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PubMed1993

Reproductive strategies and gender construction: an evolutionary view of homosexualities.

In this chapter the author addresses the following question: Can the historical occurrence of various forms of homosexuality and bisexuality be explained as part of the management of reproduction in response to environmental conditions? She believes that explanations for the occurrence and forms of homosexuality appealing to genetics are biologically indefensible and historically inadequate. However, Darwinian behavioral theory, and specifically that subset termed life history theory, provides an explanatory framework. An individual's life course consists of behaviors coerced by parents and chosen by the individual in response to environmental conditions, forming a coherent reproductive strategy. In the process, alternate male and female genders, such as cadet sons, spinsters, and religious celibates are explained and the normative male bisexuality of Classical Athens and modern Mediterranean/Latin societies is elucidated. The rise of modern homosexuality in industrial nations results from the demographic transition to low mortality and low fertility, relaxing the reproductive management of children by parents and permitting a greater role for temperament in individual sexual and gender choices.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

In-law relationships when a child is homosexual.

The purpose of this study is to review related literature concerning in-law relationships and begin an empirical exploration of the relationship between parents of gay men and lesbians and their child's significant other. Three hundred forty-seven parents of lesbians and gay men were surveyed regarding their sexuality, religiosity, socioeconomic status, attitude toward homosexuality, years they have known their child was homosexual, number of other children in the family, and acceptance of their homosexual child's significant other. A model was designed and tested via analysis of covariance structures in the LISREL VII package (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1989). Results suggest that the proposed model and the model estimated for the data are not significantly different, indicating support for the model. Future research issues are offered.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1993

A comparative study of attitudes toward homosexuality: 1986 and 1991.

This article describes changes in attitudes toward homosexuality using 1986 and 1991 samples drawn from the same population. It was found that men expressed significantly greater negative attitudes toward homosexuality than did women; participants in the 1986 assessment expressed more anti-homosexuality attitudes than did participants in 1991; and rural respondents expressed more negative attitudes than did participants sampled on a college campus. Greatest attitudinal change occurred in students over age 25 and non-students 40 and over. Plausible explanations for the favorable attitudinal change over the five-year period are explored.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Medieval Arabic medical views on male homosexuality.

Medieval medical views on homosexuality are outlined. Three theories seem to have been present. The first considers homosexuality as a nasty psychological phenomenon that ought to be punished rather than treated. The second theory suggests that an abnormal sensory innervation to the penis requires intense sensory input to achieve sexual satisfaction. A third congenital theory proposes that homosexuality results when the maternal sperm prevails over the paternal sperm. The most important proponent of the first theory was Avicenna (Ibn-Sîna, 980-1037 A.D.); a literal translation of the relevant chapter from his Canon of Medicine is given.

Arabia↗
PubMed1994

Homosexuality in the early novels of Nageeb Mahfouz.

Nageeb Mahfouz is the earliest novelist in Arabic to focus on the homosexual protagonist in his writing. Although the topic is objectionable in Islam, Mahfouz explores homosexuality in a sensitive manner, and reveals the transformation in his views regarding the dilemma of the homosexual protagonist in a hostile environment.

Egypt↗
PubMed1994

Integration of one's religion and homosexuality: a weapon against internalized homophobia?

Internalized homophobia as a psychological phenomenon has attracted little systematic research despite its destructive impact on the mental health of the gay community. This study looks at the relationship between internalized homophobia and the process of integrating one's religious faith and homosexuality by comparing levels of internalized homophobia among male participants of Dignity, an organization of Catholic gay men and lesbians, with a community sample of gay men with Catholic backgrounds. While many gay men believe they must abandon their religious faith (nearly 50% of this community sample no longer endorse a "formal religion") in order to accept their sexuality, Dignity members are actively integrating their religion and homosexuality--a process which we hypothesized would result in the Dignity participants being less homophobic than the community sample. While results showed no significant differences between the groups with regard to level of internalized homophobia, there are suggestions that involvement in Dignity does foster positive attitudes towards one's homosexuality by helping to overcome a delay in the development of a gay orientation. We also examined how other variables such as HIV status, psychological distress, conservative versus liberal ideology, and integration into the gay community would be associated with internalized homophobia.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1994

Political tolerance of homosexuals: the role of group attitudes and legal principles.

Individuals' attitudes toward and acceptance of general legal principles were assessed along with their willingness to extend application of these principles to various social and political groups, including homosexuals. Respondents then indicated their attitudes toward various social and political groups, including the groups to whom they had applied the general principles. Regression analyses were used to determine to what degree acceptance of the general principle and attitude toward the social group predicted application of the general principle to the group. For disliked groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis, individuals' acceptance of the general principle alone predicted the specific application. For homosexuals, however, the application of the general principle was affected both by acceptance of the general principle and by individuals' attitudes toward homosexuals. The implications of this difference in light of research addressing the cognitive and affective nature of attitudes and attitude change is discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

The abject gaze and the homosexual body: Flandrin's Figure d'Etude.

This article charts the history of the reception, reproduction and appropriation of a single image that has recently become a kind of "gay icon"--the Figure d'Etude in the Louvre, painted by Hippolyte Flandrin in 1835. Initially no more than a neo-classical academic exercise, the formal emptiness of this picture meant that it could be re-invested and reinscribed with new meanings and new titles at every turn. Emblematic of the anxious visibility/invisibility of the newly discovered homosexual body during a period when the gaze still had to be kept a dark secret, Flandrin's image only "came out" in its later photographic reworkings by Frederick Holland Day and Baron von Gloeden. After being reproduced for a specifically homosexual audience early this century, the popular Romantic pose of the young man curled-up in profile became a standard one, reappearing recently in the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe. The inactive, abject and inward-turned isolation of the figure with its narcissistic self-absorption makes it, in my view, a profoundly negative stereotype of the gay gaze and the homosexual body. Flandrin's figure nonetheless appears today on gay merchandise world-wide as a sign of our separate and secluded subject positions and our community's unwillingness to radically alter older imposed and inherited classical stereotypes.

France↗
PubMed1995

A critique of the possibility of genetic inheritance of homosexual orientation.

Many workers in human sexuality have tried to discover causes of sexual orientation. No one theory has proved to be satisfactory. Studies of monozygotic and dizygotic twins, some of whom have been reared separately and some together, suggest that there may be an inherited component of homosexuality. Other studies, particularly those concerned with the evolution of human sexuality, question such a possibility. A further question arises because a large part of the human population is neither exclusively homosexual nor exclusively heterosexual. This paper will examine the evidence for genetic inheritance presented by twin and family studies. It will explore ways in which a gene favoring a homosexual orientation but not reproduction could continue to exist in a population. The importance of defining terms that refer to sexual orientation will be discussed in the context of determining exactly what may be inherited. Finally, the effects of accepting genetic inheritance as the cause of sexual orientation will be discussed.

Female↗
PubMed1995

Soviet policy toward male homosexuality: its origins and historical roots.

Sodomy was a crime under tsarist criminal law. Having abrogated the tsarist legal codes in the name of socialist justice, the new Soviet regime did not at first impose criminal sanctions on sodomy. It was only in 1934, after Stalin had consolidated power, that an anti-sodomy statute was added to the Soviet criminal code. Although Russian radicals had never been friendly to variant sexual practices, which they viewed as the product of capitalist decadence, Soviet sexologists in the 1920s participated in the international movement for sexual reform and criminologists deplored the use of penal sanctions to censor private sexual conduct. The 1934 return to legal prosecution represented the recovery of two traditions: the radicals' disregard for issues of sexual freedom and tsarist legal custom. It was not, however, a clear reversal of the seemingly enlightened legal practice of the 1920s. This essay examines the trial of a group of homosexual men and the investigation of a lesbian couple, both from 1922, which show that Soviet courts tried to repress sexual variation even when homosexuality was not a crime. These cases and the status of homosexuality in general reflect on the murky status of the law and on the ambiguities of Soviet politics in the early years of the new regime.

Communism↗
PubMed1996

"Why strengthen the city wall when the enemy has poisoned the well?" An assay of anti-homosexual discourse in New Zealand.

Proposed changes to New Zealand law on homosexuality made the issues a matter of widespread public debate in the mid-1980s. The present study, which was designed as an exploratory assay of anti-homosexual discourse, draws on a large body of public submissions to the New Zealand Government Select Committee on Homosexual Law Reform of 1985. The data are subjected to discourse analysis, and a series of themes or patterns carried in the public submissions are described. To conclude, a limited attempt to test the relevance of the findings to other contexts is made by presenting an analysis of an example of a politician's radio interview from 1993.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1997

Sydney Anglicans and homosexuality.

The city of Sydney in Australia has one of the largest gay and lesbian communities in the English-speaking world, while the Anglican Church in Sydney is proud of its reputation as a strong-hold and guardian of conservative evangelicalism. Since the early 1970s the Anglican diocese, in its official statements and pastoral policies, has been strongly opposed to homosexuality and the organized gay movement. In 1973 a report on homosexuality by its Ethics and Social Questions Committee was unusual at the time because it recommended the continuance of legal sanctions against male homosexual behavior. There have been many confrontations between Anglican institutions and Sydney's increasingly confident gay community. This paper examines these tensions, the reasons for the stance of the diocese, and the responses of gay Christian groups such as Cross+Section and AngGays.

Christianity↗
PubMed1998

Essentialism, social constructionism, and the history of homosexuality.

Social constructionism is the view that homosexuality is not an atemporal and acultural phenomenon. Rather, homosexuality exists only within certain cultures and within certain time periods, most obviously Europe and North America after the nineteenth century. Essentialism is the view that homosexuality is an essential feature of human beings and that it could be found, in principle at least, in any culture and in any time. In this paper, I argue that the historical evidence available to us does not show that social constructionism is the correct view, and that essentialism is fully compatible with such evidence. Furthermore, I argue that the historical evidence does not even render social constructionism more probable than essentialism, i.e., both views are equally probable in the face of this evidence.

Cultural Characteristics↗
PubMed1998

A dung beetle in distress: Hans Christian Andersen meets Karl Maria Kertbeny, Geneva, 1860: some notes on the archaeology of homosexuality and the importance of tuning.

In 1860, the Danish fairy tale writer (whose fairy tales are perhaps primarily for grown-ups) met Karl Maria Kertbeny--who is supposed to have coined the term "homosexual" (first used in a private manuscript in 1868). The meeting caused immense despair in Andersen; yet what happened has remained a mystery. A careful study of Andersen's fairy tales and papers, however, provides a clue to an answer. The article deals with the horrors of being labelled; but it also discusses labelling as merely a minor part of what goes on in the making of the modern homosexual. Above all, Andersen's moods seem important and identifiable to us as homosexuals; more generally, they seem stirringly close to postmodern existence.

Denmark↗
PubMed1999

Homosexuality and the human genome project: private and public choices.

Recent scientific research which offers evidence of genetic and biologic influence in homosexuality has created serious concerns. The intent of this article is to offer suggestions based in principles of bioethics in which perceived negative outcomes may be diminished and the positive qualities of the research enhanced. For a portion of the general population the concerns expressed in this article could be alleviated through public discussion and exposure to the findings and theories of the academic and scientific communities. For another portion of the population, however, additional safeguards against misuse of screening tests and somatic cell interventions may be advisable through efforts initiated by researchers themselves, general public policies, and additional medical policies. While these efforts are recommended as short term goals for the separate scientific and social paradigms of homosexuality, it is proposed that an equally important and related debate involves the subjects of disease, normality and the value of diversity. It is suggested that while it is imperative that the behavioral and biological sciences recognize the limitations of their separate approaches, the reductionist approach itself limits our understanding of what essentially are questions of attraction and relationships. In conclusion, homosexuality should be understood from the perspective of autonomy as every person's right to experience a full and meaningful life.

Choice Behavior↗
PubMed2000

Consequences of impending national change: symptoms of psychological distress among homosexual and heterosexual men living in Hong Kong.

Now that Hong Kong has reverted to Chinese rule, the people of Hong Kong face many social and political uncertainties. It is likely that residents are experiencing significant symptoms of psychological distress. Homosexual men may be particularly apprehensive about impending government change given the persecution of those with this sexual orientation in the People's Republic of China. The Brief Symptom Inventory was administered to heterosexual (N = 46) and homosexual (N = 26) men living in Hong Kong. As predicted, both groups showed elevated symptoms levels compared to nonpatient norms (ps < .001) and the homosexuals were found to have more intense stress symptoms than heterosexuals. Correlations between concerns about life after 1997 and depression and hopelessness were significant (ps < .01). Surprisingly, somatization was the least elevated symptom among Chinese participants and of equivalent magnitude in both sexual orientation groups. Socio-political implications of the findings are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

What is the Word at Logos College? Homosocial ritual or homosexual denial in Don Delillo's End Zone?

"What Is the Word at Logos College? Homosocial Ritual or Homosexual Denial in Don Delillo's End Zone?" investigates the homoerotic desire that, despite being culturally repressed, periodically surfaces in foothall. Given the highly closeted nature of American foothall, it is necessary to look at the puns, allusions, and interactions between the players to see how Don DeLillo has created a text that subtly exposes the homoerotics of male sport. In order to strengthen the connection between homoeroticism and football, I will show how football's invention and organization in America coincides with the construction of the homosexual subject. Football and other arenas for male-male play become enforced at the same time as desire begins to express itself; thus, football is the logical place in America to look for unresolved (and resolved) male homosexuality, and DeLillo does this skillfully.

Culture↗
PubMed2001

Ranking of stigmatization toward lesbians and their children and the influence of perceptions of controllability of homosexuality.

Recent custody rulings in this country have indicated that lesbian mothers are viewed more negatively than other parents with stigmatizing attributes, e.g., a history of mental illness or criminality. The current study compared willingness to engage in relationships with a variety of adults with potentially stigmatizing conditions (including lesbians) as well as the children of these stigmatized individuals among a sample of college students. The hypothesis that perceived controllability of homosexuality would be related to stigmatization of lesbians and their children was also tested. Findings included the following: (1) Participants reported a greater willingness to engage in relationships with children of stigmatized parents than with individuals who personally possess a stigmatizing attribute; (2) Participants reported a greater willingness to engage in relationships with adults with physically based stigmas and their children than with adults with mental/behavioral stigmas and their children, and (3) Participants who reported a belief that homosexuality is a controllable condition were less willing to engage in relationships with lesbians than respondents who reported a belief that homosexuality is uncontrollable. Discussion includes not only an evaluation of the results and limitations of the study, but also comments concerning judicial and societal stigmatization of lesbians and their children.

Adult↗