Are you homophobic? I hope you aren't. Homophobia is a very common and, in my opinion, terrible, popular social phenomenon in our society today. The Oxford Dictionary defines homophobia as an irrational aversion to homosexuality and homosexual people (“Homophobia”). Homophobia, therefore, is fundamentally an aversion, disgust or hatred towards gay, lesbian and bisexual people. It is almost always accompanied by discrimination against these people which very often translates into verbal or physical aggression perceived by them. This is a very common problem in our everyday world that generally goes unnoticed or ignored. It affects a very large group of people and can still hurt you even if you are completely heterosexual, which is why we need to stop being homophobic and learn to respect homosexual and bisexual people. We need to stop judging people based solely on their sexual orientation; we must stop discriminating! Homophobia in our current society is wrong and immoral because of the immense harm it causes on vast numbers of individuals among us, which is why we should work to eradicate it in our daily lives. Homophobic people, as I have already said, typically discriminate against gays, lesbians and bisexuals through physical and verbal abuse; but what exactly are these crimes? In our heterosexist society, it is common for people to verbally discriminate against homosexual and bisexual individuals in common, nonviolent ways. These common ways include telling jokes, insulting people, publicly insulting gays, lesbians, or bisexuals just because of their sexuality, or using words like "gay" to insult someone. Of all the words used to insult someone that can be heard in a school environment, the word "gay" takes up up to 83% of them as d...... half of the paper ...... and offer help if they suffer from bullying or other people also cause them harm. If we see someone being bullied because of their sexual orientation, we need to talk to the aggressor and solve this problem, so that the bully stops being so homophobic and therefore stops abusing the gay, lesbian or bisexual person towards whom he behaved unfairly. We can always protest in peaceful ways, for example by writing a persuasive essay like I did, by posting messages outlining what homophobia is and how we can (and should) stop it, or by simply talking to a homophobic person you know and letting them know for stop being like that. We can truly contribute to the decrease of homophobia and heterosexism in our society if we work to eradicate it in ourselves and in close people we know, putting an end to our prejudices and discriminatory expressions against homosexual and bisexual people..