Homosexuality:

When in life is a person's sexual orientation
determined? What are the early symptoms?

Sponsored link.

Summary:

There appears to be no consensus on when a person's sexual orientation is determined. Many gays, lesbians, and others suggest it happens at conception; others believe that it is determined sometime during gestation; still others suspect that it happens in early childhood -- perhaps set up by one's genes and triggered by some unknown event in the environment.

Religious and social conservatives often teach that it happens sometimes after puberty when they believe that a small percentage of people decide to become homosexuals.

Beliefs of religious conservatives:

A common theme running through literature from the larger fundamentalist and other evangelical Christian organizations is that homosexual behavior is unnatural, abnormal, and despised by God as an abomination. This is echoed by many Jewish and Muslim writers. They derive this from their interpretation of some key passages in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and Qur'an. Most also believe that a person chooses their sexual orientation after puberty. Some youths experiment with homosexual behavior, and quickly become addicted to it. Other religious and social conservatives suggest that poor parenting and/or sexual molestation as a child contributes to the decision by the post-pubertal youth to become gay.

Because of these beliefs, many religious conservatives are opposed to any positive representations of lesbian and gay characters in TV programs. (e.g. Ellen, Friends, the former Will & Grace, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy....). They feel that any move towards accepting homosexual orientation and behavior as normal and natural will cause more youth to experiment with same-sex relationships. Religious conservatives also frequently oppose educational programs about homosexuality, high-school support groups for gay and lesbian youth and their straight supporters, etc. because they generally teach that homosexuality as normal and natural for a minority of adults.

Scientific studies:

• Detection of homosexual propensity in children: Richard Green, a psychiatrist from UCLA has compared effeminate and "masculine" boys. ₁
  
  He reported that children who grow up to become homosexuals often engage in "gender inappropriate play" in early childhood. ₂ "Feminine' boys played about four times as much with the doll...a third as much with the truck."
  
  By interviewing their child subjects later in life when they were in their teens and early twenties, the researchers found that 75% of the effeminate boys had become gay adult males. It is obvious that these boys were not taught this behavior. They did not copy their behavior from other children in the family; they were often under harsh and severe pressure from their parents to change. One reasonable conclusion is that that they are driven to this type of behavior as very young children by an innate trait which is outside of their control and consciousness.
  
• Cross-cultural study: Whitham and Mathy studied 375 homosexual men in Brazil, Guatemala, Peru, the Philippines, Thailand and the United States. ₃
  
  They consistently found that 25% of homosexual men display highly gender atypical behavior, while 50% had shown marked gender atypical behavior as young children. They played with what are normally considered girls' toys and were regarded as sissies. These studies also find the same effect among adult lesbians; however, the percentages are much lower. 

Studies on young children indicate that the factor or factors which determine sexual orientation often effect very early in a child's life (perhaps before birth). _1,4

Impacts of detecting and treating "gender inappropriate play" in children:

The term gender identity disorder [GID] normally refers to adults whose genetic gender does not match their perceived gender. They often feel like a man trapped in a female body, or vice-versa. This is an extremely rare condition, affecting only one person among tens of thousands of adults. 

The American Psychiatric Association's DSM-1V-TR manual of diagnostic criteria for mental illnesses and disorders lists criteria for identifying GID in children. They note that:

"Only a very small number of children with Gender Identity Disorder with continue to have symptoms that meet criteria for Gender Identity Disorder in adolescence or adulthood. ₅

That is, an extremely small percentage of children who exhibit GID later become transgendered or transexual as adults. Meanwhile, most therapists recognize that a very large percentage of children who exhibit GID become homosexuals during their teens and early adulthood -- perhaps on the order of 3 out of 4.

GID Reform Advocates discuss author Phyllis Burk who:

"... describes cases of children as young as age three institutionalized or treated with a diagnosis of gender identity disorder for widely varying gender nonconformity. She presents evidence of increasing use of GID for children suspected of being 'prehomosexual,' and not necessarily transsexual. Diagnosis and treatment is often at the insistence of non-accepting parents with the intent of changing a perceived homosexual orientation. Burke quotes Kenneth Zucker, of the GID subcommittee, that parents bring children to gender clinics for the most part 'because they don't want their kid to be gay'." _6,7

"... homosexuality is the most common postpubertal psychosexual outcome for children" with GID. "... there are simply no formal empirical studies demonstrating that therapeutic intervention in childhood alters the developmental path toward either transsexualism or homosexuality."

"This misuse of Gender Identity Disorder for children and youth was condemned by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the San Francisco Human Rights Commission in1996:

"The San Francisco Human Rights Commission calls on the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association to take immediate steps to stop coercive and inappropriate treatments of gender atypical children based on GID."

Far from promoting consistency in diagnosis and treatment, ambiguous and conflicting language in the DSM-IV and TR has created much confusion and controversy. Interpretation of the Gender Identity Disorder of Children may range from a narrow definition of objective distress to an overinclusive loophole to the 1973 American Psychiatric Association decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder." ₆

References:

1. Richard Green, "The 'Sissy Boy Syndrome' and the development of homosexuality", Yale University Press, New Haven CT (1987)
2. Op Cit, Chandler Burr, Page 116-7.
3. Frederick Whitam & Robin Mathy, "Male Homosexuality in Four Societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines and the United States," Praeger, New York NY (1986)
4. Bruce Bagemihl, "Biological Exuberance: Animal homosexuality and natural diversity," St. Martins Press, (1999) Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
5. "DSM-1V-TR manual," American Psychiatric Association, (1994), Page 579.
6. Kelley Winters, "Issues of Psychiatric Diagnosis for Gender Nonconforming Youth," GID Reform Advocates, at: http://www.gidreform.org/
7. Phyllis Burke, "Gender Shock: Exploding the Myths of Male and Female," Anchor Books, (1996), Page. 100.
8. K.Zucker & S. Bradley "Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents," Guilford Press, (1995), Page 270.

Copyright © 1996 to 2008 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2008-AUG-16
Author: B.A. Robinson

Web ReligiousTolerance.org