Is homosexuality normal?

Journal of Psychiatry and Law

Volumn 26, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 219-259

  Brill, Norman Q ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DISEASE CLASSIFICATION; GENETIC PREDISPOSITION; HOMOSEXUALITY; HUMAN; PSYCHOANALYSIS; REVIEW; WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION;

EID: 0032423077     PISSN: 00931853     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/009318539802600204     Document Type: Review

References (66)

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5. Monkey research has demonstrated that there are individual differences in vulnerability as a function of genetic background. There are also differences among individuals in the likelihood of showing symptoms as a function of early experience.
6. Steven Suomi studied the adverse effect of isolating infant monkeys. Depression was not inevitable, even in those who were genetically at risk, unless there was subsequent exposure to certain highly stressful events. While most rhesus monkeys adjust to social separation with little difficulty, some become morose and withdrawn and behave abnormally with fear when exposed to novel or mildly challenging situations.
7. Those that become withdrawn during separation as infants continued to show depressed responses to separation when they were heritable. Earlier isolated studies in rhesus monkeys by Harlow showed that extreme isolation at birth created nearly irreversible psychological damage, but subsequent studies showed that treatment with medication could reverse some of the ill effects of the early isolation and that not all non-human primates were as sensitive to early social isolation as rhesus monkeys. Psychiatric News, 7/21/95, p. 10.
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28. Supra note 11.
29. Some feminists believe that heterosexuality is merely an invented tradition. The sexual practices of homosexuals and heterosexuals value pleasure over procreation; living arrangements of both are converging as both groups cohabit without marriage. The terms homo- and heterosexual may become obsolete, and sexual behavior and sexual practice may exist along a continuum. Females can have their babies by artificial insemination and can live alone, with another woman, or with a man who is not the father of the child. J. N. Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality, Dutton, 1995.
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32. Supra noie 11.
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35. According to Professor Small of Cornell University, bonobos, a rare species of chimplike apes seen only in a small patch of land in Zaire, engage in frequent couplings and casual sex play that characterize every social relationship between males and females, members of the same sex, closely related animals and total strangers. Known as pigmy chimpanzees because .they are delicate in build, they often stand and work on two legs-behavior that makes them seem more like humans than chimps. Interestingly, they frequently couple face to face. They separate sex from reproduction and seem to treat sex as a pleasurable activity. Ancestral humans are believed to have behaved like them, and Frans de Waal, an ethnologist at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University, suggests that pedophilia and homosexuality may be leftovers in present-day society. Bonobos have sex more often and in more combinations than the average person in any culture. Males mount females and females sometimes mount them back. Females rub against other females just for fun. Males stand rump to rump and press their scrotal areas together. Even juveniles participate by rubbing their genitals against adults. Very young animals also have sex with each other, and males suck on each other's penises or French kiss. This may be masturbatory behavior and not homosexuality as seen in humans. Even the sight of food triggers a binge of sex and aggressive encounters, and especially among males is followed by sexual behavior (Discover, June 1992, p. 46).
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