Can some gay men and lbians change their sexual orientatn? 200 participants reportg a change om homosexual to heterosexual orientatn - PubMed

Contents:

• KEV SPACEY DEFENDS COMG OUT AS GAY AFTER BEG ACCED OF SEXUAL MISNDUCT: ‘I WAS UNR A LOT OF PRSURE’
• IS IT POSSIBLE TO SYSTEMATILLY TURN GAY PEOPLE STRAIGHT?
• CAN SOME GAY MEN AND LBIANS CHANGE THEIR SEXUAL ORIENTATN? 200 PARTICIPANTS REPORTG A CHANGE OM HOMOSEXUAL TO HETEROSEXUAL ORIENTATN
• SOME GAYS CAN GO STRAIGHT, STUDY SAYS
• 10 ANTI-GAY MYTHS DEBUNKED

KEV SPACEY DEFENDS COMG OUT AS GAY AFTER BEG ACCED OF SEXUAL MISNDUCT: ‘I WAS UNR A LOT OF PRSURE’

‘Voice may unter visibily many bisexuals feel’An abstract of the study, tled Can listeners tect if a man is bisexual om his voice alone, reads: “The prent study examed whether bisexual men n be intified om their voic ak to how gay men n be intified on their voice alone. ”But amics noted the rearch was limed on the grounds all men who participated the study are Atralian, which may not be reflected among wir the thors nced the study did not ntrol for the rerdg environment or microphone-to-mouth distance, which uld have affected the qualy of the voice thors said the fdgs suggted that while the voic of bisexual men the sample were perceived as more mascule and attracted to femal, listeners did not associate this imprsn wh a rult, while bisexual men may appear to be at lower risk of facg voice-based intifitn and discrimatn than gay men, they may often be mistaken as beg study was published the Journal of Sex Rearch. Somehow, the origal “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” premiered on Bravo two s ago this month, prentg five gay men – each specializg a specific liftyle area – as they scend upon a (ually) heterosexual male subject need of some support, whether was wh clothg choic, groomg, anizatn or perhaps an unrlyg issue around self nfince.

Krsley agreed, sayg, “We meet people all the time who are probably their thirti now, who say, ‘I me om a very nservative fay, we were very relig, “Gay” was not somethg that was ever spoken about our home, and your show allowed to at least have that nversatn, if not make easier for me to e out.

And for those who cricized the origal seri for rercg stereotyp by havg a gay fashnista or bety expert swoop to tidy thgs up, Colls creds his rint foodie Allen for a memorable moment at the show’s first NBC upont Los Angel back 2003, when he faced a slew of reporters and had the perfect retort. Y, people wh genr inty issu will typilly self-intify as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, jt as people who are perfectly fortable wh their birth sex tend to self-intify their sexual orientatn, but genr inty do not any way fluence who or what one fds romantilly and sexually sirable. If you are terted learng more about sexual orientatn and/or genr dysphoria, there are many eful rourc provid by plac like the Los Angel Genr Center, Parents and Friends of Lbians and Gays (PFLAG), the CDC’s GLBT Rource Page, the Human Rights Campaign, and hundreds of lol GLBT-supportive webs.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO SYSTEMATILLY TURN GAY PEOPLE STRAIGHT?

"If [a patient] n accept his bodily homoerotic experience while stayg nnected to the therapist, " he wrote The Paradox of Self-Acceptance, "the sexual feelg soon transforms to somethg else: the regnn of eper, pa-generated emotnal needs which have nothg to do wh sexualy. Another method was satiatn therapy, which a subject was told to masturbate over and over while verbally scribg his homosexual fantasi, until they disappeared — or, at least, "therapi" were generally effective — the person remaed attracted to the same sex — or over-effective — the person was trmatized and lost all sexual aroal entirely.

" His view mirrored the belief of many clicians at the time: that homosexualy was based on a phobia of the oppose non-aversive treatments followg this theory foced on buildg "tnal skills" like datg techniqu, assertivens trag, and affectn achg to crease teractns wh women. Feelg that their prejudic had been exposed, they end up swiftly ncedg the viographer’s obv pot: gay people were born gay jt like straight people were born vio’s takeaway seemed to suggt that all of our sexuali are “jt there”; that we don’t need an explanatn for homosexualy jt as we don’t need one for heterosexualy.

It seems not to have occurred to those who ma the vio, or the lns who shared , that we actually need an explanatn for heterosexual sex is clearly as old as humany, the ncept of heterosexualy as an inty is a very recent ventn (Cred: Getty Imag)There’s been a lot of good work, both scholarly and popular, on the social nstctn of homosexual sire and inty.

CAN SOME GAY MEN AND LBIANS CHANGE THEIR SEXUAL ORIENTATN? 200 PARTICIPANTS REPORTG A CHANGE OM HOMOSEXUAL TO HETEROSEXUAL ORIENTATN

The road to heterosexualy is paved wh blood-lts… The ventn of the heterosexual, Frd’s visn, is a eply disturbed such an Oedipal visn endured for so long as the explanatn for normal sexualy is “one more grand irony of heterosexual history, ” he Ksey (centre) may have relaxed the taboo around sex, but his reports reaffirmed the existg tegori of homosexual and heterosexual behavur (Cred: Getty Imag)Still, Frd’s explanatn seemed to satisfy the majory of the public, who, ntug their obssn wh standardisg every aspect of life, happily accepted the new science of normal.

To leap om an observatn of how nature is to a prcriptn of nature ought to be is, as philosopher David Hume noted, to m a logil gay rights are creasgly regnised, many people also scribe their sexual sir as lyg on a spectm (Cred: Alamy)Why judge what is natural and ethil to a human beg by his or her animal nature?

And while ’s dropped nsirably over the past three s, hasn’t revered so much that anyone n claim “relatnship stabily” is somethg exclive to homosexualy, as Katz shrewdly le between heterosexualy and homosexualy isn’t jt blurry, as some take Ksey’s rearch to imply – ’s an ventn, a myth, and an outdated one. Language may be ambiguo reference, so that the rear is uncerta about s meang or s cln and excln creria; and the term homosexualy has been associated the past wh viance, mental illns, and crimal behavr, and the negative stereotyp may be perpetuated by biased language.

SOME GAYS CAN GO STRAIGHT, STUDY SAYS

Eher some gay men and lbians, followg reparative therapy, actually change their predomantly homosexual orientatn to a predomantly heterosexual orientatn or some gay men and women nstct elaborate self-ceptive narrativ (or even lie) which they claim to have changed their sexual orientatn, or both. Homosexual men are famoly promiscuo, a fact that beme well-known wh the onset of AIDS, when studi of gay men who were HIV-posive revealed average numbers of partners the hundreds (and even though gay men who were HIV negative had much lower numbers, the average for them was still dramatilly higher than the average numbers for heterosexual men). Homosexual men are cled toward promiscuy, attracted to youth and good looks, and unrg about stat—hence many of the sexual swch homosexual men are set the same posn as they are heterosexual men—if gay guys were straight, their preferenc would lead them to pick fertile femal.

Homosexual, same-sex attractnBisexual, attractn to more than one sexAsexual, no sexual attractn to any sexAromantic, no romantic attractn to any sexPolysexual, attractn to people of var genrsHeteroflexible, primary attractn to people of the oppose sex and ocsnal attractn to people of the same sexHomoflexible, primary attractn to people of the same sex and ocsnal attractn to people of the oppose sexThe are jt a few of the many terms ed to scribe var sexual inti. Sometim, this belief leads to “remedi” like nversn therapy, where dividuals of different sexual orientatns receive unselg geared toward “fixg” homosexualy, bisexualy, and other practice is nsired extremely harmful to the participants’ mental health and has been outlawed many plac around the U. Helpful rpons of a therapist treatg an dividual who is troubled about her or his same sex attractns clu helpg that person actively pe wh social prejudic agast homosexualy, succsfully rolve issu associated wh and rultg om ternal nflicts, and actively lead a happy and satisfyg life.

The phrase “g out” is ed to refer to several aspects of lbian, gay, and bisexual persons’ experienc: self-awarens of same-sex attractns; the tellg of one or a few people about the attractns; wispread disclosure of same-sex attractns; and intifitn wh the lbian, gay, and bisexual muny. Crics, though, say the study's subjects may be ludg themselv and that the subject group was scientifilly valid bee many of them were referred by anti-gay relig Robert Spzer, a psychiatry profsor at Columbia Universy, said he began his study as a skeptic — believg, as major mental health anizatns do, that sexual orientatn nnot be changed, and attempts to do so n even e Spzer's study, which has not yet been published or reviewed, seems to dite otherwise.

10 ANTI-GAY MYTHS DEBUNKED

Spzer says he spoke to 143 men and 57 women who say they changed their orientatn om gay to straight, and nclud that 66 percent of the men and 44 percent of women reached what he lled good heterosexual functng — a staed, lovg heterosexual relatnship wh the past year and gettg enough emotnal satisfactn to rate at least a seven on a 10-pot said those who changed their orientatn had satisfyg heterosexual sex at least monthly and never or rarely thought of someone of the same sex durg also found that 89 percent of men and 95 percent of women were bothered not at all or only slightly by unwanted homosexual feelgs. Spzer argu that highly motivated gays n fact change that preference — wh a lot of Study, Old DebateBut crics have challenged the study, even before was formally unveiled at today's ssn of the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn's annual meetg New Orleans, which was jammed wh televisn meras reportg on the prentatn.

"In fact, he said, many of his subjects had been sponnt and even suicidal themselv, for the oppose reason — "precisely bee they had prevly thought there was no hope for them, and they had been told by many mental health profsnals that there was no hope for them, they had to jt learn to live wh their homosexual feelgs.