Homosexuality: The Untold Story — The phantom gene

Beginning here, The Catholic Standard & Times will publish a six-part series that will focus exclusively on the untold side of this issue. We will explore what is known to the medical, social, scientific and religious communities about homosexuality, giving our readers and their loved ones an opportunity to make an intelligent and fully informed choice about their lifestyle.

Professor Janis Price of DePauw University, Indiana, placed issues of a magazine on a table in the back of her classroom. One of her students was offended by an article that was critical of how homosexuality was being handled in public schools and complained to the administration. Price was accused of providing her students with intolerant material. She was suspended and her salary cut by 25 percent. Albert Buonanno, a Christian employee of AT&T Broadband, was fired in February 2004 for refusing to go along with a mandatory company policy demanding acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. Rolf Szabo lost his job at Eastman Kodak after he refused to go along with the company's "diversity" program, which required he give support to homosexuals in the work place who wanted to come out. Motorola actively promotes a similar agenda through mandatory "homophobia" workshops and homosexual sex-ed courses. One employee told author David Limbaugh that "this push is causing a great deal of tension among employees and the 'quiet anger' of some who disapprove of the homosexual lifestyle because of their religious beliefs." Episodes such as these are happening by the hundreds across America, every day of the week. According to medical, social science and especially legal experts, what is being called "diversity" is actually a dangerous new movement by a small group of activists to make the homosexual lifestyle appear as normal and healthy as the heterosexual lifestyle, even if that means deliberately hiding any information to the contrary. "The media or major health organizations communicate none of the serious medical and psychiatric problems associated with homosexuality," said Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, a psychiatrist from West Conshohocken, who has practiced child and adult psychiatry for more than 20 years. For instance, a 1997 Canadian study done in Vancouver shows the life span of gay men to be similar to what it was in 1871. The study estimates that one-half of all gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 will not reach their 65th birthday. Two recent studies published in the American Medical Association Archives of General Psychiatry confirm the existence of a strong link between homosexuality and suicide, as well as other mental and emotional problems. Forty percent of people with same-sex attraction were sexually abused as children. Relationship violence is as high as 44 percent among gay men and 55 percent among lesbian couples. "This is the truth that no one will speak," said Fitzgibbons, "This is the truth that is not spoken in any of the diversity weeks they have in colleges or high schools. Students are made to think the homosexual lifestyle is exactly the same as the heterosexual lifestyle and all the major research coming out today shows that it's not the same. ? But they are specifically choosing to ignore this research because the issue is political correctness, not science." Fitzgibbons recently served as an expert witnesses in a case involving an Ann Arbor Michigan high school student whose Christian viewpoint was deliberately excluded from the schools "Diversity Week" celebration. Part of the week's festivities involved a panel of six clerics from different denominations who were assembled for a discussion about "Homosexuality and Religion." No one on the panel represented the Judeo-Christian view of homosexual relations. Betsy Hanson, an 18-year-old Roman Catholic student, requested that a representative of the Catholic Church be part of the panel. Her request was denied by school officials who claimed her religious views would convey a negative message and would "water-down" the positive religious message that they wanted to convey. Hanson and her mother decided to sue and Detroit Federal Judge Gerald Rosen ruled in their favor. "Isn't this cultural hegemony, where you're only going to present one view to the exclusion of others?" the judge demanded of the school's attorneys. "Don't you think that smacks of government and religious totalitarianism? Isn't that how we got to book-burning in Nazi Germany back in the 1930s?" Fitzgibbons believes schools and school psychologists should be held liable when they actively promote the homosexual lifestyle while withholding vital information about mental and physical risks. "I've dealt with parents whose children were ushered into the gay lifestyle in college who are determined that if their child acquires AIDS, they plan to bring litigation against those universities. If a child was ushered into the lifestyle by the faculty at a school, and were never presented with the truth about the medical and psychological dangers associated with homosexuality, then they should be held liable." Although doctors are obligated to provide informed consent to their patients, educators are not, he said. However, in schools where a school psychologist is involved in these groups, then Fitzgibbons said they have the requirement to provide informed consent about the dangers of the lifestyle. "If they don't, and a child experiences some of the medical illnesses that are so highly prevalent, particularly among men involved in same-sex relationships, that school psychologist is liable, the principal is liable and the school superintendent is liable. Just as when a doctor makes a mistake at a hospital, the hospital is also liable." Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, has been sending out letters to 2,500 schools across the country who are relying on the "safe-school" programs devised by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network warning them of potential legal liabilities for the tort of negligence "if it is proven that homosexual activist organizations were granted access to students under the school's responsibility and that students suffered physical or mental harm. Under the right circumstances, state authorities could also bring criminal proceedings," he writes, citing Ohio Revised Code 2907.04, 2919.22 and 2919.24. Beginning here, The Catholic Standard & Times will publish a six-part series that will focus exclusively on the untold side of this issue. We will explore what is known to the medical, social, scientific and religious communities about homosexuality, giving our readers and their loved ones an opportunity to make an intelligent and fully informed choice about their lifestyle. Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615

Homosexuality: The Untold Story ? The phantom gene
Part 1 of 6

For instance, consider the gay gene. Almost everyone believes it exists. Homosexuals were "born that way," right?

Not according to the science. Once inside the venerated halls of disciplined study, one discovers the radical truth ? there is no gay gene.

However, in the absence of actual discovery, newspaper headlines frequently allude to the unfound gene in ways that make it sound real. Consider the October, 2003 Reuters headlines "Sexual Identity Hard-Wired by Genetics." The title sounds much more convincing than the actual facts, even though the article opens with the statement, "Sexual identity is wired into the genes, which discounts the concept that homosexuality and transgender sexuality is a choice. ?" Not until one reads the article does one realize that the headline and opening sentence have absolutely nothing to do with the study being reported.

In reality, the story is about a University of California, Los Angeles, study of the developmental differences between male and female brains. According to Ray Waller of the National Association for Research and Therapy on Homosexuality (NARTH) the study did nothing more than confirm what had already been known to science, that genes play a role in creating differences between male and female brains. The lead researcher, Dr. Eric Valain, said, "This is not about finding the gay gene." In fact, the word homosexuality is not even mentioned in the study.

News services echoed Reuters, most of them omitting one of the most salient facts about the study ? it was conducted on mice.

"There is no animal model that accurately reflects human sexuality," said Dr. A. Dean Byrd of NARTH. "Pigs don't date, ducks don't go to church, and mice don't fall in love."

Where rumors start, the truth departs, but it is not irretrievable.

The truth about the search for the gay gene begins in 1991 at the Salk Institute in San Diego with a scientist named Simon LeVay. LeVay reported that a group of neurons in the hypothalamic region of the human brain appeared to be twice as large in heterosexual men than in homosexual men.

The hypothalamus is a part of the brain involved in the regulation of sexual behavior in non-human primates. Other studies showed that these neurons were larger in men than women. For this reason, LeVay concluded that sexual orientation had a biological basis.

The study, however, had three major flaws that would later completely discredit it.

First, LeVay claimed to have been comparing the brains of 19 homosexual men and 16 heterosexual men. However, he was never able to confirm that all of the heterosexual men were indeed heterosexual. Six had died of AIDS, a disease whose transmission is often associated with homosexual behavior. Second, all the brain samples he took from homosexual men were taken from men who had died of AIDS, which raises the question whether the size of the neurons was related to AIDS. Third, LeVay concluded that the size difference in neurons explained homosexuality, but this was not a legitimate conclusion. Homosexual behavior may have been the cause, rather than the effect of the different in neuron size.

As widely as this study was publicized, there was not a peep about the paper LeVay recently published wherein he backs away from his hoped-for hypothesis that science can explain homosexuality.

Appearing in the Spanish journal, Reverso, LeVay admitted, "Science cannot tell us what constitutes core identity." In other words, it can't tell us who we are, a homosexual or a heterosexual.

Another study was done in 1991 by John M. Bailey and Richard C. Pillard and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry (48: 1089-1096) determining a genetic cause for homosexuality after finding it was more likely for identical twins to both be homosexual than it was for fraternal or adopted brothers.

The study found that 29 of 56 pairs (52 percent) of the identical twins were both homosexual; 12 of 54 of the fraternal twins were both homosexual and six of 57 of adopted twins were both homosexual.

Again, problems with the study arise. First, if homosexuality is genetically determined, why didn't all of the identical twins share the same sexual orientation. How does one explain the 48 percent who did not?

How valid could the study be, when it was determined that the test sample was not random.

Researchers could not rule out the fact that they had recruited twins who were both gay by advertising in homosexual newspapers and magazines rather than from material used by the general public.

In the year 2000, Bailey and his colleagues repeated the experiment, but with twins recruited from the Australian Twin Registry. This time, only 20 percent of the twins shared the same homosexual orientation, rather than the more convincing 52 percent.

The last and most publicized study was published by Dean Hamer, et al, at the National Institute of Health. Forty pairs of homosexual brothers were studied. It was found that some cases of homosexuality could be linked to a specific region on the human X chromosome inherited from the mother. This study was criticized and Hamer was actually under investigation for alleged fraud, but was eventually cleared of the charges. More importantly, no one has been able to replicate the study.

Assuming that there is a gay gene, it would therefore be logical to conclude that the homosexual condition is irreversible. Acting on this premise, Dr. Robert L. Spitzer of Columbia University, a champion of gay activism, pioneered a successful movement to have homosexuality removed from the psychiatric manual of mental disorders in 1973.

Spitzer himself seems to have changed his mind and published a new study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior (Vol. 32, No. 5, Oct. 2003, pp 403-417). His new study surveyed 200 respondents (143 male and 57 female). After therapy, 61 percent of the men and 44 percent of the women reported a marked changed toward heterosexual attraction that lasted at least five years.

In Spitzer's conclusions, he writes, "The mental health profession should stop moving in the direction of banning therapy that has, as a goal, a change in sexual orientation."

He discounts those who believe therapy to reverse same-sex attraction is actually harmful to the individual. "To the contrary," he writes, "they reported that it was helpful in a variety of ways beyond changing sexual orientation itself." For this reason, he urged the American Psychiatric Association to stop discouraging reorientation therapy, while encouraging treatments that affirm the gay-identity in people.

It's important that people understand that the gay gene remains a phantom. It's important to those who believe they have the "gene" and, therefore, cannot change. It's also important to the American public, which is far more likely to give in to demands for change in law and religious teaching if they believe sexual attraction is genetically determined and unchangeable.

Homosexuality: The Untold Story

Part 1 of 6: The Phantom Gene

Part 2 of 6: Known causes of same-sex attraction

Part 3 of 6: Health risks of the homosexual lifestyle

Part 4 of 6: Treatment and prevention

Part 5 of 6: Gay Marriage: Who's minding the children

Part 6 of 6: In the Image of God: Church Teaching on Human Sexuality

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Susan Brinkmann. "Homosexuality: The Untold Story ? The phantom gene." Catholic Standard & Times (May-June, 2004).

This article is reprinted with permission of the author and Catholic Standard & Times.

THE AUTHOR

Susan Brinkmann is a correspondent with the Catholic Standard & Times.

Copyright © 2004 Catholic Standard & Times