So, I saw a lot of “but why is there even homophobia is Equestria?” sort of questions, both on here and on derpi. It’s a good question and got me thinking. I had my reasons but they were mostly nebulous.

So I’m going to ignore the golden rule of storytelling and tell rather than show for the sake of brevity. After all, I think most of us would rather get back to cute princess ponies shenanigans rather than me trying to illustrate headcanons.

TL;DR: Ponies have their unreasonable people and ideologies too. Homophobia is not as widespread or as violent as it is our own world, but it still exists.

Before now, I just had a vague idea based on that tl;dr. I’ll just take that idea and run with it for the first draft of:

Gay Pony History Story Time

Back long before Luna’s banishment, she wasn’t exactly shy about how she felt about other mares and even Celestia was known to have an occasional fling with another mare. While the nobles families preferred procreative unions for most of their children for the sake of continuing bloodlines and all that, they certainly weren’t averse to a daughter marrying one of the sisters. The attitude of the general populace was that, while odd and curious, homosexuality wasn’t necessarily wrong. It was just a thing that happened to a few ponies sometimes, considered at the time to be like a mild birth defect. As long as the pony in question could contribute to society, they were tolerated. After all, with disease, famine, raiding, and lots of hungry predators, ponies needed every bit of help from each other. That’s not to say everyone was perfectly compassionate. As we’ve seen from even modern ponies, some like to cast down any ‘others’ to make themselves feel better. But having an openly gay near-immortal princess certainly helped things.

Sometime during Celestia’s solo reign, the pony scientific revolution happened. While largely focused on the forces of magic, other fields such as naturalist studies also advanced. The public interpretation of Darwin-like ideas became bastardized over time. Some began to view those who did not fit the desired mold as a detriment to the advancement of ponykind. Eugenics itself never got as popular with ponies as it did with humans. Celestia ensured that nothing remotely resembling such a thing eked its way into policy but she refused to cross ethical lines about stifling ideas and speech. So the idea persisted that some ponies weren’t as good as others. This was not as deeply ingrained as in human cultures and outright violence was never tolerated, but it was still there in the back of the public’s mind.

Due to these popular early studies, homosexuality gained a stigma. As it didn’t seem to serve any immediate evolutionary purpose, it was thought of a defect, unnatural and undesirable. These studies were eventually debunked and more theories about why a small population of exclusively homosexual individuals would be beneficial came about, but not before the damage was done. It’s important to remember that the general population isn’t always fully aware of what the scientific community is doing and how to interpret studies. It doesn’t help that news sources often prefer to publish the more sensational material and often fail at reporting corrections.

And that brings us to the present. The anti-LGBT sentiment persists because of remaining stigma and because ponies, like people, are often uncomfortable with ideas they can’t understand. Most know that it’s no big deal, even if they find it kind of gross sometimes, but the loud minority ruins things. It’s largely the same type of individuals that in the human world would believe in fad diets, chemtrails, anti-vaccination hype, climate change denial, etc. They think they’re doing the right thing and aren’t inherently evil, just wildly misinformed and sometimes hurting others by their ignorance.

End Gay Pony History Story Time

I could probably come up with other reasons why this attitude would exist in Equestria, but I think it would boil down to the same premise: pony society can be irrational and unpredictably weird too. I think that if they didn’t have near-immortal rulers toning things down and promoting friendship, pony society might look a little more like our own. They also might have technologically progressed faster, but that’s for some other time.

As for why I added in a little bit of homophobia when I could’ve made pony society a bit more ideal, I draw what I can relate to. I sometimes express my own fears and frustrations through silly pony drawings. It’s cathartic for me.

As for how it relates to actual canon, feel free to disagree. It’s just my headcanon made mostly to justify that catharsis.