People who have negative feelings toward homosexuality often have secret attractions to the same sex - and are more likely to have grown up in households that forbid homosexual feelings, according to a recent study.

A research team from the University of Rochester, the University of Essex, England, and the University of California in Santa Barbara found that ‘[h]omophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires.