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Difference Is Not A Sin

Chapter 6: MEDICAL EVIDENCE

HOMOSEXUALITY AND MENTAL HEALTH

In so far as people in the past bothered to consider the causes of homosexual behaviour, they thought of it as rebellion against God (St Paul in his letter to the Romans), the result of sexual excess leading to a search for new thrills or simply sinful wickedness. It was perversion because it was quite literally perverse and incomprehensible behaviour. It was never considered to be a medical or psychological condition, that is why throughout this book I have always talked about homosexual behaviour rather than `homosexuality'.

"Throughout the nineteenth century , succeeding generations of physicians in Europe and America were intent on searching for a cause for what they thought was a sexual dysfunction . . . . up to 1700 it was considered a sin . . . . then it became a social crime . . . . it was to become a medical and psychological inadequacy which very quickly could become a mental illness." (`Homosexuality, A History' Colin Spencer.) It was not in fact until 1869 that the Hungarian physician Kertbeny coined the term homosexuality to describe the condition of patients with whom he had been working. With the greater understanding of human psychology and social influences homosexuality was considered to be the result of upbringing, an over identification with the mother and a poor relationship with the father; or retarded development - homosexuals never having progressed beyond the group homosexual stage most boys pass through in their early teens. In Nazi Germany homosexuals were bracketed with the disabled and schizophrenics, and were subjected to compulsory sterilisation; a curiously inappropriate and pointless punishment. Homosexuals were put in concentration camps and it is not known how many died as a result of gassing, neglect and medical torture. At the same time the US Army and Navy described homosexuality as a "constitutional psychopathic state." The World Health Organisation, founded as part of the UN, described homosexuality as a mental disorder.

While medical `explanations' modified to some extent the antagonism to homosexuals in the community and contributed to its decriminalisation, there was still a great deal of persecution of homosexual people. In particular if something is considered a medical disorder it naturally follows that treatment is appropriate. The last known use of lobotomy as a treatment was performed in 1951 in the USA. Aversion therapy, (which caused immense suffering for the people involved and at least one death) hospitalisation, and other treatments were still in common use as late as the 1960s often as a result of a court order following a criminal prosecution. The Gay Liberation Front manifesto included psychiatry as an oppressor of homosexual people "Psychiatric treatment can take the form . . . . of mind bending `psychotherapy' . . . of aversion therapy . . . . chemically induced castration . . . erasing part of the brain, with the intent . . . . of making the individual an asexual vegetable."

However medical opinion had already begun to change. Dr Evelyn Hooker's research published in 1957, though it was ridiculed by much of the psychological establishment, stated that homosexual men were "within the normal range psychologically." Armon's research of 1960 showed that there was no greater evidence of pathology or immaturity in lesbians that in other women. It was not until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association finally declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder but it was still regarded as confused or disturbed sexuality. In Britain however the situation had not progressed as far and in 1975 the British Medical journal was still publishing articles on possible treatments including hormonal therapy, aversion therapy and most bizarrely therapy `to mobilise the heterosexual elements' whatever that might mean! Finally in 1992 the WHO deleted homosexuality from its list of mental disorders and the UK government followed suit in 1993. The Royal College of Psychiatrists supported an equal age of consent for gay men when this was debated in the U.K. Parliament in 1995 and continued to do so until this was finally passed by Parliament this year.

GENETICS

New research in America lead by Dr Dean Harmer of the United States National Cancer Institute in Bethesda has suggested that there may be a genetic cause for homosexuality. Two years ago he published a study which suggested that 82% of homosexual men carried a marker the Xq28 on the X chromosome. The X chromosome is the chromosome men inherit from their mothers. He was lead to research this because he found that gay men have more gay cousins and other relatives on their mother's side. In 1995 Dr Hamer and colleagues from the University of Colorado and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published the result of another experiment. They examined 32 pairs of exclusively or mainly gay brothers and found that 22 or 69% shared the Xq28 region. This research has now been questioned by an equally distinguished group of scientists lead by Dr George Ebers of the University of Western Ontario. The jury is still out and we must await developments.

The issue of sexual desire and orientation is certainly extremely complicated; much more complicated I think than can be explained simply by genetics. Why do some people find dark hair or blue eyes or older people or people of a different ethnic group attractive? How is it that some people are bi-sexual all their lives, having partners of the same or different genders in the same period of time (or indeed, together at once) or at different times have heterosexual or homosexual preferences? Likewise cultural influences clearly affect behaviour, witness the huge differences between the sexual behaviour of the contemporary cultures of ancient Rome and Israel, or indeed the societies of modern Holland and Iran.

There is an amusing side to this question; many parents would want to keep their teenage sons and daughters away from homosexual relatives and friends, in case it is `catching'. I have heard otherwise perfectly rational and intelligent people say that it would only take a touch or a brief experience at a critical time to turn the child's mind! This is obvious tripe, but it says a great deal about their perception of the strength and value of their own sexual orientation. Homosexuality must seem very attractive to these people if it so easily `contracted'!

Clearly these questions involve social as well as medical influences and a great deal more research must be done before any further conclusions can be drawn.

The reaction of the homosexual community to these researches has been mixed. On the one side some gay people have welcomed it as proving what gay people have known all along, that this is something over which they have no control, that they were born like it, that they have never known a time when they did not feel this way, that it is part of their essential makeup and therefore natural. It logically follows therefore that all legal handicaps should be removed and permanent gay relationships legally recognized. One of the most vocal advocates is the American Chandler Burr author of `A Separate Creation: How Biology makes us Gay.' Other voices have been less enthusiastic, notably in Britain, Peter Tatchell of the gay rights group, `Outrage'. He sticks resolutely to the line that it the result of psychological conditioning fixed very early in life. Certainly the experience of English public schoolboys, or sailors at sea, where homosexual behaviour is fairly common, but who when they leave those environments revert back to their own natural heterosexual orientation would suggest that sexual orientation is not changed throughout life.

Many people fear that if it is proved that there is a gay gene it will also become possible to test for it in the womb. Would such a test lead to abortion if requested? I can certainly believe that some potential parents would ask for an abortion. This is supported by the headline in `The Daily Mail', `Abortion hope after gay gene finding.' Dr James Watson the Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of DNA, defended the right of a woman, in this situation to make such a choice. "If you could find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman decides that she doesn't want a homosexual child, well let her (abort the foetus).'

Brian Appleyard said in a powerful article, "There's more to life than being Joe Normal" (Independent June 6th 1996), "The issue is normality, and it will be one of the central ethical debates of the next decade. Technologically we are now approaching a position in which we shall be able to choose to be as close as possible . . . to normality." He goes on to point to the real dilemma that this capacity will bring with it. Is general normality a desirable ideal? "As medical technology allows us to avoid `abnormality' we risk seeing difference as an illness . . . At the most obvious level it is clearly desirable that people experience and understand the world in different ways . All art and innovation spring from imaginations that are at least to some degree abnormal." It is not an accident that a high proportion of the most creative and artistic people are and historically always have been, gay. To lose this element as a formative part of our society would be a cultural catastrophe. This dilemma that may face families in the future, is explored dramatically in the play `The Twilight of the Golds' written in 1993 by Jonathan Tolins, where the unity of a family is destroyed when a gay brother discovers that his sister is having an abortion because she has discovered that her unborn child is gay.

Dr Starky in his article in the `New Statesman' to which I am much indebted for this part of my book, asserts that we should not be concerned over the question of whether homosexuality is natural or not. (Personally I cannot imagine how something which clearly exists in nature cannot but be natural). In any case human society is a totally artificial and constantly changing construction. "That is what distinguishes its comforts from the state of nature in which as Hobbs pointed out life `was nasty brutish and short'. We homosexuals should rejoice in modernity, we should also be proud that as George Steiner points out modernity has been created by two groups, Jews and homosexuals." (Dr. David Starky, New Statesman, November 1995).

In medicine we have travelled a long way from the view of homosexual behaviour as being a rebellion against God. We have even moved beyond the idea of homosexuality as being a psychological disorder capable of, or suitable for, medical treatment. Psychologically it is now a mental state well within the boundaries of normality and is probably the result of a minor genetic abnormality backed up by as yet unspecified social factors, which is quite irreversible. This clearly has implications for any idea that homosexuality can be described as a `sin', or that it is `para phusin' against or more than nature. The findings and new insights of modern medical research and knowledge has to influence the attitude of the church if it is not once again to appear out of touch and irrelevant.

AIDS

Clearly the AIDS epidemic has had a profound effect on our society and its attitude to the homosexual community. Some Christians have said that this is God's punishment, some have even rejoiced in this. They quote Romans "Men do shameful things with each other, and as a result they bring upon themselves the punishment for their wrongdoing." (Romans 1:27) This rather ignores the fact that except in some western societies AIDS is not a gay disease but is overwhelmingly a heterosexual problem. Even in western countries the proportion of gay people suffering from the condition is declining as a proportion of AIDS patients.

We need not spend too much time on such wicked nonsense apart from saying that Pope Pius 1X forbad Christians from being inoculated against smallpox on the grounds that the disease was a punishment from God and avoiding it was a defiance of his intention! Prelatical prattishness is not only a modern phenomenon.

It is interesting to speculate however that if this were a divine punishment it would seem that God rather favours lesbians as they are one of the groups least likely to contract the disease.