Homosexuality Causes: A Look at the History
People do not share the same opinions about the causes for homosexuality. Let's have a look at what people thought were the homosexuality causes in the past.
Recent studies refuse the old explanations of homosexuality causes, which were founded on homophobic prejudices. (Photoxpress)
Homosexuality causes: The biological explanations
Biological explanations of homosexuality causes are very old. For example, Krafft-Ebing (1886) was convinced that homosexuality is the result of a damage to the central nervous system. Special attention was also given to the study conducted by Kallmann (1952). His studies established that if one of the identical twins is homosexual, there is a great possibility that the other one will be homosexual as well. If the twins are not identical there is no such connection. The author therefore concluded that homosexuality is hereditary.
In other studies, the scientists researched the effect of hormones. There was a lot of debate about a study which discovered that a quarter of homosexual men has less testosterone in their body than. Such findings, for example, that homosexual men are less hairy, have narrower hips and penises, were met with a lot of criticism.
Pare (1956) examined 50 homosexuals and compared them to a group of heterosexual people. In the end, he found no differences whatsoever in the structure of chromosomes (all the homosexual men had male chromosome structure). Other researchers also found no evidence of hereditary, chromosomic, hormonal, morphological, bio-chemical or neurological basis for homosexuality. After an extensive reading of literature and with his own research, Lester (1975) rejected the biological explanations for homosexuality causes and labeled them as serious methodological mistakes and prejudices.
Homosexuality causes: The psychological explanations
These explanations are more or less psychoanalytical. Let's take an example from an explanation of psychoanalytical causes for male homosexuality. Because men feel good in the company of women but feel repulsed by sexual contact with them (so what actually bothers them is a different structure of sexual organs) , they suffer from the so called castration complex. They are afraid something will happen to their sexual organs so they cannot function with a person who hasn't got the same sexual organ. The reasons are a subconscious, childish fear that they might loose their penis (''if they do not behave well they will cut it off'') or because they see a female sexual organ as a tool of castration.
The cause of homosexuality, according to psychoanalysis, lies in the wrong kind of upbringing. Homosexual men are too attached to their mothers. Some are so close to their mothers that they act according to how they wish their mother would act towards them (they choose younger men and love them with tenderness they expect from their mothers), while others wish to experience the same kind of pleasure as their mother, which they can only achieve with a man. Some men also see their mother in every woman and avoid women because of the feeling of guilt.
There are several possibilities. The boys who are brought up without their mother can be so close to their fathers that they are emotionally attached to men for the rest of their life. A father that is to strict can trigger the so called ''identification with the aggressor''.
Homosexuality causes and the environment
In the past, many studies were conducted from the theoretical standpoint of the environment. Studies were conducted about the personalities of the parents, family situation in which the homosexuals grew up and their behavior in the childhood. The studies showed many interesting things, for example that homosexual men usually have a mother that is too passive and caring or a hostile father. Homosexuals more often come from the families of lesbian mothers, families without the father or families where the brothers and sisters are very competitive. Kaye (1967) discovered that lesbians are usually painfully attached to their father, while homosexual men are attached to their mother. Homosexual men usually have a strict father, often an alcoholic, who shows little respect for his children and inhibits their personal development.
The studies also show that homosexual men are different from their peers in their character and interests, which is the result of their upbringing. They are more passive, shy or play with dolls for a longer time. Boys who have a girl as their best friend when they are eight years old, will probably be homosexuals at 28 years of age, according to these explanations of homosexuality causes.
Recent studies, for example the one conducted by Garcia-Falgueras in Swaab this year, shows that the environment plays no role whatsoever in forming the sexual identity or orientation and it refuses the explanations that the homosexuality causes are formed at birth.
You can find more articles related to 
homosexuality in our Lover's Guide.
