Homosexuality

A friend of mine wants to know if there's a reason gays and lesbians need to get married. Heterosexuals, he says, get married for the express purpose of making a family. Why would anyone else care?

They want to make a family, too, I say.

An ah ha moment, hours later, having discussed this for hours over dinner. Hours later there's an ah ha moment.

There are a few things a person should understand about this subject, I think, a few basic things.

We could start with homophobia.

There's a Boston Legal episode in which a judge presents himself as a plaintiff because he has spent $40,000 to have his SSAD cured and he is NOT cured. He's suing.

What's SSAD?

I, too, wanted to know.

What is SSAD? asks Dennie (William Shatner) of the judge who is afraid he has it.

Same Sex Attraction Disorder.

The judge thinks there is something wrong with him because he is attracted to other men. He doesn't think he's gay. He can't possibly be gay. He thinks he must have a disorder if he has these feelings for men.

Sure, it's a send-off, a comedy, very funny, and highly recommended, but people do feel this way even in our more accepting society, a society that is slowly legalizing gay marriage, albeit regionally. Some people have very unsettling feelings about same-sex attraction, like they personally are bad for having sexual, emotionally charged, loving feelings for people of their own biological sex. This is called internalized homophobia, and it can start very young.

There is no Same Sex Attraction Disorder in the DSM-IV*. Never had one (not with that specific label, homosexuality sufficed); never will.

The medical establishment defines homosexuality as a sexual orientation, having a primary emotional/sexual attraction for individuals of the same biological sex. It is not a choice, and it is not a disorder.

Upon comprehending that they are supposed to get married one day to girls, many little boys are terrified at that realization. They panic, feel revulsion. Sure, certain little boys who are not gay will also express revulsion, too, at the thought of marriage to little girls. But when they get older, they're not in conflict about it anymore.

A boy who knows he likes boys won't express his true feelings, won't tell people about them, if they are obviously culturally taboo. He is likely to have self-esteem problems, too, if being gay is considered something bad in his community. Girls in love with girls have the same problem, conflicted feelings, sometimes shameful, and no one to talk to about them.

The beginning of the nightmare. You don't have to explain homophobia** to many young gays and lesbians who still, for the most part, are coming of age in heterosexist cultural environments. But this is changing, if not everywhere.

About half-way through the show, in my second mile (I walk slowly on the treadmill, jogging is for people who are in shape) Alan Shore, another lawyer, warns Dennie Don't fool yourself, Dennie. People feel that homosexuality is a treatable condition, something that can be changed if one has the will, the faith, the right tools, the time, and puts forth the effort to change.

Patently untrue.

In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association threw homosexuality out of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM-II, I think). The medical profession determined that having an emotional/sexual desire for an individual of the same biological sex is not associated with any mental pathology. There is nothing inherently sick about being gay or lesbian, bisexual, etc.

Like any heterosexual, a homosexual might surely have Axis I or Axis II disorders, such as depression, anorexia, alcohol or other substance dependence, narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality. Just about anything in the DSM is possible for gays and straights in equal measure. But being homosexual per se is not being sick. No more so than being heterosexual alone makes one sick.

Kinsey first discovered that in fact, emotional/sexual attraction, what we now call sexual orientation, falls on a continuum, like other individual traits.

There's everything in between to two poles.


A person who has primarily (mostly) homosexual emotional/sexual attraction (left half of the continuum) is thought to have a sexual minority orientation.

Among other things you should know, especially if you are going to become a therapy doc, is that mental health professionals are liable to come under intense professional peer review if they tell students or clients that they can change their sexual orientation.

Think about it from the perspective of heterosexuality. Could you (assuming you consider yourself a heterosexual) will yourself to a primary emotional/sexual attraction to someone of your own biological sex?

Probably not. It might happen. You may have some same-sex attraction, everyone does, probably in their life-time, although they won't call the papers. Sexuality is quite fluid. But you can't will it to happen.

Likewise for people whose primary emotional/sexual attraction is toward individuals of the same biological sex. They can't will their brains to light up for opposite biologically-sexed individuals.

But if that brain lights up for someone in an intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and physical way, and there's that certain compatibility, certain comfort level, warmth, and assured security that this person should share a bed, become a partner, an executive committee member of a family, related, partnered in this way forever and ever? Then marriage is certainly one way of putting that into writing.

Marriage is a contract, and people like a deal.

What is interesting about it for someone like me is this: Having fought so hard for the legal right to this contract, one that includes the benefits and trials of marriage, will gays and lesbians have a lower divorce rate than heterosexuals? I think heterosexuals are closing in on fifty percent, have been for twenty years.

I know, I know, too many variables to tell. But we'll be watching.

copyright 2008, therapydoc

*The American Psychiatric Association publishes the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. We're now in the fourth edition, patiently awaiting the fifth.

**This is called internalized homophobia, when a gay or lesbian begins to fear being himself (herself).