Origins of homophobia

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that's an interesting statement. i can see how you could arrive at that conclusion if you assumed it as your premise. how often do you suppose children play the "i'll show you mine if you show me yours" game before being told anything about sex? do you believe that this only occurs between male+female pairs unless prompted by an adult?

perhaps most importantly, why do you think that "most people don't question their sexual preference when they aren't aware there actually are options besides heterosexuality?"

I've actually met quite a few lesbians in my life. This includes my first girlfriend, one of my best friends whom I've had a "one-day-stand" with and a few others. I'm a man, by the way...

My first girlfriend had something of a tomboy appearance but you wouldn't really say she was gay. She'd had a few boyfriends before me and had never really been with a man. After she broke up with me she fell in love with a guy who was her best friend as a child and he turned out to be gay. Somehow this made her think and conclude she was gay as well, although several years and several ex-girlfriends later she nevertheless managed to hook up with some loser she got a child with. Not they've broken up as well and she's officially lesbian again.

The best friend I was talking about mentioned a few times that she was sexually abused by a guy. She's been with a few guys and a lot of girls and told me she just uses men for pleasure but she can only fall in love with a woman. When I asked her how she found out she was gay she pointed out that she never had really fallen in love with a guy but never really questioned that until she learned about the concept of lesbianism. She then started wondering whether she might be lesbian and her tomboy appearance and somewhat boyish attitude confirmed her that she was indeed lesbian. I really wonder whether she might not be confusing her own discomfort around men as a consequence of sexual abuse and in contrast her comfort around women with lesbianism.

Then there's the girl who introduced me to my first girlfriend. When I met her, she was still heterosexual. When she broke up with her last boyfriend, she pointed out that all men were poor in bed and that she was curious to "try" a woman. Ever since then she has (to my knowledge) only had female partners and she is now officially gay.

These are but a few examples of the many lesbians I met in my life and none made my convinced that either of them were born as lesbians. In the cases when I know their personal history, I in fact have quite a lot of reasons to believe that it's at least partially because of Western culture promoting homosexuality that they are now lesbians. Now, I haven't met many male homosexuals but I do know at least one case where his homosexuality seems to have originated from bad experiences with women.

Why would they?

well, if someone told you how something worked (read as: the official story) and it didn't seem, to you, like that's how it actually worked, you might question their story (read as: be skeptical). so, if you were sexually attracted to your own sex, you might be skeptical of the official story of "marriage is only for male+female pairs."

wait, no. you're right . homosexuality isn't just a choice, it's a choice homosexuals have been tricked into by a sinister conspiracy older than humanity. or did we trick animals into homosexuality too?

Maybe, although I doubt this would apply to anyone besides a very small minority in a society where heterosexuality is the norm and homosexuality is rarely (if ever) mentioned. It seems more likely to me that most of these people would just ignore their initial attraction to people of the same gender and adapt perfectly fine to a heterosexual life.

wait, no. you're right . homosexuality isn't just a choice, it's a choice homosexuals have been tricked into by a sinister conspiracy older than humanity. or did we trick animals into homosexuality too?

Homosexuality does exist in nature but it isn't very common as an equivalent to heterosexual activity when animals of the opposite sex are available.

Some researchers believe this behavior to have its origin in male social organization and social dominance, similar to the dominance traits shown in prison sexuality. Others, particularly Joan Roughgarden, Bruce Bagemihl, Thierry Lodé[22] and Paul Vasey suggest the social function of sex (both homosexual and heterosexual) is not necessarily connected to dominance, but serves to strengthen alliances and social ties within a flock. Others have argued that social organization theory is inadequate because it cannot account for some homosexual behaviors, for example, penguin species where same-sex individuals mate for life and refuse to pair with females when given the chance.[23][24] While reports on many such mating scenarios are still only anecdotal, a growing body of scientific work confirms that permanent homosexuality occurs not only in species with permanent pair bonds,[17] but also in non-monogamous species like sheep.

and you think that because....? do you just pretend everyone else thinks and behaves the way you do? you know better, so why pretend that is the case? if this is coming from some sort of research, it would be helpful to produce a citation. as it is, this reads like pure conjecture.

citation, please.

Homosexuality

Recently, in calling for a change in laws regarding homosexuals, a group of more than forty psychologists in Queensland agreed that the latest research showed that homosexuals made up a large proportion of the population and that homosexuality was quite natural.

But it is absurd to conclude that homosexuality is quite natural simply because a large proportion of the population is comprised of homosexuals. That the diseases of civilization are all natural consequences of an unnatural lifestyle doesn't mean we should regard the diseases as natural. Cancer, heart disease and the other diseases of civilization do not occur in animals living in Nature, but they often do in domesticated animals. The only thing natural about them is that they occur as a natural reaction to unnatural circumstances. Homosexuality is a disorder not in accord with Nature and, like cancer, heart disease or neurosis, is a reaction to circumstances non-existent in Nature but common in man-made circumstances.

In calling for recognition that homosexuality is natural, the panel of psychologists at the same time referred to three different studies in which the rates of attempted suicide of young homosexuals were reported as twenty per cent, eighteen per cent and twenty-one per cent respectively. The reports did not reveal how many of the suicide attempts succeeded, but whereas the psychologists presumed the attempts resulted from the despair of non-acceptance in society by an otherwise normal person, to other psychologists the same facts indicate an underlying personality disorder, which disorder in the first place is the reason for homosexuality.

The tendency to regard homosexuality as more or less normal is influenced by data from the Kinsey Report on sexual behavior, which gave the impression that almost everybody has within them the potential to become homosexual in circumstances which deprive them of contact with the opposite sex. That such segregation as in prisons and boarding schools, etc, results in homosexual behavior is well known, but the Kinsey data showed that only about one third of jail prisoners indulged in such behavior and that no heterosexual prisoner continued with homosexual relations once they became free. Homosexuals, however, are people who at no time are sexually attracted to the opposite sex, even finding the opposite sex sexually repugnant, but instead have a powerful and constant desire for sexual relations with people of their own sex.

An argument used to demonstrate that homosexuality is natural is that male animals are commonly observed to mount each other and appear to perform sexually, but whether they achieve satisfaction or not does not denote homosexuality, because homosexuality means complete aversion to sexual relations with the opposite sex and complete sexual desire for one's own sex, a situation which does not occur in Nature among dogs or any other animals.

The Kinsey data concluded that in the USA one person in every ten was a homosexual, and this proportion has been, by rule of thumb, accepted to be pretty much the same in all populations. But other studies have shown otherwise. Whereas history records the existence of homosexuality as far back as history goes, and records the homosexual behavior of emperors, kings, queens, scholars and scientists over the centuries, there are also records showing that in some remote and more primitive populations homosexuality is unknown, while in other population groups it occurs in widely varying degrees. That the highest incidence of homosexuality coincides with the general level of stressful influences in a community and that the lowest incidence coincides with the degree of happiness and health in remote and unstressed populations indicates that, like many conditions of physical disease, it is just as unnatural as the mental breakdowns, depression and neuroses so common in civilization.

Studies of primitive natives reveal that while in some populations homosexuality is non-existent or rare, in other populations it is fairly common; but the same pattern still holds-among the placid, happy, untroubled people homosexuality did not occur, while among fighting tribes and headhunters it did.

Dr Robert Kronemeyer of New York, after twenty-five years of clinical experience helping homosexual men and women, wrote a book, Overcoming Homosexuality (Macmillan, 1980). In this book Dr Kronemeyer related the observations of Dr Margaret Mead, who earlier this century studied the behavior of many native groups of the South Seas. Describing the people of Samoa, Dr Mead called them "peaceful and constructive . . . a people who plant and reap, fish and build, feast and dance in a world where no one is hurried . . . and life is harmonious and uninhibited". Babies were breastfed generously, and "children are loved and cared for and reared in large stable families that do not rely on some tenuous tie between two parents for their own security". Dr Mead noted the only homosexuality observed among the Samoans was the casual relationships between adolescent boys which they soon outgrew.

Other healthy populations in which homosexuality was never known were the Comanche Indians, and the Hunzas. It is significant that, as reported by Dr McCarrison, in nine years he worked in Hunza he observed not one case of cancer or heart disease either.

"Informed opinion" of psychologists agrees that sexual orientation is developed in early childhood and that, once formed, homosexuality is not amenable to clinical intervention. One psychologist stated that research showed homosexuality was not an unnatural or psychiatric disorder, that it was like being left- or right-handed, and that no amount of intervention can change it. But hold on for a minute--not long ago heart disease was said to be irreversible, cancer was considered always fatal and today so too is AIDS. But as we have seen, these opinions were wrong. just as epidemiological studies of heart disease and cancer have revealed the underlying causes of these illnesses, the same kind of studies reveal the factors underlying homosexuality; and the fact that homosexuality is an effect produced by unnatural human factors means that homosexuality is not natural in humans at all, but is an aberration which need not occur.

A study of 1500 San Francisco gays by the Institute for Sex Research in 1978 concluded that homosexuality in itself is not abnormal and that most homosexuals are not dissatisfied with their lives; most of them are "stable, happy, and well adjusted". Twenty per cent of the men said they had attempted suicide and about half of them each admitted to having had at least 500 sexual partners. Does this indicate happiness and adjustment? Having seen the movie Word is Out, produced by homosexuals about homosexuals, social commentator Harriett Van Horne wrote in her syndicated column: "Their stories are mostly very sad . . . By any standard, most are lost, lonely, sick, and altogether heart-breaking . . . Whatever possessed these people to call homosexuals 'gay'?"

Studies have shown the single factor shared invariably by all homosexuals, male and female, is an unhappy childhood which in most cases commenced with an incomplete mother/child relationship, and was perhaps further degraded by parental discord and feelings of insecurity. In view of this fact, the findings of a recent report are not surprising. The British research body "One plus One", in its report "Marital Breakdown", stated that the children of divorced parents were twice as likely to display delinquent behavior, four times as likely to suffer stomach ulcers or colitis before age twenty-six, were more accident prone, troubled, drifting, underachieving, and as adults far more prone to psychiatric illness and drinking problems.

It's basic human psychology, really. Human likes and dislikes are very flexible and culture has a significant impact on that. I can't think of a single objective reason to believe that most people with an initial attraction to people of the same gender wouldn't adapt to the heterosexual norm if they hadn't been exposed to the concept of homosexuality in the first place.

Why don't you ask some some gay people if they are in control of their sexual preferences?

I've actually met quite a few lesbians in my life. This includes my first girlfriend, one of my best friends whom I've had a "one-day-stand" with and a few others. I'm a man, by the way...

My first girlfriend had something of a tomboy appearance but you wouldn't really say she was gay. She'd had a few boyfriends before me and had never really been with a man. After she broke up with me she fell in love with a guy who was her best friend as a child and he turned out to be gay. Somehow this made her think and conclude she was gay as well, although several years and several ex-girlfriends later she nevertheless managed to hook up with some loser she got a child with. Not they've broken up as well and she's officially lesbian again.

The best friend I was talking about mentioned a few times that she was sexually abused by a guy. She's been with a few guys and a lot of girls and told me she just uses men for pleasure but she can only fall in love with a woman. When I asked her how she found out she was gay she pointed out that she never had really fallen in love with a guy but never really questioned that until she learned about the concept of lesbianism. She then started wondering whether she might be lesbian and her tomboy appearance and somewhat boyish attitude confirmed her that she was indeed lesbian. I really wonder whether she might not be confusing her own discomfort around men as a consequence of sexual abuse and in contrast her comfort around women with lesbianism.

Then there's the girl who introduced me to my first girlfriend. When I met her, she was still heterosexual. When she broke up with her last boyfriend, she pointed out that all men were poor in bed and that she was curious to "try" a woman. Ever since then she has (to my knowledge) only had female partners and she is now officially gay.

These are but a few examples of the many lesbians I met in my life and none made my convinced that either of them were born as lesbians. In the cases when I know their personal history, I in fact have quite a lot of reasons to believe that it's at least partially because of Western culture promoting homosexuality that they are now lesbians. Now, I haven't met many male homosexuals but I do know at least one case where his homosexuality seems to have originated from bad experiences with women.

Isn't it irritating when people presume to know you more than you know yourself?

Would you like NT's who claim that autistic traits such as sensory issues or the need to decompress after over-stimulation are "learned behaviors", "deviant", or "must be corrected"? Or do you like being invalidated on baseless grounds?

So? The fact that they NO LONGER consider homosexuality to be a mental disorder means they once did. On what do you judge that they're right today and were wrong in the past instead of vice versa?

Most people don't question their sexual preference when they aren't aware there actually are options besides heterosexuality.

Because there are other options. There's no sense in keeping kids in the dark about all this, especially considering it could clear up a lot of confusion they might have.

The following citation is from the "Health and Survival in the 21st Century" book, by Ross Horne.