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The father-deficit theory is considered outdated by mainstream sexuality researchers, but is popular among conservative Christians.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.
Been counseling for 20 years and never met anyone engaged in homosexual behavior that hadn’t been raped or sodomized by a significant adult of the same gender.
“The sins of the father are passed onto the children and onto the 3rd and 4th generation.”
Sarcastic fathers usually raise sarcastic children.
Hurt fathers hurt their children.
Children learn from their parents, they copy their behaviors, and they teach their children to behave in a likewise fashion.
Judaism’s Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality
Dennis Prager
Biblically, the premise is false as well.
Romans chapter 1 clearly teaches that homo-s is a result of atheism.
Of course, am not schooled in making such judgments, but do come away with the opinion stated.
I thought that was a dominance thing and not a provaclivity towards homosexual behavior.
Last week I was talking with the grandmother of a six year old and she was complaining about the boy constantly using profane language. I asked if he was picking it up at school. Her reply was that he learns it at home.
I have a relative who is a lesbian, and I doubt anything like molestation in her past. She tried heterosexuality, but it didn't work for her. A long-term lesbian relationship did.
The homosexuals who seem to be most angry and hostile, it seems to me, are likely basically heterosexual but forced somehow into a homosexual orientation, perhaps by some trauma-induced psychosexual block. I can spot an anthropophobic lesbian (or man, for that matter) fast, and I don't like being around them, for obvious reasons, but there are many homosexual women and men who are relaxed and fun to be with, as long as their orientation (or mine) doesn't get in the way.
There wouldn't necessarily have to be a gay gene for this to be true. It could have to do with something that happens during development in the womb, perhaps some sort of hormonal exposure. The fact that the probability a given male is gay is correlated with the number of older brothers indicates that something that happens with the mother's body may play a role.
1. I lost my father at 4 years old (although probably had a close relationship while he was alive)
2. Had a controlling mother and older sister.
3. Had a couple of experiences with an older boy which could be called “abuse” and then later had guilt and revulsion.
I am most definitely heterosexual!
I think that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice that occurs maybe before we are capable of making mature choices. I think that maybe if our earliest sexual experiences have an element of pleasure (whether our own or the other person’s) we have more of a chance of incorrect sexual “imprinting”.
I also think that our earliest learning about morality plays a part in it, we may have an experience but if we are taught that “that’s dirty” then we have a better chance of turning away from it.
If there is no God sitting in judgment of our sins then we can freely explore to whatever lust we might dare. I have spoken with several men who have struggled with heterosexual lust and porn, etc and come to the agreement that if you continue looking for the “next big high” then why stop with the opposite sex?
Homosexuality is just another sexual sin, it has just risen to political power now. I fear that all sin will rise to that same level of power.
God save us........
I would suggest the following, with regard to your “clown” theory.
Yes, as far back as western culture has had “clowns”, as represented in entertainment and art, there have no doubt been, and at times obviously, “gay” men who involved themselves in “clown culture”.
However, it is an erroneous leap to then posit that either the “clown culture” is a dominantly gay creation - which would need to imply it is dominated, in its population by “gays”, for which there is no foundation, or that something called “the gay culture” has been cross-fertilized by the “clown culture”.
There is too much diversity of persons in the clown culture and the “gay” culture, as well as too much diversity of social lifestyle in either group to posit either one as THE dominant influence on the other.
Is there one thing that “gays” and clowns DO share, in what has contributed to either their personality (gay) or the stage persona of a practicing clown. Yes - the “other”, the “estranged”, the “outcast”, the “different one”. That may have attracted a number of “gays” into the “clown societies”, but it’s doubtful that made those societies gay-dominant and from modern evidence, modern society, the diversity of lifestyles among gays shows no dominance of the attributes of “clowns” - though popular, media manufactured stereotypes and impressions certainly would lead one to think so.
The clown theory, I believe, does not hold up because it, in its own way, represents a stereotype, not an analysis, and people, and their personality development, are more complex than our stereotypes.
I believe that most were molested but I also believe that homosexuality is a direct disobedience to God, weather they know they are doing it for that reason or not. I think they need alot of physotherapy.
ARE born that way, or just believe they are born that way?
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.
The idea is more of an abusive or strained relationship, not a non-existent one. There does seem to be a correlation there.
If there is a gay gene in nature, we should see gay dogs, gay cats, gay lions, gay deers. Been around animals a bit, never saw a male dog hump a male dog. Nor male ape hump a male ape. So what is the story with man???
I don’t trust Throckmorton, and his comments about mainstream researchers on sexuality (as if psychology were a science) might as well be the professional “insights” of a phrenologist. This entire field is compromised by sodomite partisans, economic opportunists, and cowards. That is, of course, before we get to the question of whether psychology is just a way of making an income in search of a rationale. A good counselor can help people, but the effectiveness of the counseling itself depends on skills unique to the counselor rather than immersion in the “flavor of the day” theory of psychology (Freud, Watson/Skinner, Rogers, etc.).
By the way, the “gay gene” position became the new orthodoxy of homosexual activists after they lost Bowers v. Hardwick. The reason was that they wanted to argue next that homosexual behavior was really just like being black. This is a convenient argument for the culture war and is why homosexuals use it. Before Bowers, the main party line was that sexual orientation was socially constructed.
It should be pointed out that a father’s presence is not required if the father’s memory is moral and/or heroic. Children growing up without dads who were good men at the time of their death do equally well as children growing up with good men.
Or at least programmed from their earliest memory. If the cause of their homosexuality is an abusive, distant or absent father, an overbearing mother, or child abuse, the cause could be misconstrued as genetic.
Not only that, but if there indeed was a “gay gene”, there certainly would be found a way to cure it or correct it at the body function level. Do they really want to go there? Rush even talked about this some years ago, how some parents, if it were true that there was an identifiable “defect” of this nature found, would abort their child. Sad, but true.
I have an opinion that gay men don’t want to be bothered with seducing women. It’s too much trouble for them. They want quick, impersonal sex, anytime, anywhere.
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