New Trends in the Science of Sexual Orientation

Abstract

Judith M. GlassgoldScientific research has played a crucial role in the history of the psychology of sexual orientation. Decades of scientificresearch starting with the path breaking work of Hooker (1957) and culminating in numerous studies through the 1970sand early 1980s (Gonsiorek, 1982) established that same-sex sexual orientation was a normal variant of humanbehavior. This research helped to end the stigma surrounding homosexual and bisexual orientations. These results werecited by the American Psychiatric Association (1973; “Panelists Recount Events,” 1998) as empirical evidence for theremoval of homosexuality in the