DAVIS, Calif. July 25 — For more than three decades, the scientific study of anti-LGBTQ prejudice has been shaped by a single scholar whose work fundamentally redefined how researchers and policymakers understand hostility toward sexual minorities. Gregory M.
Herek, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, introduced the term “sexual prejudice” to replace the widely used but analytically flawed label “homophobia.” Herek, born in 1954 in Omaha, Nebraska, is openly gay and is regarded as one of the most influential academics working on sexual orientation and stigma. His central argument is that the term “homophobia” is a misnomer: it wrongly implies that negative responses to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people arise from an individual pathological fear, a phobia.
Psychological research, he contends, shows those attitudes are better understood as a form of prejudice—a socially learned bias—rather than an individual mental disorder. Strategically, reframing the debate from pathology to prejudice shifted the burden from the individual to the social and structural conditions that produce hostility.
A career built on empirical rigor
Herek earned his B.A. from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, then his M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Davis, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University. He taught at Yale and at the City University of New York Graduate Center before returning to UC Davis in 1989 as a research psychologist. In 1999 he became a tenured professor.
His research concentrates on societal stigma based on sexual orientation and on the social psychology of heterosexuals’ attitudes toward lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. The breadth of his output is considerable: he has published at least 108 papers and chapters, edited or coedited five books and two special journal issues, and delivered more than 85 conference presentations.
He has secured federal and state grants totaling more than $5 million. The calculus of his scholarly influence extends beyond raw numbers—he has chaired the Scientific Review Committee of the American Psychological Foundation’s Wayne F. Placek Award from 1995 to 2007, overseeing review of more than 200 research proposals.
Foundational hate-crime testimony
Herek’s work has been foundational in hate crime research. In 1986, he testified on behalf of the American Psychological Association before the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on hate crimes based on sexual orientation. That appearance, early in the national conversation about bias-motivated violence, gave lawmakers a research-backed framework for understanding why sexual orientation–based attacks demanded distinct legal recognition.
What this signaled at the time was a shift from treating anti-LGBTQ violence as a matter of simple assault to recognizing it as a form of systemic intimidation. He served on a peer review panel for the National Institute of Mental Health from 1992 to 1995.
He is Executive Editor Emeritus of the APA book series Contemporary Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Psychology and sits on the editorial boards of nine professional journals. The broader stakes of his editorial and grant-review roles are straightforward: he has helped shape which research questions get funded and which findings get published, steering the field toward rigorous, evidence-based inquiry.
Geopolitical implications of semantic precision
While Herek’s work is rooted in American academic psychology, its implications extend to international human rights discourse. Many governments and intergovernmental organizations still use “homophobia” in policy documents, a term that, by Herek’s analysis, obscures the social and political nature of the prejudice. Countries that criminalize same-sex conduct often justify laws by invoking moral or public-health arguments rather than clinical fear.
Understanding negative attitudes as prejudice rather than phobia reframes the strategic response: combating prejudice requires education, contact interventions, and legal reform, not clinical treatment of individuals. On the geopolitical chessboard, the debate over terminology affects how international bodies like the United Nations categorize anti-LGBTQ violence.
Labeling attacks as hate crimes based on prejudice rather than as acts of irrational individuals affects how aid and legal assistance are structured. Herek’s work provided the empirical justification for that classification.
What to watch next
As courts and legislatures in the United States and abroad continue to confront questions about nondiscrimination protections for sexual minorities, the conceptual framework Herek established remains the dominant lens for scientific inquiry. His retirement from active teaching has not diminished his influence; his publications and editorial roles continue to anchor the field. The question now is whether the term “sexual prejudice” will supplant “homophobia” in public and policy discourse as completely as it has in academic psychology.
The record suggests the shift is already underway, if slower outside the lab.
Sources
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