Homosexuality - Nature or Nurture?

There are also many reports of people "coming out" of a heterosexual "lifestyle" - from nuns and monks vowing chastity to prostitutes going on the wagon to middle aged husbands and wives running off with their own best friends rather than their spouse's.

Until someone has figured out what causes heterosexuality, the more common "orientation", attempts to explain homosexuality are going to be various kinds of dubious even when not immediately contradicted by obvious circumstance.

As far as "overcrowding", for instance: the most crowded cities on the planet are not observed to produce any unusual percentage of homosexuals, meanwhile we have census data for some of the frontier towns of the US dealing with the pioneer community (the very type specimen of "uncrowded") showing a quite high ratio of young male to young female employees of the local whorehouses (if we presume supply was in some general proportion to demand, the demand for young men in frontier whorehouses was significant).

 

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You've Got A Gay!

Not this time, Nancy-boy!

~String

 

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Still laughing.
Thanks String.

 

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It's probably my all time favorite video snippet ever... along with this one.

~String

 

Homosexuality as sexual orientation is an invention of western Christian societies. Sexual orientation as a homosexual has not existed culturally in any other society.

 

So, what is it then?

I can assure you, there are and have always been "homosexual" men in every society. Some are just better than others at hiding it.

~String

 

So, ....Americans caused it?

An American CIA devious plot gone awry?

American bombs, like Agent Orange or something, caused it?

I know that America caused homosexuality, SAM, but I'm trying to figure out how. Please explain that part to me.

Baron Max

 

I think S.A.M. means as a "separate" (remarkable) orientation/ "lifestyle" or however you want to phrase it.
As opposed to "Oh, he's one of of the guys but when we go out picking up women he prefers men". Of no more consequence than preferring, say, Coke over Pepsi.

 

Ah, and that's caused by the CIA with something like a bomb-chemical or something?

Hey, you might not think that's important, Mister, ....but them thar is fightin' words!!! At the count of three, draw yer six-shooter or bow down and swear your eternal allegiance to Coke! You only have seconds to live, Mister, make up yer mind!

Baron Max

 

Probably OSS, it does date back a while.

Actually, Sprite.

 

Or perhaps it was inflicted on us by someone else. Maybe China wanted to make sure they stay ahead in population, or maybe the Italian fashion industry wanted a larger market to sell their overpriced but FABULOUS clothes to.

 

I think it was when they wrote critically of the sodomy of the Arabs [or Turks, I forget which]

 

Amazing, SAM ...for all the hatred that you have for America, you give them a tremendous amount of power and influence! Just think, a few Americans are powerful enough to just write something, and millions, perhaps billions, of men begin to have sex with other men!!

Talk about power and influence! Damn, no wonder you hate Americans so much, SAM. ...LOL!

Baron Max

 

The origin of such orientation is generally ascribed to orientalism and its proponents

e.g.

Secret Sins of the Orient

Images of Deviance in Cervantes's Algiers

Turks, Moors and Englishmen

Sexuality and eroticism among males in Moslem societies

 

It's only confusing

This formulation of the proposition is problematic because the way to "turn a ... male baby into a female" is to simply not transform the fetus into a male in the first place. Even an XY fetus starts out anatomically as a female. Given that this transformation involves the timing and balance of hormonal influx, and, as Bogaert and others theorize, maternal antigen behavior, it seems incongruous to suggest that the womb will try to turn a male into a female.

Bogaert's proposition is problematic, but that is at least in part symptomatic of a relative lack of specialized literature related to the field.

To the other, the argument against Bogaert's theory, at least as you have presented it, is problematic in its own right. NARTH is an organization in which doctors make science subordinate to political desires. Their purpose is to create an organization to develop and support a diagnostic and therapeutic regimen to transform homosexuals into heterosexuals. Exodus Glboal Alliance is a Christian ministry "Proclaiming that change is possible for the homosexual through the transforming power of Jesus Christ." All About Worldview is a Christian organization trying to convert people on the front page of its website.

It would be best, I think, to leave the validation, review, and criticism of Bogaert's theory to real scientists whose critiques are not subordinate to a political cause.

At present, I'm watching what would appear to be a young homosexual—or, perhaps, transsexual—grow and develop, and it's hard to say the situation was created by any act or accident of will on the part of his parents. At six, he is doing what he can to accommodate his parents', or at the very least, his father's, masculine heterosexual identity politic. It is a curious, and sometimes agonizing process to witness. I'm of the opinion that there are more compromises the parents can make. Certainly, I understand that they simply aren't going to send the boy to school in dresses, but there is middle ground between that and the deliberate masculinization of jeans, sweatshirts with masculine-oriented sports, and so on. And there remains a question of where the parents, again, at least the father, will fall on the question of social antagonism in school as the boy's nature becomes more and more apparent. We all have the impression that the father hopes that antagonism will have a corrective effect, but at best it will be a suppressive effect leading to psychological compensatory issues down the road. I so badly want to take the father aside, start pouring beers, and explain to him that his choices are to either accept what is and learn how to protect the kid, or else be prepared for great demands in terms of the psychological trouble that will come from antagonism against the boy and his subsequent feelings of being abandoned by his parents for being different. Nothing in the Universe, save for nature itself, is going to turn this kid into a statistically normal heterosexual male, and the chances of that happening are somewhere between very unlikely and not going to happen. In the meantime, no matter what else, the boy needs his family, and the primary question of whether or not his parents will be of any use to him in dealing with the issues he will likely face remains to be unanswered. I think his mother is on board, and demands his compromise only for the sake of his father. I don't think the father will abandon the boy to the wolves, so to speak, but he's certainly following a route with high potential for outright disaster.

One of the problems with light research is that you might be assigning inappropriate weight to the various sides of the argument. NARTH, Exodus, and AAW simply aren't reliable organizations insofar as scientific, medical, or psychiatric pronouncements are concerned. NARTH is, for its issue, much akin to the Discovery Institute; they are able to attract people with scientific credentials who are unhappy with the failure of science to reconcile with their consciences, and would prefer that science be subordinate to politics.

In the long run, I think we're going to find that homosexuality is determined by a combination of genetic factors, matters of timing and hormonal influx in utero, and a certain amount of social conditioning. And that latter will more specifically have to do with the differences between autogynephilia, homosexuality, neurosis, and psychosis.

Homosexuality occurs in nature, period. The effort by religious groups like Exodus and AAW to suppress homosexuality suggests a lack of faith in God. As such, it would be best if they simply dropped the religious cloak, as they are presently nothing more than wolves in sheep's clothing. Sexual orientation and identification are issues with profound human implications for each individual, and as such should be addressed with vigilant integrity.
_____________________

Notes:

National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality. "NARTH Mission Statement". Updated March 10, 2008. NARTH.com. July 10, 2009. http://www.narth.com/menus/mission.html

Exodus Global Alliance. "Welcome". 2009. ExodusGlobalAlliance.org. July 10, 2009. http://www.exodusglobalalliance.org/index.php

All About GOD. "All About Worldview". AllAboutWorldview.org. July 10, 2009. http://www.allaboutworldview.org/

 

Hilarious.

 

How do you know he is a homosexual/transsexual? How do you know he's not a guy who likes to wear girls clothing?

 

Well, sometimes it's just obvious, SAM. Take it from a gay man.

No one "single" sign makes a person gay, but a confluence many of them is a pretty strong indicator.

Note: I'm still waiting for you to support your claim that homosexuality is a western concept.

~String

 

Sure, I live in a society where its not a concept, or wasn't until westernisation crept in. I also recommend to you literature on pederasty in Greek societies and this excellent book called "Khaled El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab–Islamic World, 1500–1800 Chicago, 2009. ISBN 9780226729893"

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=...ytSVCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2

 

It all boils down to Psychology at the end of the day (Well Neurology too). Both for those that feel they have to live Homosexually or Bisexually, and for those that are classed as Homophobics. Obviously I could go into it and it would probably have some psychologists throwing a rant about how Freudian it is, but at the end of the day all those misinterpretations of chemical signals is a matter of the mind.