Homosexual?

This is a matter that has been haunting people's mind and
really bothering some people.
Is it a psychological case?

Dr. William Byne and Dr. Bruce Parsons of the Department of Psychiatry of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons state, “Recent studies postulate biologic factors as the primary basis for sexual orientation. However, there is no evidence at present to substantiate a biologic theory … Critical review shows the evidence favoring a biologic theory to be lacking.” [W. Byne M.D., Ph.D., B. Parsons, M.D., Ph.D. (1993), Human Sexual Orientation: The Biologic Theories Reappraised, Archives of General Psychiatry, p. 228]

After reviewing the scientific studies on genetics and homosexuality, Masters and Johnson concluded: “The genetic theory of homosexuality has been generally discarded today.” [W.H. Masters, V.E. Johnson, R.C. Kolodny (1985) Human Sexuality, 2nd Ed., p. 411-412, Little, Brown and Company: Boston]

Dr. C.A. Tripp summarizes the scientific experience regarding hormones and homosexuality as follows:

… A number of clinicians have seen fit over the years to run their own experiments by administering testosterone to both effeminate and ordinary homosexuals. The results have been consistent: When there were any behavioral changes at all, the subjects became more like themselves than ever. Their sex drives were usually increased and sometimes their effeminate mannerisms as well (when they had any), but there were never any directional changes in their sexual interests. From these experiments … it has become abundantly clear that the sex hormones play a considerable role in powering human sexuality, but they do not control the direction of it.” [C.A. Trip (1975) The Homosexual Matrix, p. 12, McGraw-Hill: New York]

More recently some have argued that the problem lies in our prenatal hormones. They suggest that stress during pregnancy may alter the production of sex hormones in the mother at a crucial time, changing the level of hormones reaching the brain of the fetus, thus affecting sexual orientation.

Here too, however, the available evidence is against the theory. Thus, researchers have found that “… in the majority of intersex patients with known hormone abnormalities, the sexual orientation follows the sex of the rearing. Consequently, we have to assume that prenatal hormone conditions by themselves do not rigidly determine sexual orientation.” [A.A. Ehrhardt, H.F.L. Meyer-Bahlburg (1981) "Effects of Prenatal Hormones on Gender-Related Behavior," Science, p. 1316]

The available data … suggest that sexual orientation … is base on social learning rather than hormones.

Dr. Judd Marmor reported on the work of Richard Green who, “… in a long series of studies on boys who showed effeminate behavior in childhood has demonstrated that although over half of these boys do become homosexual, a substantial minority of them do not. This indicates that gender-discordant children are not born homosexual, but rather are born with certain behavioral tendencies that, given contributory environmental factors, can predispose them towards homosexual behavior. 

Thus, a little boy whose behavior is effeminate, who does not like competitive athletics, and who prefers music and art, may be disappointing to a macho father, who tends to reject the boy and distance himself from him. The mother may respond by overprotecting her son. Such reactions disturb the boy’s capacity to identify positively with his father and cause him to over identify with his mother. He may then ultimately develop homosexual erotic responses which are reinforced by later experiences.” 

[J. Marmor, "Homosexuality: Nature versus Nurture," The Harvard Mental Health Letter, October 1985, p. 6]

Dr. John Money says, “With respect to orientation as homosexual or bisexual, there is no human evidence that prenatal hormonalization alone, independently of
postnatal history, inexorably preordains either orientation. Rather, neonatal antecedents may facilitate a homosexual or bisexual orientation, provided the postnatal determinants in the social and communicational history are also facilitative.” [J. Money (1987), "Sin, Sickness or Status? Homosexual Gender Identity and Psychoneuroendocrinology," American Psychologist, 42, No. 4 (April), p. 398]

Dr. Earl D. Wilson writes, “The disputed evidence for physical causes of male homosexuality is even weaker when it comes to lesbianism.” [E.D. Wilson (1988) Counseling and Homosexuality, p. 76, Word Books: Waco, TX]

Facts like these led John DeCecco, editor of the Journal of Homosexuality and professor of psychology at San Francisco State University to say, “‘The idea that people are born into one type of sexual behavior is foolish.’ … The move towards ‘biologizing’ homosexuality, he says, isn’t the result of a scientific consensus, but a political consensus by those eager to label people gay or straight. Homosexuality, he says, is a ‘behavior, not a condition,’ and something that some people can and do change, just like they sometimes change tastes and other personality traits.” [K. Painter, (March 1, 1989), A Biologic Theory for Sexual Preference, USA Today p. 4D]


so What is it?

Krafft-Ebing was the first to suggest that bisexuality
is the original state of human sexuality

Sigmund Freud [Austrian neurologist]
has famously summarized on the basis of clinical observations:
"[W]e have come to know that all human beings are bisexual 
- and that their libido is distributed between objects of both sexes, either in a manifest or a latent form."

According to Freud, people remain bisexual all their lives in a repression to monosexuality of fantasy and behavior.

This idea was taken up in the 1940s by the zoologist
Alfred Kinsey who was the first to create a scale to measure the continuum
of sexual orientation from hetero to homosexuality.

Kinsey studied human sexuality and argued that people have the capability of being hetero or homosexual even if this trait does not present itself in the current circumstances.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/285/5429/803.full

"Sigmund Freud theorized that every person has 
the ability to become bisexual at some time in his or her life."
- Carey, Benedict (July 5, 2005). "Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 February 2007.
- Freud, Sigmund (trans. A.A. Brill), Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, Dover Publications, 128 pages, ISBN 0-486-41603-8

Psychoanalyst Dr. Joseph Merlino,
editor of Freud at 150: 21st Century Essays on a Man of Genius, stated in an interview:

“ Freud maintained that bisexuality was a normal part of development.... Freud felt there were a number of homosexuals he encountered who did not have a variety of complex problems that homosexuality was a part of.

He found people who were totally normal in every other regard
except in terms of their sexual preference.
In fact, he saw many of them as:

1. having higher intellects,
2. higher aesthetic sensibilities, higher morals;
3. those kinds of things.

He did not see it as something to criminalize or penalize,
or to keep from psychoanalytic training.

A lot of the psychoanalytic institutes felt if you were homosexual
you should not be accepted; that was not Freud's position."
Joseph Merlino, Interview with Dr. Joseph Merlino, David Shankbone, Wikinews, October 5, 2007.



What Went Wrong?


If our problem is not physical, what has gone wrong? A number of clues have been discovered.

In 1952, Dr. Irving Bieber began directing a research team in a nine year project studying male homosexuality. In all, 77 analysts, each a member of the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts, provided information on two patient samples consisting of 106 male homosexuals and a comparison group of 100 male heterosexuals.

The result was “the most authoritative study of its kind.”
[A. Karlen (1971) Sexuality and Homosexuality: A New View, p. 573, Norton: New York]

“No one has ever gathered so much finely discriminating detail on so many homosexuals,
treated in depth by so many different doctors, and put through so many evaluations.”
[ibid. p. 572-573]

Dr. Bieber wrote,
“We have come to the conclusion that a constructive, supportive,
warmly-related father precludes the possibility of a homosexual son….”
[I. Beiber et al. (1962) Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study, p. 303, Basic Books: New York]

Another psychiatrist, after many years of study and
practice treating male homosexuals, noted,
“Homosexuals consistently describe their fathers as a weak,
shadowy and distant figure, or an angry, cold or brutalizing one.”

[C. Socarides (1976) "Homosexuality is not just an alternative life style," in 
Male and Female: Christian Approaches to Sexuality, 
R.T. Barnhouse, U.T. Holmes, eds., p. 145, Seabury Press: New York]

Dr. Elizabeth Moberly received her Ph.D. in psychology from Oxford University for her study of homosexuality. She found “that the homosexual — whether man or woman —
has suffered from some deficit in the relationship with the parent of the same sex; or ‘homosexual,’ relationships.” [E. Moberly (1983) Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic, p. 2, AtticPress: Greenwood, SC]

Meanwhile The national organization P-FLAG (“Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays”) 

offers a booklet prepared with the assistance of Dr. Clinton Anderson 

of the American Psychological Association. 

Entitled, “Why Ask Why? Addressing the Research on Homosexuality and Biology,” 

The pamphlet says:

To date, no researcher has claimed that genes can determine sexual orientation. At best, researchers believe that there may be a genetic component. No human behavior, let alone sexual behavior, has been connected to genetic markers to date…sexuality, like every other behavior, is undoubtedly influenced by both biological and societal factors.