Dear people who think that homosexuality is the result of a strained relationship with one’s opposite sex parent,
You’re wrong.
I’m also disgusted with the fact that you believe this. But my disgust is secondary to the fact that you’re wrong. You’re wrong in the same sense that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is wrong about whether or not the Holocaust occurred.
Well, according to James Dobson, men just need to take their boys into the showers with them and show them their wangs so they’ll understand what a real hetero man is.
Whichever the case may be, I never saw my father’s wang (writing this phrase makes my fingers cramp up) and if that means I’ll remain a homosexual forever and ever because of it, I’ll be proud to remain so based on the non-sighting alone.
Would it be proper (and scientific) to say, “Phew, dodged a bullet, there, I did.”?
And I liked my mother very much, thank you. Or, was it too much.
It’s probably wrong. The theory’s certainly fallen out of favor. But I don’t understand why it’s disgusting or equivalent to Holocaust denial.
And thinking about it, that’s never been a popular theory. There was a Freudian theory that was popular from the 40s-80s, maybe, saying that homosexuality was caused by a strained relationship with the same sex parent. The theory went that homosexual men had distant, unaffectionate fathers and doting, overprotective mothers (which led to one of the stereotypes of gays as “momma’s-boys”) , but I never heard a theory that said that homosexuality was linked with a strained relationship with the opposite-sex parent.
You know what? True or not, I really don’t give a crap about all these silly, irrelevant, time-wasting issues re. homosexuality. I really don’t.
“It’s caused by a bad relationship with one of the parents!” So is not being allowed to take the car out Saturday. Why not endlessly squander money, manpower, and energy fighting that?
“It’s a choice!” Because apparently no one should ever be allowed to have a choice about anything.
“The Bible says it’s a sin!” Oh, you mean that dense, preachy, ridiculously long work of fiction that 99.88% of us (conservative estimate) haven’t given the time of day of since we were 14 (conservative estimate)? Whatever, dude.
“They can’t have children!” Yeah, why should heteros be the only ones suffering?
Look, there is ONE question that matters: Does it hurt anyone? All evidence says that it does not. So quit blabbering about morality and choices and bad relationships and start living your own goddam life. Trust me, it’s easy once you get used to it.
I agree, but also extend it to the absolute ruling out of any particular reason. Maybe a strained relationship with an opposite-sex parent is a significant factor in some people’s sexuality. Seems bizarre to assert that it could never be so.
I think it is wrong to rule out environmental factors. Genetics do not occur strictly in a vacuum. If a person is genetically prone to homosexuality, then environment can play a role. For example in identical twins if one is gay there is a 50% the other is gay. This is a big factor, but it is not 100%.
To my knowledge we do not know what the other 50% comes from. But there is no telling what environmental factors could play a role in people’s sexuality.
I once read an interesting book on genetics. It said that nature vs nurture is a false dichotomy - the two work together. Essentially what the author wrote was that most genes have a number of different ways they can express themselves so you should think of each gene as a collection of possibilities that are established at conception. But from that point on, environment will determine how the gene is expressed.
So two people with the exact same genes might be different because they were exposed to different environmental triggers. And two people exposed to the same environment would be different because they have different genetic responses to that environment.