Posted on 09/25/2007 9:01:21 PM PDT by scripter
From the book My Genes Made Me Do it - a scientific look at sexual orientation by Dr Neil Whitehead. Please use with acknowledgement. See www.mygenes.co.nz.
One of the strongest arguments against homosexuality as an inborn, unalterable condition is change in sexual orientation. In this chapter we describe how the scientific literature shows that sexual orientation is anything but fixed and unalterable; rather, it shows that sexuality is fluid. People move around on the homosexual-heterosexual continuum to a surprising degree in both directions, but a far greater proportion of homosexuals become heterosexual than heterosexuals become homosexual. Some of the change is therapeutically assisted, but in most cases it appears to be circumstantial. Life itself can bring along the factor that makes the difference. This chapter looks at change and its proponents and opponents.
The Implications of Change
Changes either to or from OSA (Opposite Sex Attraction) have implications for genetic control. Kitzuger and Wilkinson 59 in their survey of changes towards lesbianism remark that there were so many different psychological paths to exclusive SSA (Same Sex Attraction) that it was impossible they were genetically controlled, a point rarely made. But it is supported by the long list of SSA causes important to various people given in chapter 10.
For some reason people find it far easier to believe a person could move from OSA to SSA than the reverse. So we will concentrate mostly on surveying SSA to OSA.
Spontaneous Change Homosexual to Heterosexual
Bob is a former gay man whose father was sick most of his childhood and early teenage life. He grew up feeling homosexual attraction toward other men and had a lover for two years as a teenager. Two years after that relationship, he suddenly realized he wasn't struggling anymore with homosexual feelings. "As I look back now I see that part of the reason was that I was working with my father and having regular time with him for the first time in my life. I didn't realize what was going on, but a need was being met in my life, that I didn't know was there. I didn't struggle with homosexuality at that point."
Bob believes that his homosexuality was a search for male affection and connection that had its roots in the lack of a childhood relationship with his father. He was much closer to his mother. When he began in his late teens to work and relate with his father for the first time, he believes he gained something from the relationship that led to a diminution of his need for other men.
One homosexual man found that when he joined the Air Force, he began to notice women. The man was a self-identified homosexual - not seeking to change his orientation. "Being in a totally masculine environment I started to relate to men more spontaneously and feel better about my own masculinity. I felt I bridged a gap between me and the straight males ... like being one of the guys and trusting each other. And as a result, all sorts of blocks broke down. I seemed to start to notice women ... for the first time in my life I started having sex dreams with women in them. I was still mostly turned on by men, but suddenly, women too. It surprised the hell out of me."
Being able to trust straight males and become .one of the guys. seemed to bridge a gap between himself and heterosexual men that took him some distance along the continuum toward heterosexuality. He became, in effect, bisexual. The change led the authors of the paper to remark on "the malleability and temporal unpredictability of sexuality and sexual identity."
The sexology literature reports a huge number of examples of change of all degrees from homosexuality to or toward heterosexuality. These studies have been so numerous that West (a gay man) in 1977 took an entire chapter in his classic book, Homosexuality Re-examined, to review them, and commented: "Although some militant homosexuals find such claims improbable and unpalatable, authenticated accounts have been published of apparently exclusive and long-standing homosexuals unexpectedly changing their orientation."
West mentions one man who was exclusively homosexual for eight years, then became heterosexual. Straight, a book written by a man with the pseudonym Aaron, in 1972, describes Aaron.s thorough immersion in the gay scene, his decision to leave it, and his arousal of feelings for women and subsequent marriage. i
Nichols says some life-long female homosexuals spontaneously develop heterosexual interests and become bisexual in mid-life. She even thinks there is evidence (uncited) that this may be getting more frequent.
Another well known author in the field, Hatterer, who believes in sexual orientation change, said, "I've heard of hundreds of ... men who went from a homosexual to a heterosexual adjustment on their own."
Among the Sambia, a Papua-New Guinean tribe in which homosexual sex was culturally prescribed for growing boys until marriageable age (when they were expected to be exclusively heterosexual), there was a significant change toward heterosexuality. Herdt,12 who has intensively researched the Sambia, graded individual males on the Kinsey scale for those two periods: before and after marriage. He found that the change from adolescent to married man in attitudes and behavior equated to a move from Kinsey homosexual classes five and six to Class two, predominantly heterosexual. Herdt believed the change was a real change in sexual orientation.
Heterosexual to Homosexual
Exclusively heterosexual women can, in mid-life, develop lesbian feelings and behavior. This is a well known clinical feature of lesbianism. It often occurs during marriage or after marriage break-up, with no clinically observable hint of prior existence - not even lesbian fantasy, as reported by the following two therapists. Nichols found among married bisexual women that .many appeared to make dramatic swings in Kinsey ratings of both behavior and fantasy over the course of the marriage. in ways that "cast doubt upon the widely held belief in the inflexibility of sexual orientation and attraction over a lifetime."
Dixon surveyed fifty women who became bisexual after the age of thirty. They were exclusively heterosexual before, having had no earlier significant sexual fantasy about females, and quite heterosexually satisfied. They continued to enjoy promiscuous sexual relationships with both sexes.
The work of Kinsey on male and female sexuality in the forties and fifties is probably classic in the field in its conclusions that sexual orientation is fluid and subject to spontaneous change. At an early stage in his research Kinsey (as cited by Kinsey researcher Pomeroy) discovered "more than eighty cases of [previously homosexual] men who had made a satisfactory heterosexual adjustment." This was 2% of his sample. Small amounts of homosexual fantasy remained; these men only just failed to make his Category Zero-exclusive heterosexuality. Kinsey also found that most of the changes were as adults.
Commenting particularly on the work of Kinsey et al., Texas researcher Ross says, "Given these data ... sexuality can thus be seen as a fluctuating variable rather than as a constant."
Tanner reported that about half the lesbians she knew were heterosexual before midlife.
A survey by the well known research team Bell, Weinberg and Hammersmith4 published in 1981 also claimed that 2 percent of the heterosexual population said they had once been exclusively homosexual. Independently, Colorado researchers Cameron et al. in 1985, reported an identical figure. Both these studies also put the incidence of homosexuality at 4 percent. In other words nearly half the homosexual sample moved significantly towards heterosexuality. But change was occurring in both directions. About 2 percent of the heterosexual group became homosexual (Figure 21). More data are available from the comprehensive study by Laumann et al. (1994), who reported that about half those males homosexually active as young adults were no longer active later. Granted, only one or two incidences of activity were recorded in each case, and questions were directed at activity rather than identity, but, as far as it goes, the survey supports the other studies. Rosario et al. (1996) similarly reported in a longitudinal study that 57% of their gay/ lesbian subjects remained exclusively gay/lesbian, but that the remainder had changed to varying degrees. Fox reported various degrees of change among bisexual people.
Excerpted from a PDF document. Read the entire chapter 12 online here: http://www.mygenes.co.nz/Ch12.pdf. The source contains footnotes and graphs.
There is no gene. It’s been searched for. It , by all modern standards of medical science, does not exist.
Addiction is probably too strong a word. However, like most Human activity (good and bad), its certainly habit-forming.
“People move around on the homosexual-heterosexual continuum to a surprising degree in both directions”
Huh, no we don’t.
So since salvation, you've adhered to scripture and you've had no problems with Satan and his resultant sin in your life?
You are unique among Christians. Most use the crutch of and need of grace to explain their still sinful ways.
Are you telling me that today, right now, we know all there is to know about human genetics? That is just as riduculous as saying we know all there is to know about the solar system.
Do you agree that humans, like the animal kingdom at large, are created to procreate? All species are designed to perpetuate themselves. Species that fail to do so have, for whatever reason (meteors, volcanic eruption, or whatever) lost the ability to adapt or were not given enough time to adapt.
At the heart of this process are genes. If a person of one sex finds him or her self attracted to the same sex there is something terribly wrong with that person’s genetic makeup. Obviously, the problem may be more profound in some and less profound in others. Hence, we have people who are attracted to both sexes equally. Or we have people whose problem is realtively mild compared to others. Perhaps it is this group that might benefit from counseling or whatever.
Finally, if there is not a genetic component to homosexuallity, how do you explain the behavior? I remember a story a few years back about a boy whose testicles were “accidentally” cut off at birth while being circumcized. His parents actually raised him as a girl. But when he bacame an adult he reverted to his male self—despite all those years of female conditioning. Actually married—a girl.
IMO, homosexuallity is no different than being born with hemophilia, Down’s Syndrome, or any other human aberration.
Having said that, they remain God’s children and deserve being loved just like anyone else.
Ping for later read.
The problem with your statement above is that no credible scientist nor any scientific study supports your statement. On what do you base the above statement?
A couple of years ago I was reading the summary of a study from a scientist who was a homosexual. In the summary he emphasized that no study to date supported the claim homosexuals are born that way and he further stated he didn't think any further studies would support the claim that homosexuals are born that way.
Scientists can make such statements because all the evidence points to environment being the major factor for same sex attraction. Besides that, ex-gays exist and their numbers continue to grow. We have to consider all the evidence and all the evidence points to the fluidity of sexuality.
Definitely not everyone!
In my view gays are conflicted as to how they want to explain their situation. There are those gays who want to believe they have “chosen” their sexual preferenence. They simply cannot accept that there is something “wrong” with them. There is another group that accepts their “differentness”, but thinks it is somehow morally equivalent to heterosexuallity. There is the bisexual group. Some in this group may benefit from therapy that focuses their sexual identity one way or the other. Then there is the last and, I believe, largest group. People in this group understand and accept their situation. They may or not find a life partner. But either way, they keep their sexual identity to themselves and outwardly live a mainstream life. They do not particpate in so-called Gay Pride parades tongue kissing and groping each other in public.
Certainly abusive childhoods can contribute to homosexuality—as well as criminality. But I suspect the vast number of people with such a back ground grow up to be productive and loving people.
Do you also believe that people born with missing limbs, congenital defects or whatever are only products of their environments? Sometimes things just go wrong. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s not even fair or unfair. It just is. To pretend otherwise is self delusional.
I hear people say that God doesn’t create bad people. Of course he doesn’t. After Adam and Eve he stopped people creation. At times in his life he intervened in some peoples lives to fix their particular problem. But he didn’t do it to make them well so much as he did it to prove he was who he said he was. We call these illuminating moments miracles.
Someone wrote me that abusive childhoods [environment] produces homosexuals. That’s hogwash. One is or is not homosexual. And please spare me the “scientific study” ploy. Studies can be made to demonstrate any desired premise. It is “junk” science, afterall, that is creating this whole global warming nonsense. Oh, I forgot, the zealots who buy into this lie are now calling it climate change.
I don’t need a scientific study to conclude that homosexual people have a problem with they’re wiring. Nature is organized specifically for procreation. Certainly their are aberrations out there, but they are the exception—ergo aberration—not the rule.
I’ve read your post a couple of times and I’m not sure how to respond to the straw man arguments you’ve put forth, other than to say there is no evidence to support anything you’ve said.
I don’t need an “expert” or a “study” to tell me what I can see with my own eyes. Other than your “glittering generality” argument of their being no evidence to support anything I said, why not take me on point by point and tell me where I’m wrong?
If you read chapter 12 (the article) along with the links at the end of post 1 you might realize the colossal waste of time that would be. The first sentence in chapter 12 is very important.
If you could actually find a credible scientist that supports a single point you've raised then we can discuss that point. The problem is you can't.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.