Born
WHAT Way?
By
Dr. Paul Cameron
Dr. Cameron
is Chariman of the Family Research Institute of Colorado
Springs, Colorado USA. Click here for more information about
this organization. You may contact him at: Family Research Institute, PO Box
62640, Colorado Springs, CO 80962 USA. Phone number: (303) 681-3113.
Gay
activists regularly claim that they were "born that way" and thus cannot change
their desires or stop their activities. Yet there are numerous documented cases
in which homosexuals have changed. The Masters-Johnson Institute reported
that: "A 25-year-old man had had his first sexual experience when he was 13
years old. It was arranged by his lesbian mother with an older gay man. After
that episode, his imagery and interpersonal sexual experience were exclusively
homosexual.... The man was motivated to establish a heterosexual life style
because he was sincerely distressed by public disapproval of homosexuality and
his personal loneliness. [After treatment, he] has been followed for 3 1/2 years.
His sexual interaction has been exclusively heterosexual. He has moved out of
the gay community and has changed... his life style."(1)
- Was this man's sexual orientation
biologically deturmined?
- If so, how was it initially set
- toward heterosexuality or homosexuality?
- And if it was set initially,
how was he able to change?
The answers to these seemingly "esoteric"
questions matter a great deal. For one thing, the political stakes are high.
The March 3, 1993 New York Times/CBS News Poll reported that a majority
of those who believe that gays "cannot change" favored permitting homosexuals
to serve in the military. Only a third of those who believed it is a choice
felt the same way.
Many opinions about gay rights hinge
on the question of whether gays are "born that way" and/or "can't change." For
instance, 57% of those who believe it is immutable consider homosexuality an
acceptable life style vs 18% of those who consider it a choice. But if homosexual
activity is no more inevitable or unchangeable than drunkenness or drug use,
most people seem willing to insist that homosexuals abandon their destructive
behavior.
Two prominent 'homosexual' psychiatrists,
examining the evidence of their own lives as well as those of others, came to
different conclusions in this long-running debate. The first of these, Sigmund
Freud, saw his homosexual urges as pathological. Through self-analysis, he overcame
them and eventually rejoiced in the "greater independence that results from
having overcome my homosexuality."(2) The
second of these, Richard Isay, confronted his desires, pronounced them "natural,"
divorced his wife and joined the gay subculture.(3)
In 1992 Isay admitted that the "conviction
among most, though not all, dynamically oriented psychiatrists in general and
psychoanalysts in particular [is] that homosexuality can and should be changed
to heterosexuality."(4) Yet, while acknowledging
this consensus among his colleagues, Isay called attempts to change homosexual
desire "the greatest abuse of psychiatry in America today." Why? Because the
"attempt to change is extremely harmful."(3)
Instead, society should change to accommodate homosexuality.
Dr. Isay, who chairs the American
Psychiatric Association's committee on Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues,
argues that homosexuality "is constitutional [that is, biological in origin]."(4)
To support his position, he cited as proof two 1991 studies - the "gay brains"
research of Simon LeVay(5) and the "gay twins"
study of Bailey & Pillard.(6)
In 1993, Drs. William Byne and Bruce
Parsons, researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, critically
reviewed "the evidence favoring a biologic theory" presented by LeVay and Bailey
& Pillard.(7) They concluded in the Archives
of General Psychiatry that "[t]here is no evidence at present to substantiate
a biologic theory" of sexual orientation!
How could these researchers dismiss
as inadequate the very studies that were fundamental to Dr. Isay's argument
- and that even conservative columnist William- F. Buckley referred to in 1993
as proving that homosexuals are 'born that way?'
Byne & Parsons remembered that from
the 1940s through the 1970s it was widely argued and believed in the
scientific community that male homosexuals had a deficiency of male hormones.
However, only 3 "studies had indicated lower testosterone levels in male homosexuals,
while 20 studies found no differences based on sexual orientation, and two reported
elevated testosterone levels in male homosexuals." In spite of these other studies,
textbooks alluded to the supposed "fact" of hormonal differences for three
decades. But this "scientific" belief was false.
Gay Brains:
Byne & Parsons observed that the LeVay study was based upon a supposed functional
correlation between the SDN-POA brain center in male rats and a brain center
called INAH3 in humans. LeVay reasoned that since the SDN-POA had an effect
on male rat crouching/mounting behavior, then a corresponding difference in
the same part of the brain would make men homosexual. He assumed that the INAH3
in men was essentially the same as the SDN-POA in rats. But, as it turns out,
the "effective lesion site within the anterior hypothalamus for disrupting mounting
behavior [in male rats] lies above, not within, the SDN-POA. Thus, the
SDN-POA does not play a critical role in male-typical behavior in male
rats, and the correlation between its size and mounting frequencies clearly
does not reflect a causal relationship." LeVay compared human brains with rat
brains but failed to locate the analogous region. Instead of the "bullseye"
that Isay and the mass media celebrated, it was an embarrassing miss!
LeVay's study also had numerous
technical problems. For instance, his samples included 19 brains of gays who
died of AIDS and 16 brains from men whose sexual orientation was unknown. He
assumed the 16 were heterosexual, even though 5 had died of AIDS. More importantly,
although LeVay argued that a small INAH3 "caused" homosexuality, some of the
gays had an INAH3 that was larger than the average size of the INAH3 of the
"heterosexuals," and some of the "heterosexuals" had an INAH3 that was smaller
than those of gays. So some of his gays "should" have been heterosexual and
vice-versa.
Gay Twins:
Bailey & Pillard reported that 52% of identical twins of homosexuals were also
homosexual. But after the media finished hyping Bailey & Pillard's results,
King & McDonald(8) published a new 'sexual
orientation of twins' study, which found concordance rates for homosexuality
of 25% in identical twins. That's half the 52% reported by Bailey & Pillard.
Drs. Byne & Parsons noted the large proportions of identical twins in both studies
"who were discordant for homosexuality despite sharing not only their genes
but also their prenatal and familial environments... [which] underscores our
ignorance of the factors that are involved, and the manner in which they interact,
in the emergence of sexual orientation."
The evidence supporting the "born
that way" claim of Isay and other gay activists is tenuous. It has been uncritically
accepted and hyped by the media and some less-than-careful researchers. But
it hasn't been replicated by others and is riddled with technical problems.
On the other side is a body of scientific
evidence that suggests that homosexuality is adopted by people who are confused,
sexually adventurous and/or rebellious. This evidence suggests that sexual
orientation is flexible, not immutable. And the evidence comes from the
largest studies on the subject, conducted by researchers on both sides of the
gay rights debate.
Sexual Preference
Shifts
That sexual desire and behavior are flexible was demonstrated by the Kinsey
Institute in 1970. It reported(9) that 81%
of 684 gays and 93% of 293 lesbians had changed or shifted either their
sexual feelings or behaviors after age 12.58% of the gays and 77% of the lesbians
reported a second shift in sexual orientation; 31% of the gays and 49% of the
lesbians reported a third shift; and 13% of the gays and 30% of the lesbians
reported even a fourth shift in sexual orientation before "settling"
into adult homosexuality. The shifts reported by these subjects varied in degree,
but some were quite dramatic - about a quarter of gays and a third of lesbians
once had heterosexual desires and 5% of heterosexual men and 3% of heterosexual
women once had substantial homosexual desires. Heterosexuals in the study were
much less likely to report shifts in their orientation. Even so, 29% of 337
heterosexual men and 14% of 140 heterosexual women reported at least one shift;
while 4% of the men and 1% of the women reported at least three shifts. Immutable
things like eye color or skin color don't change once, much less three or four
times!
Unlike biological changes, the shifts
in sexual orientation began at age 18 or later for half of both gays and lesbians.
Sexual changes, five or more years after puberty, are exceptionally late
and without biological precedent in development. But changes in tastes
(e.g., food or entertainment) often take place around age 18.
Other Evidence
The same Kinsey study also produced other evidence that can not be explained
in terms of biological determinism, but would readily support the idea that
choice is involved in sexual orientation and behavior:
- 74% of their gays admitted to
having been sexually aroused by a female and 80% of lesbians said that they
had been sexually aroused by a male;
- 19% of their gays and 38% of
lesbians had been heterosexually married;
- 20% of gays, 5% of heterosexual
men, 7% of lesbians and no heterosexual women had had sex with animals.
Consistent with these results, the
Family Research Institute (FRI) 10 conducted a nationwide
random survey of 4,340 adults drawn from 5 U.S. cities in 1983 and found:
- 82% of those currently lesbian
and 66% of those currently gay said that they had been in love with
someone of the opposite sex;
- 88% of lesbians and 73% of gays
had been sexually aroused by someone of the opposite sex;
- 67% of lesbians and 54% of gays
reported current sexual attraction to the opposite sex;
- 85% of lesbians and 54% of gays,
as adults, had sexual relations with someone of the opposite
sex;
- 32% of gays and 47% of lesbians
had been heterosexually married; and
- 17% of gays, 3% of heterosexual
men, 10% of lesbians and 1% of heterosexual women reported sex with animals.
These are the kinds of sexual choices
one would expect from the sexually adventurous or confused. Unless Dr. Isay
and his supporters are willing to believe that people are "born" to fall in
love, get married or to have sex with animals, some measure of choice, rather
than biological inevitability, must have been involved.
The ability to change explains the
FRI findings that:
- Overall, 7.8% of women and 12%
of men claimed to have been homosexually aroused at some point in their life.
Yet 59% of the once homosexually aroused women and 51% of the once homosexually
aroused men were currently heterosexual;
- 5.1% of the women and 9.4% of
the men admitted to at least one homosexual partner. Of these, only 58% of
the women and 61% of the men were currently gay;
- 4.1% of women and 5.8% of men
reported that they had, at least once, been "in homosexual love." Yet only
66% of those who had fallen in love with a member of the same sex were currently
gay; and
- almost a third of those who admitted
to homosexual relations in adulthood were now heterosexual.
People Can Change
Where is the "biological inevitability" or "immutability" in these findings?
The evidence suggests that people can modify their sexual tastes. The FRI survey
in Dallas,(11) similar to the Kinsey survey
in San Francisco, found that 1% of heterosexual females and 3% of heterosexual
males at one time considered themselves homosexual (i.e., were ex-gay when interviewed).
And a survey of 50 wives who had
no homosexual experiences or interests up to age 30, but who participated in
homosexual sex acts as part of "swinging" (where married people swap partners)
reported that all of these women eventually considered themselves to be bisexual.(12)
These are among the findings that
seriously challenge the claim that sexual orientation is predetermined before
or after birth, or even that it is permanently fixed in adulthood.
What is at Stake?
If sexual orientation is actually a matter of choice like drug use, we can expect
that more of our youth will try homosexuality the more that it is tolerated
and encouraged. Along these lines, Dr. Christopher Hewitt's(13)
analysis of the frequency of homosexuality in various societies is summarized
in the Table: societies that accept homosexuality have more of it and those
that disapprove of and punish it have considerably less of it
With the above in mind, consider our
society's future in light of D. Minkowitz's December 29, 1992 editorial in the
national gay magazine, The Advocate:
"I am increasingly impatient with
the old chestnut that our movement for public acceptance has not increased and
will not increase the number of gay men and lesbians in existence. `There are
more of us than there used to be,` historian John D'Elmilio has written.
Firmly believing this, I wanted to... argue the morality of teaching kids that
gay is OK even if it means that some will join our ranks...."
Indeed. Youth are often attracted
to excitement and rebellion. The gay movement is growing.
Minkowitz also argued that the 'born
gay' claim is nothing more than a smokescreen: "most of the line about homosex[uality]
being one's nature, not a choice, was articulated as a response to brutal repression....
'We didn't choose this, so don't punish us for it!' One hundred years later,
it's time for us to abandon this defensive posture and walk upright on the earth.
Maybe you didn't choose to be gay - that's fine. But I did."
When Kinsey (14)
asked 1700 homosexuals in the 1940s how they "got that way," only 9% claimed
that they were "born gay." In 1970, a similar percentage was recorded for 979
gays in San Francisco.(9) But in 1983, after
the gay rights movement started to politicize the issue of homosexual origins,
35% of a random sample of 147 gays(10) said
that they were "born that way.
Perhaps those who commit adultery,
molest children or practice homosexuality are "born with" unusual biological
influences. But there is no hard evidence of this. In fact, it appears that
participation in these activities, like drug abuse or any other chosen behavior,
is a combination of will and opportunity. No matter how such desires come about,
members of society are rightly expected to control their behavior and not endanger
others.
References
1. Schwartz MF & Masters WH The Masters and Johnson treatment
program for dissatisfied homosexual men. Amer J Psychiatry 1984:141;173-81.
2.1910 letter to Sandor Ferenczi.
3. Wall Street Journal 4/21/93 A6.
4. Homosexuality and psychiatry, Psychiatric News, Feb. 7,1992, p.3.
5. LeVay S A difference in hypothalamic structure between heterosexual and homosexual
men. Science 1991;253:1034-1037.
6.Bailey JM & Pillard RCA genetic study of mate sexual orientation. Arch Gen
Psychiatry 1991;48: 1089-1996.
7. Human sexual orientation: the biologic theories reappraised. Arch Gen Psychiatry
1993:50;228-239.
8. King M & McDonald E Homosexuals who are twins: a study of 46 probands. Brit
J Psychiatry 1992,160:407-419.
9. Belt AP & Weinberg MS Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and
Women. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978. /& Hammersmith SK Sexual Preference:
Statistical Appendix. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981.
10. Cameron P, Cameron K. & Proctor K Effect of homosexuality upon public health
and social order. Psychol Rpts, 1989,61,1167-79.
11. Cameron P, Cameron K. & Proctor K. Homosexuals in the Armed Forces, Psychol
Repts, 1988,62,211-219.
12. Dixon, JK. The commencement of bisexual activity in swinging married women
overage thirty. J Sex Research, 1984,20,71-98.
13.1993, after Broude GJ & Greene SJ Cross cultural codes on twenty sexual attitudes
and practices. Ethnology 1976;15;409-430.
14. Gebhard P & Johnson AB The Kinsey data Philadelphia: Saunders, 1979.
Dan Lirette
www.icminternational.org