Is this true? While the gay-friendly public (myself included) enjoys when openly anti-gay figures like Ted Haggard are outed as hypocritical gays themselves, the answer is no. The study itself (bypass the paywall here), does not show that men with negative attitudes toward homosexuality show unconscious enjoyment of homosexual imagery. This research is unworthy of publication; its popularity seems solely politically motivated. This is pseudoscientific clickbait. Its clickbaity nature happens to be the reason I ran into it at all.
The study gives its bias away right in the introduction: "Homophobia is typically defined as any negative thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors toward homosexuals as well as an aversion or a fear toward interacting with gay individuals. As such, homophobia includes both cognitive and emotional responses toward homosexuality."
See what they did there? The first sentence describes homophobia as negativity toward gay people, which is fair. But the second sentence magically equates this with negative feelings about homosexuality itself. Sexual arousal and rejection are feelings. Negative feelings about homosexuality are an inherent part of heterosexuality -- if you didn't have them, you'd be bisexual. Right in the introduction, this study pathologizes male heterosexuality by equating it with homophobia.
1) How did they determine participants were "anti-gay" or had "negative attitudes towards gay men"?
Besides the evident researcher bias painting male heterosexuality as inherently homophobic, they also used a deeply partisan questionnaire to determine whether participants were "anti-gay," called The Modern Homonegativity Scale, which uses the familiar 1-to-5 agree-to-disagree scale. It is also from 2002. Gay rights have progressed significantly since 2002. It is not fair to judge 2016 participants as though they live in the political atmosphere of 2002.
Questions (that is, statements to be rated) include:
