Can gays bee straight? | New Scientist

Contents:

• IS IT POSSIBLE TO SYSTEMATILLY TURN GAY PEOPLE STRAIGHT?
• CAN SCTN MAKE STRAIGHT MEN GAY?
• THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT
• CAN GAYS BEE STRAIGHT?
• SOME GAYS CAN GO STRAIGHT, STUDY SAYS
• WHY SOME STRAIGHT PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE GAY SEX
• IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?
• CAN SOME GAY MEN AND LBIANS CHANGE THEIR SEXUAL ORIENTATN? 200 PARTICIPANTS REPORTG A CHANGE OM HOMOSEXUAL TO HETEROSEXUAL ORIENTATN
• JAGS' MAXEN IS FIRST MALE AMERIN PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY

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. Both APAs have led that the therapi are unscientific and possibly harmful — not to mentn unnecsary, sce homosexualy was officially -classified as an illns 1973, and therefore n't be "cured.

The few that did have "high-qualy" evince "show that endurg change to an dividual's sexual orientatn is unmon, " and that treatments tend to change sexual orientatn may e harm, cludg prsn and mental Dark AgHomosexualy was officially labeled a mental illns the U. 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. They "were ed whout people thkg about whether they were humane, " Glassgold all treatments were so gome: Lnel Ovey, a Columbia Universy psychoanalyst and thor of Homosexualy and Psdohomosexualy, created a behavral method the 1960s.

Ovey studied a clilly disturbed group of patients and summarized their unnsc mds as follows: "I am a failure = I am not a man = I am strated = I am a woman = I am a homosexual. " 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.

CAN SCTN MAKE STRAIGHT MEN GAY?

Cognive therapists, meanwhile, ma a few attempts to change homosexuals' thought patterns by reamg sir — redirectg thoughts away om homosexual activy — or through hypnosis. Still, SOCE is still beg practiced wh a small group of mental-health practners, most of whom ter to a populatn whose relig beliefs strictly bar homosexualy. The article rais the qutn of changg sexual preference: Can a man whose past sexual practice has been almost exclively heterosexual change his practice to homosexual after beg sced by another man?

THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT

" Contrary to this rponse, the thor prents three s which the men swch om heterosexual to homosexual relatnships (exclively two s) by means of a sexual enunter iated by another man. The evince that the men experienced a genue change sexual preference, shows that life-long, exclive homosexualy, as articulated by gay rhetoric, is more a statement about the culture which occurs than the "sence" of homosexualy.

When I was young, I was told the whole world was divid to heterosexual men and heterosexual women, bar a small number of unfortunate ‘homosexuals’ of both genrs and possibly an even smaller number a third tegory, ‘bisexuals’, who ‘swung both ways’; pl, fally, a ty band of wretched creatur who were physilly not que one thg or the other. Ksey diststed btal tegorisatn but, wishg to unt, nstcted what me close to a slidg sle ntag seven gradatns between exclive heterosexualy and exclive homosexualy. He found that almost half his male terviewe had reacted sexually to both genrs; more than a third had had a homosexual enunter; and more than one ten reported roughly equally strong sexual rpons to both men and women.

CAN GAYS BEE STRAIGHT?

All all, I’ve probably slept wh as many straight men as self–intifyg gay or bisexual on: I doubt most were lyg, and some s have reason to know they weren’t. In what pass for the gay ‘muny’, there’s somethg of a taboo about admtg, even to ourselv, that que a few of (not me) uld, wh a ltle axg and self-disciple, be ‘straight’.

There exist strong reasons for this taboo among gays: first, ‘we n’t help ’ was absolutely central to our early pch for equaly, and we need to believe .

SOME GAYS CAN GO STRAIGHT, STUDY SAYS

IN THESE days when no TV s is plete whout a gay character or two, when openly gay men and women are erng ci, and when all thory matters of style and fashn has been ced to the queer eye, you might thk that succs-oriented heterosexuals would be lg up for nversn to homosexualy.

A mory of the men I terviewed were homophobic and held prejudice agast LGBTQ2+ people and this prejudice mak the thought of an LGBTQ2+ inty unappealg to them.

My last post scribed a populatn of mal who nsir themselv heterosexual, do not label themselv gay or bisexual, chew volvement wh the LGBT muny, are often married or romantilly volved wh an oppose-sex partner, and who engage sex wh mal or exprs the sire to do so. Due large part to the popularizatn of the topic the btsellg 2005 book On the Down Low: A Journey to the Liv of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep wh Men, [i] Lato and Ain-Amerin men are the primary subjects rearch wh non-gay intified MSM.

WHY SOME STRAIGHT PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE GAY SEX

One of the earlit studi, "The Bisexual and Non-Gay Attached Rearch Project" om the early 1990s, found that participants engagg same-sex sexual behavr but not intifyg as gay or bisexual scribed themselv as “kky, ” “normal, ” or “jt a guy. Siar fdgs were found throughout a seri of terviews wh non-gay intified MSM prepared for the Centers for Disease Control and Preventn 2004.

In tally, the men terviewed reported that if sexual activy between men was anonymo, experimental, ocsnal, or if substance e was volved, the act was not “gay. [iii] Daryl Hood, Garrett Prtage, June Crawford, Tania Sorrell, and Chris O’Reilly, "Report on the BANGAR Project: Bisexual Activy/non Gay Attachment Rearch Targetg Strategi Intifitn Project. Ramamurthi, Cleo Manago, Serg Ava, and Marv Jon, “Sexual Behavr, Sexual Inty, and Substance Abe Among Low-Ine Bisexual and Non-Gay-Intifyg Ain Amerin Men Who Have Sex wh Men, ” Archiv of Sexual Behavr 37, no.

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.

IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?

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.

Ariel Shidlo and Michael Shroer, two psychologists private practice New York Cy, found that of 215 homosexual subjects who received therapy to change their sexual orientatn, the majory failed to do so. "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. "He said some velop such tremendo strs that they bee chronilly prsed, socially whdrawn or even Spzer says his study shows that some homosexuals makg some effort, ually for a few years, make the change.

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

Another 23 percent were referred by the Natnal Associatn for Rearch and Therapy of Homosexualy, which says most of s members nsir homosexualy a velopmental disorr. "The sample is terrible, totally tated, totally unreprentative of the gay and lbian muny, " said David Ellt, a spokman for the Natnal Gay and Lbian Task Force Spzer says while the people his sample were unual — more relig than the general populatn — don't mean their experienc n be dismissed. Rick McKnon, who is openly gay and works as an edor at the weekly Seattle Gay News, is ncerned the study rults n be ed to forward an anti-gay agenda.

"Conservative, anti-gay, anti-diversy folks are gog to embrace and they're gonna e for their own agenda to ph their pot of view that, y, you don't need equaly Amerin society for gay people bee they n change, " he said. "But Spzer — who scribed himself as a "Jewish, atheist, secular humanist" wh no axe to grd — says maybe there are gays who are happy beg gay and ex-gays who are happy beg straight, and that both sis serve more rpect. In terms of pure numbers, we know that the vast majory of those who have gay sex intify as straight — and this is te for both women and men.

Though they loved the sexual experience and wanted to have a future relatnship wh the person, they had mixed attus toward homosexualy and premaral sex. Bee only four sexual orientatn optns were given to stunts — heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, and don’t know — perhaps many of the dividuals were misplaced the straight tegory.

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

Are the the men who will bee vigilant wh anti-gay rhetoric, and who will e eher their nservative relig or polil beliefs to jtify their behavr?