David Scasta. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy. Volume 2, Issue 4. 1998.
A gay person presenting for psychotherapy always brings with him or her a cultural perspective-ingrained since early childhood and reflective of generations of dogma and beliefs-which carry a profound impact on his or her personal development and the constructs under which therapy is provided. Cultural beliefs about homosexuality have varied radically from culture to culture and from age to age-sometimes diametrically so. Familiarity with the historical development of views on homosexuality (particularly Western views) is a valuable tool for the therapist. Historical perspective allows the therapist to escape the constraints of societal dogma which have colored so much of non-affirming therapy with gay peoples. For the patient, the academic understanding of the cultural yoke that affects a gay person’s sense of self esteem can also be very helpful in facilitating the corning out process (the process of coming to terms with homosexual feelings and assuming a homosexual identity). The understanding is not, however, sufficient by itself. Coming out and developing a positive sense of gay identity involve much more than questions about etiology and cultural perspectives. The article, “Issues in Helping People Come Out” which is included in this issue, addresses in more detail a broader range of aspects which affect the coming out process -of which historical perspective is only one.
Any attempt at a comprehensive study of this history would easily require several volumes of books and is clearly beyond the scope of this article. Instead, a fundamental overview will be provided. Readers will find a wealth of detail in the references at the end of this article, especially in the seminal work by Ronald Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis (1987).
Ancient History
Judaic law canonized proscriptions against non-procreative sexual behavior. The Levitical Codes prescribed death for men who “lay down with man as with woman” (Leviticus 18:22). Female sexual behavior, however, whether heterosexual or homosexual, was generally ignored.
These laws against non-procreative sexual activity need to be viewed within the cultural perspective. The tribes of Israel were squeezed on a land bridge between the great civilizations of Egypt and the Mesopotamian valley. Periodically one of these competing civilizations would pour through Palestine on the way toward conquest of the other. The Israelites, greatly outnumbered, faced cycles of foreign occupation. In ancient warfare, the number of men who could be placed on the battlefield often was the deciding factor affecting victory or defeat. Thus, the very survival of the Israelites depended upon mustering as large an army as possible. It is small wonder then, that taboos were developed against sexual behavior that limited births-particularly of males. Sperm came to have magical qualities such that it was “sin” to spill it without the possibility of creating more sons (Genesis 38:9-10). Modern concepts about growth of population and the pressure such growth places on food supplies and natural resources did not develop until the late eighteenth century with Malthus (Malthus, 1798). Since the basis of the predominant Western religions (Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism j were derived from this tiny, otherwise obscured people, the proscriptions against homosexuality have been canonized into the codes of their derivatives even though the pressures on procreation are now towards limiting, rather than increasing, births.
Other cultures did not have the same geographical vulnerability and did not develop the same aversion to homosexuality. The epic stories of the Babylonian hero, Gilgamesh (from which the Israelites during their captivity in Babylon probably drew their story of Noah and the great floods and modeled the love story of David and Jonathan), describe Gilgamesh’s love for Enkidu, a rough, masculine character with whom he fought and later loved. They subsequently shared many adventures together until Ishtar, the guardian goddess of the city of Erech fell in love with Gilgamesh. When Gilgamesh rejected her love, she sent the Bull of Heaven to destroy Erech. Together, Gilgamesh and Enkidu killed the bull. In punishment, the gods doomed Enkidu to die throwing Gilgamesh into a great depression and causing him to set out on a quest to learn the secret of immortality (Sandars, 1987). This view of heroic love between two men “that was wonderful, passing the love of women” (ZZ Samuel 1 :26b), in the words of David, was the predominant view of acceptable love between men in the ancient world. Sexuality between such men bound by a relationship that surpassed mere friendship or sexuality was understandable to the ancient mind. What was forbidden, however, was for an adult man to be the passive partner. All respect was lost when an adult male was anally penetrated. Such treatment was reserved for defeated soldiers who were humiliated in their defeat by being raped.
During the Greek era, temples of a variety of religions provided both female and male prostitutes for men to financially support the activities of the temples (Wool, 1987). A homosexual identity probably did not exist in those times. All men were capable of sexual activity both heterosexual and homosexual. Passive sexual behavior was prohibited except for adolescents and prostitutes. Trans-generational sex was common as exemplified by the mythological story of Ganymede, a Trojan prince, who was so beautiful that Zeus, in the form of an Eagle, snatched the boy up bringing him to Zeus’s bed in Olympus where he was subsequently given immortality. replacing the female, Hebe, the goddess of youth, as the cup bearer to the gods (Boswell, 1989,260-261).
A Greek non-freeborn adolescent male often was taken under the wing of an older male mentor and was expected to engage in passive sexual activities with his mentor. When the adolescent was an adult, the same passive behavior was forbidden to him. He was expected to play the active role as an adult whether with male or female (Cantarella, 1992, 17-53).
Both Socrates and Plato espoused the pleasures of young men. Plato’s Phaedrus, in which he describes Phaedrus and Socrates debating the benefits of erotic love versus friendship between men (Plato, cir. 340 BC), was quietly ignored during the great renaissance of Greek philosophy in the Middle Ages because it was at such odds with the teachings of the Catholic church and the monks who were given the job of translation. The historian Thomas Cowan, PhD (1 988, 17) wrote:
PIato posed the question: Is the love (eros) felt by an older man for a younger man different from that felt by the younger man for the older. Plato enjoyed this kind of question. His answer was no, the feelings were not different, but the process was.
It was easy for the fourth-century Greeks to account for the love of an older man for a younger man-the younger man had vigor and beauty-but it was more difficult to explain how a younger man could love an older one whose faded physical beauty no longer matched the youth-oriented standards of Athenian society. But Plato had an explanation. The young man is beautiful because he participates in the divine Beauty, which is perceived by the older man and then reflected back to the younger. In this way both the older and younger man serve as conduits through which is channeled the ideal form of Beauty. And in recognizing beauty in any individual, one is really recognizing the ideal Beauty which is changeless and eternal.
Although genuine affection was expected between the older man and his adolescent sexual partner, the concept of taking on a gay identity and becoming exclusively homosexual was not well formulated during this era. Great friendships could occur and relationships could last a lifetime. In another story of heroic love, Alexander the Great went into a clinical depression when his probable lover, Hephaestion, died. For three days he laid with the body, neither eating or drinking, wailing over his loss. The great god-king was unable to prevent the death of the only person he truly loved (except, perhaps, for his Persian eunuch and bed partner, Bagoas) (Alyson Almanac, 1991, 91). Alexander himself died of illness several months later-broken in spirit.
In the Roman era, homosexuality was tolerated during the early Empire. Arguments could be found in literature debating whether sexual relations between men and women or between men and men were more desired (Boswell, 1980, 74). There were a number of recorded examples of homosexual marriages and laws were written codifying such marriages (Boswell, 1980, 82). However, the prohibition against passive sexual behavior remained. Julius Caesar was ridiculed by the gossip that he had been the passive partner in a sexual affair with Nicomedes, King of Bithynia. His men chanted, “Caesar conquered Gaul; Nicomedes, Caesar” (Boswell, 1980, 75).
In fact, most of the early Roman emperors engaged in homosexual activities. Augustus Caesar, while still a boy, was rumored to have engaged in sex with Julius Caesar (Boswell, 1980, 75). Nero married two men in succession (Boswell, 1980, 82). Hadrian (137-138 AD), one of the better emperors, had a lover named Antinous, whom he deified after his lover mysteriously drowned following criticism of the affair. Statues of Antinous can be found in many collections of Roman art due to the widespread and prolific production of memorials to him ordered by Hadrian (Boswell, 1980, 84-87).
By the middle of the third century, AD, the role of the Roman Senate began to wane and the emperors solidified their control of the reigns of government. Christianity became increasingly influential with the emperors leading eventually to the establishment of Christianity as the state religion in the third century. As Christianity began to sway the empire, the tolerance of homosexuality began to wane. Initially male prostitutes were taxed and then prohibited. By the middle of the fourth century, even homosexual marriages were prohibited. Contrary to previous writings (e.g., The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire), Rome went into decline with the introduction of proscriptions against homosexuality. It was at the zenith of its power and influence when it was most tolerant of the behavior (Boswell, 119-126). Eventually, the roots of modern Western thought about homosexuality moved to the lands of the barbarians to the north and rested in the hands of the Catholic Church.
Foreshadowing the shift, a black Roman theologian, named Augustine (354-430 AD), began espousing the value of celibacy. Typical of many religious leaders, Augustine developed his faith and philosophy as an about face from his early background. By age 15 he was already married and he had a son by age 18. He later wrote in his autobiographical work, Confessions, of his passion for a young man and of his prayer, “Give me chastity and continence but not just now” (Alyson Almanac, 1990, 93). He was raised by a Christian mother and a non-Christian father and received a classical education in Latin and rhetoric with an eye towards a political career which never materialized. He became involved in several sects (i.e., Manchaeism which was a Persian philosophy which dichotomized Life into the struggle between Good and Evil) searching for identity.
In 387 feeling divinely called to pick up a copy of the book of Romans and to read the first verse he selected randomly, he picked Romans 12:13-14: “Let us walk honestly, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” After reading the verse, he returned to the religion of his mother, Christianity, and subsequently became celibate. After a period of study and speaking he was ordained a priest by popular acclaim in Hippo Regious in North Africa and later became bishop. His theological treatises, particularly, The Theory of Illumination, which states that the intangible (such as the existence of God) can be known through intellectual insight, became mainstays of Catholic philosophy, and profoundly influenced St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the principle architect of Christian doctrine regarding homosexuality.
Like his predecessor, St. Augustine, St. Aquinas entered the priesthood after a period of searching and rebellion. He was the son of an Italian count who was placed in a monastery at age 5 attended by celibate Benadictine monks. His uncle had been the Abbott of the monastery. At age 20, while at the University of Naples, he became a Dominican friar. His mother in a great fit of anger had St. Aquinas confined to the family castle for a year before she finally relented and he returned to his Dominican studies in Paris.
Over then next 30 years he wrote prolifically about the great religious and philosophical debates of his era capitalizing on the writings of Aristotle and Augustine. He was particularly interested in the philosophical debate questioning whether divine revelation is knowable or must be accepted solely by faith. He felt that some divine Truths were in fact knowable and used Nature as the prime example of Truth that is apparent. Similar in approach to St. Augustine, St. Aquinas espoused sex for procreation, not for pleasure. He erroneously believed that homosexual behavior was not seen in animals and therefore was “Unnatural” (is., not of Nature) making the behavior a form of sin. All behavior that is against Nature, is against God and therefore a form of sin. Homosexual behavior became codified as immoral with his seminal treatise, the Summa Theologica, (Question 94) completed in 1273 one year before his death (Boswell, 1980, 318-322).
For the next six hundred years, Western scholars viewed homosexual behavior as a moral question. Homosexuality was typically assumed to be a behavior that was immoral in the same way murder is an immoral behavior. Engaging in the behavior of murder does not imply that the individual has a separate, immutable identity as a “murderer” since anyone is capable of committing murder and may or may not chose to do so depending upon circumstances. It is incorrect, however, to assume that the concept of a homosexual identity was a foreign idea to medieval thinkers (cf. Stein’s article on “Social Constructionism and Essentialism” in this issue).
The sermons of St. Bernardino of Siena (cir. 1425) warn his parishioners of the risks of allowing their sons to be exposed to sodomites who would pollute their sons and turn them into sodomites themselves-expounding, “I heard it from a very worthy man, who said he believed that more boys are ruined from the age of eight to fifteen than at any other age.” He asserted that the sodomite would then betray himself by choosing not to marry-leading local officials in Tuscany to encourage heterosexual prostitution and appoint a special court, called “Officers of the Night,” to prosecute homosexuals with the hope of preventing the youth from being turned forever into sodomites (Rocke, 1989).
Early Activists
In the late 1800s a number of early gay activists began to stretch the boundaries of thinking about the morality of homosexuality, sometimes pushed by their own homosexuality in societies which condemned homosexuality as one of the most, if not the most, grievous sin possible. The Prussian and English codes stood steadfast against the influence of the more liberal Napoleonic codes of France in legally banning all homosexual behavior. Richard Kraft-Ebing was one of the first academicians to put a different spin on how homosexuality was viewed. He began to talk about homosexuality within a disease model. As one of the first researchers to study sexuality itself, he argued in Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) that homosexuality was not a moral issue but the consequence of a perversion. He viewed all non-procreative sexuality as a perversion (cf. St. Aquinas’s view above) and attempted to document the causes of homosexuality from environment and heredity. Karl Ulrichs in Germany took Kraft-Ebing’s view one step further arguing that homosexuality was due to a feminized brain and was a consequence of heredity. He then took the extraordinary step of publicly acknowledging his own homosexuality which was particularly risky for a German attorney. In the process he also began to solidify a view of homosexuality as an identity rather than a behavior. His contemporary, Magnus Hirschfeld, the great German sexologist, began one of the first formal studies of homosexuality, surveying 10,000 men and women and concluding that homosexuality was due to glandular secretions. He, however, argued against a pathological view of homosexuality and decried the Prussian codes in Germany which punished the condition. Across the Channel, Havelock Ellis, the great British sexologist, wrote his seminal work, Studies on the Psychology of Sex (1897-1910). Following his first book in the series, Sexual Inversion (1897), he was brought to trial for publishing a book that was “wicked, bawdy, scandalous and obscene” for arguing that homosexuality was inborn. His succeeding volumes were published in the United States rather than in Britain (Bayer, 1987,20-21).
Freud
Freud was not nearly as pejorative towards homosexuality as the American psychoanalysts who would follow him. He argued that everyone is innately bisexual with both masculine and feminine natures. He did not feel that homosexuals could change to heterosexuals because the condition was based on the pleasure principle rather than on the distress of neurosis. He used psychoanalytic approaches to try to determine the causes of homosexuality in individuals who had undergone analysis. He described a number of etiological dynamics over the years. Bayer, in his book, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis (1 987) has listed a number of the dynamics which Freud has described as causing an individual to be homosexual:
- Excessive interest in genitals during the autoerotic phase of psycho-socia1 development caused boys to turn toward men who have penises.
- Frustrated oedipal phase-denied the gratification of his mother, the male regresses and identifies with women; he therefore seeks men who love him as his mother would not.
- Oral fixation on the mother leads to the desire to experience oral sexual gratification from the penis/breast-or, in the fixated anal stage, the desire to experience sex as his mother.
- Deprivation of a mother figure may lead to too strong of an attachment to father.
- Fear of father’s retaliation during the oedipal phase causes the boy to avoid women. Only with males is castration anxiety avoided.
- Sibling rivalry from an older brother may be transformed into homosexual love of the formerly hated brother.
Unlike American psychoanalysts (before the 1990s), Freud did not believe that a homosexual identity should preclude psychoanalytic training (Bayer, 1987,21-27).
American Analysts
From the 1940s with Sandor Rado’s rejection of the concept of bisexuality, American psychoanalysts began to view homosexuality as thwarted heterosexuality. The pathologization of homosexuality was dogmatically canonized in psychoanalytic literature with the famous study by Irving Bieber in 1962 of 106 gay and 110 heterosexual analysands of 77 analysts in the New York Society of Medical Psychoanalysis. He used a 450 questions survey and found that 70% of the gays had restrictive, binding mothers vs. 32% of heterosexuals. Detached fathers were also more frequent in gay partners. Nineteen percent of obligate homosexuals were reported to have changed (characterized by: age greater than 35, motivated, father not detached, some efforts at heterosexuality, some heterosexual dreams, usually greater than 350 hours of therapy). From this study he postulated the following cause of homosexuality:
- Mother thwarted and punished heterosexual drives, expressed demasculinizing and feminizing attitudes, competed with father/son relationships, favored son over father, competed with peer relationships. Fathers were hostile, detached, minimizing and openly rejecting. During the oedipal phase, over stimulated by mother, thwarted in his masculinity, rejected by his father, female genitalia became identified with danger forcing the heterosexual drive underground.
- Despite poor treatment results, Bieber felt that change was possible and appropriate. He did not feel that stable relations were possible between males.
- His conclusions were based on clinical, rather than normal populations-observed by psychoanalysts with common beliefs about the dynamics of homosexuality (Bayer, 29-34, 1987). The patients were drawn from the New York area which limited the ethnic/cultural heterogeneity of the sample.
The effect of Beiber’s study was profound. Even today, few mothers of gay men are unaware of the concepts developed from his study, even if they have had no significant contact with psychoanalytic thinking. Homosexuality became a hallmark of bad mothering and, to some degree, bad fathering. With mother‘s being responsible for homosexuality, the stage was set for homosexuality becoming a stigmatized disgrace and failure of family. The disease model once again took on a moral attribute-now painted in the words of science rather than religion. The punishment for homosexual fixation was a life devoid of any true intimacy or love from which absolution could only come through years of intensive (and expensive) psychoanalysis. The self serving nature of the conclusions escaped the attentions of both the psychoanalysts themselves as well as the general public.
Over the next 35 years, Bieber’s mantle was taken up by Charles Socarides who wrote that heterosexuality was a biological imperative although he felt that both homosexuality and heterosexuality were culturally learned. He described homosexuality as a highly pathological attachment of the male child to his mother during the separation and individuation phase. Intimacy with women other than the mother leads to separation anxiety. He felt that homosexuality was pathological, self defeating and unfulfilling. He was the primary advocate of the pathological view of homosexuality during the 1970s when the diagnosis of homosexuality was removed from DSM-ZZ. He felt that stable homosexual relationships were very unlikely and initially claimed a 50% cure rate with his treatment; later, a 35% cure rate. Now marginalized by mainstream psychiatry, he and another prominent advocate of the pathological view of homosexuality, Joseph Nicolosi, (author of Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality and Director of the St. Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic), chartered the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) which remains active at the time of this publication-receiving its primary support from conservative religious groups.
For many years, the gay and lesbian communities debated whether Socarides’ son should be publicly “outed.” There was considerable sentiment in gay psychiatric circles that the homosexuality of his son was affecting Socarides’ psychoanalytic view of homosexuality-a view which to many gays seemed so vitriolic and personalized. This confounding variable was never addressed by Socarides until 1995 when his son’s homosexuality was publicly acknowledged in an article in The New York Times (Dunlap, 1995). Having been so firm in his belief that gay men seldom have effective intimacy, he also revealed that he himself had been married four times.
In the late 1980s, another New York psychoanalyst, Richard Isay, began writing about a non-pathological psychoanalytical view of homosexuality (Isay, 1989). After publicly acknowledging his own homosexuality, Isay began to take the view that closeted therapists are ill equipped to treat gay patients. He maintained an essentialist view of homosexuality (cf. Stein’s article on “Social Constructionism and Essentialism” in this issue) and felt that homosexuality likely is inborn-perhaps due to genetics.
Non-Analytic Disciplines
While psychoanalytic views dominated American psychiatry, a number of researchers were taking different approaches which were largely ignored by psychoanalysts. Alfred Kinsey in his famous study, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), found that 37% of his male sample had sexual contact with other males to the point of orgasm. He found that 13% of males and 6% of females of his samples were homosexual but used a continuum from 0 (no homosexual feelings) to 6 (exclusively homosexual) to describe homosexuality. He upset the psychiatric world by showing that homosexuality was much more common than culturally thought (Kinsey, 1953). Kinsey espoused the idea that homosexuality is a normal variant. He did not claim that 10% of the population is gay as is often asserted.
Ford and Beach (1951) studied 76 non-western cultures and found 49 societies for which homosexual activity of some variety was considered normal and socially sanctioned, often in the form of a berdache, a male who assumes female characteristics. The incidence of homosexuality across cultures remained at 56% (similar to Kinsey’s findings for the number of Kinsey 6’s in the US. population). They also studied primates documenting homosexual behavior in adult male monkeys. They believed that homosexuality and heterosexuality were culturally determined (Bayer, 1987, 46-48).
The pivotal psychological study for the non-pathological view of homosexuality was Evelyn Hooker’s study in 1954 of 30 gay men matched against 30 heterosexual men. She was introduced to a group of gay men through her university students who were not in therapy. With a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health she made the first significant study of a population of non-clinical gay males. Using the Rorschach ink blot test and two other projective tests, blind evaluators (i.e., the evaluators did not know which patients were heterosexual and which were homosexual) were unable to distinguish the two groups. Pathological findings on the projective tests were no more severe for homosexual men than for heterosexual men (Hooker, E., 1957).
Hooker’s study was ignored as Bieber‘s study gained prominence in the early 1960s-until it was resurrected by Judd Marmor (cf. Marmor’s article, “Homosexuality, Is Etiology Really Important,” in this issue) in his book Sexual Inversion (1965). Marmor wrote one of the first balanced works on homosexuality including material from Kinsey, Hooker, Bieber and Socarides. He eventually took the stand that the issue of pathology of homosexuality was a moral, rather than a medical issue, when he was compelled by gay activists to reassess the data. In 1972 he wrote the article, “Homosexuality-Mental Disease or Moral Dilemma” in which he stated that the designation of homosexuality as mental illness was used only to “justify society’s aggressive interventions into the lives of individuals.” He felt that there was little evidence that homosexuals could change. He was president-elect in 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Edition ZZ replacing it with “Ego Dystonic Homosexuality’‘ and condemning legal and social discrimination against gays.
In 1974 Socarides mounted a campaign to reverse the 1973 removal of homosexuality as a pathological diagnosis from the DSM-II. Along with the new president-elect, John Spiegel, Marmur rallied APA members to support the American Psychiatric Association’s statement by the Board of Trustees. In a final vote with 10,092 members voting, 58% supported the removal while 37% sided with Socarides (Bayer, 101-157, 1987).
The American Psychiatric Association came under pressure from members of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists (which emerged from a group of closeted gay members of the APA in 1978), supported by academic arguments from psychologists such as Alan Malyon, to make further changes to the diagnostic nomenclature. In 1986 Paul Fink, the current president-elect of the APA and head of the APA Committee on Nomenclature, recommended to the board of trustees of the APA that the diagnosis, “Ego Dystonic Homosexuality” be removed from the DSM-ZZZ entirely. The Committee reasoned that the diagnosis was not used in any significant research and ego dystonic feelings are to be expected in the normal development of gays and lesbians who live in a culture which stigmatizes their orientation.
In 1996, former presidents of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, Robert Cabaj and Terry Stein, with the blessings of the American Psychiatric Press, Inc., edited another pivotal work, the Textbook of Homosexuality and Mental Health compiling much of the new research on homosexuality and taking a view which affirms homosexuality rather than seeking to change it. In the early 1990s the American Psychoanalytic Association began admitting openly gay psychiatrists to psychoanalytic training without requiring change in sexual orientation by the conclusion of training. By 1997, the long standing opposition to an affirmative, non-pathological view of homosexuality had substantially eroded, making the American Psychoanalytic Association the last major mental health organization to go through such a metamorphosis (after the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Psychiatric Association).
More Recent Etiologic and Prevalence Studies
Etiologic explanations have been divided in recent years between biology, genetics, behavioral development, and cultural outgrowth.
Biological Explanations. Early studies exposed male rats to estrogen and found increased lordosis (arching to accept male penetration) followed. (This finding raised the classic question, “Which is the homosexual rat: the one who is mounted or the one doing the mounting?”) There currently is little evidence that homosexual behavior in humans is related to either early abnormal hormonal exposure or subsequent development of hormonal abnormalities. A number of studies have attempted to link brain morphology with homosexuality, the classic study being that by LeVay in 1991 in which he found that the interstitial nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus (region 4) was smaller in gay men who died infected with the AIDS virus. These studies have yet to be replicated in a controlled manner (Gladue, 1987; Byne, 1996). A more detailed report on these studies can be found in Pillard’s article, “Biologic Theories of Homosexuality,” in this issue.
Genetic Explanations. Bailey and Pillard (1993) found that 52% of monozygotic male twins; 22% of dizygotic male twins and non-twin brothers and 11% of adopted brothers were concordant for homosexuality. For women, monozygotic twins were 48% concordant; dizygotic twins and non-twin sisters were 16% concordant and adopted sisters were 6% concordant. Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays report that 25% of all families have a close gay relative (parent, sibling, or child). The report is mathematically reasonable. If one assumes that as little as 3% of the population is homosexual and assumes an average family (grandparents, parents and two children), one in four families will have a gay member in the immediate family. Green (1987) studied a cohort of effeminate males at childhood and found that 27% became heterosexual, 32% bisexual and 41% homosexual. Hamer et al. (1993) found that 33 of 40 pairs of gay brothers had the same alleles at the Xq28 region on the X chromosome (which is very unlikely to be due to chance [p. < .0061]). He postulated that homosexuality may be mediated through the mother and the X chromosome.
Developmental Explanations. Imprinting through pleasurable same sex experiences well before puberty, peer or parental pressure on those who are gender atypical (i.e., an effeminate male or masculine female continually accused of being gay may introject the stigma and take on a gay identity later), same sex parents who are impaired as parents leaving the child longing for contact with the distanced parent through same sex sexual contact, etc. are themes that continue to receive theoretical consideration. Often the theories are merely restatements of earlier psychoanalytic theories and serve as a basis for providing “treatment” for those with gay or lesbian sexual orientation. While there may well be developmental factors either leading to, or amplifying, homosexual behavior or identity, these factors have not been identified by current research. Many of the studies along these lines amount to little more than uncontrolled, non-blinded surveys of therapists with similar theories about the etiology of homosexuality.
Cultural Explanations. Ritualized intergenerational male homosexual behavior is seen in a number of ancient and contemporary societies (e.g., ancient Greeks, Sambia of New Guinea). Young males in these societies engage in passive homosexual acts from older males, giving up the passive role in adulthood for active roles until marriage either forbids or curtails homosexual activity. In these societies, the majority of the male population may engage in homosexual acts, yet go on to marry and carry out a heterosexual lifestyle. However, as noted above by Boswell and supported by the writings of Plato, there is evidence that some men in Greek society clearly preferred adolescent males over women. This finding suggests that a gay identity is not so easily de-constructed by culture.
Prevalence
Prevalence studies of homosexuality have in recent years suggested that the incidence of homosexuality ranges between less than one per cent to nearly 20 per cent (AP, 9/5/94). The primary problem with the studies have been in setting a uniform definition of what homosexuality is (behavior, desire, or identity) and how the epidemiological evidence is collected (face to face interviews, anonymous written surveys, etc.). Most researchers acknowledge that their data under-report the incidence of homosexuality because of the effect of stigmatization on those who are surveyed. Leumann et al., in 1994 completed a major study of prevalence of homosexuality, the National Health and Social Life Survey, breaking their findings down between homosexual behavior, homosexual desire and homosexual identity. The study reported about 7.5% of men and women reported homosexual desire. Ten percent of men and 5% of women reported homosexual behavior since puberty. The number of men reporting homosexual behavior drops to 5% when measured from age 18 onward; remaining the same for women at 5%. Only 3% of men and 1% of women reported a lesbian or gay identity (Michaels, 1995).