The Cause of Homosexuality

There is often a question in the minds of Americans about the causes of homosexuality. In this blog post, I will attempt to give two theories about this abnormal sexual orientation. I am particularly interested in this matter because of the recent change of policy in the Boy Scouts of America. That organization previously would not admit homosexuals into the organization as members or as leaders. Lately, the BSA has decided to allow openly homosexual boys to become members.

I believe that homosexuality is a moral mistake. Of course, homosexuals have long strived to establish their life style as a normal variant, caused by a genetic difference between them and heterosexual individuals. Intense study of the human genome has failed to find any correlation between homosexuality and any particular pattern of human genes or chromosomes. In other words, there has been found no genetic correlate for homosexuality. That leaves only environmental and social causes as viable explanations for homosexuality.

So…what does cause homosexuality? This is a question that probably has several answers in different cases. But whatever the causes may be, you can be pretty sure that they are complex. Sigmund Freud in the late 19^th Century pointed out that establishing sexual identity is a major and sometimes difficult task for the human being. He thought the task of sexual identification in males is more difficult than that of females. Of course, I think that Freud was a bit too ready to ascribe every psychiatric malady to something sexual—but nevertheless, his observation has some credence.

It is my opinion and that of many others that homosexuality has two common origins. The first is that in very early childhood, certainly before the age of 5, a conflictual relationship develops between the child and the parent of the same sex. We will discuss the pathway to homosexuality in boys because homosexuality is more common in the male; but the principle can be reflexly applied to girls, also. Both little boys and little girls are very attached to their mothers during infancy.  As a boy grows up, however, he becomes more and more interested in his father. He sees his father as a model for his life; and he seeks to identify with the father. He notices that his father is sexually attracted to females, and he, thus, identifies that as a model for his life, too. He then normally becomes a heterosexual person, attracted to the female.

However, when a conflictual relationship becomes obvious to a little boy, he becomes afraid of his father. Or…he may disengage emotionally from his father who is authoritarian, hostile, distant, or otherwise offensive. This conflict drives the little boy to develop a pathological (abnormal) relationship with his mother. The boy notices that the mother is sexually attracted to males; and the boy, then develops an attraction to males. Thus…you have a homosexual male as he grows up. This early conflict with the father causes very early onset homosexual affinities; and I have heard these early age homosexuals tell me on several occasions that their earliest memories are of their attraction to males as sexual goals. This early attraction to males is the thing that makes homosexuals believe that there is something genetic about their homosexuality; they cannot imagine how their sexual affinity can come from any other source.

The second kind of sexual development into homosexuality occurs in teen-age years; and this is what I think is particularly hazardous in the Boy Scouts. There is a well-known tendency for teenagers to rebel against their parents and other authorities in their lives—they are trying to find their own identities. The teenager seeks venues in which he can rebel. In the course of this rebellion, some of them decide to “walk on the wild side,” so to speak, and find the most blatant issue against which he can rebel. He soon sees that one of the most powerful recommendations that is put upon him is that he become heterosexual. This provides the teenager with the opportunity to rebel in grand fashion. He may decide to experiment with the gay lifestyle. Sometimes this results in a lifetime commitment to homosexuality. Sometimes, however, it is only a temporary situation that is nothing more than a brief experimentation in an otherwise normal developmental model. There are many teenagers who have had brief encounters with homosexuality; and their subsequent development does not seem to be harmed.

 My concern with the Boy Scout matter centers on this second developmental pathway. I worry that exposing developing boys to homosexual influences may tempt them to adopt that lifestyle for themselves as a result of their normal rebellious tendencies. For that reason, I do not think the Boy Scouts is a proper venue for homosexual boys. I think that normal boys might possibly become homosexuals as a result of interaction with homosexuals during teenage years.

Homosexuality is a harmful lifestyle practiced by about 5% of human populations. The more it is tolerated and accepted as normal, the more prevalent it will become. It brings no happiness into the life of a boy and as time goes on his focus is on how attractive he can be to other males; he does not move on in life as a happily married  man. I do not believe that our government and our social institutions are doing anybody any favors by aiding and abetting this aberration of behavior.