Otherwise, homosexuality can go back to being categorized for the mental illness it is and always has been.
Actually, there was a study done about a year ago that showed exactly that. The brains of gay men respond similarly to humor and asthetics (design) as other women. I saw it on the morning news but don't know where it was published.
Gay, Straight Men's Brain Responses Differ
Gay Men Respond Differently to Pheromones
That's just the first few. I typed in "gay men's brains" to my Google toolbar and there sure are a lot of articles! :)
If there were a conclusive study that *proved* without a doubt that gay men had female-working brains, I would completely flip my position on the subject. But I don't think that this will be the case.
There may be a very small percentage of men who do have this problem, as all humans begin "female" and chemical signals essentially transform the baby boy fetus into a male. But if it turns out that we have a large population of males with female brains, something is *very* wrong with our water supply.
There are all manner of serious theories, ranging from purely psychological (weak father, domineering mother) to completely biological. One strange theory recently advanced (by Cochran and Ewald) is that there is an as yet unidentified virus that causes unborn male fetuses to become gay. An even stranger theory is that of Dr. Ian Stevenson (University of Virginia), who believes that homosexuals are men who were women in a previous life (Stevenson has spent his career amassing intriguing evidence for reincarnation).
Various theories look good from some angles, but always it seems that there is a problem with the theory. One theory popular with some conservatives is that homosexuals recruit, or similarly, that sexual abuse causes homosexuality. While there are plenty of gay men with these unfortunate experiences, which makes the theory look good superficially, it turns out that only a minority of gay men have been sexually abused -- and that lots of men who were sexually abused by men as children grow up to be heterosexual. One clue: most gay men report not being stimulated visually by women (e.g., by erotica), even if they do respond to physical sensation and closeness with a woman. Another clue: most boys identified as "sissies" by other children grow up to be gay. (Perhaps being a sissy causes homosexuality, or being picked on by peers -- or perhaps sissy-ness is actually an early manifestation of homosexuality.)
The important thing to remember is that for most gay men, they do not remember "becoming" gay -- they've always felt they were gay, since their first sexual feelings manifested in early pubescence. Recent research suggests that some highly motivated homosexual men can at least partially change their orientation, but it is still clear that most homosexual men are not able to "change" for long. I strongly suspect that there are actually several different causes of homosexuality, and that in certain kinds of homosexuality, change is possible (perhaps because some gay men are really weakly bisexual).
I for one now believe that acceptance of homosexuals should not depend on some possible biological cause of homosexuality. I believe conservatives should concentrate on encouraging responsible behavior among homosexuals (caring, committed permanent monogamous relationships), but of course I respect those who differ with me on this point.
LOL!
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Starting over again, after cleaning orange juice off my keyboard...
If this study bears fruit, it may provide munition for the arguement of people being born gay. That is, if it can be proved that gay men have the same physiological traits within their brains that match those of women.
That is what they were probably searching for to begin with: birth defects, a whole new socialist welfare venue...
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Otherwise, homosexuality can go back to being categorized for the mental illness it is and always has been.
Correctemundo... but, will that happen to change their religious idolatry of perversion?
Or the Drama Complex with Pavlovian behavioral conditioning for mutilation of and deviance with human anatomy found in the media and popular culture?
In other words, it's either a mental illness, or a birth defect