Posted on 05/12/2009 6:32:53 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The causes of homosexuality continue to both fascinate and divide people. Recently, in London, a conservative group of Anglicans, called the Anglican Mainstream hosted a conference to discuss the causes of homosexuality and promote change from gay to straight. Featured at the conference was American psychologist, Joseph Nicolosi. Dr. Nicolosi stirred much controversy when he said, without research support, that most of his clients show some degree of change in their sexual orientation.
Nicolosi's views regarding causes of homosexuality are also controversial. In response to a question about the existence of a gay gene, Nicolosi said:
In other words, that fact remains that if you traumatize a child in a particular way you will create a homosexual condition. If you do not traumatize a child, he will be heterosexual. If you do not traumatize a child in a particular way, he will be heterosexual. The nature of that trauma is an early attachment break during the bonding phase with the father.
In a popular book written with his wife, A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, Nicolosi pegs the "crucial period" for bonding between father and son at "between one and a half to three years." Elsewhere, Nicolosi argues that fathers of homosexual sons are unavailable, detached and/or hostile. To fathers in London, he advised, "If you don't hug your sons, some other man will," suggesting that male homosexual attraction is a search for a father's love.
The father-deficit theory is considered outdated by mainstream sexuality researchers, but is popular among conservative Christians. This evangelical acceptance has always puzzled me because Nicolosi's statements regarding the origins of homosexuality can be discounted not only by research but by common experience. His theory is contradicted in at least two ways. The first way should be quite obvious to Nicolosi's audiences: there are many men who experienced poor fathering not only during the first six years of life but throughout childhood and are nonetheless, exclusively heterosexual.
Since many in Nicolosi's audiences are either unhappy with their homosexual attractions or do not know many secure gay people, the second problem might not be so clear. In contrast to Nicolosi's depictions of the typical family of gay males, many such men experienced loving, close relationships with their fathers throughout childhood with no break in attachment. Listen to one such father who spoke to me recently about his gay son.
When my son was 18 months to 3 years old (and on into childhood), we enjoyed a wonderfully close relationship. We explored the world behind the YMCA and called it travelling, looking for creatures in nooks and crannies. When it would snow, we bundled up and follow the same path. We hunted for snakes together in the creek, built a swamp world for various amphibians and generally loved each others' company. Wherever I was, there was my son; as my wife would say, we were like "Peel and Stick."
As he got older our relationship changed, but in a way that it should change. It matured into a friendship as father and son. After our son came out to us, our relationship did not change.
Does this sound like an uninvolved, detached father? This man's son concurs with his dad's assessment of the relationship. They were and are close, with no breaks during the period Nicolosi theorizes should cause homosexuality.
Devout Christians, the family attended conferences put on by conservative Christians who believed parental deficits were responsible for homosexuality. The answers they heard were very much like what Dr. Nicolosi promotes. These parents also took their son to a reparative therapist (i.e., counselor who holds to Nicolosi's theory) who evaluated the potential for sexual orientation change. The father reported that it wasn't helpful.
Not understanding the nature of his condition, we did take our son to a counselor. After several weeks of "therapy," our counselor told our son that he didn't know what to do. None of the stereotypes fit. Our son told his counselor that he had a wonderful and close relationship with his father and mom.
Although the parents maintain the traditional Christian, non-affirming view of homosexual behavior, parents and son have maintained their relationship. What they all do much less often now is become preoccupied over causes and self-blame. The father sees a bigger picture.
Dr. Nicolosi gets it wrong to reduce the thorns in our sides/lives to a human event where we have but one chance to get it right. Does that sound like the relationship we have with our heavenly Father? God has allowed all of us to experience thorns, some painfully obvious, others less so. No doubt the thorns God allows are refining our character and leading us back to Him.
In fact, sexual orientation is quite complex. Most likely, multiple pre-and post-natal factors are involved in different ways for different people. One size does not fit all. What this means for Christian groups, however, is the stuff of controversy. For some, it means that homosexuality should be affirmed and Scripture reframed. For others, it does not lead to a change of orthodoxy, but rather to greater humility regarding the need for spiritual support to live a different and often difficult calling. What is not needed is adoption of simple, but misleading, answers.
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Warren Throckmorton, PhD is Associate Professor of Psychology and Fellow for Psychology and Public Policy at Grove City College (PA). He can be contacted through his blog at www.wthrockmorton.com.
If you look at all the male children born to unwed mothers in the ghetto and see that they all grow up to sire even more unwanted children, it is very easy to conclude that this premise is false.
What's not seen is all the black men "on the downlow". Many Fatherless men will eventually grow up to either be effeminate or promiscuous. We all know what happens to the effeminate ones, but promiscuous men eventually dabble into homosexuality because the thrill of women will eventually fade.
I say who knows blaming the parents has gotten old
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
A liar and an imposter desires to reframe scripture.
I don’t agree with this guys theory, but I will do agree that one of the contributing factors to homosexuality, particularly male homosexuality is the relationship with the father. THe bulk of homosexual men I have dealt with have one of 3 common threads in their lives.
1) A troubled or horrible relationship with their father, or loss of their father at a relatively young age.
2) A hyper overbearing mother or mother figure in their lives.
3) Were abused by a homosexual at some point in their lives, generally at a young age.
Certainly not every homosexual has that background, but in my experience its a very very large percentage.
I don’t know what causes homosexuality, but I do know that boys who have a father involved in their lives are so much better off than the ones who don’t in a nearly unlimited number of ways. My son is middle-school aged and I’m involved with middle school aged kids through Scouts, Robotics, PTO and athletics. Almost without exception, the problem boys are kids who either have no father at home, or have a father who does his own thing and never shows up at the kid’s events. Boys whose fathers care about them enough to show up are almost without exception good kids who are going somewhere with their life. Even if the father is overbearing or a jerk, if he cares enough to show up, the kid is going to turn out OK.
I personally cannot imagine what fathers who don’t look after their kids are thinking, because the joy and fun of seeing kids grow into successful young people is much more satisfying than careers or partying.
Interesting theory. Here’s mine:
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2228855/posts
Yup. Any of those three can be the cause, though the homosexual abuse as a child one depends on the type of abuse: Violent v. persuasive.
There is another cause: The young boy who is bullied in general because of a fear and intense revulsion to violence.
However, it is obvious that certain traumas can block heterosexual orientation and lead to homosexual orientation. Perhaps some predisposition must exist in the victim, but perhaps not. Certainly a childhood of brutalization and/or molestation by a parent of the opposite sex could predispose someone to homosexuality. Another thing that might do it would be a same-sex parent who compulsively steals attention from the child.
I think that the causes are multiple and that the predispostion forms a statistical bell curve.
I know 3 gay men. A classmate in HS, my cousin and sister in-laws' brother were gay and all had very hostile fathers who traumatized them.
The article mentioned the fathers who traumitzed their son's at a young age, impressionable age. "In other words, that fact remains that if you traumatize a child in a particular way you will create a homosexual condition"
Black fathers are absent from their lives.
I don’t know many gay men but the ones I do know fit into one of your 3 scenarios.
One thing my daughter points out is that her generation seems to be more “noncomitted”...kids who want the freedom to switch their preference at the drop of a hat.
I have found that most gay men had a distant relationship with their father. My brother is gay and that was true whereas I was closer to my dad.
I am very close with both my kids.
Nah. I had fraternity brothers like that. They would screw anything. Male, female, whatever. That was during the heyday of AIDS so it was a real problem.
Girls are more likely to play Lesbian these days to get attention.
I tend to agree with you. Some percentage of gay men (10-15%?) are simply born that way. Others are created from a variety of psychosocial and biological factors.
I wonder if there are differences between male and female homosexuals. I have known several lesbians, all of whom were molested early in puberty. One was a childhood friend who tried to be heterosexual, but it just did not work for her. None of the lesbians I have known believed that they were born that way.
A single exception doesn’t blow a theory out of the water.
And anyone familiar with Nicolosi’s thinking knows that he holds that some boys are more easily traumatized than others. The same father can raise several sons, and traumatize only one of them. And many fathers relate well to several sons, but reject one son—the “sissy,” in particular—which ends up reinforcing the very traits the father dislikes.
Anybody who has raised cattle or studied the sexual behavior of jailbirds can tell you that, yes, it is not unusual to see bulls (or jailbirds) mounting each other when no females are available. This behavior, however, mysteriously vanishes once they become available.
If it was inbred, as the homo lobby claims, it would remain constant regardless of the presence or absence of members of the opposite sex. The homo lobby would also not go to extraordinary efforts to promote, teach and proselytize it were it inbred and innate as they claim.
The evil of homosexuality lies in the act and not the orientation. You don’t need to be a Biblical literalist to see that the act is something that should be strongly discouraged.
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