Regular science understands homosexuality more than ever before. A whole complex of feelings and experiences can be identified which ultimately gives way to same-sex attractions. Before we analyze the Gay Related Complex, we need to look into the controversy with which radical gay-lib has confused the debate in the past three decades. Gay-lib has even created a science of its own, called LGBT-psychology. By boldly denying all underlying mechanisms, this frame of thought has led to therapeutic neglect. In this article, we will analyze the phenomenon, demonstrate how and why it is a pseudo-science, explore its historical roots, and explain in what way it is actually harmful to young people who are questioning what to make of life.
1. LGBT-psychology as a belief system
In the years before 1990 the term ‘LGBT’ was unknown as a phrase. In Wikipedia we read,
“The term LGB referring to Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual first began to be used in the mid-to-late 1980s to more clearly indicate the inclusion of bisexuals.”
The term was created to describe feelings and behaviors that occur, but it started living a life of its own when it was subsequently used to identify a whole individual. “I experience homosexual feelings” became “I am a homosexual person”. The activists went on to pluralize this and to promote the word ‘community’, creating tribal feelings and a sense of numbers.
By the year 2000, self-appointed chieftains found themselves having great prestige and social power, to the extent that US Presidents even officially welcomed them to the White House as Very Important Persons (in this case the Obama administration).
In reality, these terms are merely social constructs, that is to say, they are only figures of speech and do not exist as real entities. But through activism and constant repetition, they are brought to life as actual and tangible biological phenomena.
The downside is the emergence of us-them thinking, comparable to the way that in India the population is divided into immutable casts. Only in recent years has resistance started to rise in India against these divisive structures. With names and labels, people mutually exclude each other from the equation. It leads to social apartheid and separatism.
In the USA, we see the emergence of complete gay villages, especially in San Francisco. In Wikipedia, we read,
“A gay village (also known as a gay neighborhood, gay enclave, gay venue, gay ghetto, gaytto, gay district, gay mecca, gaytown or gayborhood) is a geographical area with generally recognized boundaries, inhabited or frequented by a large number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Gay villages often contain a number of gay-oriented establishments.”
“The Castro District in San Francisco was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States. It remains one of the most prominent symbols of activism and events in the world.”
“In the city of San Francisco itself, a 2006 survey found that 15.4% of its inhabitants identified as LGBT. In U.S. Congressional District 8, which consists of San Franciscans of voting age, 16.6% of adults identify as LGBT. According to a 2013 survey, 29% of the homeless residents of San Francisco identify as LGBT.”
So, in these areas, the notion of a community was more or less appropriate because the neighbors were gay too. But this train of thought was then exported to the rest of the country, creating virtual or fake realities of “gay communities” everywhere. As a consequence, every rural American citizen was frowned upon for being anti-LBGT if he did not jump for joy to celebrate the newly created gay ghettos and neighborhoods in certain major cities.
From the year 2000 onward, the new identity of being gay and ‘other’ became intellectualized.
Activists started to delete and rephrase the body of knowledge in human and social sciences. Freud’s idea that every human being has a bisexual potential was ousted. New mantras arose, claiming that 
LGBT feelings are an inherent feature of a certain kind of guy. He must therefore own a certain kind of brains, and is ultimately entitled to a new psychology, seeing how ‘other’ he innately is. A new humanistic belief system was born, thriving in sectarian suburbs, replacing all cultural and religious heritage. The central dogma of activism grew into: “Gay and straight, never the twain shall meet”.
2. LGBT-psychology as a pseudo-science
LGBT-psychology is a pseudo-science because it is built on the supposed term “immutable orientation”, which was introduced after 1990.
There is something very wrong with that view on humans. Imagine my liking the eighth symphony of Gustav Mahler (with a 1.000 voice choir) but not the ninth (with only violins). You can say I have a preference for Mahler 8. But can you say that I have a Mahler 8 orientation? Is that the kind of guy that I am? Am I a M8 guy? And when I was nine years old, was I a M8 child, waiting to bud into full bloom?
The same applies to the realm of sexuality. It is perfectly fine to acknowledge that persons can demonstrate a sexual preference at a certain moment in their lives. But does that justify the use of the word ‘orientation’? Same-sex attractions appear for some people to be so unusual that, in their imagination, it must stem from a magical internal mechanism, a sort of alien computer operating system.
3. The flaws of LGBT-psychology
LGBT-psychology is basically flawed because it is built on the assumption that there is indeed a hitherto unidentified, mysterious force that governs feelings and behaviors, and that this force defies all knowledge accumulated by religion, culture and science up till 1985. The force was called ‘orientation’. Apparently, it has magical properties, and proving its existence has become an extremist activist cause.
This confuses the debate, because there is no scientific proof whatsoever that separate sexual orientations actually exist. As Sigmund Freud declared more than a century ago, we all have the same broad sexual potential and we are all capable of same-sex and opposite-sex attractions at the same time or in any alternating order. Sexuality is fluid; attractions and infatuations come and go. Millions of people have demonstrated this in their private lives and in therapy.
LGBT-psychologists on the other hand are heavily into us-them thinking, building on the notion of immutability. They have carried out surveys to explore origins of sexual orientations, automatically assuming beforehand that orientations actually exist and treating them as an established fact, not doubting their existence for a moment. Then they do maths or statistics on the biased data, after which in the eyes of onlookers, they must apparently be right. And therefore, so is their social cause.
But in all honesty, the existence of ‘orientations’ is not the output of the research, it is the input.
In doing so, the ideology of ‘immutable orientations’ is sneaked into the public arena. We must remember, however, that these psychologists are first and foremost activists, as they proudly proclaim in books and on websites. And if they manage to finance a deliberate and dedicated publicity campaign, the ideology of immutable orientations can be mainstreamed.
LGBT-psychology is activism. It is biased right from the start, and there is nothing objective about it. But these phonies do all they can to make it look like just another contribution to justifiable science.
They submit their papers for peer-review, but do so only to journals who are into LBGT-psychology and the ‘born that way’ ideology to start with (click here). In no way do these own fabrications meet up to standards of regular psychological or psychiatric science.
Examples are the Canadian Online Journal of Queer Studies in Education, Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Journal of LGBT Health Research, Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, International Journal of Transgenderism, Journal of Bisexuality.
Without this pseudo-science, ‘gay guys’ would not exist as separate human entities, ‘orientations’ would be merely a figure of speech, and childhood developmental psychology (which is belittled and denied by LGBT-psychology when it comes to ‘gays’) would be just as applicable to persons experiencing same-sex attractions as it is to the peculiarities of anyone else.
Without LGBT psychology, we are forced to consider other explanations than the pre-configured restraints of ‘being born that way’. The notion that sexual feelings are predetermined before birth is fake, and it is a heavily marketed element of an emancipation struggle gone awry.
4. Where did the notion of ‘born that way’ come from?
The ideology does not stem from scientific research. It was promoted between 1980 and 1990 by American lawyers in order to gain approval and protection of the USA Supreme Court for sodomy (anal sex), at a time when anal sex was under heavy criticism due to the spreading of the H.I.V. virus for which in that age there was no cure.
The lawyers beat on the war drums and since then people have actually started believing it is true. The campaign was so clever that many have come to take it for granted, especially American lawmakers who find themselves heavily lobbied by pro-sodomy activists. The latter are on the doorsteps of the legislative buildings around the country on an almost daily basis (i.e. Human Rights Campaign, National Center of Lesbian Rights, etc.)
A short look at the history of the gay movement clarifies how the notion of ‘being born that way’ is the result of relentless activism. On his website, Victor J. Adamson writes:
“The “born gay” hoax was invented in 1985 by Marshall Kirk and Dr. Hunter Madsen. In 1985, they wrote an article entitled “The Gay Agenda” in a pro-sodomy magazine called Christopher Street. In short, the article emphasized the strategic importance of shifting the central issue in the debate over “homosexuality” away from anal sex (sodomy) and toward a sexual pseudo-identity called “gay.” The goal of “The Gay Agenda” was to force opponents of sodomy into a position where they would be seen as attacking the civil rights of so-called “gay” citizens, rather than opposing a specific antisocial behavior.
“The Gay Agenda” also briefly outlined the strategy that would eventually be used to convince the public that individuals are “born gay.” Initially, there was no enthusiasm for “The Gay Agenda” within the pro-sodomy movement.
In 1988, they organized a “War Conference” in Warrenton, Virginia, inviting 175 leading pro-sodomy activists, representing organizations from every part of the United States. The purpose of the conference, according to Kirk and Madsen, was to establish an official agenda for the newly conceived “gay” movement. At this “War Conference” pro-sodomy activists adopted the identity politic strategy outlined in “The Gay Agenda” and “The Overhauling of Straight America”. The “born gay” hoax was born.”
In 1986 the pro-sodomy movement lost Bowers v. Hardwick, the United States Supreme Court case which upheld the rights of individual states to criminalize sodomy. The loss was devastating.
Desperate, angry, and galvanized pro-sodomy activists learned that if they could make a compelling case that they were “born gay,” they could become eligible for “Minority Status” as a “Suspect Class” under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
If Minority Status were granted, it would force the courts to overturn Bowers v. Hardwick, thus legalizing sodomy. It must be noted however, that the Civil Rights Act recognizes Minority Status only for those groups who:
1) Have suffered a long history of discrimination, 2) Are powerless to help themselves as a community, 3) Are born that way.
The legalization of sodomy by way of “Minority Status” is the secret to understanding why pro-sodomy activists adopted the strategy outlined in “The Gay Agenda” in the late 1980s and began to promote the claim that people are “born gay.”
Subsequently, in 1989, Marshal Kirk and Hunter Madsen expanded their article “The Overhauling of Straight America ” into a book entitled “After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of the Gays in the 90s” (available at Amazon). In this deliberately deceitful agenda for America, Kirk and Madsen write that they intend to “get tough” on straights. They further write,
“It is time to roll out the big guns. We are talking about propaganda. The public should be persuaded that gays are victims of circumstance, that they no more chose their sexual orientation than they did, say, their height, skin color, talents, or limitations. We argue that, for all practical purposes, gays should be considered to have been “born gay” — even though sexual orientation, for most humans, seems to be the product of a complex interaction between innate predispositions and environmental factors during childhood and early adolescence.” (emphasis added, JB).
5. The effects of the ‘Born That Way’ ideology
The AIDS crisis, starting in 1983, pointed its medical finger to the undeniable facts of highly promiscuous, anonymous homosexual unprotected anal intercourse. Fear struck at gay men’s hearts. ‘Oh my god, they are onto us’. A successful recipe was delivered by the Kirk & Madsen strategy of 1988: turn the tables around, seek the victim role, portray the heterosexual as negatively as possible and vilify any opposing voice. If well done, you will gain public sympathy.
Young people who grew up in the nineties and since, have come to view this rhetoric as a truth. They are not aware of the fact that there ever was any other explanation than ‘born that way’ to view and analyze homosexual behavior. And if someone views homosexuality differently in this day and age, they must be the enemy, those bad ‘other’ people; ‘they are onto us’, so youngsters have been brought up to feel and to know for sure. The ideology has been internalized.
Young people who are questioning their sexual feelings these days are led to a gay identity. In doing so, they place themselves in a psychological fish bowl, watching the big outside world through glass in a paranoid distorted way. They are led to feel that the other side is a hostile place to be. Kirk & Madsen told them so (Rule Nr. 2, make straights look as bad as possible). In doing so, the activists rally them to the cause, helping them swim small circles in a romantic fantasy of fights, victories and martyrdom.
Separatism is a strong and appealing emotion as we see in current day Spanish Catalunya, where this primitive tribal urge, culminating into rage, can be stronger than the cumbersome unification process of the European Union. Flags are viciously waved into the other person’s face to express otherness and to glorify self-chosen segregation.
We see the boy who later experiences same-sex attractions gazing jealously and estranged at others as if he were a “kitchen-window boy”. (The phrase “kitchen-window boy” was first used by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi Sr., and is now commonly used for a child estranged from his peers and who spent too much time at his mother’s side watching other kids playing together). As an adult, the glass pane in the kitchen becomes the glass of the fish bowl of the gay identity.
And the proud, separatist rainbow colored flag, no matter how big and ferociously swayed, barely conceals the loneliness, pain and estrangement after being told by activists that you will never belong. The ‘straight’ world becomes a paradise lost, so close and yet so far.
6. The harm of loneliness
The ‘Born That Way’ ideology is harmful in its effects on the self-perception of the coming generation. Coming out may sound positive, but being assigned a gay label is also like being recruited to live your life in a submarine, observing the old world you used to live in through a periscope. The distance to the shore has become so great, as the building blocks of gay depression flood your mind.
In the Huffington Post, gay writer Michael Hobbes wrote an essay on “The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness”:
“For decades, this is what psychologists thought, too: that the key stages in identity formation for gay men all led up to coming out, that once we were finally comfortable with ourselves, we could begin building a life within a community of people who’d gone through the same thing. But over the last 10 years, what researchers have discovered is that the struggle to fit in only grows more intense. A study published in 2015 found that rates of anxiety and depression were higher in men who had recently come out than in men who were still closeted.
“It’s like you emerge from the closet expecting to be this butterfly and the gay community just slaps the idealism out of you,” my friend Adam says. When he first started coming out, he says, “I went to West Hollywood because I thought that’s where my people were. But it was really horrifying. It’s made by gay adults, and it’s not welcoming for gay kids. You go from your mom’s house to a gay club where a lot of people are on drugs and it’s like, this is my community? It’s like the fucking jungle.”
In the next article, we will look into the psycho-analytic and psycho-dynamic tradition and demonstrate the way that homosexuality can finally be understood as a complex of feelings and past experiences, none of which make permanent marks on your character, behavior or soul. While activists were busy handing out their flags to youngsters to make them feel good, regular psychology has come a long way.
To be continued.
Job Berendsen, MD,
Gary Morgan.
