Might it be that some children are selected for sexual abuse _because_ of their sexual orientation, not the other way around?

Mike Melendez,

I am glad you are amused, but I am afraid you are wrong. If human beings have instincts at all, they are very limited, and human beings do not “instinctually” have sexual intercourse. Put a male dog (or any male mammal) with a receptive female dog, and they will have sexual intercourse even if they have never had it or witnessed it before. Their behavior is instinctual. Put a sexually mature male with a sexually mature female in a sexually exciting situation, and if neither has no prior experience or knowledge about sexual intercourse, they will not instinctually have sex. They may fumble around and figure something out—which is not instinctual behavior—or they may not.

We are humans because we have culture and we act based on learned behavior, not instinctive behavior.

Do a bit of googling on the question of whether human beings have instincts if you don’t believe me.

I think the nature and politics of homosexuality being what it is today, it’s not unreasonable to be concerned about whether kids are really getting the advice based on what’s best for them – or whether the adults are injecting their own emotions, anxieties, and even ideological concerns into it, using the kids as projection spaces.

The only thing I’d say against this idea is that we aren’t recognizing that it’s equally harmful when either side of the political spectrum does it to any young man or woman.

The development of sexuality is far more complex, far more personal, and far less clear-cut than other aspects of puberty/adolescence. We can say there is a ‘right’ way to feel about developing an adult body: if a person is feeling abnormal amounts of shame or negativity toward a healthy body, something can be said to be ‘wrong’, and we can tell what a healthy body looks like vs. a body with a problem.

But we can’t apply that same level of certainty toward sexuality. To the extent that anyone has the “right” to tell another person how they “ought” to feel about sexuality, I would agree it is the parents who have that right – but I would also agree that there are limits to that, and the state has a valid interest in protecting children from excesses if those excesses are likely to cause harm. The question is to me not whether the state has a right to set boundaries on parents, but rather when and how it is appropriate to do so.

But the state also has a responsibility not to abuse that power – and I don’t think the people who have (or covet) that power really understand what an awesome responsibility it is, to be entrusted not to abuse that power.

That’s the best joke you’ve told yet, David! How did we humans ever procreate before we invented writing? I think you may be confusing embellishment with the core. Certainly today’s decolletage is not instinctual.

As to the rest, it seems you agree with me in general. We don’t know much about the immediate causes of sexual attraction, if any, in any living entity. But we do know about the origins of sex itself and the reasons for straight sex in humans.

However, the idea that straight sexual attraction and procreation are not connected seems very far-fetched indeed. You might even say, unscientific.

It isn’t often that I agree with you, but I agree with this statement.

However I do not agree that the government is not qualified because “What does the state government know about psychotherapy? ” If the matter were a clear-cut medical issue, then the government could get expert testimony, the way it does with other technical issues.

The real problem IMO is that nobody knows. Psychology is still too young a field to have answers to these questions, and the potential for damage is huge.

Hmmm….that’s interesting. Apparently there’s something unique about reparative therapy such that it gets treated differently from every other medical or psychiatric procedure that requires informed consent — i.e., parental consent doesn’t count. That’s a pretty hard case to make, that reparative therapy is inherently so much more dangerous and/or unproven than any other legal medical or psychiatric procedure that it needs to occupy a unique place in law.

Thanks for attempting the clarification, but actually, I don’t believe it is known for a fact whether sexual orientation is “instinctual” or learned (in humans). As Hanne Blank says, “We don’t know much about heterosexuality. No one knows whether heterosexuality is the result of nature or nurture, caused by inaccessible subconscious developments, or just what happens when impressionable young people come under the influence of older heterosexuals.”

Sexual reproduction does not always require sexual attraction. Wikipedia notes: “Many plants make use of external fertilization, especially ones without bright flowers or other means of attracting animals. In many aquatic animals such as coral or hydra, eggs and sperm are simultaneously shed into the water, and the sperm swim through the water to fertilize the egg in a process known as broadcast fertilization. In many fish species, including salmon, the female will deposit unfertilized eggs in the substrate and the male will swim by and fertilize them.”

If human sexual behavior were truly instinctual, there would be no need for sex manuals.

Actually, science has a handle on that through the theory of Evolution. Opposite sex attraction leads to more members of that species, which helps considerably in survival. Indeed, that is seen as a rationale for the existence of sex in the first place.

I think what David meant to say was that we don’t know the details of how that attraction is created in the individual, whether straight or gay.

As I recall, Masters & Johnson claimed they could “convert” a homosexual to a heterosexual, but they also claimed they could convert a heterosexual into a homosexual. I don’t doubt that there are behavioral techniques that could accomplish to some extent the changing of a functioning homosexuals to functioning heterosexuals or vice versa, but the techniques would no doubt be considered immoral by Christians.

If someone was homosexual as the result of sexual abuse as a child, it does not seem to me that therapy attempting to undo the damage, even if it resulted in an extinguishing of homosexual feelings, would be considered “reparative therapy.” It would be therapy for childhood sexual trauma. Who could oppose that? (Whether that is really the mechanism by which anyone becomes homosexual is one question. Whether it can be undone by therapy is another question. I doubt that anyone knows the answers, in spite of what may have happened in individual cases.)

I am extremely skeptical about “reparative therapy,” but perhaps equally skeptical about state government trying to ban it. What does the state government know about psychotherapy? How are they going to differentiate between “reparative therapy” and, say, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy in which some believe that if there is a problem, and all the issues are talked through, the problem will be solved without attempting any kind of “conversion”?

I personally think “reparative therapy”—to whatever extent it sets as a goal changing a person’s sexual orientation—is not therapy but something more akin to brainwashing, but I think it is a mistake for the state to ban it unless they can identify very specific techniques (e.g., use of electric shocks to try to suppress sexual excitation when viewing pornography) that can be demonstrated to be harmful or inhumane.

Nobody knows what makes gay people gay, and one reason for that is that nobody knows what makes straight people straight.