Homosexuality is not biologically determined - latest research.

On Line opinion ^ | June 08, 2004 | Dr David van Gend

[scripter]

The Titanic of Gay Rights, leaving all in its wake, is about to founder on a large and immovable fact.

My concern is not for the glamorous first-class passengers - the prominent doctors and judges - or for the Mardi Gras exhibitionists leering and lurching across the deck - but for the unknown homosexuals down in their lonely cabins feeling sick.

These are the ones who want to stop the ship and get off. The homosexuals who do not want to be homosexual but who are told that change is impossible, and that any talk of change is disloyal to the Gay crew, even mutinous. 

The iceberg of clinical fact looming up in the dark is this: that homosexuals who want to become heterosexual can and do change, as authoritative medical research has now demonstrated. Given the will, and skilled therapy, there can be an end to the nightmare of same-sex attraction. That is the best news for our heartsick friends down below deck, but it is bad news for the complacent triumphalists of the Gay Titanic.

Bad news for their tall tale that being gay is like being black, an immutable inborn identity. Bad news, in the debate on gay marriage, for their false analogies with apartheid and Aborigines, since blacks cannot stop being blacks, but gays can stop being gay.

Homosexuality emerges in its truer light, not as a minority "genetic identity" but as a complex conditioned behaviour, which can and does change.

As to the exact causes of homosexuality, the medical jury is still out. But the baseless claim, promoted by Justice Michael Kirby and others, that gays are just born that way, is given no support by the American Psychiatric Association. Their Fact Sheet on Sexual Orientation (2000) sums it up: "There are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality".

As to the ability for homosexuals to change, late last year a remarkable research paper was published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour (October 2003) by one of America's senior psychiatrists, Dr Robert Spitzer. Significantly, this was the same Spitzer whose reforming zeal helped delete homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's manual of mental disorders back in 1973. Now he has published a detailed review of "200 Participants Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual orientation". He writes of his research: "Although initially sceptical, in the course of the study, the author became convinced of the possibility of change in some gay men and lesbians." 

In his structured analysis of homosexuals who claimed to have changed their orientation through "reparative therapy", he concluded that the therapy had been genuinely effective: that "almost all of the participants reported substantial changes in the core aspects of sexual orientation, not merely overt behaviour". Against critics who say that attempts to change sexual orientation can cause emotional harm to homosexuals, he notes: "For the participants in our study, there was no evidence of harm".

So our seasick travellers down below in the Titanic can take heart: the desire to shake off sexual disorientation can be, in this eminent and gay-friendly doctor's opinion, "a rational, self-directed goal", and for some it can be successful. The enforcers amongst the ship's crew who accuse you of desertion, of "irrational internalised homophobia", are wrong.

To our shame, some of these enforcers are health professionals. To them Spitzer says: "Mental health professionals should stop moving in the direction of banning therapy that has as its goal a change in sexual orientation. Many patients can make a rational choice to work toward developing their heterosexual potential and minimizing their unwanted homosexual attractions."

Spitzer, once a medical darling of the Gay Rights movement, may now have to walk the plank, because his stubborn telling of the clinical truth has political implications.

The success of Gay activism has been due to portraying Gays as a persecuted minority group, identifying with historically persecuted minorities like blacks, women, Jews. This illusion cannot survive Spitzer's findings, that being Gay is a treatable psychological condition like any other, not an inborn identity.

In the current political debate about same-sex marriage, all talk is of persecuted minorities and human rights, while Spitzer's truth of a treatable condition is nowhere to be heard. Gay activist Rodney Croome thinks back to the Aborigines and accuses the Prime Minister, who opposes same-sex marriage, of denying gays "the full humanity of a disadvantaged group".

In The Australian, Former AMA President Dr Kerryn Phelps likewise accused the Prime Minister of "apartheid" against the gay "minority" in denying them marriage rights. But turning from that bogus racial minority model to Spitzer's therapeutic model, we see that gays can in fact marry, and in Spitzer's study many were married - but first they had to become biologically marriageable by successfully reorientating from homosexual to heterosexual.

The titanic illusion of homosexuality as a fixed inborn identity will take time to sink, but Spitzer's therapeutic iceberg will be more liberating than destructive.  Below decks are the passengers I care about, and they need to know that it is OK to want to escape the suffering of same-sex attraction, and possible to do so. And our health professionals, who alone can man the life rafts, owe them a duty of care in aiding that escape.

Dr David van Gend is a family doctor in Toowoomba, Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine, University of Queensland, and a medical advisor to the Australian Family Association.

[EdReform]

Born or Bred? Science Does Not Support the Claim That Homosexuality is Genetic

[Junior]

Homosexuals can change - they can leave the homosexual lifestyle and marry someone of the opposite sex.

Or at least have carnal relations with them...

[jongaltsr]

Research Has proven that the majority of homosexuality is learned and Very, Very little is genetics.

A bell curve of male or female characteristics are found in both males and females. Some of those characteristics are physical and some are chemical (physiological). It is the latter that would account for homosexual tenancy's. It is also a rather skewed bell curve and very few samples on the extremes as the normal bell curve would indicate.

Research has proven this time after time but it is the "Non" professionals that report their version of what they think justifies their view points that ever gets reported on the news. Of course the news media never researches their sources which compounds the problem.

[nmh]

Homosexuality is an EMOTIONAL disorder acted out when they are of age.

NO ONE IS BORN THAT WAY!

It's all about EMOTIONAL neglect, EMOTIONAL abuse and other EMOTIONAL deficits.

[nmh]

Homosexuality is an EMOTIONAL disorder acted out when they are of age.

NO ONE IS BORN THAT WAY!

It's all about EMOTIONAL neglect, EMOTIONAL abuse and other EMOTIONAL deficits. Forgot SEXUAL abuse as well.

[hunter112]

Are we genetically programmed to be religious? Or is it a choice, all based on learned behavior?

[evad]

Did you retract a statement of yours somewhere along the line, and I missed it?

Not at all.

The debate that I'm talking about (and the title of the thread) is the question of homosexuality being behavioral or genetic. I find convincing arguments on both sides of that argument although I tend to lean in the 'genetic' direction as to cause.

But, maybe I'm the one that misunderstood. What did you mean by the pro-homosexuality side?

>>What specific points on the pro-homosexuality side do you find overwhelming? <<

[evad]

You don't think perversion is a mental illness

Sure don't.

If it were, how would we ever convict a pervert in our court system?

[Freakazoid]

Check out the information here---> Click here

[evad]

Bookmarked..
gimme the cliff notes version on the question of behavior versus genetics.
Where does it fall?

[scripter]

Born or Bred? Science Does Not Support the Claim That Homosexuality is Genetic

Now there's a well written article that I forgot about. Thanks.

[William Terrell]

I find convincing arguments on both sides of that argument although I tend to lean in the 'genetic' direction as to cause.

But, maybe I'm the one that misunderstood. What did you mean by the pro-homosexuality side?

Ok. I'll try to be more clear. The are two sides to the argument, as you say. That means that there is a side that is against the notion that homosexuality is genetically determined. It is anti-homosexual because that side refutes the basis for which homosexuals claim special consideration.

With me so far?

The side that supports that notion, on which the homosexuals claim equal tolerance for lifestyle, anti-"hate" legislation, marriage rights, adoption rights, et cetera, is necessarily pro-homosexual.

Now, which pro-homosexual specific argument do you see as overwhelming evidence for the genetic cause of homosexuality?

[nmh]

"Are we genetically programmed to be religious? Or is it a choice, all based on learned behavior?"

We are ALL spiritually wired. It is a CHOICE on what we do about it. Learned behavior comes from seeking your choice.

Madonna ... involved with Jewish mysticism is seeking to fill that spiritual void. Others ignore the void. Her "learned behavior" is a product of what is thought to be acceptable for her beliefs.

[William Terrell]

Sure don't.

Then you think it is mental health?

If it were, how would we ever convict a pervert in our court system?

That's merely idiosyncrasies in our law. A "perversion" is not due to a physical aberration, unless it is based on an organic psychosis; it is based on a perceptual aberration, and therefore a functional psychosis.

Mental illness, in other words.

[evad]

The side that supports that notion, on which the homosexuals claim equal tolerance for lifestyle, anti-"hate" legislation, marriage rights, adoption rights, et cetera, is necessarily pro-homosexual.

Under that definition, since I do believe there are genetic traits that lead young adults to a homosexual lifestyle, you can put me as PRO.

However, I have no use for, nor do I believe in anti-"hate" legislation, marriage rights, adoption rights, et cetera, or any of the rest of what I consider the homosexual agenda.

What I have said at the very beginning and still firmly believe is as follows:
Although I have no doubts that there are ways to 'reprogram' early stage homosexuals I find it hard to believe that young kids would choose a homosexual lifestyle over a heterosexual one.

Until someone can adequately explain that one I will continue to disbelieve that homosexual is totally behavioral. There HAS to be more to it.

[hunter112]

We are ALL spiritually wired.

Scientific evidence, please? Is there a "God gene"? Where is the adaptive value of having the gene, to pass it down to other generations? Why hasn't that gene been bred out of populations where it has been obviously deleterious (Islamic societies immediately come to mind.)

Further, and to the point, even if it is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no biological basis for being religious, would we still allow people to pick and choose their religions?

If the opposite was conclusively proved, and we knew for a fact that all people were indeed, "spiritually wired", would we continue to allow people to choose NOT to be religious? Or would our society define it as some sort of mental disorder, since those who choose to be nonreligious are not acting in accordance with their genetic predisposition, and must have been negatively impacted by their environment?

[scripter]

I'm sure this will lead off the 6 o'clock news.

If only we could get the major media outlets to do just that. Getting the truth to those who only see the incredible (yet very biased) pro-homosexual headlines is a worthwhile task.

[William Terrell]

Yes, yes, but which evidence do you consider overwhelming that homosexuals are caused by one or more genes? You did make that statement. Will you withdraw it?

[sitetest]

Ping.

Thought this might be of interest to you.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Agreed.