Out-group visibility infuriates authoritarians regardless of the specific target group

Evidence

Furthermore, as homosexuals have increasingly “come out,” they seem to have infuriated authoritarians the way that black Americans did during the civil rights movement. “Don’t these people know they should be ashamed of what they are?” and “What makes them think they have the same rights that ‘decent people’ do?” were heard as often in the 1980s about homosexual protest as they were in the 1960s about black protest. One expects, therefore, that as homosexuality becomes more socially acceptable in society, some High RWAs will lower their voices. (However, the connection in the public mind between male homosexuality and AIDS may delay this modulation.) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 378

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the parallel between civil-rights-era anti-black rhetoric and anti-gay rhetoric as evidence that authoritarian aggression targets visible defiance of in-group norms rather than inherent group traits — a ‘decent people’ framing that recurs across every moral panic.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s theme of moral panics as class/identity signaling, and to Cohen’s moral panic concept in my existing library. — connects to: High authoritarians readily support persecution of groups including their own. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 917