Dispelling myths: Same-sex attraction is less prevalent than we think, can be environmentally influenced and is often not immutable.Op-ed.
By Robert M. Schwartz, INN
When sex is the passion, it’s hard to be dispassionate. Adding religion and LGB to the mix creates heat that leads to distorted facts and overgeneralized thinking. Myths become accepted truths, especially if they support the popular zeitgeist.
For example, a 2015 study in Social and Policy Issues reported that the American public believes 23% of Americans are LGB. The correct figure: A 2017 Gallup poll found 4.5% identified as LGBT and a 2019 study of sexual orientation in 28 nations in Archives of Sexual Behavior found figures as low as 1.5%.
Another myth enshrined as fact is that choice never plays a role in any LGB person’s behavior, period. Therefore, parents’ sexual orientation can have no effect on their children. Rabbi Benny Lau’s compassionate “guide” for the religious LGBT community endorsed this belief. According to Rabbi Lau the religious community should not “fear” that including LGBT families will cause people to “drift” or be confused about their identity, as reality shows that no man or woman voluntarily chooses this tendency.
This “reality” does not correspond with current sex research or with my own clinical experience.
This belief is rooted in another myth: Since sexual orientation is biologically determined, voluntary choice regarding these inclinations is impossible. In fact, the scientific view noted in a 2019 Science article that none of the DNA markers associated with sex were powerful enough to predict an individual’s sexuality. Andrea Ganna, MIT/Harvard geneticist and lead researcher, left no ambiguity: “There is no gay gene.”
The current view is that environmental and familial factors also influence sexuality.
Perhaps the most surprising myth-shattering breakthrough comes from research that refutes the “immutability” of sexual attraction and behavior. Diamond and Rosky co-authored a 2016 article in Annual Review of Sex Research, concluding that the immutability of sexual orientation is unscientific, oversimplified and overgeneralized. Recent genetic and neuroendocrine discoveries “challenges the notion of being ‘born gay,’ along with the notion of being born with any complex human trait.” Our genetic legacy, they conclude, is “dynamic, developmental, and environmentally embedded.”
A 2012 study of 12,000 adolescents found that 43% of the men and 50% of the women chose a different sexual orientation category six years later. That Diamond, who is openly gay and acknowledged making choices in her sexual lifestyle, adds credibility to this countercultural conclusion. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as ‘sexual fluidity.’
Scientific thinking takes time to filter into popular consciousness. To wit, New Jersey senator Cory Brooker respectfully grilled Amy Barrett, U.S. Supreme Court nominee, during the hearings about using the ‘offensive’ term “preference” rather than “orientation. He wanted her to acknowledge the ‘fact’ that sexual orientation, as opposed to preference, is “immutable,” no different from race. Neither Brooker nor Barrett, given her later apology, were familiar with the research that suggests both terms, orientation and preference, can be accurate to varying degrees for different individuals.
Many exclusively gay persons who identified their tendencies early may be unlikely to modify their attraction. Yet, to my knowledge, only one 2010 study of LGB adults by a prominent gay researcher, Gregory Herek, asked about “perceived choice about sexual orientation.” In the total LGB group, about 60% perceived “no choice at all,” but 40% felt they had a “small amount” (14%) or a “fair amount/great deal” (25%) of choice. Not surprisingly, higher percentages of bisexuals acknowledged choice, but only 12% of gay males did so. Interestingly, no fewer than 1/3 of the lesbians perceived choice, with half of that group perceiving a fair amount/great deal. The authors note that as with any survey study their results are limited because self-reports are subject to biases. Since the study included only LGB persons, the results can’t generalize to those with same sex attraction who don’t identify as LGB, more of whom may feel they have a choice.
This study gives pause for thought about global assertions that no LGB person has a choice. With 40% of LGB individuals acknowledging some choice, the logical (tentative) statement based on sexual fluidity research and today’s limited, self-report data may read as follows:<
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For a majority, sexual orientation may not involve choice, but for a very large minority, choice may play a role. Thus, the terms “sexual orientation” and “sexual preference” are both necessary for rational discourse. Intense emotions that distort scientific reality do disservice to this new “sexual minority” who want to dispassionately examine where they fit in the spectrum of sexual attraction and behavior.
If sexuality is fluid, not genetically determined, and influenced by familial and developmental factors, what effect might an LGBT family have on the children? Again, research is emerging that questions the “reality” noted by Rabbi Lau that “drift” and “confusion” will never occur. Although research shows mixed results, consider a study by Walter Schumm, Professor of Family Studies at Kansas State University that investigated 262 adult children of gay parents. The study found that adult children of LGB parents were more apt to be LGB, concluding that there was some degree of “intergenerational transfer of sexual orientation.”
Interviews in various studies found that 56% of the lesbian’s daughters thought their mother wanted them to be gay. One daughter said she was repulsed by heterosexuality because she was immersed in gay culture and didn’t have a model of straight relationships. A heterosexual son of a lesbian couple rejected marriage because he was afraid that he would “betray Mom and Judy if he married.” Such studies on both sides of controversy are not definitive, but illustrate that we simply don’t yet know enough to draw sweeping conclusions about the potential for intergenerational “drift” in orientation.
During forty years of doing psychotherapy, I have treated many LGB persons for mood disorders (not to become heterosexual since few ask for this in today’s climate). Many spontaneously acknowledged varying degrees of choice in their sexual behavior. All, with one notable exception, had familial and environmental factors that have been associated with later LGB attractions and behaviors. Even that single exception reiterates that some as yet undefined percentage of LGB persons likely have no choice in sexual orientation.
But the emerging view of sexual fluidity suggests that we need a more nuanced and open-minded view that avoids overgeneralizing the total absence of choice for all.
None of the foregoing arguments imply anything other than a compassionate approach to religious LGBT persons, nor do they contradict an attitude of love for the families and their children. As Rabbi Lau observes, the world is not ideal and few if any individuals reach that level. The coalition of religious Jewish LGBT called for an empathetic, sensitive, courageous and scholarly discourse on the topic.
Hopefully these ‘inconvenient truths’ won’t be misinterpreted as insensitive and non-empathic. When it comes to matters of social policy and in Jewish law–where the ability to make sexual preference a [halakhic] choice is a central concept–the discourse must balance emotional factors with the courage to consider scholarship and scientific fact. For many who want to explore modifying sexual attraction and behavior, the belief that change is possible remains factually tenable and is essential for hope. The rainbow must be expanded.
Robert M. Schwartz, Ph.D is a clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist and supervisor. Dr. Schwartz was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine for over 30 years where he conducted psychotherapy research and taught sex therapy to psychiatry residents. He is president,if Cognitive Dynamic Therapy Associates,
@ Bear Klein:
Ha Ha. Good one.
Sexual orientation or preference is a “queer” topic for an Israeli political blog.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
I seem to recall reading that Masters and Johnson wrote in their famous study that Most people are bisexual with a strong preference, and that there are a tiny number of people at either end who are just one or the other.
It is a total myth that sexual orientation is determined at birth and is immutable. History proves it. Julius Caesar was known as one of the greatest compulsive womanizers of all time. Yet he also had many affairs with many other men. He called himself “Any woman’s man and any man’s woman,” and was proud of it. Alexander the Great was exclusively homosexual in his behavior and he began to realize the importance of having an heir to whom he could pass on his kingdom. He then suddenly began to surround himself with high-class female prostitutes (known as “courtesans”) and to take one or more with him to bed at night. Historians think he was attempting to familiarize himself with the female body, with which he had no sexual experience with before. But after six months or so, he stopped patronising prostitutes and instead proposed marriage to a high-born Persian princess. Once they were married, everyone in Alexander’s court was convinced they were deeply in love. They were always “making goo-goo eyes” at each other, hugging and kissing, and went everywhere together, almost never letting each other out of their sight. Soon they had a daughter, whom Alexander immediately proclaimed as his heir.
(Unlike Henry VIII, he had no problems with the idea of a reigning queen).
HIstorians think that Alexander was probably “gay” in his early manhood because he was a full-time soldier from an early age, and spent nearly all of his time in army camps, shating tents with other soldiers. Also, homosexuality was customary among Greek and Roman male citizens, because these were militaristic societies in which men were expected to spend much of their time in military service. The Greeks and Romans believed that sexual relations between soldiers was a useful kind of “male bonding” that made soldiers willing to do anything to protect their buddies in combat and created feelings of solidarity among them.
I believe that homosexuality or its absence has always been determined by a mixture of cultural attitudes and personal circumstances, and has nothing to do with genetics. Men and women certainly can change their sexual orientation if they are willing to make the effort to do so, and over the years many men and womendone so when they decided that it was in their interest, , or was morally the right thing to do–or they finally met the opposite sex person of their dreams. Genetics has nothing to do with it.