Category: sexual orientation

Salt Lake City program examines cruising behavior, sexual identity

Here is an article that bring together several topics covered here on the blog. The Healthy Self-Expressions program works to curb sexual cruising in Salt Lake City and is run by Pride Counseling, a GLBT oriented counseling center. Many men are married and identify as straight.

Buie says many of the program’s participants identify themselves as straight. Many are also active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and roughly 40 percent are married, he says. The average length of those marriages is 23 years. Two of the men with whom he is currently working have been married for more than 40 years…

…”Just because you have an attraction to men doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to those attractions,” he says. “As a therapist I try to encourage people to be honest with themselves.”

Sexual orientation: Is it “that predictable?”

A reader sent this link to Richard Cohen on Universal Peace Television, a Moon controlled internet television network. Cohen is interviewed by Michael Marshall, a Unificationist and Editor of United Press International. My purpose for posting the link has little to do with the source but rather the content. We have discussed the theories of sexual orientation on this blog and noted the inadequacy of any of them to fully capture the variation of sexual orientation. The research is mixed with perplexing contradictions and modest effects.

On point, there is an amazing statement, among several, in this interview about half way through. Mr. Cohen says, “I can tell you why any man or woman has homosexual feelings. Give me three hours with him or her and I can tell you specifically what occured in their life to create these desires. It’s that predictable.”

Putting aside that Cohen is claiming an ability to reconstruct and not predict, such claims cannot really be proven or disproven. They of course would be guesses that generate from the premise that sexual orientation stems from some kind of wounding in childhood. In his new book, Gay Children, Straight Children, he even invokes “inherited wounds” as the contribution of heredity. For him, heredity is:

Inherited wounds, unresolved family issues, misinterpretations, a predilection for rejection. At the core of SSA [same-sex attraction] is a sense of not belonging, of not fitting in and of feeling different. These feelings and thoughts may be inherited from one’s racial, religious or cultural lineage. This is not the same thing as the so-called gay gene. However, these lineage issues may imbue a child with a predilection for rejection. (p. 72) 

The phrase “predilection for rejection” based on ancestry is confusing. Predilection means a preference for something. I wonder if he really meant to say that. In any event, none of this sounds like heredity in the way most researchers define it. A preference for rejection based on ethnicity or the actions of someone generations before provides the therapist with an out when no present day or childhood wounds can be found. “It must be your heritage.” Seems like identical twins would be more concordant than research shows, if this were true, since the inherited wound would be true of both children. Practically, how could you test this? In any event, if the lineage is unclear, Mr. Cohen has 9 other types of wounding that will qualify. As I read it, any wound will do.

That statement brought to mind the powers of prediction given to Karnak the Magnificent. I’ll bet Karnak would not need three hours.

Montgomery County passes transgendered bill

The Washington Post in reporting that the Montgomery County Council passed the transgendered bill 8-0 yesterday. 

According to the Post article, the locker room provision was removed prior to yesterday’s vote.

Late last week, in response to the outcry and concerns from some fellow council colleagues, Trachtenberg agreed to pull an amendment to the bill that would have specified restrooms and locker rooms as public accommodations in which an individual could choose a room based on the gender identity that the person “publicly and exclusively expressed.”

Taking out the proposed amendment, according to the county attorney’s office and council staff, would allow employers to maintain “current gender-based restrictions” on such public facilities.

I suspect a referendum might be in the offing. It would take 20,000 signatures to get a repeal on the ballot.

Smooth thinking on sexuality: Labels don’t communicate well

Robert Epstein, a frequent commentator on sexuality issues, reports in advance of his Scientific American online survey of 18,000 people regarding precision in defining sexual orientation.  He says,

Although common thinking holds that everyone is either “gay” or “straight,” my new survey of nearly 18,000 people who voluntarily answered an online quiz shows that these terms are highly misleading. Sexual orientation actually lies on a smooth continuum, and the way people state their orientation is often a poor predictor of their true sexual behaviors and fantasies. Someone can call himself “gay” but behave “straight,” and vice versa.

Looking forward to his findings…

Montgomery County, MD votes tomorrow on gender identity ordinance

For sure, Montgomery County, MD is a hotspot for cultural change. My information is that tomorrow, the county officials there vote on whether to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity that a person expresses or asserts. Here is the paper trail on this issue with the current ordinance.

I cannot see any exemptions except perhaps for “distinctly private or personal” facilities (what are those like – is a church in that group?). Not sure what that means, but it appears children might exposed, literally, to adult nudity in public facilities.

Let’s have an open forum on this.