Homosexuality is not biologically determined - latest research

[mayor]

Interesting article... it's nothing that many of us haven't believed for ages, but it is good to see some with the courage to speak the truth in spite of the potential backlash and atmosphere of political correctness.

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Homosexuality is not biologically determined - latest research.
By David van Gend
Posted Tuesday, June 08, 2004

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.


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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.


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[luvmetender]

For those who want to be heterosexual, this is good news. But for those who are comfortable in a homosexual relationship, they should feel free to do so.

[bobbcat]

I wonder if this latest research is truly going to have much (if any) impact on the Gay Rights movement. I am not even all that sure that the controversy surrounding whether or not they are born that way still has any relevance. For those who are gay and do not wish to be that way should feel free to seek help. But for those who are comfortable with their homosexuality should not be forced to consider treatment modalities or forced to examine whether or not they have a psychological disorder. This group has made far too much progress to be forced to look back, so to speak. Just MHO.

[luvmetender]

so we agree on something?

[CagedTroll]

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Gayness: not all biology, but not all choice either
By David Skidmore
Posted Monday, June 14, 2004

<SNIP>

Besides leaping on research that is yet to stand the test of time (not to mention the fact that van Gend is not giving us the whole story – interestingly he didn’t mention 93 per cent of participants in Dr Spitzer’s study regarded religion as “very” or “extremely” important in their lives, 19 per cent had connections with “ex-gay” ministries and none were chosen randomly) van Gend makes several other erroneous assumptions. First of all, he asserts “…blacks cannot stop being blacks, but gays can stop being gay.” This is not entirely true. Accounts of Australian Indigenous people last century tell of those with lighter skin colouring who managed to pass as white in a time when being identified as Aboriginal was regarded as shameful. And Michael Jackson is merely the most well-known African-American who altered his appearance to look Caucasian.


Also fallacious is van Gend’s rather offensive implication that gays are not a persecuted minority group. Statistics from the NSW Anti-Violence Project alone show far too many gay men and lesbians are bashed or murdered specifically on the basis of their sexuality. Nor was it that long ago that all states and territories in Australia imprisoned people found guilty of “homosexual acts”. Research by trade unions indicates a shockingly high level of workplace discrimination, harassment and even outright violence against lesbians and gay men. If that is not persecution, I don’t know what is.

<SNIP>