Latino perspectives on sexual orientation: The desire that we do no dare to name José Toro-Alfonso, PhD 1 University of Puerto Rico San Juan, Puerto Rico The bet for equality is one of the major challenges of the time. The search for equality challenges all. This task involves changes in structures, institutions, and transformations in daily lives which charge the practices of diversity on a day to day basis in all actions and aspects of human existence. Even though homosexuality is heard more than in previous decades and that media present the lives of gays and lesbians more frequently, this not necessarily translate in changes on attitudes towards these communities, including among university students (Toro-Alfonso & Varas Díaz, 2004). Evidence of this can also be observed in recent debates in the United States and Puerto Rico on the inclusion of gay bashing as part of the legislations on hate crimes (Enkidu, 2005). The stigmatization of homosexuality have multiple origins, among these there is the association with mental disease and the combination of homosexuality with pre-existing stigmas as pederasty, promiscuity, and AIDS (Cáceres, Frasca, Pecheny, & Terto, 2004). But over all, the stigma of homosexuality is strongly related among Latino communities with the social construction of gender. Latino societies assume the myth that gays internally want to be women and that lesbians desire to be men. Homosexuality and the contradictions of the masculine desire The ideology of machismo also exerts its dominion over homosexuals. This is done through de-valuing the homosexual perceived as a male impersonating a woman, renouncing to the social superiority adhered to the penis and passing from being a male subject to a mere object. Being homosexual y more despicable that being a woman because the homosexual have the elements for supremacy and seems not to care or not interested (Fone, 2000; Ramírez, 1995; Ramírez & García-Toro, 2002; Toro-Alfonso & Varas Díaz, 2006). From this perspective, homosexuality is rejected because it breaks the social demand from the family, the sex roles, the competency between men, and the ever existing power relation between men and women. Homophobia: Social exclusion Homophobia is manifested as an affective response and in negative attitudes based on myth and stereotypes about relations between people of the same sex (Snively, Kreurger, Stretch, Wilson-Watt, & Chadha, 2004). Homophobia, as racism and misogyny, 1 A version of this paper was presented at the XXXI Interamerican Congress of Psychology, Mexico, July 4, 2007. To contact the author send e-mail to jtoro@uprrp.edu .