In reaction to my post “Say No to Same-Sex Pseudo-Marriage,” commenter “The Man Who Was…” objects to our claim that homosexuality is largely caused by one’s upbringing. He says no evidence exists for this claim.
The truth is rather different. That homosexuality is largely due to the environment in which one is raised is very nearly true by definition, and is therefore not subject to either proof or disproof by empirical means. If The Man Who Was… objects that “studies” don’t prove that homosexuality is induced by a disordered environment, he’s probably failing to notice that “studies” also don’t disprove it.
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The proof of my claim proceeds as follows. Homosexuality is a form of character, meaning a settled disposition to behave in a certain way. As such, it is midway between behaviors over which we have full control, such as what dish we order at a restaurant, and behaviors over which we have no control, such as squinting at a bright light. Homosexuality is one value of a character variable that is vulgarly called “sexual orientation.”
“Sexual orientation” is malleable when being formed, but once in place it is hardly malleable at all. Once your character is set, you generally can’t help yourself, barring an act of God (which can happen.)
But character is formed by thousands of small actions and interactions (and occasional major ones), almost all of which are induced by the environment. True, the environment interacts with the individual and his already existing character as well as his biological endowments. That’s why there may be a biological component to becoming homosexual. But character, by definition, is not primarily determined by biology. Human biology sets wide limits, and within these limits, character is set by the sum total of one’s experiences and choices, especially those occurring when one is young and especially malleable. Therefore homosexuality is largely caused by the environment in which one is raised.
One important point remains: Is homosexuality caused in large measure by being raised in a disordered environment, or can we say no more than that it is “caused by the environment?” To answer this question, one must develop a moral intuition. Things have moral qualities, and the immoral tends to be associated with the immoral. If homosexuality is immoral (and it is), then, speaking statistically, it has to be correlated with an upbringing that is at least somewhat immoral. If it were really true that no such correlation existed, then reality itself would not make sense. But since reality does make sense, the correlation does exist.
It must be emphasized that I am speaking statistically. The individual cannot fully be understood by a chain of causal relations. But the overall pattern of human society is broadly intelligible, including the cause of immoral character.
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And all of this has a wider significance. All of us are being tyrannized by the “experts,” who tell us (at least implicitly) that we have to accept their pronouncements. And since their pronouncements invariably support liberalism, we allegedly have no right to object to liberalism.
But there is something more fundamental than “expertise.” The fundamental realities, and especially the moral realities, are grasped by intuition rather than by scientific technique. We do not have to accept the “experts” when they tell us that our knowledge of homosexuality is invalid. If they cannot acknowledge reality, it is their thinking that is invalid.
The Orthosphere 
My inference from Alan Roebuck’s observations is that ‘expert’ opinions about the causes of homosexuality are based on immoral intuitions.
I once read a newspaper story about a sixteen-year-old boy in Tulsa, Ok., who was raised by a single mother from the age of two. The mother was quoted in the story saying that as early as the age of three the boy had begun to show signs of homosexual/transgender behavior, namely that he would pull at his genitals saying “off, off!” She admitted that once she understood what this behavior was all about, she began to treat him differently, buying him little girl toys and dressing him in little girl clothes, etc. My recollection is that the boy (along with his very supportive mother) was eagerly awaiting his sixteenth birthday, only a few days away, at which time he would be legally eligible to begin the transgender surgical process. In the meantime his mother had allowed him to have a live-in “boyfriend.” This is the twisted environment this poor boy was raised in. Anyone who denies that the boy’s twisted, pro-homosexual single mother, and the environment she created for him to grow up in, was a huge influence on him, is to some degree completely out of touch with reality.
My 7 year-old daughter recently worried me by saying wistfully, “I wish I were a boy.” Before I could respond she added thoughtfully, “Or a dolphin.” That’s it! The next frontier! She’ll soon be famous as the world’s first transspecies-American. Now we just need to find a doctor who specializes in species reassignment surgery. (Actually, I told her God had made her a girl for a reason, and we talked happily about all the great things about being a girl. I’m a horrible father, I know.)
You must be sent to the concentration camp. You are denying your own child the freedom of becoming what she wants. You are a dolphin-phobe. You hate dolphins, those cute animals that have always been friendly to humans. You are a human cisgendered bigot
Homosexuals and transgenderism are two completely different things. Gay men do not wish to be women like the boy in your story. In conflating gender identity with sexuality, you reveal not wisdom but ignorance.
The mother of the boy conflated the two, I didn’t.
My only point was that she created a home environment for the boy which encouraged and fostered both homosexual and transgender behaviorisms in him from as early as the age of three (according to her, but I’m betting it started even before that); that for her own twisted reasons I do not pretend to understand, she was instrumental and highly successful in deeply imprinting on his formative psyche the irrepressible conception that he was/is a freak of nature, a girl born in a boy’s body, and that as such he must become what nature had cruelly and mistakenly denied him at birth, both sexually and physiologically. The latter with the help of modern science.
Sadly this will only complicate matters for the boy, and he’s very likely, as a result of the surgical mutilation of his body, coupled with the hormone treatments, etc., to ultimately commit suicide as a way of escaping his becoming a freak in reality.
I suggest you understand the difference between homosexuality and transgenderism. In conflating the two you only reveal ignorance.
They are both disordered sexual expressions, and both are not explained by “genetics.”
I concur 100 percent with you. I wish everyone in this twisted world would read your post. I speak from personal experience as I was raised by a single mother and was exposed to an immoral environment and that has mostly affected my orientation
My comment here is completely unrelated to the post, but I guess there is no better place to put it since this is currently the top posting. Basically I live in Poland and will be going to the USA, to Boston for business tomorrow, and stay 2 weeks. Reactionaries are sufficiently rare creatures that I take interrest in personly meeting anyone from here, poster or commenter. So, if there is anyone here that lives in Boston or near by, we could organize a meeting. Hopefully I will have sunday off, but cannot guarantee, if there is work to be done sunday too I might have to cancel the meeting. The way I understand it americans might see their reaction as something strictly domestic, but in reality everywhere in the west (latin america+north america+europe) is in exactly the same situation. I fear to put my e-mail here for contact due to the spammers, so I propose that anyone contact me via my blog for example, writing a comment: http://felipemonteirodecarvalho.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-tale-of-street-crossing-fine.html
É um texto fora do assunto, mas é interessante. Bem-vindo Felipe. Você tem uma herança cultural mista, Latina e Eslava, é uma grande coincidência. Tenho também o mesmo perfil. Sente-se em casa.
According to a crude online translation, this comment means “It is a text out of the subject, but it is interesting. Welcome Felipe. You have a cultural mixed, Latin and Slavic inheritance, you is a great coincidence. I have also the same profile. One feels at home.”
Human biology sets wide limits…
That’s where your argument begs the question, Mr. Roebuck. How wide the limits imposed by biology are on any specific trait is an empirical question, and the answer is different for each trait. If, in the case under discussion, the limits are narrow, your conclusion that “homosexuality is largely caused by the environment in which one is raised” is wrong.
Note that the existence of a correlation between homosexuality and immoral upbringing, if it exists, would not demonstrate anything by itself. If the biological limits are narrow, then the cause would be homosexuality and the effect would be immoral living and immoral upbringing of the next generation, and not the other way around.
Now, I agree that today’s “experts” cannot be trusted to ascertain the empirical question, so the problem will remain open for the time being. The best hypothesis I’ve heard of is Gregory Cochran’s: same-sex orientation is a disease, probably transmitted in the womb, to which individuals are differentially susceptible depending on their genetic makeup.
It is clear that the biological limits are quite wide, for man’s sexual expression is, shall we say, varied. And I was arguing against the belief that upbringing is largely irrelevant; I wasn’t trying to argue that upbringing is the only cause.
Perhaps I could refine my assertion: Regardless of its ultimate cause, homosexuality is at least triggered largely by upbringing. Man is a social creature, and statistically speaking, a society that encourages homosexuality (as ours does) coupled with a bad childhood in which unnatural stresses impinge on the impressionable youngster cannot help but trigger an increased incidence of homosexuality.
Bottom line: I was not arguing for a specific theory of the cause of homosexuality. I was arguing that common sense is valid.
Man is a social creature, and statistically speaking, a society that encourages homosexuality (as ours does) coupled with a bad childhood in which unnatural stresses impinge on the impressionable youngster cannot help but trigger an increased incidence of homosexuality.
Sigh. Traditionalists often embarrass themselves when trying to explain the specific ways in which society and human beings work. In this case, there is a gaping hole between the premise and the conclusion.
The “hole” is a fundamental truth that you apparently won’t acknowledge, namely that character is heavily influenced by upbringing. And I’m not trying to explain the specific ways things work. I’m pointing out that your side is missing something important.
It is clear that the biological limits are quite wide
You’re playing with words not arguing.
I read in a book by a scientist (veterinarian + doctor) that there is no such thing as “homosexuality” as we think of it, ie., an emotional/ psychological manifestation. There is only “homosexual behavior”. Further, he stated that he believed the basic cause to be a deficiency of certain minerals during gestation.
Strangely, about 35 years ago, in a book on natural healing by a non-scientist, non-medically trained philosopher of sorts, I read the same thing exactly. He also stated that if the homosexual wishes very much to change into a hetero, it is doable through natural medicines, etc. He mentioned one such case he was personally familiar with. But the person has to want this.
Just passing this along. I don’t reject this out of hand, by the way. But I know that most here will.
There is “homosexual behavior”. Scroll down and see my comment about it below. It often arises due to sexual segregation. Once access to the opposite sex is gained, it subsides.
At the same time however I do think there is genuine homosexuality.
I guess by immoral upbringing you could also note a dysfunctional family, which was my case. Though I agree with your synopsis I should like to add that there is an emotional depth to homosexual love akin to romantic love and that is less easily explained by one’s environment. Yes it can be a desire for the masculine in the other but when combined with the friendship between two men for example, it can be all enveloping and sacrificial. This is the love that is spoken of and whether rooted in dysfunction or not is still very real for those involved. The love between heterosexual men can be very strong as it is, especially for comrades and combine romance – it becomes almost invincible.
If homosexuality is immoral (and it is), then, speaking statistically, it has to be correlated with an upbringing that is at least somewhat immoral.
Conclusion does not follow from premise. The moral status of homosexuality would not be affected if it turns out to have a purely physical cause, such as, for example, a gay germ.
As a hypothetical, that’s true. But, in fact, homosexuality cannot be caused (except perhaps in the sense of causing an increased susceptibility) by a purely biological factor. Character is not caused purely, or even mostly, by biology.
This is simply and blatantly untrue. “In fact” it is nothing of the sort and you are willfully ignoring that. Apply the correct electrical or hormonal stimulus to certain areas of the brain, you trigger certain thoughts and feelings. This is known and commonly observed in laboratory environments. The brain is a physical thing. Configure a male brain to produce female-like hormone levels and electrical impulses, put it in a male body, you have a man who is hard-wired to be homosexual (or abstinently so) regardless of environment. That homosexuality in the real-world human beings who experience it is not necessarily or always that firmly set does not mean it is impossible, and makes your “in fact” statement a blatant lie and wishful thinking.
It would be a good thing if your description was a sufficient analysis of the condition. I will grant that that certainly is a part of it. You have not however provided anywhere near the level of evidence required to demonstrate that it is the complete explanation.
Rollory,
The beliefs you express in this post presuppose an atheistic materialist worldview. If man is nothing but matter, then you are basically correct.
You are basically saying that a male-looking robot-human who was programmed to be homosexual would be homosexual. True, but man is not a robot. Atheistic materialism is false, and man has a spiritual (i.e., non-material) component.
Homosexuality just is a type of character, and human character just is a settled disposition to behave in a certain way. And a settled disposition is produced by many factors, none of which operate in a strictly deterministic fashion, because man is not a purely physical being.
To Rollory: Why would he try to demonstrate that it is the complete explanation? He knows environment isn’t the complete explanation for homosexuality, as his posts demonstrate.
I don’t understand the obsession with the etiology of homosexuality. Homosexual sodomy is a sin, but so is every sexual perversion: masturbation, incest, birth control, heterosexual sodomy, etc. What is important is the fact that there is one standard of sexual virtue to which all civilized people should conform. As St. Jerome says, “Do you imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?”
All of our lusts must be ordered according to natural law, regardless of our individual predilections. We may disagree on the etiology of a particular sin, but we all know that the only cure for spiritual sickness is to realign our wills with the objective moral order of reality.
True, one must not obsess over the cause. The other side is interested in the cause so that they can find homosexuality to be good. My post was only trying to correct a common erroneous view about the cause.
“I don’t understand the obsession with the etiology of homosexuality. Homosexual sodomy is a sin, but so is every sexual perversion: masturbation, incest, birth control, heterosexual sodomy, etc.”
How is masturbation a sin?
2352 By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. “Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of “the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.”
To form an equitable judgment about the subjects’ moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.
Selfishness almost certainly has a biological cause as does gluttony, sloth, etc.
How do you know that?
Oh, come on.
Well, let me ask a better question then: Which side do you take in this dispute? What broader point were you trying to make with your observation?
Self-preservation is the most fundamental instinct that any creature has, followed close on the tails by procreation. Can we agree that fundamental instincts or appetites are purely biological in nature? If not, can we agree that any instincts or appetites we share with chimpanzees are purely biological? Please note I am not asking for agreement that any expression whatsoever of those instincts is made wholesome or entirely good based on its origin alone. I am only saying that all basic human instincts clearly have, or quite plausibly have, biological origins. I.e., that we were created by God to have such instincts and if we didn’t something would be terribly wrong.
Just because something is related to a biological drive does not make it not sinful. Our reason and the natural law written on our hearts can tell us that gluttony is not the proper relationship of man to food. However, when we start denying that there is a proper relationship between man and nature with respect to anything, people reason from false premises and ignore natural law.
We all have disordered desires. We live in a fallen world. We have a duty to try to overcome this, to ask for help, and to ask for forgiveness when we fail.
I’ll bet we agree.
Selfishness is consequent on having a Self, and Selves are not biological but spiritual entities.
Animals are not Selfish. They just are
Well, I agree with Alan here. Yes, there is likely to be a biological predisposition to homosexuality in some individuals. But biology can’t explain everything. What, for instance, of those people who claim to have suddenly discovered a homosexual identity at the age of 40 or 50 or 60? There is a certain life path has brought them to that point – it can’t all be biology. Human sexuality is a very intimate expression of a human personality and this personality is bound up with emotions, attachments, aversions, hurts, identities and so on. If things go wrong with these aspects of “psyche” then that is likely to show up in the realm of relationships and sexuality. This doesn’t just apply to homosexuality; it can be manifested in someone not being as strongly oriented to committed relationships, or in someone not fully developing a masculine or feminine persona, or in a loss of sexual expression of self.
What, for instance, of those people who claim to have suddenly discovered a homosexual identity at the age of 40 or 50 or 60?
Notice how this is only a very recent phenomenon though, which suggest that these are just socially conformist guys who were primarily attracted to men all along, but didn’t want to be social pariahs. Now, that being gay is no big deal socially, they want in on the action, so to speak. Being gay still carried a certain stigma up until the last 10-15 years.
Or possibly being gay is a really big deal with rich rewards; square to hip in a matter of seconds.
And at least you finally answer my questions! If you forgot them, they were this: “Would you agree that having less acceptance of homosexuals would result in less people (example: teenagers) experimenting with homosexuality? Would you agree that fewer homosexual suggestions pervading society results in fewer people experimenting with homosexual behavior?”
Men in the past were avoiding homosexual behavior partly because the social environment persuaded them to suppress their sinful urges. And that is OUR point here when we bring up gay marriage. I understand that you want to snowflake and pretend that Alan is attempting to give us the total whole material causality behind clinical homosexuality (according to your strict definitions). But you’re only doing that to protect your homosexual loved ones, I would presume. You’re blinded.
Our point seems to be that the social rejection of homosexual marriage will lend to fewer acts of sodomy in people’s private lives (which are now spilling into public). Whether this reduction in sodomy is due to homo volition or hetero coercion is less important in this context. (It is also true that criminalizing sodomy and placing cameras in people’s private living spaces would also result in fewer acts of sodomy.) And *fewer acts of sodomy* is the reactionary’s/traditionalist’s goal.
True ultimate physical healing is the Christian physician’s goal. The discussion about the ultimate causality is best left up to homos and the Christianised professional counselors/doctors seeking to heal them.
What about the homosexuals who abandon that perversion and “become” heterosexual? Anne Heche is the most famous example; Rosaria Champagne Butterfield wrote a book about her abandonment of homosexuality and embrace of God (The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith). There are also the numerous organizations that work to deprogram homosexuals, organizations which report some degree of success.
The “biology is all” ideologues have no plausible explanation for such people, and ignore them entirely.
Lesbians are different than male homosexuals. This has already been covered.
some degree of success.
No.
Ah. I see some ideologues do not ignore former homosexuals but merely deny their existence, without bothering to substantiate their beliefs.
Perhaps you would care to share the source of your confidence, Mr. Was?
Homosexuality is both a mental disorder and a behavioral disorder. Generally, both types of disorder are treatable, though success various by disorder, treatment, and individual.
Conversion/reparative therapy has, as near as I can tell, only about a 1 in 3 success rate, with success defined as cessation of homosexual behavior, either through heterosexual behavior or celibacy. However, even these results are challengeable. We are not going to get good data on the efficacy of such therapy unless and until the social environment becomes significantly less homosexual-friendly than it is now. (A good step in the right direction would be the reclassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder. It was declassified as such not because of any change in the science, but because of unendurable and persistent harassment by homosexual activists.)
I just found out about Antoine Dodson. It appears he became an Internet sensation a few years ago for being a flamboyant queer. Now, however, he reads the Bible and has renounced his past ways (hat tip to Mantronikk of heteroseparatist.blogspot.com)
He does not deny his past, but does want to move on to a wife and children.
What a blessing the gift of repentance is!
I suspect that cultural conditioning does have a greater influence than is usually admitted on sodomitical appetites at least among women, the more sexually malleable of the species. That lesbianism was once extremely rare but has now (according to a survey I won’t bother tracking down now) become quite common in university environments seems strong evidence for this.
However, I think your arguments here are not valid, Alan. You rely too much on a switch of definition of “character”. If this just means “disposition to act in a certain way”, everyone will be on board with you. But then you can’t load “not biologically predetermined” into the definition halfway through. That’s begging the question.
Also, I think the jump to the conclusion that the environmental trigger must be something disordered is also overly hasty. For fallen human beings, even good things can sometimes be occasions for temptation. Consider “The man who was..”‘s theory that prosperity leads to irreligion. This may or may not be true, but if it is true, it would hardly follow that the universe doesn’t make sense, because something good became an occasion for something evil.
Yes, lesbianism likely has a completely different cause and a different nature. For one, bisexuality appears to be much higher among women, and I’ve known one aquaintance who specialized in seducing lesbians, just for the kick of doing it. He asked one girl, “Aren’t you a lesbian?” “Well, 90% lesbian.” I also believe that there was a study that showed women getting turned on from watching monkeys have sex. Women probably have a sexual preference, but not a definitive orientation.
Every sin is (and only is) to take or use a per se good thing in a wrong way or for the wrong reasons. If a (created) thing can be, in an of itself, evil, then the universe doesn’t make sense.
[This is in response to Bonald’s comment at 2:12 am. I don’t understand why it ended up here.]
I think that character in this sense of the word is not biologically determined almost by definition, because the word refers to a disposition that is not predetermined. That’s why character is morally praiseworthy or blameworthy: it could have gone a different way. I’m not saying that biology is a factor, but it is far from the entire explanation, and therefore “not biologically predetermined” seems to be a valid way to say it.
And character is also praiseworthy or blameworthy because we bear some responsibility for it. It is not just the case that we react automatically to an upbringing that is either good or bad. There is a personal factor. This personal factor is not just biological. It is, shall we say, spiritual, meaning not physically programmed and also not just an automatic response to the environment.
I have been speaking statistically, not in terms of strict causation. Causation, yes. Strict causation, in which one thing necessarily always results from another, no. Common sense says that man’s natural endowment naturally leads to heterosexuality (or, at worst, sexual indifference) rather than to homosexuality. This being so, it is reasonable to hold that it takes something like an active interference to result in homosexuality. In the case of prosperity and irreligion, the one is not an active interference in the other. In the case of a disordered environment, the child is, for example, encouraged to be homosexual, or deprived of a father’s affection which naturally drives him to seek male affection elsewhere, or forced to experience perverted sexual activity and therefore his sex drive is forcibly derailed, or some such.
Again, the result is never automatic, because of the kind of being man is. But common sense sure does suggest that the upbringing has a strong influence on the result, and I am saying that this intuition is valid, despite what the “experts” say.
Once you’re “speaking statistically” I think you’re right out in the middle of an empirical question, begging for data–data which could not prove beyond all doubt causation anyway. It seems to me to be epistemologically most humble to say that we don’t know the chief causes of male homosexual orientation; less humble to say we’ll never know the chief causes of it; and least humble of all to say that WE DO know the chief causes and they are X, Y, and/or Z.
Whatever the causes may be has no relevance to the question of whether male homosexual orientation is disordered or whether homosexual acts are sinful. Any more than knowing the etiology of obesity rates tells us whether gluttony is disordered and sinful.
This is why I find your framing of the question so strange.
Either we are going to A) treat the question empirically, complete the research, and be happy with whatever answers we get; or B) treat the question morally, judge desires and behaviors according to the revealed will of God (Scripture, Tradition, Natural Law), and be happy with whatever answers we get. The respective answers from (A) tell us nothing necessarily, predict nothing necessarily, about the respective answers from (B) and vice-versa.
By “speaking statistically,” I mean that we can speak with more certainty about the group than about the individual. The mean of the group varies less than the individual.
I repeat my main point: The Man Who Was…, echoing the beliefs of many others, disparaged our ability to say that one’s upbringing is a cause of homosexuality. I replied that of course one’s upbringing is generally a cause (not the only one, but a cause) of homosexuality, and that to say otherwise is foolish.
We do know the morality of homosexuality, although many deny it. The cause is mainly important in that we must defend ourselves against the idea that we cannot know what common sense makes plain.
I assume by “upbringing” you mean specifically bad moral upbring like failure to model correct masculine behaviors, discouraging boys from emulating manly behaviors, over-mothering, failure to equip a child with strategies to avoid impulsivity and compulsiveness. Okay; that bad moral ubringing may be a significant cause in homosexuality in a significant number of cases seems a modest and quite plausible thesis.
But I don’t think we know that yet empirically, and it isn’t even clear how we would test it (at least not thoroughly). No parent perfectly avoids these types of failures above. Maybe by trying too hard to equip a child to avoid impulsiveness, I somehow cause him to be more impulsive? Nobody’s perfect, and no mere mortal can know perfectly the optimal amount and type of guidance and pressure to put on a kid at every second of every day to give him the best chance at not being gay.
And even if you did somehow manage to be a perfect parent, there still seems like there’d be a non-zero probability (probably lower than that of the population at large) that a boy could turn out to be same sex attracted. You got genes, intra-uterine environment, birth order, germs, viruses, plus all the personal choices of the child himself, which could overturn your otherwise zen-like mastery of parenting.
If we are able to determine that certain parental behaviors or failures were correlated with homosexuality in their children, then we would definitely want to know what those bevaviors or failures were so as to avoid them.
I agree with what you say here, except that you are setting too high a standard for knowledge of causes. My basic point is a modest one, although important: We can know some of the causes of homosexuality even if they cannot be strictly demonstrated by the means of science. Science does not know all, and non-scientific knowledge is often more important than scientific knowledge.
I still think we’re asking the wrong question. There is no sexual act that two men can perform with each other that wouldn’t be just as sinful if performed by a married man and woman. Since most acts of sodomy are engaged in by heterosexual couples, the question should be about what causes people to engage in such illicit acts in the first place. By focusing on the sexual dysfunction of a small minority of men, we are ignoring the much larger problem posed by the sexual dysfunction of the majority of the population.
“I still think we’re asking the wrong question. There is no sexual act that two men can perform with each other that wouldn’t be just as sinful if performed by a married man and woman. Since most acts of sodomy are engaged in by heterosexual couples, the question should be about what causes people to engage in such illicit acts in the first place. By focusing on the sexual dysfunction of a small minority of men, we are ignoring the much larger problem posed by the sexual dysfunction of the majority of the population.”
I agree with this. Moralizing aside, the very real health issues that arise from anal sex are becoming reported to doctors now more than ever before, since anal sex between heterosexuals has been mainstreamed via online. pornography exposure.
And I’m not talking about HIV here. I’m talking about the stretching of the anal wall and the associated bowel movement issues that come with that.
Why do you think adult diapers are now being ordered online and anonymously by increasingly younger men and women?
This health issues needs mainstream exposure.
My observation — it’s unlikely that biology plays much of a direct role, though certainly, factors such as athleticism and participation in sports in the case of girls, and other physical features and activities in boys, affect the social and emotional factors and social groups in which they are formed. There’s also the fact that girls tend to be more powerful and assertive than boys these days which tends to make girls seem too dangerous to boys, and boys not so attractive to girls.
Family and social environment plays a huge part — though I would say it is not necessarily immorality that is most significant, but more likely a general androgyny of the community, especially where in most families both parents are in “careers” — bureaucrats, educators, doctors, lawyers, etc. — where sexes are interchangeable and where the adults tend to lose the distinctiveness of their sex as they become “professionals” or “workers”. There are few sex role models — indeed, this is discouraged if not outright forbidden.
Overt immorality is not so much an issue, and in fact, large numbers of these families may attend church or have the children bar mitzvahed. However these religious communities tend to focus on social justice, non-judgmentalism and awareness of group differences — to cultivate guilt or anger about privileged groups. Feminism is essentially a given — i.e, stressing that there is no difference between the sexes, and that sexual orientation is now the distinctive feature of human categories.
In addition, mandatory “health” education curriculum has for a long time (in NY, at least) has focused on “safe sex” (which, of course, includes all manner of non-procreative sexual activities), the de-stigmatization of AIDS, the normalization of homosexuality (and now transsexuality), and encouraging children to challenge their parents’ irrational, traditional understanding of sex and the sexes. In most cases, the parents have a hard time defending that!
In short, real sex has lost its appeal and its raison d’être. Real relationships with the opposite sex are fraught with danger and disappointment and family life with mother and father scrambling around to keep the kids safe and busy is stressful rather than rewarding. Might as well opt out of that. Want children? Fertility clinics can provide the child without the hassle of real sex. Real sex is “so yesterday”!
That’s an excellent observation. Our liberal society has perverted normal human life, especially the normal relations between the sexes, resulting in more instances of perverted sexual activity.
This is even more true in Japan, where the pervasiveness of porn in a hypersexualized society has led to many young men expressing no interest whatsoever in sex or sexual activity. While some go to the legal brothels, sex bars, and/or partake of the huge variety of pornography, others, apparently due to over-stimulation, opt out entirely.
Is it any wonder that their marriage rates are down and their fertility rates are plummeting?
I am traditionally more liberal thinking but it bothers me the way liberals can be so stubborn and biased in their assessment of things…. as can conservatives. I like the discussion here because it raises points that are too often not allowed in liberal dialogues. I do believe that social environment plays a strong role in determining a person’s expression of sexuality and so we should not persecute and lay blame on individuals. I will even go as far as to say we ought not to label something as bad or immoral. It is what it is. If we conduct proper research we may be able to say, “This is what causes heterosexuality. Create this environment for your child to increase the likelihood of them turning out heterosexual.”
“If we conduct proper research we may be able to say, “This is what causes heterosexuality.”
But that’s just what classical theists have done for thousands of years. We’ve researched the physical (by inventing science) and the metaphysical (philosophy) evidence and concluded that heterosexuality occurs for a certain reason. We are also able to apply moral status to sexuality, thereby guiding our children, which is something more research will never be able to do in the liberal secular view.
In your world there is no answer to the question for your children – just more research. Forever.
Would I be correct in thinking, then, that you would not have a problem with your teenaged child (either sex) bringing home a 50-year-old boyfriend, that there’s nothing wrong with it? You also wouldn’t mind if your middle-aged brother or cousin dated your teenaged child (either sex)? You think these things are neither bad nor immoral, they just are what they are?
” You think these things are neither bad nor immoral, they just are what they are?”
That is something I don’t get about liberals. They love sex. They hate social pressures that repress sexuality. Liberals permit anything that does not harm another. Under these principles, it would follow that consentual pederasty is not immoral. Since liberals heartily endorse sexual fulfillment, and since sex does not actually harm a person (it is rather enjoyable when there is no actual violence present), then liberals should conclude that sex with children does not violate any liberal principles. If liberals nmove to claim children are “psychologically damaged” by such sexual acts, then surely it is society that needs to change; children should be safe to “come out of the closet” and stop hiding from their sexual past, and society should progress and move on to accept pederasty as healthy, safe, and normal so that children can be free to move on with discovering their sexuality. Heck, maybe the government should regulate such relationships through marriage certificates, to make it safe, formally consentual, and legal.
I guess it is just one of those Unprincipled Exceptions.
Earl,
I agree with most of what you say, but I might have put in scare quotes here:
They hate social pressures that “repress” sexuality.
because there is nothing repressive about those social pressures, unless you are a normality-hating leftist.
I know we agree that VD is harmful, but I’m more concerned about the harm that sex causes when it is fornication. “Free love” has been the left’s biggest success: it damages souls, and thereby makes people more vulnerable to the leftist program. Note that rampant sexual immorality preceded our current state of demise; it seems to have been a factor in the fall of other societies as well.
Now that same-sex pseudo marriage is constitutional, I’m afraid that our wicked society will go down the path you imagined and open the gates to pederasty, incest, and similar abominations.
These statements are mutually contradictory:
“our claim that homosexuality is largely caused by one’s upbringing.”
and
“It must be emphasized that I am speaking statistically. ”
Understanding involves knowledge of Causation. The knowledge of Correlations merely involves no understanding. As it has been said by Chesterton, I believe, it is characteristic of animal (in the sense of non-rational) behavior that they expect things to recur. That is, animals correlate things.
But humans, being rational, try to understand Causation.
Well, I am speaking statistically when I speak statistically, and not otherwise. We can know that overall, upbringing contributes to homosexuality because there are correlations, and because we know that man is influenced by his environment. But since man is not a robot, the causes of homosexuality are not strict causation. There are always cases where an individual is subjected to many of the influences that tend to produce homosexuality, but does not become a homosexual. The individual cannot be predicted.
But common sense shows us that upbringing plays an important role. And we can see the statistical results that tend to confirm this, although they fall short of proving strict causation.
“We can know that overall, upbringing contributes to homosexuality because there are correlations,”
Simply NO. Correlations tell us nothing about causation. And causation is not limited to physics.
All you can say that we expect that upbringing is a factor. Beyond that, nothing has been affirmed.
“But common sense shows us that upbringing plays an important role. And we can see the statistical results that tend to confirm this, although they fall short of proving strict causation.”
Statistical methods DO NOT prove causation. They merely suggest but are unable to confirm.
Correlations do not prove causation, but they reveal patterns that show causation upon closer inspection. Statistics sets the stage for non-statistical analysis and understanding.
Your epistemic standards are too high.
If we’re going to count empirically obtained knowledge (not that we shouldn’t), we are going to have to hold such knowledge tentatively to some degree, always and forever, knowing that future data may unseat such knowledge. Empiricism is a fundamentally less certain way of knowing, valuable in and of itself, but only as far as it can go.
we know that man is influenced by his environment.
You’re taking a general statement and applying it in a way over general way. Many psychological traits are influenced by social environment; some are not. Sexual orientation in men may be one of the latter.
Besides male sexual orientation, another trait that appears not to be influenced by social environment is intelligence. One would think that being raised in a more scholarly home, for example, would make one more intelligent, but that doesn’t appear to be the case at all.
I don’t think I am. I’m making a correct statement that is broad but accurate on its own terms. This post began as a disagreement with your confident assertion that homosexuality is not caused by upbringing; I pointed out that of course homosexuality is caused partly by upbringing, at least as a general phenomenon.
By the way, “..at least as a general phenomenon” means that although the exact causes of the general phenomenon of homosexuality cannot be known, and the specific causes of it in an individual also cannot fully be known, common sense shows that it has to be partly caused by upbringing, as a general rule.
Don’t set your epistemic standards so high that you throw out the baby of valid intuitive knowledge with the bath water.
As for intelligence, it is not a character trait, so it is not analogous to homosexuality. I agree with you that intelligence is independent of environment. It is a power that develops naturally, and not a character trait that emerges through an interaction of the individual with his environment.
Intelligence has been demonstrated to be highly heritable.
It has also been demonstrated that same-sex attraction can not be due solely to heritable factors.
Apple, meet orange.
I’d also note that there doesn’t even seem to be a correlation.
It has also been demonstrated that same-sex attraction can not be due solely to heritable factors.
Irrelevant, there are other biological actors than genes.
So you have identified the bacterium or virus that transmits homosexuality?
Maybe there is a gay particle? Quarky little homos.
I think we should at least keep an open mind about early childhood experiences and the formation of homosexuality. One possible explanation, at least in some individuals, is that if you are a) biologically predisposed and then b) unable to identify positively with your father, to the point that you say “I don’t want to be like you, a man” that c) you might not develop a clearly masculine sex identity which means that d) heterosexuality as an attraction of opposites becomes less available to you and you are likely to feel confused about sexual orientation.
Here for instance is Peter Wherrett talking about his father: “I did not, then, know the cause of my father’s terrifying rages…I was convinced he was a bully and a monster of some kind, I developed a dread of growing up to be like him. I wanted to grow up to be like my mother. I loathed my father. I was in mortal fear of him, and of what he represented, seeing him as the archetypal male. Much later I would come to see that there were millions of men who were not like my father, but I never escaped from the fear of him. Habits and attitudes acquired in childhood die hard. I still have very few male friends and I am still fearful of the male pack mentality. Men, generally, make me feel uneasy until I get to know them. On the other hand, all women are my mother, and the objects of my lifelong envy and admiration. As a teenager I even wanted to be one of them.”
Peter Wherrett (a famous motoring journalist in Australia) grew up to be a cross-dresser but not a homosexual, but his brother Richard did become a homosexual. If their father had been someone they admired and identified with, would both boys have developed this way? At the very least, I think it’s less likely.
A distant or absent parent also seems to be (anecdotally) correlated with homosexuality. For instance, three of Sheila Kitzinger’s daughters grew up to be lesbians. One of them explained it this way: “Tess talks of an emphasis on achievement and of her mother as an absent figure”. The mother, an academic, used to begin her work at 5.30am: “I was very concerned to get back to academic work, and I didn’t want to be drowned by children.” In the Kitzinger family, the children picked up on cues that a feminine, maternal role was an inferior one and they did not personally experience a warmth of maternal love in their early childhood years.
The problem with all of these cases is that the arrow of causation is always murky. Did he not want to identify with the archetypal male because of his already innately feminine psychology, with the rages just reinforcing this? In other words, this looks to me like all that was happening was an exacerbation of an already strong tendency.
What is “homosexuality” for Alan’s purposes? As these conversations usually do, this one seems to me to involve equivocation on that word.
If you take a behavioral definition of the word, then Alan’s point seems pretty hard to dispute. There was less homosex going on in the past, probably an enormous amount less. And there were more people with homo temptations who habitually resisted them, presumably.
To take the orientation definition of the word makes the question awfully hard to answer. How can we know what % of men in 1850 or 1350 were tempted in this way?
There are two problems that need addressed before we can even attempt to debate “cause(s)” of homosexuality.
First, there is not a genuine desire by radical homosexuals to find the exact cause(s) of homosexuality.
Secondly, homosexuality is not primarily “same-sex” attraction. Homosexuality is opposite-sex aversion.
In short, the genuine unwillingness to find exact cause(s) coupled with the willing obfuscation of the true nature of homosexuality tells us all we need to know about those with whom we will debate this subject.
Homosexuality is self-annihilating and therefore CAN’T have a biological cause unless within the “biological mechanism” is a over riding self-destruct mechanism. It is instead rooted in a deconstructing sexual aversion to female that renders the homosexual without stable identity and thus an ambiguous relation to his ultimate origins.
The homosexual is the most primitive liberal archetype. A true self-annihilator.
And the debate should be whether self-annihilators should have a voice in the civilized affairs of Western Man.
Disenfranchise the gays! While we’re at it, disenfranchise all my smug over educated childless liberal friends/family, too.
I would say disenfranchise “preachers” of self-annihilation.
Disenfranchise everyone but married, tax-paying men with children.
Full disclosure: I would lose the vote if this were enacted—and yet I support it completely.
Hey, you often say that homos are primarily motivated by an aversion to the opposite sex. What is your thinking on this? I don’t know that I agree.
I think for females this is, I think predominant. I’m not even sure we make properly speak of a deep-seated female sexual preference, except for whom(ever) she truly loves.
For males? Are you kidding, gays get along much better with women than with men.. They just don’t want to bed them. For the girls, gays are like beta orbiters who are ecstatically happy to be beta orbiters. It’s win-win.
Purely anecdotal I know, but a recent conversation I had with a flamboyantly homosexual guy at whose table some friends and I sat in a crowded beergarden revolved mostly around his disgust for female genitalia.
Thordaddy’s thought about the predominant disposition being one of aversion to the opposite sex seems to fit reality. While male homosexuals seem to get along fabulously with women, I get the impression that it is not because of their interest in women as other, but because women, more so than men, share their own interests, and remind them of themselves.
There are also physical correlations that seem extremely hard to square with the cause being the social environment, like the prevalence of feminine digit ratios in male homosexuals.
I don’t know: Prince Rabadash in The Horse and his Boy morphed physically into an ass because he was behaving like one. I am aware that it’s a work of fiction, but isn’t the concept of the spiritual spilling over into physical attributes a reality?
This whole discussion is confusing. I thought Alan Roebuck never denied that biology could play a role in homosexuality, but TMWW… keeps speaking as though he did. But then what is the subject really about anyway, a predisposition toward homosexual behavior, the giving in to the urge to engage in homosexual behavior, or something else?
My purpose in this discussion is to defend the commonsense notion that upbringing has to be a cause (not THE cause, but a cause) of homosexuality. Some of my interlocutors seem not to want to concede this point.
commonsense
Warmed over Freudianism is not common sense.
It is not freudianism, warmed over or otherwise. It is an accurate, though general, observation: Man’s character develops in response to his environment, as well as other factors, and disorder generally proceeds from disorder.
Yet another example of conservatives (of whatever stripe) adopting yesterday’s modernism as if it were somehow traditional.
The really traditional explanations would be bad blood (the premodern equivalent of genetics), demons, or a witch’s curse. Let’s not pretend this has anything to do with common sense or traditionalism.
In the same fashion, we should not pretend that your position has anything to do with logic, biology, or morality: it’s all about redefining good as “whatever an individual desires.”
That’s just about the most ridiculous accusation you could make. You’re grasping at straws.
Hmm. Not so much. See Thordaddy’s comment below.
Also, that is the sum of the liberal “argument” for its evaluation of the good: desire. Liberalism rejects all higher/external authority, so man becomes the measure. All humans are deemed to be “equal,” so it follows that all humans’ desires are good, and equally so.
The only other option is “innateness”: homosexuality is “inborn” and nothing can be done about it, so nothing should be placed in the way of the realization of homosexual desires. This not only reduces humans to the level of automata, but also justifies rape, murder, and the like as “natural” desires that ought to be allowed to be fulfilled.
So which is it: is my desire equal to yours, or are we ruled by instinct and nothing more? Liberalism has no principled way to choose any other option.
His comment describes how liberals approach the etiology of male homosexual orientation. But it’s a smear to say that anyone who thinks male homosexual orientation has an entirely biological cause is approaching morality in the same way as a liberal. Shame on you.
I’ve yet to encounter someone who took the deterministic biological approach yet did not also have the usual liberal “understanding” of what is good.
My apologies if you do not fit the mold. However, I have yet to see how your approach to the good differs. Perhaps you could be so kind as to point me to where you make that clear.
I’ve yet to encounter someone who took the deterministic biological approach yet did not also have the usual liberal “understanding” of what is good.
You just don’t get out much.
The man who was…
There are consequences to asserting that homosexuality has a strict biological cause(s). The first and most damning consequence of this claim is that within the homosexual’s genetic makeup is a “self-annihilate” mechanism that must have survival and reproduction “override” capability. In essence, your genes CAN kill you if said genes “desires” to do so.
Homosexuality is, by definition, self-annihilating (a sexual aversion to female negates procreation) and a homosexuality with strictly biological cause is evidence for devolutionary death and annihilation WITHIN one’s genetic makeup.
Of course, we then must ask how these “self-annihilate” genes perpetuate?
Mr. Was,
Perhaps you would care to refrain from the personal attacks, which ultimately redound to you, and instead make a substantive reply.
We have to start with the understanding that the radical liberationist, in which the homosexual is the most primitive archetype, DOES NOT have a genuine desire to know the exact cause(s) of homosexuality, i.e., has no desire to find origins.
It is in this lack of desire to find one’s origin that one can then justifiably lack any concrete identity.
We know “homosexuality” as “same-sex” attraction.
But, this is Liberalism’s definition. It is the definition that maximizes the homosexual’s autonomy to the greatest extent.
So the homosexual is either “born that way” and entirely unable to turn from his attractions (no free will) or homosexuality literally comes from “nothing,” i.e., homosexuality is a preference that one freely chooses with the implication of sexual neutrality towards the female.
So here we are arguing in good faith trying to take the middle ground and it is all futile.
Homosexuality is either determinate at conception or freely chosen.
These are the only available options open to the radical homosexual and so there is no reason to argue for a middle ground.
They may be the only options available to the radical homosexual, but for the rest of us there are other options.
“Freely chosen” is more accurate than “determinate at conception,” because the individual has his own will that operates on his biological endowment and his environment, but it is still not “free will” in the usual sense of the word. Homosexuality is a settled (not absolutely unchangeable, but settled) disposition to behave in a certain way.
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Throwing in a couple of links about the cause of homosexuality (and evidence it’s not genetic) from another corner of the reacosphere.
A homosexual is someone for whom that mysterious internal force we call “sexual attraction” latches on to others of his own sex (in the case of a lesbian her own sex). The question is why this happens? The proposed explanations are a) that it is strictly biological in origin, b) that it is strictly environmental in origin and c) that it is a mixture of biology and environment. The third explanation is, if I have understood him correctly, what Mr. Roebuck is arguing for. It is also the explanation that is most consistent with what is known about the influence of biology and environment on human attitudes and behaviour in general. Arguments can be made against specific biological factors being a significant cause (a gene that caused homosexuality, for example, works against its own propagation) and against specific environmental factors, but the overall idea that homosexuality is caused by a combination of both (perhaps not necessarily the same combination in each homosexual) seems reasonable enough.
The liberal position, that because many of these factors are outside the individual’s control, the homosexual cannot help being that way, and therefore we need to change society to accomodate homosexuality, does not follow from this. Liberals derive this conclusion from a series of assumptions – “society exists for the sake of the individual”, “society must never get in the way of the happiness of the individual”, “the individual finds happiness through the unhindered pursuit of whatever he desires” – all of which are false.
We should be careful that in our wish to avoid the Scylla of materialism, in which all human thoughts, desires, emotions, decisions and behaviour are products of biological processes, that we do not fall into the Charybdis of Cartesianism or even Gnosticism. The same God created the physical and the spiritual and in human nature the two are united, not divided.
As for the moral aspect, even if it could be proven that homosexuality was purely hereditary and that all homosexual were “born that way”, which for obvious reasons it cannot be, this would not suffice to negate the traditional, moral condemnation of homosexual behaviour. Human sinfulness in general is not justified by the fact that we all inherit Original Sin from Adam. Why then would a particular sin be justified if it could be shown that a specific disposition towards that sin was hereditary?
Mr. Neal’s last paragraph can be re-read, with the appropriate changes, to apply to alcoholism, or violence, or overeating, or any other anti-social and/or sinful behavior.
Excellent argument.
I personally do not believe in homosexuality as a genetic trait.
It would be self defeating to the species, counter to reproduction. This doesn’t by itself mean that it isn’t possible, or all genetic diseases would be self limiting. Not only that, but not being inclined to opposite sex interaction doesn’t preclude it happening. We see lots of the gay men married to women issues today. Still its one factor to consider.
It is ultimately an action. The gay community tends to define homosexuality as being attracted to the same sex, but is a man really gay if he never has sex with a man? Even if a man has had sex with a man, can he stop the activity and say he is no longer gay? The gay communities definition says “no”. This leads them to the “once gay always gay” and other statements about “sexual orientation”, including that now accepted label. Defining everyone by what goes on in their mind vs their actions is a biblical concept in some cases, but not a practical concept. We don’t put people in jail because they think about murder or robbery. Actions are not genetically defined.
There is no argument that homosexuality can be learned. We see it in prisons and other situations where only same sex partners are available. We see it in kids who have been abused. We know that homosexuality doesn’t require a genetic code.
Finally, despite large efforts to prove a “gay gene” there hasn’t been any real success in that direction. Scientifically its no more that a theory or hypothesis that has failed to be proven. As such it really has little value other than as pop science and a talking point by the uneducated. The proponents of the gay gene theory are counting on the fact that is harder to prove something doesn’t exist. Can you prove that there isn’t a gay gene? Can you prove that there isn’t a gene that made me late for work?
All that being said, the argument presented on this web page is as much “pop morality” as the other is “pop science”. “Moral intuition” and “Induced by a disorderly environment” are vagaries used by someone that doesn’t really have any valid argument. One might as well say, “its trivial and obvious that what I say is right.”
What we really need to get to as a society is that people are going to do what they are going to do. Some things are harmful to themselves, some things are harmful to others, and some things just are life. If someone is happy being gay, that doesn’t hurt anything but perhaps your comfort zone. Let it be. If you don’t want to associate with them, then don’t, just like you avoid the gossip, complainer, drunk, liar, or unkind person at work or church or in your neighborhood. Heck, sometimes I avoid even people who are too sweet and people that hug too much.
Oh give me a break! In-your-face homosexuality is not avoidable in normal human intercourse.
Even if I could choose not to associate with homosexuals consequence-free (NB, we often can’t, given the immense social and legal pressures brought to bear against those guilty of “discrimination”), I would still have to live in a society that’s been vulgarized by their perversion, a situation I’m unfree to choose or avoid.
Damn right! The only way to “avoid” homosexual degeneracy is to put it down full-force. That means violating a fundamental liberal rule and cause; it means absolutely and resolutely discriminating against sodomitic behaviors, and those who engage them. Simply trying to ignore them is stupid beyond belief.
As civilized men, we are required to order our passions in accord with natural law (vide Rom. 1). What this means, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:18, is to “flee fornication (i.e. porneia).” Porneia for Paul, like for any first century Jew, means fornication, adultery, homosexuality, any type of oral sex, contraception, masturbation, the woman being on top, etc. The only type of sexual intercourse that is acceptable is that which is practiced for procreation. All of us, regardless of our particular sexual temptations, should remember the apostle’s words in 1 Corinthians 9:
25 And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.
26 I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:
27 But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.
I and other same sex attracted men may have a little extra in terms of temptation, but we are still required to adopt lives in accord with the universal moral law, as are straight men.
“If someone is happy being ____, that doesn’t hurt anything but perhaps your comfort zone.”
Let’s fill in that blank with something else, like, oh, I don’t know, “a drug addict,” or how about “an alcoholic”? Maybe “a consumer of virtual child pornography”?
Sinful behavior harms not just the sinner, but also those around him.
To the greatest extent possible, I want the sinful things I am tempted by to be illegal and norm-violating. Because I need help resisting temptation. This goes double for the sinful things which, in my obstinance, I don’t acknowledge as sinful.
When the moron liberals infer that someone is in the closet from the fact that they are loud and proud in their homophobia, I kind of sympathize with their inference. From my POV, they are being charitable. They are saying “Look at this good man, trying to order society to make it safer for people with the exact temptations he knows, to his sorrow, so well.” The moron liberals don’t know they are saying this, of course, dribbling as they do about “hypocrisy.”
[This is in response to Dan’s comment of June 6, at 4:26 pm.]
The point is, we are being forced to act as if we approve of homosexuality, and one of the main reasons given is that the cause of it is said to be either unknown or else completely beyond our ability to control. Since it is allegedly natural and not understandable, we are told that must accept it.
Here at the Orthosphere, we say no to all this. We will not act as if we approve of homosexuality, and if there is to be talk of the cause, then we are free to use commonsense observations without being told to shut up by an expert or an ordinary citizen.
Right. Basically we’re told that it’s ok to diapprove of homosexuality as long as we keep our disapproval to ourselves. Well, I’m not so-inclined; I’m never going to be so-inclined, nor should I have to.
There are certain things that no decent, normal human being should have to sit back and quietly tolerate. Homosexual degeneracy is one of these things. Yet, I no longer take my family to public zoos or theme parks, for example. Why? Because it is virtually impossible to go to these places without subjecting one’s wife and children to the spectacle of two men walking arm-in-arm, suck-facing one another in direct defiance and utter diregard of the majority of people around them. THAT is not avoidable in public places these days, and it is absolutely intolerable!
Bottom line?: I don’t really care what the cause(s) of homosexuality is when it comes to protecting my family from its degenerative influence. Someone wants to argue there’s a “gay gene” or some such. Fine. I can go along with that IF that someone will also admit that these people are also human beings, and that as such they no more have to yield to their impulses in public than I have to yield to mine as a heterosexual man; that those who otherwise choose not to suppress or control their impulses outside the force of law must be controlled externally BY the force of law. The alternative is simply unthinkable.
Gregory Cochran and others have entertained the “germ theory” as a cause of homosexuality.
See: http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/#GenderSexGame
Wow…looking for some answers and my child has been raised in a heterosexual loving home..does not want to be this way..your theory of how they were raised causes this is way off base. I am very religious and don’t believe it is right however my child does not want to be this way. I have to believe there is an element of genetics. Who would choose this lifestyle really….with the ridicule that goes along with it. Get a clue???
Homosexuality is not chosen, it is an attribute of character. But character forms partly from chosen acts, as well as other factors. And upbringing obviously has a lot to do with the formation of character.
My main point in writing this article is that the pro-legitimization-of-homosexuality party wants us to think that the causes are either mysterious and unknowable or else as unchangeable as the rotation of the earth. They want us to believe it because they think that if they’re right, then homosexuality cannot be criticized.
But they’re wrong. Reality can be understood (albeit only incompletely), and since the Bible identifies homosexual acts as sin, they are not beyond criticism. And we are allowed to draw conclusions about the likely causes of homosexuality.
I’m afraid this is a non-argument. Who would choose a life of crime, or addiction? The downsides are well-known, and yet some people do choose to break the law, to use addictive substances, and, yes, to engage in homosexual behavior. This is not to deny a genetic component in homosexuality (and some types of addiction), but there is more to us than DNA.
Also, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, homosexuals are positively celebrated in popular culture nowadays. While things might be different for teens, adults face significant penalties, social and professional, if they do not act as though they accept homosexuals and homosexuality, regardless of what they actually think. Once upon a time, the fear of public ridicule helped steer people away from homosexual behavior; unfortunately, we can no longer count on that to help those who have that inclination.
As for your child, I am truly sorry for you and him. I cannot imagine what your family must be going through. At least he does not want to be that way. Prayer and counseling might help. The earlier the intervention starts, the better the results.
Homosexuality is a disorder of the mind. As well a slow seduction by lustful thought which are not dealt with at childhood which leads to fantasy then to reality. Forces of darkness are in operation for example when a little boy is sexually abused that make him think he is gay and the more he gives in to that thought the more the darkness of it takes control of his actions. Then eventually he very thing they hate they find themselves doing and guilt and shame enter in and they tell NO ONE so this darkness isolates them and they don’t get help with their thoughts. Now society says it’s okay and teaches anal sex in school so there is NO help now at all.
The disgust protects the men from the homosexuality.The disgust is almighty to protect the men from the homosexuality. The theory of the attachement (John Bowlby, Attachement and loss) explains the trauma from which homosexuality springs
THE CAUSE OF HOMOSEXUALITY
Errors to avoid to keep your baby from becoming homosexual
Table of Contents
THE NATURAL ORDER AND ITS INVERSION
EXPLAINING HOMOSEXUALITY
1. Introduction
2. Inner realm
3. Psychic virility
4. Love instance
5. The trauma from which homosexuality springs
6. Errors to avoid to keep your baby from becoming homosexual
EDUCATING INFANTS WITHOUT ARTIFICIAL TOYS
[Editor: This comment was far too long. The interested reader can click here to read the full text.]
“That homosexuality is largely due to the environment in which one is raised is very nearly true by definition, and is therefore not subject to either proof or disproof by empirical means.”
That claim is completely false. Science continually points in the direction that homosexuality has either a genetic or epigenetic cause. You then conveniently say that such a false claim is not subject for proof–which is completely absurd. Your entire argument is based on this premise which you hold as a priori fact.
If the premise is false, then your argument completely falls apart. And not only is your premise false, you have absolutely no support for it whatsoever, and try to justify this complete lack of argument by classifying the premise as “true by definition.”
That, my friend, is as fallacious as reasoning gets.
“Science continually points in the direction that homosexuality has either a genetic or epigenetic cause.”
This is an obvious impossibility. Since human beings are not insects, their behavior is obviously not caused by genetics. Human behavior has many “causes.” Genetics, epi- or otherwise, obviously does not explain behavior.
Homosexuality could have a genetic component. That’s a totally different claim. But the blanket statement “homosexuality has a genetic cause” is obviously false.
There’s a difference between homosexual behavior and homosexuality. In situations where the sexes are segregated, you find homosexual behavior. Think British boarding schools and “buggery”, think sailors at sea for a long time, think cultures where marriages are arranged and there is little to no social interaction between non-family opposite sex persons.
In these and more scenarios you will find homosexuality behavior. It is temporary. A sort of stop-gap measure until sexual access to the opposite sex can be secured. None of the participants identify as “gay” nor do they wish to spend the rest of their lives in a marriage-like relationship with the same sex.
Then you have genuine homosexuality which is altogether a different thing.
Also, I read the link. The author’s premise that toys in infancy and toddler stages lead to homosexuality is…. ridiculous. And there was no double blind, peer reviewed study to back his claim. Pure speculation or “belief” if you will.
I feel that professional articles like this should leave out religion and opinion. This man states that homosexuality is immoral in this article based on the laws of a god that doesn’t exist. If you’re going to write a professional article please leave your imaginary friends out if it.
God does exist, and Matt, by denying him, is showing defective thinking.
Besides, this is a Christian site. Objecting to Christianity here at the Orthosphere makes about as much sense as going to a bar and objecting to the consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Furthermore, one does not need to affirm the God of the Bible to understand that homosexuality is disorder. Christianity makes it easier to know this truth, for Scripture confirms it. But intuition is enough to know that something is wrong with same-sex attraction.
It goes without saying that rape, child molestation, and psychological abuse are what causes Homosexuality… When we can start punishing people for psychological abuse of children, and child molestation, and rape then we can put an end to homosexuality… Coddling them further will make things worse not better…..
The sins you mention go a long way to explaining the existence of homosexuality, but we can’t just say that they are its clear-cut cause. But obviously coddling sin will indeed make things worse.
I truly believed my whole life that Homosexuality was genetic because I’ve witnessed some male relatives of mine who displayed the traits from a very young age (2 – 3 years old). I’ve always ridiculed those Christian therapists who claim to have a “cure” for it until one day I read an article saying that the main causes for Homosexuality could be problematic relationships with the parent of the opposite sex and a chaotic upbringing. It was mind blowing! All my gay friends and relatives had problematic upbringings indeed, ALL OF THEM, and I would say that at least in 90% of those cases, the father was an alcoholic who abused their wife and children physically and emotionally! It shows you that some things in this kind of environment and dysfunctional upbringing might trigger Homosexual behavior in a child.
So, if Homosexuality is rooted in dysfunction, couldn’t it in reality be a kind of psychological problem that could be cured or at least treated? Let’s be honest here, the gay lifestyle is far from being something healthy, the crushing majority of them is highly promiscuous, are into drugs, are sexual predators (if they have the chance they will have their way with young hetero boys and men!) and none of my gay friends seem to be really happy with who they are and their lives…
However, what really smacked me was the fact that, without knowing, I became a victim of the political correctness brainwashing! It’s scary to think how the media can twist our perceptions and distort the truth! Just take a look at their lifestyle to realize it’s not desirable or even acceptable, and I’m not coming from a religious or moralistic point of view – it’s just mere observation: their way of life is self-destructive: promiscuity laced with drugs and partying cannot lead to anything good… I could talk about the married, supposedly monogamous gay couples who adopt children and live the happily ever after… the problem is that I don’t think they really exist, it’s just a front! And talking about those children will be another topic for another generation of dysfunction! Let’s see what having 2 daddies will do to those children in the long run…
Thank you for your testimonial, Ulla. Even if we do not refer to the Bible, even if we do not know its cause, there is obviously something wrong with homosexuality. This is why the homosexual-rights movement is so totalistic in their attitudes and actions: They are trying desperately to make right what is wrong.
men falling in love with other men is emotionally like nothing else and i wonder is that is because 1) children age 4-10 (homosexuals are stuck emotionally at that age) have a very strong imagination and so love experienced then has that additional dimension and 2) needing affirmation from the other bloke creates a stronger sense of adoration that does not exist if two people in a relationship are emotionally whole.
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