Excerpted from "The Complex Interaction of Genes and Environment: A Model for Homosexuality" by Jeffrey Satinover,M.D.
It may be difficult to grasp how genes, environment, and other influences interrelate to one another, how a certain factor may "influence" an outcome but not cause it, and how faith enters in. The scenario below is condensed and hypothetical, but is drawn from the lives of actual people, illustrating how many different factors influence behavior.
Note that the following is just one of the many developmental pathways that can lead to homosexuality, but a common one. In reality, every person's "road" to sexual expression is individual, however many common lengths it may share with those of others.
(1) Our scenario starts with birth. The boy (for example) who one day may go on to struggle with homosexuality is born with certain features that are somewhat more common among homosexuals than in the population at large. Some of these traits might be inherited (genetic), while others might have been caused by the "intrauterine environment" (hormones). What this means is that a youngster without these traits will be somewhat less likely to become homosexual later than someone with them.
What are these traits? If we could identify them precisely, many of them would turn out to be gifts rather than "problems," for example a "sensitive" disposition, a strong creative drive, a keen aesthetic sense. Some of these, such as greater sensitivity, could be related to - or even the same as - physiological traits that also cause trouble, such as a greater-than-average anxiety response to any given stimulus.
No one knows with certainty just what these heritable characteristics are; at present we only have hints. Were we free to study homosexuality properly (uninfluenced by political agendas) we would certainly soon clarify these factors - just as we are doing in less contentious areas. In any case, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the behavior "homosexuality" is itself directly inherited.
(2) From a very early age potentially heritable characteristics mark the boy as "different." He finds himself somewhat shy and uncomfortable with the typical "rough and tumble" of his peers. Perhaps he is more interested in art or in reading - simply because he's smart. But when he later thinks about his early life, he will find it difficult to separate out what in these early behavioral differences came from an inherited temperament and what from the next factor, namely:
(3) That for whatever reason, he recalls a painful "mismatch" between what he needed and longed for and what his father offered him. Perhaps most people would agree that his father was distinctly distant and ineffective; maybe it was just that his own needs were unique enough that his father, a decent man, could never quite find the right way to relate to him. Or perhaps his father really disliked and rejected his son's sensitivity. In any event, the absence of a happy, warm, and intimate closeness with his father led to the boy's pulling away in disappointment, "defensively detaching" in order to protect himself.
But sadly, this pulling away from his father, and from the "masculine" role model he needed, also left him even less able to relate to his male peers. We may contrast this to the boy whose loving father dies, for instance, but who is less vulnerable to later homosexuality. This is because the commonplace dynamic in the pre-homosexual boy is not merely the absence of a father - literally or psychologically - but the psychological defense of the boy against his repeatedly disappointing father. In fact, a youngster who does not form this defense (perhaps because of early-enough therapy, or because there is another important male figure in his life, or due to temperament) is much less likely to become homosexual.
Complementary dynamics involving the boy's mother are also likely to have played an important role. Because people tend to marry partners with "interlocking neuroses," the boy probably found himself in a problematic relationship with both parents.
For all these reasons, when as an adult he looked back on his childhood, the now-homosexual man recalls, "From the beginning I was always different. I never got along well with the boys my age and felt more comfortable around girls." This accurate memory makes his later homosexuality feel convincingly to him as though it was "preprogrammed" from the start.
(4) Although he has "defensively detached" from his father, the young boy still carries silently within him a terrible longing for the warmth, love, and encircling arms of the father he never did nor could have. Early on, he develops intense, nonsexual attachments to older boys he admires - but at a distance, repeating with them the same experience of longing and unavailability. When puberty sets in, sexual urges - which can attach themselves to any object, especially in males - rise to the surface and combine with his already intense need for masculine intimacy and warmth. He begins to develop homosexual crushes. Later he recalls, "My first sexual longings were directed not at girls but at boys. I was never interested in girls."
Psychotherapeutic intervention at this point and earlier can be successful in preventing the development of later homosexuality. Such intervention is aimed in part at helping the boy change his developing effeminate patterns (which derive from a "refusal" to identify with the rejected father), but more critically, it is aimed at teaching his father - if only he will learn - how to become appropriately involved with and related to his son.
(5) As he matures (especially in our culture where early, extramarital sexual experiences are sanctioned and even encouraged), the youngster, now a teen, begins to experiment with homosexual activity. Or alternatively his needs for same-sex closeness may already have been taken advantage of by an older boy or man, who preyed upon him sexually when he was still a child. (Recall the studies that demonstrate the high incidence of sexual abuse in the childhood histories of homosexual men.) Or oppositely, he may avoid such activities out of fear and shame in spite of his attraction to them. In any event, his now-sexualized longings cannot merely be denied, however much he may struggle against them. It would be cruel for us at this point to imply that these longings are a simple matter of "choice."
Indeed, he remembers having spent agonizing months and years trying to deny their existence altogether or pushing them away, to no avail. One can easily imagine how justifiably angry he will later be when someone casually and thoughtlessly accuses him of "choosing" to be homosexual. When he seeks help, he hears one of two messages, and both terrify him; either, "Homosexuals are bad people and you are a bad person for choosing to be homosexual. There is no place for you here and God is going to see to it that you suffer for being so bad;" or "Homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable. You were born that way. Forget about your fairytale picture of getting married and having children and living in a little house with a white picket fence. God made you who you are and he/she destined you for the gay life. Learn to enjoy it."
(6) At some point, he gives in to his deep longings for love and begins to have voluntary homosexual experiences. He finds - possibly to his horror - that these old, deep, painful longings are at least temporarily, and for the first time ever, assuaged.
Although he may also therefore feel intense conflict, he cannot help admit that the relief is immense. This temporary feeling of comfort is so profound - going well beyond the simple sexual pleasure that anyone feels in a less fraught situation - that the experience is powerfully reinforced. However much he may struggle, he finds himself powerfully driven to repeat the experience. And the more he does, the more it is reinforced and the more likely it is he will repeat it yet again, though often with a sense of diminishing returns.
(7) He also discovers that, as for anyone, sexual orgasm is a powerful reliever of distress of all sorts. By engaging in homosexual activities he has already crossed one of the most critical and strongly enforced boundaries of sexual taboo. It is now easy for him to cross other taboo boundaries as well, especially the significantly less severe taboo pertaining to promiscuity. Soon homosexual activity becomes the central organizing factor in his life as he slowly acquires the habit of turning to it regularly - not just because of his original need for fatherly warmth of love, but to relieve anxiety of any sort.
(8) In time, his life becomes even more distressing than for most. Some of this is in fact, as activists claim, because all-too-often he experiences from others a cold lack of sympathy or even open hostility. The only people who seem really to accept him are other gays, and so he forms an even stronger bond with them as a "community." But it is not true, as activists claim, that these are the only or even the major stresses. Much distress is caused simply by his way of life - for example, the medical consequences, AIDS being just one of many (if also the worst). He also lives with the guilt and shame that he inevitably feels over his compulsive, promiscuous behavior; and too over the knowledge that he cannot relate effectively to the opposite sex and is less likely to have a family (a psychological loss for which political campaigns for homosexual marriage, adoption, and inheritance rights can never adequately compensate).
However much activists try to normalize for him these patterns of behavior and the losses they cause, and however expedient it may be for political purposes to hide them from the public-at-large, unless he shuts down huge areas of his emotional life he simply cannot honestly look at himself in this situation and feel content.
And no one - not even a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, sexually insecure "homophobe" - is nearly so hard on him as he is on himself. Furthermore, the self-condemning messages that he struggles with on a daily basis are in fact only reinforced by the bitter self-derogating wit of the very gay culture he has embraced. The activists around him keep saying that it is all caused by the "internalized homophobia" of the surrounding culture, but he knows that it is not.
The stresses of "being gay" lead to more, not less, homosexual behavior. This principle, perhaps surprising to the layman (at least to the layman who has not himself gotten caught up in some pattern, of whatever type) is typical of the compulsive or addictive cycle of self-destructive behavior; wracking guilt, shame, and self-condemnation only causes it to increase. It is not surprising that people therefore turn to denial to rid themselves of these feelings, and he does too. He tells himself, "It is not a problem, therefore there is no reason for me to feel so bad about it."
(9) After wrestling with such guilt and shame for so many years, the boy, now an adult, comes to believe, quite understandably - and because of his denial, needs to believe - "I can't change anyway because the condition is unchangeable." If even for a moment he considers otherwise, immediately arises the painful query, "Then why haven't I...?" and with it returns all the shame and guilt.
Thus, by the time the boy becomes a man, he has pieced together this point of view: "I was always different, always an outsider. I developed crushes on boys from as long as I can remember and the first time I fell in love it was with a boy, not a girl. I had no real interest in members of the opposite sex. Oh, I tried all right - desperately. But my sexual experiences with girls were nothing special. But the first time I had homosexual sex it just 'felt right.' So it makes perfect sense to me that homosexuality is genetic. I've tried to change - God knows how long I struggled - and I just can't. That's because it's not changeable. Finally, I stopped struggling and just accepted myself the way I am."
(10) Social attitudes toward homosexuality will play a role in making it more or less likely that the man will adopt an "inborn and unchangeable" perspective, and at what point in his development. It is obvious that a widely shared and propagated worldview that normalizes homosexuality will increase the likelihood of his adopting such beliefs, and at an earlier age. But it is perhaps less obvious - it follows from what we have discussed above - that ridicule, rejection, and harshly punitive condemnation of him as a person will be just as likely (if not more likely) to drive him into the same position.
(11) If he maintains his desire for a traditional family life, the man may continue to struggle against his "second nature." Depending on whom he meets, he may remain trapped between straight condemnation and gay activism, both in secular institutions and in religious ones. The most important message he needs to hear is that "healing is possible."
(12) If he enters the path to healing, he will find that the road is long and difficult - but extraordinarily fulfilling. The course to full restoration of heterosexuality typically lasts longer than the average American marriage - which should be understood as an index of how broken all relationships are today.
From the secular therapies he will come to understand what the true nature of his longings are, that they are not really about sex, and that he is not defined by his sexual appetites. In such a setting, he will very possibly learn how to turn aright to other men to gain from them a genuine, nonsexualized masculine comradeship and intimacy; and how to relate aright to woman, as friend, lover, life's companion, and, God willing, mother of his children.
Of course the old wounds will not simply disappear, and later in times of great distress the old paths of escape will beckon. But the claim that this means he is therefore "really" a homosexual and unchanged is a lie. For as he lives a new life of ever-growing honesty, and cultivates genuine intimacy with the woman of his heart, the new patterns will grow ever stronger and the old ones engraved in the synapses of his brain ever weaker.
In time, knowing that they really have little to do with sex, he will even come to respect and put to good use what faint stirrings remain of the old urges. They will be for him a kind of storm-warning, a signal that something is out of order in his house, that some old pattern of longing and rejection and defense is being activated. And he will find that no sooner does he set his house in order that indeed the old urges once again abate. In his relations to others - as friend, husband, professional - he will now have a special gift. What was once a curse will have become a blessing, to himself and to others.
“Hahaha… lo ga tau yee. PKI aja dibantai ama militer ampe abis. Apalagi cuma hetero!”
Hahahahaaa… Nice quote.
Gw juga pernah nulis artikel serupa di blog gw jg waktu gw ngomentarin film “Brokeback Mountain”.
Intinya, klo masalah hak/asasi (sebagai manusia), gw pasti jamin dan gw ga akan/ga pernah menyisihkan kaum gay. Cuman hak asasi berkeluarga/menikah yg gw TOLAK KERAS! Bukan dgn latar belakang agama. Tp latar belakang manusia MESTI berketurunan sebagai ketentuan evolusi.
Trus ada argumen “suatu saat manusia mempunyai hak utk tidak mempunyai keturunan”. Itu artinya ada aturan yg mesti diamandemen. Kta gw mah ENGGAK! Itu bunuh diri jek. Nah, siapa yg setuju dgn bunuh diri? Ini beda banget ame eutanasia. Hehehehe…
Rukun yee…
Gay, sebagaimana makhluk hidup lainnya, tentu punya hak untuk hidup. Tapi kalau kemudian lantas dilanjutkan menjadi hak untuk mempromosikan gaya hidupnya, ini sudah tidak benar.
Secara alami, homoseksualitas jelas adalah penyimpangan.
Saya cerita sedikit; ada kawan saya yang gay. Tapi karena tekadnya kuat untuk berubah, maka dia bisa menikah dengan wanita. btw; kebetulan istrinya juga rada tomboy sih hehehe
Saat ini anak-anak mereka justru sudah lebih banyak daripada kebanyakan pasangan lainnya. Alhamdulillah mereka, setahu saya dan pengamatan kawan2 yang lain, hidup dengan bahagia.
Kalau gay dipromosikan, takutnya yang tidak gay pun jadi terjerumus.
Lha yang gay saja bisa berubah jadi straight, tentu kebalikannya pun bisa saya kira.
Tapi yang paling vital adalah agar kita dapat merangkul mereka. Jangan dimusuhi !
Dalam kasus kawan saya diatas, walaupun terpergok basah oleh saya (kaget banget saya mas, hehehe), saya bertindak seperti biasa saja.
Saya tetap menjadi kawannya, saya bantu jika dia ada masalah, saya beri saran kalau dia meminta, memberikan dukungan ketika dia sedang stress, dst. Sedikit2 juga memberikan nasehat2 seputar pernikahan jika sedang ada masalah.
Alhamdulillah sampai sekarang perkembangannya terus semakin bagus (tendensi gay nya terus berkurang).
Summary; gaya hidup gay please jangan dipromosikan. Nanti malah jadi menjerumuskan yang sebetulnya bukan gay.
Dan jika kita tahu ada kenalan kita yang gay - jangan dikucilkan ! Rangkul dan dukung mereka dalam usahanya untuk menjadi semakin baik.
btw; nice blog, artikel2nya walaupun baru sedikit tapi bagus-bagus ! saya paling suka yang tentang free-pitch, good stuff.
Salam kenal dari saya.
halo..
salam kenal
ada benernya juga sih untuk ga mempromosikan gaya hidup gay.
kadang gw juga males gaya penyiar radio jaman skg, yang malah gayish.. atau presenter di tivi-tivi yang dipikirnya makin centil makin banyak job..
tapi sebenernya buat kalangan gay sendiri. terutama temen-temen gay yang udah bisa menrima diri bahwa, “yess, i’m gay, and there’s nothing i (nor u) could do about it,”
bukan status orientasi mereka sebagay gay yang ingin mereka tunjukkan pada masyarakat. tapi, gay people lebih ingin membuktikan, “i’ve got something more for u to see, despite my sexual orientation. so please don’t you close your eyes on that”
maka di sana kaum gay butuh kesempatan yang sama. dalam bidang apapun, untuk bisa menunjukkan prestasi mereka.
saya bersyukur sebenernya sistem kita sudah mendukung persamaan hak itu. (atau mungkin sebenarnya belum pernah menyentuh pengaturan hak kaum gay)sehingga gay people masih bisa menunjukkan kebiasaanya di berbagai kesempatan.
sayang pandangan negatif masyarakat terasa lebih kuat, sehingga banyak gay people malah menutup diri, dan tidak bisa berkembang karena alasan takut tidak diterima masyarakat.
hampir sama kaya manusia sama ular. semua punya cara masing2 untuk mempertahankan diri. manusia takut dengan ular terus bilang ular itu jahat karena bisa melukai. sementara ular cenderung malas bertemu dengan manusia.
sayangnya setiap manusia bertemu dengan ular, selalu berusaha membunuh ular. atau kabur sejauh mungkin. hal ini karena pemahaman yang sudah lama ditanamkan pada diri manusia. bahwa ular adalah musuh.
sehingga ular terpaksa selalu bersikap agresif. meski hanya untuk mempertahankan diri.
padahal kalo manusia bisa menyesuaikan diri dengan ular tersebut. atau setidaknya tidak saling mengganggu. kontak yang disertai dengan kekerasan antara ular dan manusia, akan lebih sedikit terjadi.
well cukup dengan cerita manusia ularnya
yang sekali lagi pengen saya tekankan. ngga pernah ada niat gay people untuk menyebarkan orientasi seksualnya. atau juga promosi. mereka ngga pernah sampai minta diadakan pride parade kaya di luar2 sana kok.
gay people cuman ingin lebih diterima. lebih bisa saling menyesuaikan. dan tidak dipandang sebelah mata ketika kamu tau orientasi seksualnya
they have more than that..
and it’s good
more about gay life
www.queercurious.blogspot.com
(bukan promosi, sekali lagi. hanya sekedar berbagi pendapat)