In this feverish pre-election season, last month it was America's Muslims taking the heat as the anger of a volatile and unhappy electorate bounces from object to object – with the furore and protests over the "Ground Zero mosque", an attack on a New York taxi driver and other ugly incidents around the country. This month, it seems to be open season on America's gay and lesbian community.

A court ruling that has ordered the US military to end its discredited "Don't ask, don't tell" policy has produced a strange kind of backlash, with the Obama administration forced to appeal a decision it actually agrees with. Legal wrangles over DADT come hot on the heels of a recent landmark judicial decision in favour of same-sex marriage – prompting anti-gay activists in Iowa to campaign against judges whom they regard as in favour of gay marriage. And then, this week there was the disgruntled "apology" of the Republican gubernatorial candidate in New York, Carl Paladino, after he had outraged many with his remarks about young people being "brainwashed" on homosexuality in schools.

Most shocking of all, perhaps, was the story concerning three men held hostage, assaulted and sodomised by a Bronx street gang called the Latin King Goonies as "punishment" for their perceived homosexuality (http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/12/new.york.hate.crimes.case/index.html). So justifiably traumatised were America's various news outlets by this story, even the face of Fox News, Glenn Beck, felt compelled to rail against bigotry.

But it was a different comment that stayed with me about this vile incident. "The tenor of hatred and bigotry seems to be rising right now," said New York governor David Paterson, on CNN, "as it often does in the midst of a recession and economic downturn… people's angers are fulminating themselves in the wrong direction."

It is necessary, when confronted by a rising tide of bigotry, to wonder why. Does Paterson have a point?

Yale Professor George Chauncey has heavily researched the relationship between homophobia and economic instability. In his book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of Gay, Chauncey examines how a poor economy can lead to a "crisis of masculinity", and discusses the effects of the Great Depression on gay culture.

"The anti-gay reaction gained force in the early to mid-thirties as it became part of a more general reaction to the cultural experimentation of the Prohibition years and to the disruption of gender arrangements by the Depression. As the onset of the Depression dashed the confidence of the 1920s, gay men and lesbians began to seem less amusing than dangerous."

Of course, in looking at the uncomfortable tenor of homophobia in the US at the moment, you have to look at the activity on the fringes of the right. As the Tea Party movement gains momentum by defining itself against the "progressive", "liberal", even "socialist" Obama administration, the rise in homophobia looks increasingly like a backlash against the multimillion dollar push against Proposition 8, or the imminent demise of the discriminatory DADT policy.

In his book for teenagers, Gay America: Struggle for Equality, Linas Alsenas chronicles periods of heightened homophobia in the US. He charts two very different, concurrent events in the US: the publication of the Kinsey reports between 1948 and 1953, and the McCarthyite era of persecution. On the one hand, Kinsey's survey revealed (among many things) that half of the men polled (6,000, approximately) had experienced some sexual attraction to other men; and 28% of the women said the same.

On the other hand, "government persecution and harassment were par for the course for gay men and women during this difficult period. It took a lot of courage for those people to do even the simplest things, like go to a bar or a meeting," says Alsenas. But Alsenas wonders whether what we're seeing now is a rise in homophobia itself or a rise in the reporting of homophobia. The GSLEN, which conducts studies into homophobia in high schools, reports that anti-gay bullying among teens has actually remained at a constant over the last decade. A request for statistics from the FBI hate crimes bureau was not met, so it's difficult to get an accurate picture of whether the high-profile incidences of homophobia of the last few weeks are indicative of increased reporting of homophobic hate crime or something more sinister.

Coincidentally, Governor David Paterson gave an interview to Chauncey in 2009, in which he explained why gay rights are a matter close to his heart. Growing up with a visual disability, Peterson simultaneously experienced prejudice from the black organisations who refused to hire him and the blind friends who used racial epithets in his company, unaware they were in the presence of a black man. Understanding what it was like to be discriminated against, and having grown up under the care of gay relatives, Paterson shows an ingrained compassion for gay rights. Just as he highlighted recently the socio-economic issues which lead to heightened bouts of homophobia, he also mused then on another possible outcome of the recession.

"Pretty soon people are going to be borrowing money for gasoline from their neighbours," he told Chauncey. "I don't think they'll care whether their neighbours are men living with men or women living with women."

Paterson's two-year tenure as governor has not been without its bumps and wrinkles – not least when, as Paterson's polling fell, the White House let it be known that the administration felt he should not run in 2010 for a full term as governor. Paterson stood aside for Andrew Cuomo's candidacy. Given that it's now Cuomo who faces the challenge of the Tea Party-backed Paladino, we have to hope Cuomo adheres to Paterson's strong stand on gay rights.