Homophobic brother fixated on gay people

So, said brother refers to anyone or group of people that does or believes something he disagrees with as Fa***t’s, then says they must (refers to sexual activities between gay men) in the most insulting way. He eventually does this almost every time I talk to him for any length of time.

Here it some back story to this.

We are both in our late 30s and he has always been this way. He holds back when it comes to our sister who is out as a lesbian and at family gathering. We have an older cousin who everyone thinks is gay but has never said anything. When I am talking to my brother, he will often criticize our cousin for being gay and call him gay slurs then complain that he hasn’t come out of the closet. It really seems like my brother has been fixated on our cousin since we were young kids.

I am not out to any of my family, but my sisters know and my other brother suspects that I am not straight. Also, my whole family thinks my best friend who I hung out with all through my teens and 20s is gay. They have all asked at one time or another if my friend was gay. Even the homophobic brother has asked a lot and seems a bit fixated about my friend as well. Oddly none of them have asked me if I was gay/bi though.

You would think that at this point this particular brother would also be thinking I am not straight.

But given all this he still continues to be insulting towards gay people.


I am thinking there might be something more going on here but would like to hear from anyone who has some insight on this.

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if he was at least bi. Kind of always felt like a lot of the family has at least some bi tendencies. The typical big family with a catholic back ground thing going on. All the red flags are there, LOL.

It seems like he has been doing more of this in the last year but it’s getting very tiring. Not sure if the girlfriend of the last year and a half has anything to do with it? He does have a lot short term relationships lasting only 2 to 3 years.


He knows that I am accepting of LGBT people and he knows our sister is gay.

I wonder why he would be so much more afraid than me? He has always been much more ornery and aggressive than me.


We do get along just fine, but I am really getting tired of hearing the derogatory comments. There are some options though.

Directly call him out.

Ramp up the pro gay comments on my part.

Or just stop talking to him.

 

My mom and her family were raised catholic and they were taking it pretty seriously when I was young. I remember my aunt getting angry when I told her I didn’t believe some of the ideas they were pushing on us. She seemed very invested in us believing in the church then. By the time we hit our mid-teens some of us just refused to go and I ended up denouncing religion altogether. Much of the family doesn’t put a lot into the church today.

As for our cousin, he is quite a bit older and given that the way family would hang out in groups most of the time its very unlikely that anything would have happen between him and my brother. I probably spent more time around my cousin than my brother did anyway.

One thing that might explain some of this, Is around our early or pre-teen years there was at least a few times that my mom would mention to my siblings and I that people think our cousin was gay. Then our older siblings would start gay bashing and my brother would join in. The situation seems weird, she didn’t say anything bad about our cousin but she did nothing to defend him either. Its almost like she was doing it intentionally. To be honest I felt like I was being compered to my cousin at times. Looking back, it does seem like my mom held a lot of anti-gay sediment. She usually didn’t say much out loud for all to hear, but there was a time when she got angry, pulled me aside and told me to stop acting like a faggot. That really didn’t help much for my self-esteem.

My family was very dysfunctional in just about every way so trying to un-wrap it all is confusing.