{"id":1242,"date":"2016-08-29T14:34:59","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T18:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicauthenticity\/?p=1242"},"modified":"2016-08-29T14:48:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T18:48:58","slug":"the-new-gay-atlantean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicauthenticity\/2016\/08\/the-new-gay-atlantean\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Gay Atlantean"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"underwater-1216244_1920\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the next few days, I\u2019m going to do a series discussing the recent New Atlantis article on sexual orientation and gender identity<\/a>. Throughout the Christian world, this paper is being presented as scientific proof that everything traditional Christians have been saying for the past few decades about sexual orientation is true \u2013 and that, by extension, everything that is being said about gender identity is also true. We\u2019re already aware that McHugh, one of the paper\u2019s authors, is fast becoming the go-to authority for socially conservative media outlets who want to be able to cry \u201cscience!\u201d in debates about trans issues, and it\u2019s very likely that we will be seeing and hearing about this particular paper for some time to come.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to start with the section on sexual orientation. The evidence put forward here is being trumpeted in various parts of the Christian blogosphere as proof that the LGBTQ lobby is wrong: gay people are not \u201cborn that way.\u201d Rather, sexual orientation is almost certainly caused primarily by social and environmental factors.<\/p>\n

The thing is, none of the evidence that is put forward here is actually new or controversial. Most of it is stuff that I covered in my first book<\/a> \u2013 based, for the most part, on research that I found in queer friendly sources. In other words, the LGBTQ academic community has been aware of this data, and has been writing about these concerns, going back for over a decade. This isn\u2019t a shock wave that\u2019s going to topple the entire edifice of queer studies, the data itself is all stuff that every serious scholar involved in the debate has known for a long time. What is controversial is not the data, but the interpretation of it \u2013 and in that respect, the New Atlantis paper is really just another a restatement of the social conservative position.<\/p>\n

For example, the article talks about how sexual orientation is almost impossible to rigorously define, and how it\u2019s a multivalent concept that can encompass a number of different dimensions of attraction. This is something that is not only known and acknowledged in queer academia, it\u2019s well known in the gay community at large because it\u2019s a significant part of everyday queer experience. There\u2019s a reason why, for example, the asexual community has specific terms to describe romantic as opposed to sexual orientation (i.e. a person may be heteroromantic, aromantic, homoromantic or biromantic.) I sometimes joke that if I wanted to give a full account of my own sexual orientation it would be something like \u201cheterosexually-monogamous homoerotic biromantic genderfluid grey-A.\u201d In other words, there are five separate dimensions of sexuality that all play into my personality and behaviour and which, in my own case, don\u2019t exactly line up.<\/p>\n

Obviously this kind of diversity within queer experience makes it very difficult to come up with a definition of homosexuality that can be operationalized (this is, that can be used effectively in studies to define who is, and is not, homosexual.)<\/p>\n

As is fairly typical, the New Atlantis article combines the difficulty with operationalizing homosexuality with the data showing that biological causality is far from demonstrated and certainly not absolute, then throws in statistics about childhood sexual and physical abuse, and finally data on sexual fluidity, to insinuate that sexual orientation is not an element of human personality that is fixed at birth.<\/p>\n

The thing is, the data doesn\u2019t really show this. What the data suggests, quite strongly, is that there are multiple developmental pathways that can cause a person to develop homosexual attractions, homoromantic relationship patterns, homoerotic aesthetic inclinations, and\/or homosexual behaviours. So, for example, a woman with CAH (an intersex condition that results from exposure to androgens in utero) who experiences same-sex attraction, seeks out same-sex partners, and identifies as lesbian is probably lesbian because she has CAH. The \u201cborn that way\u201d narrative is almost certainly fairly accurate in her case. Whereas it is equally unlikely that the \u201cborn that way\u201d narrative is accurate in the case of a feminist who chooses to identify as lesbian for political reasons.<\/p>\n

It seems to me highly unlikely that the same underlying biological or psycho-social causes would motivate a highly aggressive, ultra-masculine gay misogynist who seeks sadistic encounters and always absolutely insists on playing on the active role; a gentle gay man who experiences mild gender dysphoria, loves Disney princesses, and craves a deep romantic relationship with the man of his dreams; and a highly rationalistic gay man with Aspergers who is mostly asexual but about once a year goes to a leatherbar and has anonymous sex. As soon as you start to think about the causes of homosexuality in relation to the kinds of people that you actually encounter in the gay community, it immediately becomes obvious that there is literally no operationalizable definition of homosexuality that would allow you to discover its \u201ccause\u201d because you\u2019re obviously looking at a dimension of human behaviour and experience that can be caused by many different things.<\/p>\n

This means that some gay people may authentically be \u201cborn that way,\u201d while others may develop homosexual desires or behaviours as a result of experiences after birth. What we do know, is that whether the causes are biological or psycho-social there is very little evidence to suggest that individuals can deliberately change their sexuality. Fluidity can, and does, occur naturally in some cases, and obviously (absent psychological compulsions) individuals can make decisions regarding behaviour. But natural fluidity does not, by any means, imply that homosexuality can be voluntarily overcome. In fact, one of the reasons why I seriously doubt the efficacy of treatments to change sexual orientation is that I haven\u2019t seen a credible study where the results of orientation change efforts exceed the rate of fluidity that we find in untreated populations.<\/p>\n

In so far as the New Atlantis paper does put forward a reasonably strong possibility for non-biological causation, it\u2019s in the form of the trauma model. This is a theory, based on the fact that we find elevated rates of early childhood abuse (especially sexual abuse) in LGB populations, which hypothesizes that homosexuality may be the result of such abuse. I don\u2019t find this theory incredible myself. Obviously, since the majority of LGB people are not abuse victims this cannot be said to be \u201cthe cause\u201d any more than biological factors can, but it does seem credible to suppose that some people who experience sexual trauma in childhood might end up suffering damage to their sexual identity. The fact that abuse seems to correlate more with bisexuality than with homosexuality may provide support for this idea.<\/p>\n

But, here\u2019s the thing. If this is the horse that social conservatives want to saddle up in their quest for a non-biological etiology of homosexuality then there are serious, serious problems with the way that social conservatives approach LGBTQ communities. I mean, if traditional Christians honestly believe that the reason people are gay is that they are deeply psychologically traumatized as the result of being sexually abused as children, then the response of traditional Christianity is actually quite horrific. If you believe that someone is suffering from severe, and possibly incurable, trauma you don\u2019t write articles about how sick and perverted they are. You don\u2019t fight against laws that will protect them from further victimization. You don\u2019t fire them from their jobs and refuse to bake cakes for them. In short, you don\u2019t constantly revictimize them for being unable to just make an act of will and be healed of scars from their childhood.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the bottom line is that the causes of homosexuality remain unknown. What the Catechism concluded 25 years ago, that homosexuality\u2019s \u201cgenesis remains largely unexplained\u201d, is still true today. If you read carefully, you\u2019ll find that what the New Atlantis paper actually shows when it comes right down to it, is that we don\u2019t have conclusive evidence in support of any etiological theory \u2013 but that there is considerable evidence that biology does play a role, not in all cases, but certainly for a significant number of LGB people.<\/p>\n

Next we\u2019ll take a look at the questions surrounding mental health in queer communities.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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