Posted by Tiggy. on October 31, 1999 at 19:42:40:
In Reply to: Re: What's a diathesis? posted by Ev on October 31, 1999 at 17:02:21:
Well, I'm going to be very unpolitically correct and come out and say what I think, and I don't have to provide detailed scientific evidence for it which I don't have access to unless I'm going to make it a major research project which I'm not.
Athena said read stuff by gay men and I have. And many of the gay writers I've read have had absent fathers or fathers they felt they couldn't accept as role models. Quentin Crisp said he was sexually abused as a child and a friend of mine said he wouldn't be gay if he hadn't been lonely at boarding school and engaged in homosexual sexual activity there.
So the stuff I've got from that has been that for many gay men there is a psychological basis of learned behaviour.
The so-called 'gay gene' is a gene associated often but not always with a certain personality type rather than a sexual orientation.
Learned behaviour affects the structure of our brains, so any evidence from adult brain patterns is fairly useless in any nature/nurture argument.
I have been to numerous wide-ranging discussions on homosexuality where there were many homosexual speakers and a predominantly pro-homosexual audience, and I still remain unconvinced that it is something to be encouraged. It's none of my business what sort of relationships other people have, but if I were asked I would have to say I think it has unhealthy psychological origins, often smacks of gynophobia, and for many men is a way of avoiding intimacy.
That's not to say that someone can't fall in love with someone of the same sex and have a happy, long-lasting relationship, but that's to do with falling in love with a particular person, and if that happens who would want to discourage it; but as a general orientation I consider heterosexuality to be the biological and psychological norm and homosexuality an unfortunate aberration.
I guess it's typically Fourish of me to risk being hated by stating honestly what my beliefs are over this. But I won't pretend that they are any other.