Psychology On Homosexuality

Psychology on Homosexuality

One of the deeply debated topics in psychology is homosexuality, some psychologists believe that it's genetic and some believe that it is a learned sexual orientation. In my personal opinion, I think that homosexuals are born with that sexual orientation. I believe that a homosexual might not always have fully known they were gay but some part of them always did know. I strongly disagree with the psychologists who say that homosexuality is learned; you just don't go and learn sexual orientation like you learn something in school. There are also some psychologists who believe that homosexuality is a psychological disorder. I believe that this too is wrong, just because someone likes a person of the same sex does not make him or her mentally ill.

Homosexuality has been reported in all societies throughout recorded history (carrier, 1980; Ford & Beach, 1951). Kinsey and his colleagues thought that 4% of their male respondents from their survey, had had homosexual intentions throughout their life, and that 2-3% of the females participants had been in some or exclusive lesbian relationships. In another survey, which is known for being very reliable, Laumann and others (1994) stated that the percentages of people who said to be homosexual or bisexual were 2.8% men and 1.4% women. But 5.3% of men and 3.5% of women said that they had had sexual experience with the same sex only about once since puberty. And even bigger percentages of the people surveyed-10% of men and 9% of women-said that they had had same sex desires. Other survey suggests that the exact measure of the prevalence of homosexuality might still be missing something. For one thing, a purely homosexual orientation appears to be rare. For instance, Sell and his associates (1995) rethought the results of an 1988 Harris Poll to include homosexual attraction and behavior. They learned that 6% of the males and 3-4% of the women participants identified themselves as homosexual in both attraction and behavior. But only 1% of these poll participants claimed to have no sexual contact at all with the opposite sex in the past 5 years. Moreover, demographic studies state that homosexuality is not equally prevalent in all races or in all places. College educated white American men who live in big cities are most likely to identify themselves as being homosexual then are other men in other groups. Some studies suggest that prevalence of homosexuality among these men might be as high as 14% (Binson et al., 1995). In almost all prevalence studies suggest that homosexuality is more common in men then in women. However, these surveys did not allow participants to give anonymous answers to questions about sexual orientation. It has been suggested that if anonymous answers to the questions had been permitted, the prevalence figures for homosexual and bisexual orientation would have been higher (Bullough, 1995). In fact, studies that have allowed anonymous responding estimate the percentage of homosexual people in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe at between 5 and 15 percent (Bagley & Tremblay, 1998; Diamond, 1993; Rogers & Turner, 1991; Sell, Wells, & Wypij, 1995).

Psychologists still debate whether sexual orientation is genetic or is brought about by learning and experience. Even though Freud argued that homosexuality is results from early childhood experiences (Mitchell, 2002), many psychologists believe that genetic factors determine sexual orientation (Bailey & Pillard, 1994; Isay, 1989; LeVay, 1993). Still others believe in the interaction theory, which states that both nature and nurture