In 2016 two different reports containing their sources and a huge bibliography of primary sources on Gender Identity and Sexual Identity/Orientation were released. Both pointed to a lot of the same documentation and both came to the same conclusion. One was written by Lesbian Psychologist Dr. Lisa Diamond and was simply ignored and buried in the dustbin of 2016 history. The other one saying basically the same thing that orientation/identity is not stable for most same sex behaving in humans was vilified. Both of these studies again used a lot of the same sources and came to the same conclusions, but, one was not misscharacterized and called a hate study.
I am referring to The New Atlantis report on Sexual and Gender Identity. Which was lambasted as being a hate screed by people whom never even read the study and did not even know what it said. Things like that it supported the ex-gay movement were stated which is patently false. No where in the entire study does it say people should attempt to will the changes it finds in peoples orientations/identities and fluidity. In fact, it goes out of its way to say there is no evidence any of the changes were willed through external use of therapy. Only that it happens and it is not talked about by sexuality scientists among the popular press.
It links in its bibliography the works of openly non-heterosexuals whose studies they take from in their work. It is not taken from studies from people like NARTH or the likes of Exodus International. It is taken from the actual data on hand for both sexuality and gender identity. The fact is that sexuality for many people changes over time. Most same sex behavior is not the same as same sex identity. Most people whom were with same sex individuals when younger are not in fact homosexual in the exclusive definition. Most people are not gay, even if they engage in same sex behavior. Most people do have some capacity to go either way and bat for either team without any sort of mental incongruity whom experience same sex desires.
The vast majority of humans are some form of heterosexual from somewhat to exclusive. Most humans do not exclusively get aroused only by the same sex. Bisexuality is this very phenomenon in action. It is the combination of some form of heterosexual reproductive possibility combined with a differing level of homosexual non-reproductive possibility under differing environmental conditions, cultures, and, relationship prospects. Most LGBTQ people are in fact this sort of human and not exclusively LG or Q if Q means same sex desiring. In fact, most people that inhibit the B are mostly Straight as well. It is unlikely even if one identifies as Bisexual to really be as homosexual tending as heterosexual tending. Most bisexuals are not 50/50 at all in this regard. Again this does not excuse people whom support Conversion Therapies. It is simply a matter of human demographics and facts/data.
This is not a condemnation of people whom are exclusively gay at all. This is simply stating the facts and data as they exist. A certain percentage albeit quite small of the LGBTQ are indeed lifelong no heterosexuality possible homosexuals. However, those are the vast minority of the LGBTQ group. This does not mean one should be forced to change if one COULD play for either team and ends up playing for the same sex due to something stopping them from acting on their heterosexual possibility if they go both ways either. This is simply a report of all the data and comes to the same conclusion that Lisa Diamond does. The "Born This Way" argument and "Gay Gene" argument is flawed because most LGBTQ people are not "determined to be gay or lesbian or even bisexual.. some form of heterosexuality is the most stable form of identity or orientation over time in a range." Again, this is not something willed through therapy it is a natural change and the precise mechanisms are as yet unknown.
I am not here saying because some form of of heterosexual ranging from equally as much as homosexual all the way up to completely heterosexual is the norm for people that have dabbled on the same sex team one should go out there and persuade their favorite gay to try being straight for a while. No, you should ABSOLUTELY NOT pressure anyone into a manipulated sex act for sake of a possible thing that might be for them. However, if your favorite gay decides completely without pressure in a very much not anti-gay open society to try on the vag and actually get off on it more than the D and switches teams out of nowhere due to a discovered locked away hetero-possibility of sexual flexibility you should equally not pressure him to rejoin the gay team. I am arguing for a which team you are on and why does not fucking matter worldview. Nature or Nurture or both.
I am arguing for a my bedroom is my business and why are you even assuming anything about what makes my junk tingle based on stereotypes view. I am arguing for a it does not matter if genes play a role when it comes to freedom of sexual activity between consenting adults view. It could come to pass a Gay Gene does not even exist and that Womb environment plays a role in biological sex differences, but, not really lack of heterosexuality as such. This would make no difference on the underlying moral argument for same sex equality of rights or at least it should not. This report is not anti gay at all and I present the Preface as proof quoted below.
Readers wondering about this report’s synthesis of research from so many different fields may wish to know a little about its lead author. I am a full-time academic involved in all aspects of teaching, research, and professional service. I am a biostatistician and epidemiologist who focuses on the design, analysis, and interpretation of experimental and observational data in public health and medicine, particularly when the data are complex in terms of underlying scientific issues. I am a research physician, having trained in medicine and psychiatry in the U.K. and received the British equivalent (M.B.) to the American M.D. I have never practiced medicine (including psychiatry) in the United States or abroad. I have testified in dozens of federal and state legal proceedings and regulatory hearings, in most cases reviewing scientific literature to clarify the issues under examination. I strongly support equality and oppose discrimination for the LGBT community, and I have testified on their behalf as a statistical expert.
I have been published in many top-tier peer-reviewed journals (including The Annals of Statistics, Biometrics, and American Journal of Political Science) and have reviewed hundreds of manuscripts submitted for publication to many of the major medical, statistical, and epidemiological journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and American Journal of Public Health).
I am currently a scholar in residence in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University. Up until July 1, 2016, I also held part-time faculty appointments at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and School of Medicine, and at the Mayo Clinic.
A
n undertaking as ambitious as this report would not be possible without the counsel and advice of many gifted scholars and editors. I am grateful for the generous help of Laura E. Harrington, M.D., M.S., a psychiatrist with extensive training in internal medicine and neuroimmunology, whose clinical practice focuses on women in life transition, including affirmative treatment and therapy for the LGBT community. She contributed to the entire report, particularly lending her expertise to the sections on endocrinology and brain research. I am indebted also to Bentley J. Hanish, B.S., a young geneticist who expects to graduate medical school in 2021 with an M.D./Ph.D. in psychiatric epidemiology. He contributed to the entire report, particularly to those sections that concern genetics.
I
dedicate my work on this report, first, to the LGBT community, which bears a disproportionate rate of mental health problems compared to the population as a whole. We must find ways to relieve their suffering.
As citizens, scholars, and clinicians concerned with the problems facing LGBT people, we should not be dogmatically committed to any particular views about the nature of sexuality or gender identity; rather, we should be guided first and foremost by the needs of struggling patients, and we should seek with open minds for ways to help them lead meaningful, dignified lives.
For more from the report showing how not ant-LGBTQ it really is one need only look at what the FAQ says on these matters.
1. Does the report argue that being gay or transgender is a choice?
No. The report explicitly states that “sexual orientation is not a choice,” but demonstrates that, according to currently available scientific research, “biological factors cannot provide a complete explanation” for sexual orientation and argues that “environmental and experiential factors may also play an important role.” The report does not argue that gender identity is chosen, but notes that “almost nothing is well understood when we seek biological explanations for what causes some individuals to state that their gender does not match their biological sex.”
No. The report shows that the “born that way” hypothesis is not supported by scientific evidence. Observing that something has not been proved true is not the same as demonstrating that it is false. What is false is the claim that the “born that way” hypothesis is supported by science.
No. The report argues that “sexual orientation may be quite fluid over the life course for some people” and observes that “only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.” The report does not advocate trying to change — or confirm — a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through therapy. The report’s authors are especially wary of medical interventions directed at children.
The report argues strongly for better addressing the mental health problems (anxiety, depression, suicide) and behavioral and social problems (substance abuse, intimate partner violence) that non-heterosexual and transgender populations experience at much higher rates than the general population.
4. The report questions the meaning of “sexual orientation” and related terms. Doesn’t the American Psychological Association provide a definition?
The report includes an extensive discussion (see pages 15 to 25) of the APA’s definition of “sexual orientation” and the lack of consistency in the way this and related terms have been used in scientific studies. Reading a range of studies in this field will show that this ambiguity presents a significant challenge for research design and interpretation. The report quotes two respected scholars, Lisa M. Diamond and Ritch C. Savin-Williams, on this point:
The more carefully researchers map these constellations — differentiating, for example, between gender identity and sexual identity, desire and behavior, sexual versus affectionate feelings, early-appearing versus late-appearing attractions and fantasies, or social identifications and sexual profiles — the more complicated the picture becomes because few individuals report uniform inter-correlations among these domains.
Lisa Diamond has also observed that “there is currently no scientific or popular consensus on the exact constellation of experiences that definitively ‘qualify’ an individual as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.”
No. Throughout the report, Drs. Mayer and McHugh take care to describe and explain the evidence on all sides of the questions they discuss. At the beginning of Part Two, they explain their methodology in reviewing the scientific literature related to mental health outcomes and social stress:
[E]ach section begins by summarizing the most extensive and reliable meta-analyses — papers that compile and analyze the statistical data from the published research literature. For some areas of research, no comprehensive meta-analyses have been conducted, and in these areas we rely on review articles that summarize the research literature without going into quantitative analyses of published data.... [W]e also discuss a few select studies that are of particular value because of their methodology, sample size, controls for confounding factors, or ways in which concepts such as heterosexuality or homosexuality are operationalized; and we discuss key studies published after the meta-analyses or review articles were published.
“Sexuality and Gender” is 143 pages long and cites nearly 200 peer-reviewed studies in 373 notes. Nevertheless, no scientific paper can address every previous study in its field, and no methodology for selecting studies is beyond criticism. Drs. Mayer and McHugh “readily acknowledge that this report is neither an exhaustive analysis of the subjects it addresses nor the last word on them.” Readers who are able to cite specific studies not examined in the report, and to explain why those studies should have been included, will make positive contributions to the public discourse.
6. Haven’t several critics cited a recent paper by J. Michael Bailey that should have been included?
The authors of “Sexuality and Gender” sought to offer an up-to-date review of the scientific literature, and included seven papers from 2015 and four from 2016. The paper by Professor Bailey and his colleagues, the publication date of which is September 2016, became available online on April 25, 2016, and reached the authors and editors of The New Atlantis report too late to be included.
One critic has asserted that the publication of “Sexuality and Gender” should have been delayed to allow time to include the Bailey paper. But any fair-minded scholar will acknowledge that to pause in the preparation of a scientific paper, especially at the end, every time another relevant article becomes available, would mean never finishing. (The Bailey paper, for instance, cites no peer-reviewed articles from 2016, and only four from 2015. Ritch Savin-Williams, in a commentary that accompanies Professor Bailey’s paper, cites three 2015 papers and four 2016 or “in press” papers that Bailey left out.)
Professor Bailey has written that he agrees with some, though not all, of the major findings of “Sexuality and Gender.” Importantly, he agrees that the social stress model alone does not account for the mental health problems experienced by LGBT populations, that the idea that gender identity is innate and fixed is not consistent with the scientific evidence, and that all of these issues should be studied more openly and rigorously by scientists.
Though the subject matter of “Sexuality and Gender” overlaps with that of the Bailey paper, one difference is that Bailey and his colleagues focus on criticizing environmental explanations for sexual orientation. Drs. Mayer and McHugh did not find that there were many plausible environmental explanations for sexual orientation, and so they focused on discussing the more prominent biological explanations and their shortcomings. As Ritch Savin-Williams observes in his commentary on the Bailey paper, “scholars disagree as to the prominence and interpretation they give to particular findings.”
It is tempting to think not. It sometimes seems that, as one writer has put it, for every study there is an equal and opposite study. And in the accompanying commentary on the Bailey paper, Ritch Savin-Williams writes:
Although [Bailey’s] coverage is indeed wide-ranging, it is somewhat restricted in that an equally celebrated assemblage of scholars might have produced a different manuscript in terms of topics reviewed and conclusions reached.
Nevertheless, the presence of disagreement does not imply the absence of truth, only that debate between scholars is a necessary part of discovering the truth, even in the empirical sciences. For this reason, “Sexuality and Gender” does not claim to be the last word any more than the Bailey paper does.
The report is not a study; it is a scientific review of the literature. It tells us what science, at this stage, does and does not support. And it clears away many false claims about what is allegedly known.
Something that has been published previously may not necessarily be widely known or well understood. Drs. Mayer and McHugh believe there is a clear gap between the certainty with which beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity seem to be commonly held, and what the science actually shows.
A large majority of articles in peer-reviewed journals are written for a small number of scholars and are available only through subscriptions that cost hundreds of dollars. Even lay readers who try to stay informed on scientific issues do not have easy access to most scientific journals, and usually do not have the background to draw independent conclusions from articles written by experts for other experts. “Sexuality and Gender” seeks to improve public understanding of the issues it addresses by analyzing a large body of research, explaining it clearly for non-experts, and making the explanation available free of charge.
Why publish this report now?
The publication of “Sexuality and Gender” follows three years of close study of the scientific literature and consultation with experts from the biological, psychological, and social sciences. Current events may make the report more or less timely, but its lengthy and thorough preparation was guided by enduring public health concerns and a wish to correctly depict the science.
Given the status of science in our society, political leaders, opinion-makers, medical practitioners, and the general public benefit from rigorous independent analyses of scientific findings. There is often a large gap between the certainty of our beliefs about these matters and what the science shows.
As stated above it is a scientific review of tons and tons of the scientifically peer-reviewed literature on sexuality and gender identity. It is taking what is already out there and making it easier to digest by essentially making an easy to understand meta-report or analysis of the data. Even if their interpretation was biased it links to all its sources all you need to do is be a first-handed independent thinker and click each link to see if they reported it correctly. I have actually done just that and I have clicked on their links. I have checked their sources and they are correct.
All of the sources point to sexual orientation being fluid and changing over time in most people towards some form of heterosexual. Whether a cross-orientation mix of high heterosexuality and some homosexuality AKA bisexual. Or to mostly heterosexual or to complete heterosexuality. Naturally over time by what mechanism we do not yet know. However, when openly unashamed both Lesbian and Feminist Psychologist Lisa Diamond says this too in her own work citing specifically heterosexual identifications of different kinds are the norm over the long range in human orientation she is just ignored. When she too says 85-90% of opposite-sex typical children grow up to be not trans and not to be dysphoric in the long term she is just ignored.
Yet, when the same sources including her own research is re-cited in The New Atlantis by a person and main editor whom admits to supporting LGBTQ equality it is deemed hatred or pseudo-science. It shows a lack of want to believe in the existence of sexual fluidity, changes in any form even not brainwashed, forced or compelled/pressured. The lack of want to believe that opposite sex couplings are very, very much the most common even if the facts bare it out. Or do they also think Lesbian Psychologist Lisa Diamond whom testified to legalize same sex marriage whom has found this same pattern is a self-hating Dyke?
The truth is there are way more opposite sex attracted people than there is exclusively same sex attracted people. The truly 100% no budging, not even a little bi, gay community needs to admit they are a very small minority. Their having rights does not depend at all upon them being a majority. After all the individual is the smallest minority in the world and each one of us has individualized human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as they say in the US Constitution and damn right they are!
Even if Therapy could hasten or assist heterosexual potential for people capable of playing on either team. That still would not mean it should be pressured on people to take on board such therapy. You have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness regardless of whom you sleep with or love.
