[This is a rebuttal to Myounus sheikh's
controversial posting titled
Homosexuality: A Mental Disorder! posted in MM forum. Another
rebuttal from Mauno can be found
here]
We all know that policy makers and members of the public are routinely
confronted with questions about lesbians and gay men. Are they mentally ill?
Do so-called conversion therapies change sexual orientation? Are homosexuals
more likely than heterosexuals to molest children? Such questions arise from
long-standing cultural stereotypes that depict lesbians and gay men as
immoral, criminal, sick, and drastically different from what society
considers "normal."
A considerable body of social science's data are now available to answer
such questions and to separate falsehood from facts concerning sexual
orientation. Here are some examples:
1. Ellis' Theory
Early in the twentieth century, Ellis (1901) argued that homosexuality was
inborn and therefore not immoral, that it was not a disease, and that many
homosexuals made outstanding contributions to society (Robinson, 1976).
2. Sigmund Freud's Theory
Sigmund Freud agreed with Ellis that a homosexual orientation should not be
viewed as a form of pathology. In 1935, Freud wrote: "Homosexuality is
assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no
degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a
variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual
development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times
have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato,
Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute
homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too...."
3. Military research [Berube (1990)]
A common conclusion in their wartime studies was that, in the words of Maj.
Carl H. Jonas, who studied fifty-three white and seven black men at Camp
Haan, California, "overt homosexuality occurs in a heterogeneous group of
individuals." Dr. Clements Fry, director of the Yale University student
clinic, and Edna Rostow, a social worker, who together studied the service
records of 183 servicemen, discovered that there was no evidence to support
the common belief that "homosexuality is uniformly correlated with specific
personality traits" and concluded that generalizations about the homosexual
personality "are not yet reliable."
.... Sometimes to their amazement, [researchers] described what they
called the "well-adjusted homosexuals" who, in [William] Menninger's words,
"concealed their homosexuality effectively and, at the same time, made
creditable records for themselves in the service." Some researchers spoke in
glowing terms of these men. "The homosexuals observed in the service," noted
Navy doctors Greenspan and Campbell, "have been key men in responsible
positions whose loss [by discharge] was acutely felt in their respective
departments." They were "conscientious, reliable, well-integrated and
abounding in emotional feeling and sincerity." In general, "the homosexual
leads a useful productive life, conforming with all dictates of the
community, except its sexual requirements" and was "neither a burden nor a
detriment to society." Fry and Rostow reported that, based on evidence in
service records, homosexuals were no better or worse than other soldiers and
that many "performed well in various military jobs" including combat (Berube,
1990, pp. 170-171, footnotes omitted).
4. Hooker's study
Hooker's (1957) study was innovative in several important respects. First,
rather than simply accepting the predominant view of homosexuality as
pathology, she posed the question of whether homosexuals and heterosexuals
differed in their psychological adjustment. Second, rather than studying
psychiatric patients, she recruited a sample of homosexual men who were
functioning normally in society. Third, she employed a procedure that asked
experts to rate the adjustment of men without prior knowledge of their
sexual orientation. This method addressed an important source of bias that
had vitiated so many previous studies of homosexuality.
Hooker concluded from her study that homosexuality as a clinical entity
does not exist and that homosexuality is not inherently associated with
psychopathology.
The weight of evidence
In a review of published studies comparing homosexual and heterosexual
samples on psychological tests, Gonsiorek (1982) found that, although some
differences have been observed in test results between homosexuals and
heterosexuals, both groups consistently score within the normal range.
Gonsiorek concluded, "Homosexuality in and of itself is unrelated to
psychological disturbance or maladjustment. Homosexuals as a group are not
more psychologically disturbed on account of their homosexuality" (Gonsiorek,
1982, p. 74; see also reviews by Gonsiorek, 1991; Hart, Roback, Tittler,
Weitz, Walston & McKee, 1978; Reiss, 1980).
Confronted with overwhelming empirical evidence and changing cultural
views of homosexuality, psychiatrists and psychologists radically altered
their views, beginning in the 1970s.
My conclusion:
Please stop spreading falsehood theory to confuse people. If anyone is not
satisfied with my statement then I suggest please read following documents
to understand the subject before spreading falsehood theory.
For further reading:
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