Yeah, ain't karma a bi*ch? And science is even more ruthless.
Researchers from that god forsaken university somewhere in New York, namely Columbia University, have found that Homophobes tend to live on average 2.5 years less than more accepting people.
So it is not in the CDC catalog of disease yet, but it might be.
A recent paper in the American Journal of Public Health by Hatzenbuehler et. al. is titled "Anti-Gay Prejudice and All-Cause Mortality Among Heterosexuals in the United States"
Their main finding:
Heterosexuals who reported higher levels of antigay prejudice had higher mortality risk than those who reported lower levels (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.25; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.09, 1.42), with control for multiple risk factors for mortality, including demographics, socioeconomic status, and fair or poor self-rated health. This result translates into a life expectancy difference of approximately 2.5 years (95% CI = 1.0, 4.0 years) between individuals with high versus low levels of antigay prejudice. Furthermore, in sensitivity analyses, antigay prejudice was specifically associated with increased risk of cardiovascular-related causes of death in fully adjusted models (HR = 1.29; 95% CI = 1.04, 1.60).
I haven't looked carefully into the paper itself yet, so I cannot attest to the validity of the statistics presented. However, logically it makes sense -when one's life is consumed by hatred of others, one's heart is pumping overtime for all the wrong reasons.
This comes on the heels of a paper published in 2012 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which makes the assertion that homophobia is an expression of repressed individual homosexuality.
When individuals grow up with autonomy-thwarting parents, they may be prevented from exploring internally endorsed values and identities and as a result shut out aspects of the self perceived to be unacceptable. Given the stigmatization of homosexuality, individuals perceiving low autonomy support from parents may be especially motivated to conceal same-sex sexual attraction, leading to defensive processes such as reaction formation. Four studies tested a model wherein perceived parental autonomy support is associated with lower discrepancies between self-reported sexual orientation and implicit sexual orientation (assessed with a reaction time task). These indices interacted to predict anti-gay responding indicative of reaction formation. Studies 2–4 showed that an implicit/explicit discrepancy was particularly pronounced in participants who experienced their fathers as both low in autonomy support and homophobic, though results were inconsistent for mothers. Findings of Study 3 suggested contingent self-esteem as a link between parenting styles and discrepancies in sexual orientation measures.
I think it was H.L. Mencken who said it even better than these scientific papers:
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
And living with constant fear and hate is no way to live.