Human Homosexuality Research Articles

HUMAN SOCIOBIOLOGY

Abstract. Sociobiology is the scientific study of why organisms sometimes associate with other organisms. This paper surveys recent research on the reasons for altruism and aggression. It also considers the contributions an individual's genes and its environment make to its behavior, and it reviews functional theories for the evolution of cannibalism, polygamy, homosexuality, and infanticide in humans and other animals. Finally mention is made of the limited and generally negative attitude of sociobiology to religion.

Are there gay genes? Sociobiology and homosexuality.

This paper considers recent hypotheses prepared by sociobiologists purportedly giving Darwinian evolutionary explanations of human homosexuality. Four models are considered: balanced superior heterozygote fitness, kin selection, parental manipulation, and homosexuality as a maladaptive side effect of intensive natural selection for superior male heterosexual behavior. The evidence for the models is reviewed, and their philosophical adequacy is considered in some depth. It is argued that although the models pass obvious methodological hurdles and meet other criteria, as yet, the evidence for their applicability is indecisive.

Sex hormones and female homosexuality: a critical examination.

To ascertain the validity of hormonal theories of human homosexuality, which are based on animal research, this article reviews psychoendocrine data on lesbian and transsexual women. Sex hormone levels were found to be normal in the majority of homosexual women, but about a third of the subjects studied had elevated androgen levels. In women with prenatal androgen excess, heterosexuality appears to be more frequent than bisexuality, and exclusive homosexuality is rare. Two recent reports suggest abnormalities of the neuroendocrine regulation of LH secretion in female transsexuals. Clearly, prenatal or postpubertal hormone levels do not determine the development of sexual orientation, but a facilitating neuroendocrine predisposition cannot be ruled out at present.

Sex hormones and male homosexuality in comparative perspective

Animal research has demonstrated the modifiability of sex-dimorphic mating behavior by hormone and brain manipulation, especially in subprimate mammals, and has led to radical attempts at treating human homosexuality by psychosurgery and to the suggestion of preventing homosexuality by prenatal hormone manipulation. This article reviews psychoendocrine studies of human homosexuality — the effects of hormone treatments on sexual orientation, the association of clinical endocrine syndromes with homosexuality, sex hormone measurements in homosexual subjects, and the issue of prenatal endocrine influences on human sexual orientation. The available studies, often deficient in methodology, have produced conflicting and largely negative results as to a hormonal theory of human homosexuality. Unfortunately, there is hardly any overlap between psychoendocrine studies on sexual orientation in man and on sex-dimorphic mating behavior in subhuman mammals that would allow systematic comparisons. A major alternate theory of human homosexuality has been derived from learning theory, and this position has been strengthened by the recent development of partially successful behavior therapy approaches to the change of sexual orientation. There is currently a lack of animal experimentation that could assist in formulating a learning-based etiological theory of human homosexuality. Since the influence of hormones relative to learning on sexual behavior appears to diminish along the evolutionary scale, animal models need to include manipulation of both hormonal and learning conditions.

Homosexuality: Changes on the Way

At the beginning of this century, most experts believed homosexuality a strictly constitutional disorder. Since it was possible to induce sexual aberrations in animals by implanting sex glands from animals of the opposite sex, homosexuality in humans was likewise regarded as a glandular imbalance. As recently as 1952, Dr. Franz Kallman published a study of male homosexual twins, in which he reported that twins born from a single zygote were significantly more similar in their patterns of homosexual behavior than were fraternal twins. His study has been criticized, but not refuted; no one else has undertaken a comparable study. Dr. Kallman's findings, nevertheless, do not imply that a constitutional factor is a prerequisite to the development of homosexuality. Generally, scientists interpret such evidence to mean that an inherited physical disposition can play a role in the cultural shaping of a homosexual. If a boy happens to look effeminate, or a girl happens to look masculine, says Dr. John Adams of the National Institute of Mental Health in Chevy Chase, Md., may be treated as if they were homosexual, and of course the way they are treated will influence their It is now orthodox to believe that homosexuality is a mental rather than a physical disease. Freud defined mental health partly in terms of normal sexual functioning; abnormal sexuality was by definition evidence of emotional sickness. The psychological investigation of homosexuals would, he felt, invariably uncover unrealistic fears and anxieties originating in early childhood experiences, which blocked heterosexual growth. The most exhaustive psychiatric survey of homosexuals that has so far been performed was done by Dr. Irving Bieber and other members of the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts between 1952 and 1957. It supports the Freudian notion of homosexuality as a mental illness. The families of children who later became homosexuals were strikingly different from normal families, according to the survey. The mothers of homosexual sons managed to be seductive and antisexual at the same time; they made confidants of their sons and openly preferred them to their husbands, while simultaneously crushing any signs of ordinary masculine independence. The fathers of male homosexuals either ignored their sons or competed with them for the mothers' affections, the result naturally being to discourage the children from identifying with their fathers. The survey concluded that homosexuals in truth were latent heterosexuals, whose parents had frightened them away from the ordinary course of development. The Freudian hypothesis, nevertheless, remains unproved. The Bieber survey included only 106 male homosexuals, all from the New York area. The survey questionnaires were filled out, not by the homosexuals, but by When homosexuals picketed the White House recently, passersby seemed to regard the demonstration as a joke.