If someone says they don't like gay people - is that homophobia?

That was the topic on Tuesday 3 November 2015. And our responses:

“Yes, because it is a generalised term rather than saying I don’t like this gay person doing…, yes because it is every gay person they are stereotyping, you wouldn’t be able to say I don’t like women, black people, Muslims etc, social media can be useful as if people do make comments like that they get called out on it, you can dislike a person but not a whole group, you dislike the things you fear, it’s lazy communication and worth teasing out exactly what things or actions they don’t like, if there is some reason for disliking gay people it should be explained, I can be heterophobic, had a couple of real homophobes in the family and it was really nasty, people can jump on the bandwagon when terms like transphobic get bandied around, some of the worst homophobes can be gay people themselves – lesbians who don’t like lesbians, it’s okay to say things but if it means restricting other people’s freedom that’s not okay, homophobia come from mainly monotheistic religions.”