Roots of Homosexuality

Some claim that homosexual orientation is biologically determined through genetics or hormones in the same way that eye or hair color is fixed. This claim is used to advance the argument that because homosexuality is caused rather than chosen then it cannot be immoral; instead it is normal and good. It is also used to advance the argument that children & teenagers who are experiencing trouble in their sexual development should be told that their troubles really mean they are homosexuals and that they should embrace homosexuality as they mature.

While genetic influences and predispositions may contribute to any unwanted behaviour, it is important that we aren't misled. The origins of homosexuality are still not clearly understood by scientists and the topic is the subject of debate. So far science has not been able to establish a single biological cause, whether genetic, hormonal or otherwise, for homosexuality. Media reports have claimed much more than the scientific community has accepted. Actually science has begun to show that comparing same-sex attraction to race or eye colour, both of which are completely determined by our genes, is not a good comparison. A better comparison may be cigarette smoking. Genes or hormones may signal personality or temperamental traits that make smoking or experiences of same-sex attraction more or less interesting to an individual under certain circumstances. It is possible that some people have genetically grounded personality traits that predispose the person towards but do not “cause” homosexuality.

We can also say that people do not choose to be homosexuals. No one wakes up one day when they are 15 or 20 or 50 years old and says, “I have been heterosexual all my life. Today I choose to be homosexual.” In fact, the experience of most people is that they felt different from their earliest memories. Further they did not want these feelings and they fought them for years.

So, if people aren’t born gay and they do not choose to be gay, what’s left? Well there is a third option. Science has been working on the psychological aspects of homosexuality. In fact, until it became politically incorrect to study this area, science was developing much more solid results about the psychological aspects of homosexuality than its biological aspects. It is more accurate and helpful to say that various psychological (e.g. early childhood influences such as parent-child relationships and childhood sexual abuse), environmental (such as peer group influences, same-sex experimentation and early sexual debut) and biological factors, together with human choice (adult experiences such as wilful or purposeful experimentation and subculture dis-inhibition), contribute in varying degrees to the development of homosexuality. There may be a variety of factors that provide a push in the direction of homosexuality but there is no evidence that this ‘push’ renders human choice utterly irrelevant.

Finally, and this is most important, none of the science to date shows homosexual persons to be some sort of subhuman robots who can make no real choices about how they behave. “My genes made me do it” has never been a valid reason for heterosexuals to rape someone else or engage in sex before marriage or outside of marriage. The same is true for people affected by homosexuality.

If people aren’t born gay and they do not choose to be gay, then how do homosexual attractions develop?

Before considering this question, another caution is needed. No one develops homosexual attractions in exactly the same setting or the same way. Yet from those who share their experiences come a few common themes that seem to make a person susceptible to developing homosexual attractions. These themes frequently center around parent-child relationships, peer interactions, and childhood sexual abuse. This is not to suggest that all of these themes exist or occur to the same degree in every person. Nor are they the only factors that contribute to homosexual attraction. Nevertheless, they appear to be major contributing influences.

It's noteworthy to point out that factors such as genetics and hormones may cause some to be born with certain physical traits that may make them more susceptible to the formation of same-sex attractions, but these are indirect factors. They don't guarantee that a person will develop homosexual attractions any more than a person who is tall and agile will develop an interest in playing basketball.

It is generally accepted that early childhood development plays a major role in shaping what we will be like as adults. Most people understand and accept this general principle. But many are not aware of how this applies to the development of gender identity and sexuality.

We also understand the potential for enormous benefit and harm exists in every parent-child relationship. So, as we look for the roots and causes of homosexuality, we must listen to the fact that many who struggle with homosexual attraction report that their childhood relationships with their same-sex parent and/or opposite-sex parent was a time of great disappointment and rejection.

All children long to connect emotionally with their parents, especially their same-sex parent. This relationship is a vital part in the process of growing to feel complete and secure as males and females. The term vital part means that children have a need for same-sex love, affirmation, acceptance, identification & bonding. These needs are normally and properly satisfied by the same-sex parent or parent figure in the first few years of childhood.

A child’s sense of gender identify begins to develop about the age of 2. Healthy psychological development requires that a little boy be able to recognize that there are two sexes and he is male, he is like other boys, and will grow up to be a man and possibly a father, not a woman and a mother. Additionally he needs to feel good about being a boy and becoming a man. He needs to believe that his mother and father are happy that he is a boy and expect him to become a man. The same-sex parent through the child’s attachment to the parent normally meets these needs.

While children need and desperately long for connection with their same-sex parent, some children feel that this relationship is bringing rejection and harm. In order to prevent further harm, they may distance themselves from this parent. This form of self-protection is commonly referred to as "defensive detachment."[i]

Instead of expressing their desire for connection and acceptance, they hide it. Instead of remaining open to a close relationship with their same-sex parent, they become angry and distrustful. For many, it's the beginning of seeing all close relationships with the same sex through a filter of anger and mistrust.

But when a child grows up feeling emotionally cut off from his or her same-sex parent, whether it's real or imagined, it interrupts the process gender identity development and their needs for same-sex love from their parents go unmet. If the distance continues, the process never resumes, leaving a child feeling rejected, empty, and insecure as a boy or girl. Deep down inside, the child senses that something critical is missing, which can cause a child to seriously question his or her identity as a boy or girl.

Many things are capable of causing the disruption in attachment. It is not a question of one specific event always causes this disruption but that many events can lead to a child’s response of detachment; sickness, travel & other causes of separation can cause hurt just as much as cruel parenting. The key is the child’s response - becoming unwilling to relate any longer to the love-source that they think has hurt them. Even if love is offered, it cannot be received.

When a child detaches (“decides”) they will no longer allow the parent to meet these needs then the child experiences something called same-sex ambivalence. The child experiences an avoidance/approach conflict. The attraction in the need to attach has to contend with the aversion involved in the defensive detachment. The need to attach never goes away. It remains until it is fulfilled.

Years go by and the child grows up – physically & mentally or psychologically. But not all psychological aspects of the child grow up. Some remain stuck in childhood because the defensive detachment will not permit a need to be met. And the unmet need prevents growth in adulthood.

One woman recalled never feeling nurtured by her mother. "I played varsity volleyball, and she never came to any of my games. She laughed when I started my first period. She didn't want me to have a bra when everyone else in my class had one. In short, I never felt encouragement or support in areas that nurtured my femininity."[ii] One man recalled how he withdrew from his demeaning father long before his father left the family. His parents' divorce simply made it "official." Another woman described it this way: "In my heart I had cut my mother out of my life, emotionally and relationally."[iii]

The relationship with the opposite-sex parent is not as crucial to the development of same-sex attractions. But in many cases this relationship intensifies a problem created by the distance and/or assaults of the same-sex parent.

For instance, an opposite-sex parent can expand the distance and hostility between a child and the same-sex parent by inappropriately confiding in the child about various marital problems. Then there are situations when an overprotective mother may never allow her son to risk expressing himself as a male by displaying any strong initiative. Or she might constantly ridicule his competence, making him feel more out of place and insecure as a male. This could also involve a father who wanted a son so much that he treated his daughter as a son, ignoring her femininity altogether.

When a child who is already feeling cut off from his or her same-sex parent has his or her gender inhibited, criticized, used, or ignored by the opposite-sex parent, it fertilizes the soil from which a homosexual attraction can arise.

While some parents more than others should feel a greater sense of sorrow over the ways they failed or harmed their children, it's wrong to place all the blame on the parents. The important thing is the child’s perception and the child’s response. Some children feel they are being hurt by their parents and so they detach from their parents in order to defend themselves. In so doing they unwittingly prevent themselves from receiving the first building blocks of their gender identity.

A psychologist named Elizabeth Moberly has expressed the link between these childhood experiences and homosexuality in the following way.[iv]

Homosexuality is a deficit in the child’s ability to relate to parents of the same sex that is carried over to adult members of the same sex in general. Put another way, the problem with an adult homosexual is not that they want same-sex love. It is that their childhood needs for same-sex love from their same-sex parent have never been met and they are trying to meet them now with relationships to other adults of the same-sex that includes sexual activity as a mistaken method to receive love.

Children who are 4 & 5 years old make a transition from simply playing beside other children to playing with other children. They begin learning to have friends. And God has designed this early friendship process to provide another layer in a child’s gender identity. Children need the love & acceptance of other children their age. Particularly from other children of the same sex. Same-sex friendships are important in the gender identity building process.

But children who are disillusioned with their same-sex parent may also experience a similar degree of distance and rejection among their same-sex peers, which adds to their level of confusion and insecurity. In some cases, they expect the same kind of treatment.

A little boy may feel like a misfit among his male equals just as he felt with his dad. A little girl may feel she doesn't belong with girls her age just as with her mom. But the desire to fit in is still screaming to be met. If children or teenagers don't fit in and identify with their same-sex peers, they may be drawn toward unhealthy relationships that seem to hold out the promise of acceptance.

Tragically, for many men and women, homosexual attractions are also rooted in haunting incidents of past sexual abuse. Sexual abuse involves any contact or interaction whereby an older, stronger, or more influential person uses a vulnerable child or adolescent for sexual stimulation.

Studies show that incidents of sexual abuse are prevalent in the childhoods of adult homosexuals.[v] 80% of homosexual men in a major study reported they had been sexually abused by an adult while they sere still a child – most before they were 10 years old. Those who work with adult individuals seeking help for homosexual struggles repeatedly hear stories of boys having been sexually molested, usually by older teens or men. They regularly hear of girls having been sexually abused, typically by a close male family member, friend, or authority figure.

As is the case with any of the factors we are discussing, sexual abuse does not automatically produce homosexual attractions. But for some it can be a major part of a context in which homosexual attractions can form. The way the damage of sexual abuse affects the development of these attractions tends to be different for men and women.

Strong ambivalent feelings experienced during and after incidents of sexual abuse by an older male can be a part of what forms homosexual attractions. Ambivalence is "feeling two contradictory emotions at the same moment."[vi] The result is overwhelming shame and confusion. The fact that somehow, in such an awful context, a young boy felt some pleasure brings a raw sense of shame. Relational connection and physical contact occurred, which naturally aroused and brought him emotional and sexual pleasure, but it also felt so horrible.

Enjoying a level of sexual pleasure with a man or older boy is difficult for a young boy or adolescent to reconcile. The shameful confusion increases when sexual abuse was the only context in which his thirst for male love and connection was seemingly quenched. It leaves the deceptive impression that sex and love always go hand in hand.

Shame and confusion provoke nagging thoughts like, "What does that say about me? Maybe I am homosexual." Consequently, the damage from ambivalent feelings can mislead confused young boys into thinking they're something they're not.

Intense feelings of betrayal as a result of sexual abuse are frequently a component of what fuels homosexual attractions for women. Betrayal is the experience of being set up, used, violated, and discarded. Perpetrators of sexual abuse often lure potential victims with a level of affection and attention no one else has offered.

The betrayal of sexual abuse teaches young girls or adolescents that it's too dangerous and painful to want and hope for love from men. As a result, many struggle with a deep hatred and mistrust of men. It similarly spurs them to hate their femininity. Some grow to become terrified of and repulsed by expressing any part of their femininity that longs to be loved and cared for by a man. In their mind, it's the main reason they were abused.

When a young girl, who may already have an exceptionally strong desire for same-sex connection because she's been deprived of it, is sexually abused by a male, the damage of betrayal can powerfully ignite homosexual attractions. Homosexual attractions can emerge in young girls when a hatred of men and a hidden, unquenched thirst for female connection exist simultaneously.

Pulling away and hiding the desire for connection with their same-sex parent didn't make the need go away nor the desire that seeks to satisfy the need. It unknowingly caused the desire to grow stronger. When sexual desires start to emerge around the age of adolescence, the buried yet growing unmet desire for same-sex love and connection can subtly merge with sexual desires. As adolescents are attracted to what's missing, and as they experience moments (whether actual or fantasized) when they sense someone touching their unsatisfied desire for same-sex love, their bodies may respond sexually. Moments like these, usually with an older adolescent or adult, are often when sexual attractions for the same sex surface.

The fact that same-sex love needs are often eroticised or made sexual brings confusion into people’s understanding of homosexuality. We have confused homosexuality by thinking that it is all about sex. It is not surprising that someone who has attained physiological maturity (whose body has grown up) should interpret their deepest emotional needs as sexual. We bring sex into many things – cars, beer, clothing, even shampoo. What is important in this discussion is to remember that sex is not appropriate in the normal parent-child relationship. Actually sex not appropriate in any relationship that, however adult it is in other respects, is significantly determined by the attempt to meet non-adult attachment needs. In the homosexual condition, pre-adult psychological needs still exist in a person who is in other respects an adult. Sexuality is intended to express the desires of both physical and psychological maturity in co-ordination with each other. So, an attachment to the same sex is not wrong. Actually it is the right thing for satisfying same-sex deficits. What is wrong is bringing sex into the relationship.

So far we have been talking about what goes wrong during puberty when sex is made part of an attempt to fulfill childhood needs. We also need to talk about what is normal for sexual development during puberty. Our understanding of sexual development seems to be missing something about what is normal. We understand the physiological process and we understand the moral aspects of the process. But something is missing in our understanding of the psychological process - that normal sexual development during adolescence is a “messy” process just like learning how to eat, walk, talk or read were for young children. An adolescent’s body will experiment with sexual arousal just like the experimenting of young children as they learn to eat of walk. At first your body will seem to do things on its own without your conscious control. Erections, sexual arousal, ejaculations occur without control. Later comes the ability to control and direct a young adult’s sexuality. Not only do we need to understand this but adolescents also need to understand this. They need to be taught that it is normal to experience confusion as they develop a new capacity for sexuality. Consider this example. The boy who experiences an erection in a change room at the sight of other naked boys or at other times when there is nothing nearby that an adult would consider sexually stimulating needs to be taught that his embarrassing experiences are normal & common for early adolescence. It is the equivalent of baby talk or potty accidents. His body is practicing at performing a new function and this new function is not yet under conscious control. It is not an indication of homosexuality. He needs to know that as months go by and he progresses farther in sexual development that the episodes of uncontrolled sexual arousal will be replaced with controlled sexual arousal.

Events like this example are not uncommon for many teens. But when they are accompanied by inaccurate information and peer humiliation, events like these can plant additional seeds of doubt and confusion about a teen’s sexual preference.

The University of Minnesota Hospital & Clinics studied 35,000 students in Minnesota secondary schools.[vii] Among the more significant information provided by the survey were the following:

The survey clearly points to a developing or emerging sexual identity among adolescents. Also, there is a noticeable lack of consistency as attractions, fantasies and identity appear to be at odds with one another in many children. Interestingly, among the students who identified themselves as homosexual, 64.8% said they had engaged in heterosexual activity, but only 39.2% said they had engaged in homosexual activity.

The data from this study indicates that uncertainty about sexual orientation is a normal part of growing up, and that social influences do have a bearing on sexuality. The researchers concluded that students should be given the space and the freedom to move through that uncertainty without being pressured to label themselves as homosexual or heterosexual. When they express concern about their feelings, they should be told that such uncertainty is normal. If they have specific concerns, these should be addressed in a way that does not start with the underlying premise that the student is necessarily gay but rather provides the student with different ways of understanding the situation. These are interesting conclusions from a secular study.

It is appropriate to finish this article with the question “How should I respond?”

Give people healthy examples of sexuality roles. People need to navigate the terrain of their own sexuality and come to a place of healing if they've experienced harm. They need to see a picture of how fulfilling authentic sexuality can be in the way God designed us, even in the midst of hurt.

Accept people with grace. Those who've experienced abuse or struggle with sexuality often have Scripture used in a way that leaves them feeling shamed and condemned. Struggling people often find that Christians unintentionally send the message that they are unlovable through the tone and content of confrontation. Confrontation without grace often leads to believing that Christianity is not intellectually credible or unable to meet real-life hurts. They might also be forced to stuff their feelings in an attempt to avoid rejection. We can be living examples of the gospel and help people understand truth through relationship.

Helping people recover from negative experiences that erode healthy, authentic sexuality the way God intended is best done through the example Christ has given. Jesus clearly accepted people who were considered outcasts, telling them that they were loved and treasured. It's in this gracious acceptance from Christ that lives are changed.

Help people process unfulfilled expectations in relationships. None of us will have a relationship where all of our expectations are met. Unfulfilled expectations are a part of life. What do we do with them? How do we continue to have healthy relationships the way God intended in the midst of unmet needs? Sharing appropriately about how we have dealt with our own relational disillusionments can help others learn valuable lessons about relationships. Strugglers need to see relationships in others that reflect the way God has designed us to be most fulfilled—even in the midst of relationship disappointment. And we need to point them to the powerful presence of God as an unfailing healer and comforter.

Help people look to Christ rather than sex to make their life work. With the attention that is given to sex in our culture, people are often driven to a view of sexuality that's distorted. Sexuality is a profound experience of life when occurring the way God intended. But some people don't see God's design for their sexuality. With the rush of raging hormones and the driving need to feel loved, people are susceptible to opening themselves up for deep hurt as they explore their sexuality in a way God didn't intend.

Change is possible. Adults, both young and mature, who have experienced these roots and their consequences, are not stuck with the end result. It is possible to deal with these roots and it is possible to satisfy the underlying needs. Specifically, it is possible to fulfill unmet childhood needs for same-sex love as an adult. Reparative therapy is one way that adults can deal with their roots and learn how to fulfill their unmet childhood needs. Other articles are available that focus on the process of change. Here is an extract from the article.

Change and healing requires facing the unmet needs and pain in constructive ways, instead of acting out, drowning it out or turning to that which cannot meet those needs. God offers a pathway to repentance, change, healing and growth. Receiving His forgiveness and being adopted into His family is immediate. But walking the pathway is a lifelong process. The pathway involves change – for all of us, including the homosexual. The process will probably be more difficult for those who've struggled with homosexuality for a longer period of time. But no matter how hopeless one may feel, the hope for change is real because while God loves you just the way you are, He refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be just like Jesus.

The specific solution to homosexuality for an adult is not sexual activity. Neither is abstinence from sexual activity the solution. One should neither ignore unmet needs (the “conservative” mistake) nor eroticise them (the “liberal” mistake). The opposite of homosexuality is not heterosexuality but a healthy parent-child relationship that satisfies the child’s needs. The answer to the question about change begins by realising that homosexuality is all about psychological growth that was prematurely stopped or suspended but is still experiencing a drive towards completion. The process of change involves restarting the psychological growth process with a healthy parent-figure and ensuring that it gets completed. The end result of this process of growth is heterosexuality – which is the ability to relate to people (of both sexes) as a psychologically complete member of one’s own sex. The end result is not sexual activity with someone of the opposite sex.

[i] Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality, by J. Nicolosi, pp.104-107

[ii] Anything for Love, Harvest Testimony

[iii] Freed To Love, Harvest Testimony

[iv] Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic, by E. Moberly, 1983.

[v] Child Abuse and Neglect 16, no.6, 1992, pp.855-64

[vi] The Wounded Heart, by D. Allender, p.127

[vii] Demography of Sexual Orientation in Adolescents, Pediatrics, The Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, (Vol. 89, April 1992)