Your story of Lenny is a sympathetic personal defense of someone in your community who felt even more vulnerable than you may have felt; but it is not by any means a controlled study using the scientific method. Objective research shows different results and behaviors than your description of a single gay-identifying boy who apparently influenced your lifelong opinion of a vaster and much more complex demographic sub-group than this one male, Lenny.
Lenny is not my only homosexual acqaintance. And, yes, I have been “hit on” by an agressive gay guy. Unlike you I do not infer to an entire group the behavior or emotional development of individuals within that group.
I am not a believer in so-called studies unless I know what the premise was going in—every “study” must have a premise. Other components to consider when evaluating the onjectivity of the study are funding (where did the money come from?) and political agenda/bias.
These so-called studies rarely survive the test of time. For all sorts of reasons. The main impactors being flawed study premise, expanding of the knowledge bank and human bias. Chocolate is good for people one day and bad for us the next. Alcohol is totally bad for us one day, but maybe a little bit is not such a bad thing the next day.
My unscientific sense is that most studies are outcome based and not objective. Also, most studies are more often than not a device to cover somebody’s butt—particularly the political class.
You say your study of homosexuality points to people “changing” their sexual orientation at some point in their lives. No one wants to be thought of as defective. The devilishmess of homosexuality is that, except for the gay defect, these people are are as normal as you or I intellectually. Ergo, unlike the Downs Syndrome kid, they are perfectly aware of their situation.
I remember in the 70s the Gay Community was very insistent that its homosexuality was a “preference”—not genetic. The only problem with that was that it negates their argument that they are a “victim” class. Now the aceppted source of homosexuality is genetic defect.