Homosexuality Avoidable, Doctor Tells Parents

I ran across this on the web. It's very interesting and confirms what many of us already believe about homosexual behavior. Jaysun

Dr. Joseph Nicolosi is Executive Director of the National Association tot the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and Clinical Director of Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic in Encino, California. An expert in "reparative therapy." a treatment for homosexuality, he was interviewed by Lesley Payne.

Nicolosi: To understand the cause of homosexuality, we have to begin by understanding that homosexuality is really a symptom, a rsult, of a gender-identity disorder. In other words, the boy did not sufficiently develop a masculine identification or the girl did not develop a sufficient feminine identification. This seems to hold out for the vast majority or homosexuals. With regard to formation of a masculine identification, in order for the boy to develop a solid sense of his own masculinity, he needs to first establish a bonding or an identification with the father. The father-son relationship is absolutely critical in the boy's sense of his own masculinity. We have to remember that boys and girls are first identified with the mother in their earlier years, but the boy has to dis-identify with his mother and make the bonding identification connection with the father.

We're talking about 2 1/2 years old. This is what they call the gender-identity phase. It's the time when children begin to realize that the world is divided between males and females and that he or she is pressured into identifying with one or the other. If the father is cold, distant, aloof, detached or critical, that doesn't happen properly.

The concern I have developed over the whole question of preventing homosexuality in children comes from the years of clinical work with homosexual men who desire to change. So, essentially, I'm working backwards, dealing with adults and understanding the critical events in their childhood that con-tributed to their homosexuality. So. prevention is really guarding against those particular factors that create the homosexual adult.

To begin, I would say that I think home-schooled children have a particular vulnerability for a number of reasons. The primary reason, especially for the boy (and I'll be focusing primarily on boys), is that it isolates him from his peers. I think that's a very important factor in the development of his masculine identification and his heterosexual development. In fact, I'm working right now with a number of parents who are concerned about symptoms what we call pre-homosexual symptoms or gender-identity confusion and a number of these parents are home-schooling these children. The problem that they all complain about is that their son does not have access to boys his age and can-not participate in the kinds of ordinary activ-ities of boys, like sports and sleepovers and just getting together and playing. I think that's a critical factor.

"Freud said 90 years ago that if a homosexual has an older brother, it's a feared, hostile relationship with the older brother."

From my work with adult homosexuals, what we see repeatedly in their childhood is the fact that they were isolated from other boys. They did not have close male friends. That's a very important factor. Parents who home-school will often complain that they have to chauffeur their kid all over town just so he can play with a boy for a couple of hours.

They have to make appointments and drive and it's a lot of work, whereas going to school, there's already a built-in social net-work. . I think that the burden of responsibility, unfortunately, falls on the parents of chil-dren who are home-schooling to provide opportunities tot their children to have peer interactions. That's very important. I'm not saying that home-schooling produces homosexuals. I am saying that parents who home-school have an additional burden of being concerned about these issues.

You have to look at the variables. One of the things we see over and over in the history of homosexual men is the tendency to feel left out of the other boys, to always feel that they were not included, that they were not good enough. This is a fundamental theme in the lives of homosexuals.

One of the signs of the pre-homosexual condition is characterized by a confusion of gender identity, which is to say the boy will exhibit certain behaviors like what we call the "sissy-boy syndrome," which is UCLA psychology researcher Richard Green's term--he wrote a book by that name. Basically--and other researchers have supported this--this is a boy who shies away from physical activity, tends to stay with girls. tends to stay close to his mother, grandmother or sisters. When he's very young he will actually say he doesn't want to be a boy and that he wants to be a girl. They will sometimes engage in dress-up or playing with makeup. Now, we have to warn parents that a certain amount of this is kind of normal curiosity. So we don't have to panic as soon as we see the slightest sign. But we have to look at an over-all picture of a boy who systematically either ignores, denies or minimizes his masculinity.

Typically, these boys stay home more. they stay in the kitchen more, they like theater, acting and music, they're into fantasy--fantasy is a very big part of their life, and they tend to identify with female characters on television. Like, usually in the Disney productions, they tend to identify with Sleeping Beauty or the mermaid or whatever the feminine character is....

If people were to ask me what is the one characteristic that identifies the pre-homosexual boy, I would say it's a boy who is not connected to his father, who avoids his father, who minimizes his father, who does not really go out and seek out his father's attention.

My experience with home-schoolers is that the fathers are more involved with their kids than typical families and the fathers are what I would consider more masculine, where they are clearly the head of the family and they go to Catholic men 's meetings, etc.

Let me say this generally speaking, more conservative and orthodox people--not only Catholics, but any religion politically, religiously and socially conservative people--tend to be more clear about gender difference. This is to say, the men are the men and the women are the women. Whereas, the more politically/socially/religiously liberal people tend to blur gender distinctions.

Furthermore, the decision to home-school, which is a major decision, is usually made by parents who are more concerned. Home-schooling is such an unpopular decision that, for the decision to be made, it usually means that the mother and father are very committed to the children. Already, that tells me that this is going to be a father who is more involved in his children's lives.

In a large family is there a different dynamic? In some home-schooling families I know there are five boys or nine boys.

When we're talking about the important variables [which] determine a boy's masculine identification, one of the important factors is a relationship with his older brother. If he has a loving, supportive, encouraging, positive relationship with his older brother, that's a very good sign. Whereas, if it's a feared, hostile relationship with the older brother, then that is not a good sign. If the younger boy shies away from his older brothers or feels intimidated by them or is constantly being beaten up by his older brothers, that's also another important variable. Freud said 90 years ago that if a homosexual has an older brother, it's a feared, hostile relationship with the older brother, and I have seen this to be true time and time again.

Many people have a family member or neighbor who is homosexual. What do you tell the kids about that? I don't want my kids to be un-Christian, but I don't want them to think it's normal.

Basically, we should educate our children to see that the homosexual is a person with a problem. We have to respect this person. We don't want to contribute to their unhappiness by rejecting them or making them feel bad about themselves. We have to always be Christian and tolerant of the person. But while we are loving to the person, it does not mean we have to accept or approve of their homosexuality. Tell the kids that homosexuality is really a psychological problem and that many of them, if they really work hard at it, can overcome their homosexuality, get married and have families. This is basically what we want to teach our kids.

Number one, what you do is you let the child know very specifically that effeminate behavior is unacceptable. That seems very obvious, but you would be surprised how many parents don't like their sons sissy behavior but do not comment on it, because they're either intimidated or they're fearful, or they don't want to hurt the boy's feelings, or they hope it's just a phase that will go away. The child interprets their silence as approval. This is one of the big discoveries that Richard Green found, that parents will not correct an effeminate boy.

Anyway, the first thing you do is you discourage effeminate behavior. The second thing is you get the mother to perhaps back off, to not be so emotionally tied to the boy. The father has to get much more involved. Any male in the boy's life has to become involved. All significant males in this boy's life have to work together to support and encourage and reinforce his masculine identification. The message has to be: "You're lucky to be a boy. Being a boy is fun. Being a boy is special." You really have to play that up. You have to really make him feel special to be a boy. It may be sexist, but that's what we need to do....

One of the things I find is that when these mothers call me up--and it's usually the mothers who call--they have an intuitive sense that there's something wrong. That's a good starting point. When parents call me because they are concerned, the first thing I do is an evaluation to determine whether the parents' fears are well-founded. If so, then I basically work with the parents. I really don't work with the child. I coach the parents in doing the right thing. If they're motivated, they can turn this around. If the parents are willing to work together as a team, they can produce very good results. And the younger the child, the faster the change. I once worked with the parents of a 3 1/2 year old boy who wanted to be a girl. We were able to bring about a radical change that everybody noticed-- uncles and aunts and everybody--in about three weeks.

Flaming a newbie about leftist tactics is what freepers do before they have their coffee.

No, most FReepers I've come in contact with have been mature, intelligent, rational human beings. Most of them put up posts that reflect their opinion. Most of them don't go trolling for people to harass. I've reviewed some of your posts and discovered that you occasionally disrupt threads just to harass someone you've had a run-in with on another thread. It appears that's what drew you here to this thread. You were smart enough not to post to that person directly, but you're not as smart as you think you are. You're actually quite transparent. If the person you followed in here had disagreed with me, you would have agreed with me and insulted anyone who disagreed. I may be new here, but I do know how to view your recent postings.

Or really so you think I am disrupting threads while I post on the Canteen for the troops?

Again- just because you say it does not make it so.

Lets see , was it the statement of the multiple of screen names that got you or the fact that the truth hurts?

BTW- I was pinged here in the beginning of the thread. a very early post. so I was one of the first people to respond and others have followed me here.

Again lies and liberal tactics to control the conversation. Nice try- nice fact gathering. It is getting funny. Thanks for the laughs tonight. Gotta go back and "disrupt" the canteen thread...

Dear Marie:

When I saw Netmilsmom's later posts, I definitely understood why she arrived at her conclusion. The speaker did appear to flip flop on the issue. As someone who is considering homeschooling and has long supported parents who chose to homeschool, I know that homeschooling has been under considerable attack until recently. As more homeschoolers claim top honors in national contests and out-perform their public educated counterparts, they are finally gaining the acceptance and respect they deserve.

While I haven't re-read the thread or article in the last few days, I remember having the impression that someone else wrote the article with snippets from an interview.

I know from personal experience that organizing thoughts on paper, where one has the leisure of composing sentences to directly reflect a specific point, and public speaking or giving an interview, where one has to articulate in the moment, are very different things. I have been praised for my writing and received awards for my poetry, but I am a terrible public speaker - awful - the worst.

Given the doctor's numerous supportive comments on the involvement of homeschooling parents in the lives of their children, I am giving the doc the benefit of the doubt. I am presuming that he, like myself, didn't originally articulate his position as intended and was forced to clarify later on. But I certainly hold no ill will against anyone who doesn't see it my way.

I wonder if someone didn't run the original through Babelfish, to Spanish and back again, and then through a New York Times editor, to come up with the final, disjointed, rambling, inconsistent result we're all fussing about.

It's such poor writing, and the top half doesn't match the bottom at all. It has definitely brought the paranoid out in some FReepers...and it's true that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Agreed. Here's the big issue. As more of us prove that homeschooling works, we become more of a threat. As more parents pull their kids out, we become more of a threat. As homeschooling comes more under the public eye, we are facing greater attacks, not less. We find ourselves locked in defensive arguments with coworkers, family, neighbors and friends on a weekly basis.

When one becomes a homeschooler, they feel like they are painting a huge target on their front door. The constant parrying is harder than teaching the kids sometimes and I?ve known one homeschooler who quit because she couldn?t handle the fear. It?s strange how the most dedicated parents are the ones who get the most flack.

Maybe it just feels this way.

Again you show your newness by not understanding the finer arts of pingdom dear.

And if I posted at #120, who are these posters that you claim I followed here to harass.

Care to give a screen name so we can verify your claims about my motives here? Let us see who has followed who shall we?

You may want to check with your source and find out her motives for posting here before you answer. While you are at it double check her first post number to this thread, she has apparently given you some bad information.

You shouldn't need to feel that way.

I've known many homeschooling families. Exactly one of those shouldn't have been homeschooling--it was not working for them at all, and I think it made it easy for them to cover up the evidence of parental temper control problems. Everybody else homeschooled well and for good reasons, at their own expense, and with considerable success. No reason to be defensive for that. Sending your kids to public school without a care for what they're learning is considerably more irresponsible.

I did know one semi-feral boy whose mother claimed he was homeschooled, but it was a lie--at 8 he couldn't even write his NAME. He just rode his bike all day while his grandma slept, and begged food and drinks from the neighbors until someone finally got the cops into it. Now we all know that's not homeschooling--that's negligence trying to call itself homeschooling. Still it's an issue that will have to be addressed, and addressed, and addressed, and defended--because some people won't listen no matter how much you explain a basic truth. The basic truth is that even if public school were not of questionable educational value, if it never had funding and safety problems, and didn't teach an agenda more than it teaches analytical thinking and life skills, it still wouldn't be the optimum situation for all kids.

I knew a diabetic 13 year old who was heavy and very sensitive. Public school was just about killing her. A year off from those pressures let her catch up academically, lose the excess weight, get her self-esteem back, and grow up a little. She decided for herself to go back to public school, and the peer problems that almost destroyed her in 5th grade were absent in 7th. Boys are asking her for her phone number instead of tormenting her. That year off was the best possible thing for her--she's suddenly a happy, sunny person!

I think the parents who attack us do so because we represent something they know they could not do themselves. That is put our children and their needs first.

There are some parents who only wish they could have the courage to do what we do.

It is funny to me that I have started to notice some "wanna be" homeschoolers around here lately. Too bad they just don't have the courage it takes to walk the walk like we do.

Oh, puhleeze! You accuse this author of putting forth an opinion that cannot possibly be gleaned from his article...

I've been noticing this more and more on FR lately. Angry knee-jerk reactions & flame wars based on quickly made and inaccurate assumptions by people who couldn't possibly have read the article or the post they're responding to.

We seem to be polarizing into zealous "100% pro-" or "100% anti-" camps with no room for any middle ground. As soon as I read this article, understanding it to mean "homeschooling is an excellent choice, and here are some tips to help parents understand the special needs of young boys to prevent a specific problem that could arise", I knew it would automatically be presumed to be an anti-homeschooling article and bashed by people who'd quit reading the moment they saw the first sentence they didn't like.

You know, it really is possible to be pro-(name your topic), but still find problems associated with it. What's wrong with looking to further improve a good thing? And, how can we improve anything without intelligent, honest analysis and constructive criticism? And, why? Why have we suddenly started treating people seeking to make said improvements like trolls?

The word Homeschool or some version is used 9 times in this article

So what?

You shouldn't let one observation on the vulnerability of home-schooled kids in the area of peer interaction turn you off to an article with alot of interesting points and valuable information.

You and a couple of others in this thread have come off as being unnecessarily defensive about home schooling. I think your narrow perception has kept you from having a more fruitful discussion with other folks on this thread. From what I've seen of you at FR you are a kind, intelligent and reasonable person so I was kind of surprised to see you react like that.

The studies show, however, that when one identical twin is homosexual, the other twin is usually not! In fact, the tendency for homosexuality in twins is about the same as in the general population. The conclusion seems to indicate that this is a case of "nurture, not nature."

PLEASE SITE

According to Bailey and Pillard studies -
http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/sexorient/twins.html
you are wrong:
52% of identical (monozygotic) twins of homosexual men were likewise homosexual
22% of fraternal (dizygotic) twins were likewise homosexual
11% of adoptive brothers of homosexual men were likewise homosexual
48% of identical (monozygotic) twins of homosexual women were likewise homosexual (lesbian)
16% of fraternal (dizygotic) twins were likewise homosexual
6% of adoptive sisters of homosexual women were likewise homosexual

At the following site - this study and two others - Kallman (1952) and Heston & Shield (1968) are compared with similar results.

Homosexuality appears to be alot like left-handedness. A right handed person has a right-handed gene, but there is no left-handed gene (yet identified). Those without a right-handed gene can split either way and there are significant brain development difference between those with the gene and those without.

So, homosexuality is not entirely genetic, but it does have a genetic base. The doctors preventive approach above does not appear to be based in anything but wishful science and if worth nothing.

If you had posted this as post #19 instead of post #219, boy would you have gotten a lot of attention, mostly negative.

I appreciate the citation, and it confirms my beliefs about complex, learned human behaviors. You can have a genetic predisposition for an aberrant behavior, but you also have to have circumstances that favor the awakening of a predisposition.

The human brain develops in response to the stimulations it receives, and the variety of environments in which children develop has never been greater. I'm amazed when I see parents allowing their young children to watch violent movies or play video games for hours each day. Do they not realize that they are literally changing their children's brains with these choices? They'd probably protest experimenting on animals by having them develop in unnatural conditions, but they think nothing of experimenting on their own children that way. When it comes to parenting, one should be conservative, not progressive, if one wants an outcome that is anywhere near what we regard as normal. Raise children who are "tolerant" of promiscuous, unnatural sexual practices, and aren't they more likely to experiment with those practices, to teach themselves to be "gay"? Without the disposition, they'd be less likely to try it, but without the teaching of tolerance for it, they'd be FAR less likely to try it.

I don't think Barbra Streisand is a happy woman, having her only child dying of AIDS from deviant sexual behavior. She may blame President Bush all she wants, as if funding AIDS prevention at a higher rate could have stopped a millionaire's kid from having unprotected gay sex, but don't her nonconservative parenting choices have SOMETHING to do with the sexual orientation that is slowly killing her child, and denies her grandchildren?

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