It Is Now 50 Years Sce Gay People Were “Cured" | Psychology Today

Contents:

• THE END OF GAYS: GAY MARRIAGE AND THE DECLE OF THE HOMOSEXUAL POPULATN
• IT IS NOW 50 YEARS SCE GAY PEOPLE WERE “CURED"
• JAGS' MAXEN IS FIRST MALE AMERIN PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY
• PULSE SURVIVOR SAYS HE IS NO LONGER GAY, HAS FOUND CHRIST
• AUTHOR WHO ONCE EMBRACED HOMOSEXUALY EXPLAS WHY HE NO LONGER CALLS HIMSELF 'GAY' (INTERVIEW)

THE END OF GAYS: GAY MARRIAGE AND THE DECLE OF THE HOMOSEXUAL POPULATN

The argument is this: gay sex alone n’t produce children, and for tras to evolve, they have to be passed onto children, who get some form of petive advantage om them. In a paper published yterday by myself and De Universy profsor Brian Hare, we propose human sexualy (cludg homosexualy) evolved as an oute of the evolutn of creased sociabily humans. In our clost primate relative, the bonobo, straight and gay sex have val rol play, social transactns, barter of food, same-sex social bondg and bondg between matg pairs.

Gay sex and attractn may have evolved bee dividuals wh a gree of same-sex attractn benefed om greater social mobily, tegratn and stronger same-sex social bonds.

Many studi sce the pneerg rearch of Aled Ksey and lleagu have emphasised that sexual mori occur across all cultur, and the levels of gay and bisexual people populatns have been que stable over time. Our hypothis predicts that bisexualy and people who intify as “mostly straight” should be more mon than people who intify as exclively gay, and this is the se. Our hypothis for the evolutn of homosexualy would predict this kd of variatn human sexualy, and n help expla why is generally stable across cultur.

IT IS NOW 50 YEARS SCE GAY PEOPLE WERE “CURED"

It is admtedly odd to thk that a progrsive, humanarian shift attus toward gays and lbians might lead, ironilly, to a noticeable cle the homosexual populatn. Yet this is precisely what I predict will happen over the very long urse of natural selectn should the societal-level normalizatn of adult homosexual relatnships, such as is happeng currently wh the triumphant legalizatn of gay marriage my new home state of New York, ntu happily on s way. ) Not so very long ago, the ncept of “gay marriage” was so far om beg a legal possibily s leral sense that most listeners would have probably terpreted this phrase to mean a closeted gay man married to a woman, or a lbian to a man.

JAGS' MAXEN IS FIRST MALE AMERIN PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY

In one extensive study 1978, for example, rearchers Alan Bell and Mart Weberg, factorg ethnic differenc, found that 35 percent of gay whe mal, and 13 percent of gay black mal, reported havg been married to a woman. And Bell and Weberg’s figur almost certaly unrreport the actual equency of such relatnships, too, sce their data e om surveys of sexual orientatn llected durg an unapologetilly homophobic era.

In other words, the statistics only take to acunt those dividuals prevly or currently a mixed-orientatn marriage willg to acknowledge their primary homosexual leangs. ) Still, many studi have sce examed the psychologil experienc of those who acknowledge beg mixed-orientatn marriag—cludg motivatns to enter to such a marriage to beg wh, ternalized homophobia, self-awarens and acceptance, relig iology, experimentg wh open relatnships, and so on—om the perspective of the homosexual as well as om that of the heterosexual spoe.

One tertg sex difference, reported 1985 by Universy of Mnota psychologist Eli Coleman, is that lbians tend to marry men at younger ag (mean age of 21) than did gay men marryg women (mean age of 24).

PULSE SURVIVOR SAYS HE IS NO LONGER GAY, HAS FOUND CHRIST

Lbians also reported beg ls aware than gay men of their own homosexual orientatn upon enterg such ill-ftg marriag and a slower realizatn of their same-sex attractns. And for our purpos, the most relevant fdgs for the qutn we started off wh—which is whether the creasg public support for gay marriage will lead, ironilly, to the eventual cle of the homosexual populatn—is the fact that most homosexuals mixed-orientatn marriag have had at least one child wh their spoe.

Although the precise geic mechanisms unrlyg homosexualy are still relatively unknown, we do know that, however the mechanisms actually work, there are ed clear, ntributg geic factors unrlyg homosexual orientatn. The bt evince that homosexualy ns fai as a herable blogil tra om 1990s-era tw studi, which revealed that the nrdance rate (the rate by which tw members overlap on anythg om schizophrenia to creativy to sexual orientatn) for homosexualy is signifintly greater monozygotic tws (intil) than dizygotic tws (who share only half of their gen, jt like non-tw siblgs).

AUTHOR WHO ONCE EMBRACED HOMOSEXUALY EXPLAS WHY HE NO LONGER CALLS HIMSELF 'GAY' (INTERVIEW)

The more rigoroly ntrolled tw studi adjt for possible shared environmental fluenc by takg to acunt, for stance, the sexual orientatn of non-tw siblgs or tws separated at birth, and yet all reveal that homosexualy is at least partially herable. Homosexualy is often prented as an evolutnary “mystery” bee of the obv reproductive disadvantag, and th for s rearchers have sought some adaptive functn for the culturally recurrent percentage (anywhere om 1 to 10 percent of the populatn, pendg on the measur ed) of the human populatn that is aroed more by the same than is by the oppose sex. Yet if we nsir the historil, and perhaps even the anctral, percentage of the homosexual populatn that did fact reproduce bee of societal proscriptns agast adult relatns wh the same sex, the mystery be nsirably ls profound.

Even societi where homosexualy was tolerated, such as Ancient Greece, men tend to engage perasty wh adolcent boys while matag wiv and fai at home—romantic relatnships wh fellow adults were by ntrast nsired reprehensible.