However, 'homophobia' should be understood as the parallel to xenophobia (which refers to racial fear and prejudice).
Most people who discuss discrimination and hatred against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people use the term 'homophobia' as a parallel to racism or sexism (which refers to racial discrimination and hatred or sexual discrimination and hatred). A possible etymological precursor was homoerotophobia, coined by Dr Wainwright Churchill in Homosexual Behavior Among Males in 1967. The 'homo' in homophobia is abbreviated from the word homosexual, which in turn derives from the Greek homo, meaning 'same'. It combines the Greek terms phobos, meaning 'fear' or 'panic', and homos, which means 'the same'. It was coined by clinical psychologist George Weinberg, who claims to have first thought of it while speaking at a homophile group in 1965 and popularized by his book Society and the Healthy Homosexual in 1971.
