Scientists using pupil size to test arousal

The results were quite interesting.

They recruited 165 men and 160 women, including gay, straight and bisexual participants. These volunteers watched separate one-minute videos of a man masturbating, a woman masturbating and neutral landscape scenes. The videos were all matched for brightness so that differences in light wouldn't skew the results.

A gaze-tracking camera recorded the pupils during these videos, measuring tiny changes in pupil size. People also reported their own feelings of arousal to each video.

The results showed that pupil dilation matches the pattern seen in genital arousal studies. In men, this pattern is generally straightforward: Straight men respond to sexual images of women, and gay men respond to sexual images of men. Bisexual men respond to both men and women.

In women, things are more complex, Savin-Williams said. Gay women show more pupil dilation to images of other women, similar to the pattern seen in straight men. But straight women dilate basically equally in response to erotic images of both sexes, despite reporting feelings of arousal for men and not women.

The possible explanation for this in the article was a bit odd. Read the rest of this post...

Internal audit finds anti-gay marriage study to be "bullsh-t"

You might recall last month we reported on a new study that claimed that kids were worse off with gay parents.

At the time, a number of us noted that the study didn't appear to have anything to do with gay parenting at all - in fact, it's not entirely clear if the study looked at more than two gay parents in toto.

Well, the scientifically journal that published the study launched an internal audit to review whether the study was approved in the appropriate manner.  They found, in their own words, that the study itself is "bullsh-t."

Chronicle of Higher Education:

The peer-review process failed to identify significant, disqualifying problems with a controversial and widely publicized study that seemed to raise doubts about the parenting abilities of gay couples, according to an internal audit scheduled to appear in the November issue of the journal, Social Science Research, that published the study.

The highly critical audit, a draft of which was provided to The Chronicle by the journal’s editor, also cites conflicts of interest among the reviewers, and states that “scholars who should have known better failed to recuse themselves from the review process.”

Like Regnerus, the editor of Social Science Research, James D. Wright, has been at the receiving end of an outpouring of anger over the paper. At the suggestion of another scholar, Wright, a professor of sociology at the University of Central Florida, assigned a member of the journal’s editorial board—Darren E. Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale—to examine how the paper was handled.

Sherkat was given access to all the reviews and correspondence connected with the paper, and was told the identities of the reviewers. According to Sherkat, Regnerus’s paper should never have been published. His assessment of it, in an interview, was concise: “It’s bullshit,” he said.

Sherkat goes on to explain that the peer reviewers had conflicts of interest and that he believes the study's author, Mark Regnerus, is pushing a political agenda:

Sherkat considers Regnerus to be “a bright young scholar,” and, years ago, he wrote a letter of recommendation for him. Sherkat believes that Regnerus, whom he has known for two decades, made a decision to push a conservative political agenda in his academic work a number of years ago, and that this paper is evidence of it.

Read the rest of this post...

Gay rights advocate Richard Isay dies

Via NYT:

Dr. Richard A. Isay, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and gay-rights advocate who did not admit to himself that he was gay until he was 40, married and a father, and who won a pitched battle to persuade his own profession to stop treating homosexuality as a disease, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 77.

The cause was cancer, said his son, David, the founder of StoryCorps, an oral-history project.

At his death, Dr. Isay (pronounced EYE-say) was a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and a faculty member at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.

"He changed the way the psychoanalytic world viewed the subject of homosexuality," said Dr. Jack Drescher, a training and supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute in New York and the author of "Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man." "He was a pioneer, a very brave man. He was attacked by psychoanalysts. He took a lot of flak."

Read the rest of this post...

Study: Gay marriage is good for public health

LA Times:

A study published in February by the American Journal of Public Health found that gay men in Massachusetts were in better physical and mental health after that state became the first to recognize same-sex marriage in 2003. Researchers examined the medical records of 1,211 gay and bisexual men who went to “a large, community-based health clinic” in a “large metropolitan city” and compared the patients’ use of medical services before and after the law went into effect.

“One mechanism that may explain these findings is a reduction in the amount and frequency of status-based stressors that sexual minority men experience when institutionalized forms of stigma are eliminated,” they wrote.

That last part hits on a point that Dan Savage raised in the post I link to below. Here's the relevant part of Dan's post:

The haters have it backwards. It's not that self-hatred in many gay people causes personally-destructive behavior. It's that the external hatred all gay people have to endure—discrimination, oppression, bigotry, and rejection by family members poisoned by "faith"—can lead to substance abuse, punishing sexual excess, and suicide. Being gay doesn't damage us. It's the way we are treated for being gay that leaves many of us damaged. Johann Hari said it best:

Being subjected to bullying and violence as children and teenagers makes gay people unusually vulnerable to depression and despair. The homophobes then use that depression and despair to claim that homosexuality is inherently a miserable state—and we shouldn’t do anything that might “encourage" it. They create misery, and then use it as a pretext to create even more misery.

It reminds me of the old fear that being gay was a security risk. And I've never said this before publicly, but the fact that it was considered a security risk made it a security risk.

The stigma pushed gays into the closet which made them have "a secret." Get rid of the stigma, you get rid of the need to have a secret, and the security risk vanishes. Read the rest of this post...

Damning report on new religious right gay parenting "study"

The family-values researcher who did the "study" - paid for by the anti-gay far right, of course - claims he enjoys controversy.  Hopefully he enjoys controversy more than his reputation, which is quickly heading south now that his "studies" are finally get the attention they deserve.  Though it's not the attention he was expecting.

It really appears quite duplicitous what this guy did.  Read through the link above.  This sounds like the work of the Family Research Council, and every other anti-gay "study" out there.  Lots of numbers to hide the fact that the "conclusion" is total bs.

My favorite "find" in the HuffPo link is that this "study" of "gay parenting" includes only two kids who actually grew up with gay parents.

Two.

But that hasn't stopped the religious right from totally distorting the "results."

I wonder if this "researcher" will put out a statement correcting the religious right's abuse of his "science."  Whether he does so will speak volumes as to whether this guy is truly an impartial scientist, or just another religious right hack. Read the rest of this post...

Most kids in new anti-gay "parenting" study didn't even live with gay parents long-term

As you may know, there's a new "study" claiming to show that gays make bad parents.

It's interesting therefore that most of the kids in the study who lived with gay parents didn't spend any significant period of time actually living with those parents. Jim Burroway makes a huge find:

But in this study, only 57% said they had lived with their mother and her partner for at least four months before the age of 18, and only 23% reported living with their father and his partner for the same length of time. Only 23% of LM [lesbian mom] children and 2% of GF  [gay father] children reported living with their parents and their parents’ same-sex partners for three years or more. And when looking at the outcomes of those children, we are being led to believe that those outcomes are in some way related to the short amounts of time that those children spent with their gay or lesbian parents while in a same-sex relationship, and not the fifteen-plus years the vast majority of them spent outside of that dynamic. The illogic behind this comparison is mind-boggling.

So to recap. The study purports to show how bad it is for kids to live with gay parents. But only 23% of the gay-parented kids in the study lived with a gay mom for three or more of their 18 years. And only 2% of the gay-parented kids lived with a gay dad for the same period of time.

So most of the kids in the study didn't really "live" with gay parents at all.  How is it then that the researcher found the same "damage" among kids who spent years with gay parents and those who spent only a few months or less - unless of course the damage was caused by something else all together (oh, I don't know, how about divorce itself?)

Jim notes a second, and important, point.  If the kids lived most of the time with heterosexual parents, and only a small fraction of the time with gay parents, then isn't it more likely that whatever "damage" they suffered happened from 17 years of living with a straight parent than 3 months of living with a gay one?

Jim does a deep, stellar analysis of the entire survey.  Do check it out. Read the rest of this post...

New study says gaydar is real

Some people don't like the notion that some people "look" gay.  I disagree.

If we believe that your sexual orientation is genetic, then why not believe that those genes might express themselves in a physical manner?  Especially when we're talking about genes linked to sexual attraction.

Interesting study. Read the rest of this post...

I'm back from cataract exile

I'm back.

All appears to have gone well (knock on wood) with my cataract surgery last Thursday night. Even though it could take weeks or months before I know my final prescription, as it currently stands my distance vision rocks.

Though it's come at the price of my near vision - I was incredibly near-sighted, and I'm now terribly far-sighted. Can't focus on anything under six feet, possibly 8 feet, with my left (post-cataract) eye. Which is annoying. I expected the surgery to leave me presbyopic, but didn't expect to be THIS presbyopic. It's been a big adjustment. Again, I know this was going to happen, but I guess I didn't realize the extent of the far-sightedness. It's tempered my elation a bit.

Then in a few weeks we do eye number two, and that's when I'm really not going to be able to see my dinner.

Another odd development is how I see color in the post-operative eye. I knew, from reading other's stories, that people always talk about how amazing colors are after their cataracts are removed. My colors aren't amazing. They're just different. Whites are now actually white, while in my not-yet-operated-on eye the whites are, I now know, cream colored. In fact, everything with my right eye has a creamy overtone to it. While my left borg implant now sees the world tinged slightly blue.

In part, or perhaps in whole, this is due to the fact that your natural lens in your eye starts out clear but becomes more yellow as you age. It's so gradual that you don't notice that the world is becoming more yellow around you. Not until you have a cataract and a new clear lens goes in, and suddenly the yellow is no longer blocking the blue (that's the way the color wheel works), so everything seems to have a bluish tint. I'm not sure I like the bluish world I now live in, though cream-land now feels like a bit of a lie.

I've suddenly lost all faith in colors all together. When I edit my photos in the future, will they look funny to any of you pre-cataract people (for lack of a better word, we'll simply refer to you as the pre-assimilated), since they'll be edited for a post-assimilation eye? I'd never expected to have an existential crisis over color.

Things are also somewhat brighter with my borg eye.

Now a word about the surgery. Don't let them fool you with all the talk of it being "out-patient." I've had out-patient surgery before. This was different. My previous outpatient surgery involved things like sitting in a chair and have my retina zapped with a laser in order to cauterize a small hole or a large tear. I wasn't supposed to feel a thing. It was excruciating. But at least I was sitting in a chair, in my own clothes, and pretty soon it was all over.

Not so much with the cataract surgery.

You start fasting around noon. Get to the hospital around 6pm (I was late due to NATO/Occupy traffic backup from Chicago). And then wait until 9pm for your surgery. In the meantime, you have to go downstairs and be admitted, and get one of those funky wristbands with your name on it (in case they accidentally kill you, and then lose your body, I guess). Then you go back upstairs, talk through all your current medications with a nurse, and then go back into what looks like an emergency room with lots of people wearing surgical gear, and patients wearing those nasty little gowns they make you wear for surgery.

The entire experience felt very very surgery-like. And not very out-patient like.

Now, all of this is to make sure the area is sterile - bacterial infections post cataract surgery can be very serious, and ultimately blind you. So I'm not knocking the whole operation-room chic of the experience. But I wasn't expecting it. I honestly thought I was gonna sit in some guy's office and he was going to sit me back and zap my eye like he might a wart.

Two funny moments pre-surgery. The first was when I asked the nurse if I could keep my iPad with me (the hospital has free wifi) in case the surgery was going to be a while. She looked at me, in total seriousness, put her hand to her eye, and said "why do you have an eye pad, you're going to put it against your eye?" We both got a chuckle when I very politely explained what an iPad was, just in case she was from Mars.

The second somewhat humorous moment was when the anesthesiologist asked me, in front of my mother, "do you drink?" Not really. "Do you smoke?" No. (Though I did think it odd she was asking me this in front of mom - I know people who aren't out to their parents about smoking.) Then, sensing what was coming next, I jumped in and said to her, "are you seriously going to ask me if I do drugs in front of my mom?" Not without cause - these were the three questions the other nurse asked me when we were going through my list of medications.

All in all, I'm pleased the surgery appears to have gone well, and so far I don't seem to have an of the dreaded complications. But I'm honestly still a bit freaked about my near vision now being this bad (though, as I mentioned, it still may get better as my eye heals, though I'm doubtful). I'm not sure what I was expecting - maybe that I'd be able to focus two feet away from my eyes, which is pretty much what I can do with my contacts. But with my generation, and younger, we spend so much time with our gadgets, and at our desks, that I worry about needing glasses for every little thing.

Then again, I've been wearing glasses (or contacts) full time since I was 6. So it's not like wearing glasses is a new thing. Still, it's a bit unsettling. And I'm not entirely sure why. Read the rest of this post...

So I'm off for cataract surgery...

Click photo for larger version.
(Photo via Shutterstock)

So in another chapter in the ongoing tale of my eyes, I'm going for cataract surgery today.  Today is the left eye, in a few weeks we're doing the right eye.

It's not entirely clear why I've got cataracts at this young an age, but I do.  We suspect it's the steroids I've been using for my asthma.  It's particularly odd since the more advanced cataract is in my "good" eye, i.e., the eye I did "not" have a retinal detachment in a few years back (the retinal surgery put me at an increased risk for a cataract in that eye, but not the other).  Though the "bad" eye has one too.

Interestingly, it was my cute French doctor, Julien, who spotted the nascent cataracts three years ago - no one believed him, and no one else spotted them for a good long time thereafter.  I noticed a change in color perception in that eye, a sudden decrease in my prescription, and a sudden sensitivity to light.  In retrospect those are classic cataract symptoms, but I went for loads of tests before anyone figured out it was a cataract.

Cataracts are funny things.  At first, they simply made my prescription worse (in addition to making colors a bit less vibrant).  I'm already pretty nearsighted - I think my glasses prescription was at about a -10 and -11 before the cataracts (which is pretty bad).  Now they're something on the order of -11 and -14.  But in addition to the cataracts progressively making your prescription worse (which can be corrected with expensive new glasses or less expensive new contacts), eventually they start to blur your vision all together - and in a way that can't be corrected by new glasses or contacts.  That's the stage I'm in now.

My left eye has been blurry for about a year - it's beyond the point of simply getting a new prescription - and the right eye was doing fine until just recently when it too started to go blurry.  At this point, I use my right eye exclusively when working on the computer, the left image is just a blur, but oddly permits me to read up close pretty well (meaning, if I'm trying to read the fine print on a bottle).

Now, when you get cataracts the doctors are loathe to tell you WHEN you need surgery.  It's not entirely clear why.  It's almost as if they're afraid to give you advice.  They say "you'll know when you need surgery."  Not really.  Now, why not get it done immediately?  Because it still is surgery, and there still are risks.  Of infection.  Of even a retinal detachment that could leave you blind.  It is common surgery, it does tend to go well, but it's not without risk.  Especially when you're as myopic as I am, and when you have a previous history of retinal detachments, which I do.  Then your risk of a detachment during the five years following the surgery is not insignificant.  Now, that doesn't mean you'll go blind if your retina detaches.  Mine detached while I was in Paris 3 years ago, and after emergency surgery my vision is really no worse for the wear.  My sister, however, had a detachment and she lost the vision in a quarter to a third of her one eye.  Others have detachments and lose their vision in that eye permanently.  So the risk of a detachment shouldn't be taken lightly, and it's definitely on my mind.

But at the point where you can't use your left eye for work, and your right eye is starting to go, it's time to get things fixed.  And as my eyes have never tolerated contact lenses well, I can only wear them for a few hours at a time, out socially, not for close up reading or computer work, I'll be getting both eyes done (the usual option is to get one eye done and then wear a contact lens in the second eye until it too needs surgery).  There's usually a surgical delay of 1-4 weeks between eyes.

What is a cataract?  The lens in your eye gets cloudy and has to be removed and replaced with a new clear artificial lens.  It's out-patient surgery, takes about half an hour.  While you may have good vision in a few days, you might not have optimal vision (to really determine how well the surgery worked) until 6 months or so after.  Though usually about a month after the doctor takes a final prescription for glasses etc.

Which raises the issue of "will you need glasses after cataract surgery?"  The goal is "no."  But it depends.  Most of my bad prescription is in my lens that will be replaced.  So in principle the new lens will fix by bad prescription.  But.  It depends on where exactly implanted lens settles after six months of healing.  It could move a bit, and any slight movement could affect my prescription for better or worse.

Then there's astigmatism, a problem related to the cornea of your eye.  It too affects your prescription, and changing the lens won't affect your astigmatism since the problem isn't in the lens.  Well, that's not entirely true either.  I found out that the surgery to take out your old lens and implant the new one can change your astigmatism for the better or for the worse.  It depends on the specific details of your astigmatism, and how the doctor does the surgery.  In my case, the surgery should, by simple dumb luck, cancel out perhaps 80% of my existing astigmatism.  So, we hope that I won't need glasses for distance vision after I get both eyes fixed.  (They do have what are called toric lens implants that can fix astigmatism, but insurance won't pay for them.  In my case it doesn't matter since the surgery should fix much of my astigmatism anyway.)

Reading is another matter.  The kind of lenses I'm getting are fixed-focus lenses, meaning, the lenses are optimally focused at a fixed distance - kind of like the old cheap cameras that had an optimal distance of maybe 12-15 feet.  Too close, they were blurry.  Same thing goes for the lens implant.  I'll need reading glasses after.  A thought I loathe.  I really think our generation is the first to spend so much time on the computer AND on our phones and other mobile devices.  I check my iPhone 100 times a day for mail and more.  It's going to be a pain to constantly look for reading glasses - and, as a guy, without a purse, where do you put such glasses when you go out in the summer?  I'm probably going to buy some cool bifocal sunglasses I saw online.

There is another option, multifocal lens implants, that let you see distance and close up.  Thing is, a lot of people have been seeing glare and halos using these lens - a LOT.  And apparently, the glare and halos are horribly annoying, to the point where people are regretting getting these lenses.  I'm told that some doctors think the numbers of patients seeing these halos and glare are much higher than people realize - I was basically warned off of getting them.  Keep in mind, once this thing is in your eye, that's it - it ain't coming out, can't be fixed, etc., so if they get it wrong... (I believe they could do another surgery to try to fix it, but you're entailing some serious risks doing that. It's not "easy" like the initial surgery.)

And the final option is mono-vision.  Basically you get one lens for distance vision in one eye, and the second eye gets a lens for near vision, so you can read with that eye.  Your brain in principle fuses the two together, and this way you won't need glasses even to read.  I've tried monovision the past few years with my contacts (intentionally) and my glasses (unintentionally).  I hate it.  I feel like there's veil over my left eye.  My mom has monovision lenses implanted in her eyes and doesn't mind the monivision.  At the hospital they told me that women tend to adjust to the monovision well, men not so well.

I've worn glasses for 42 years now.  I'm dying to lose them if I can.  I think I'm willing to opt for reading glasses - which everyone pretty much needs eventually - in order to ditch the glasses for distance after this much time (even though I did get some awfully trend burgundy Danish eyeglasses when I was in France the other summer - figures that the age I finally get the nerve to get cool glasses, I'll no longer need them (will probably turn them into reading glasses or something).  And the other cool thing is I can now get those coolio and cheapo Warby Parker glasses that up until now wouldn't make lenses for people as nearsighted as I.  With the new prescription, if there is a new prescription, I can at least get those.  So all is not lost, barring other complications.

So, in a few hours I'm off to the hospital in Chicago where my specialist works (I'm going to a specialist because of my past retina issues) and should have the surgery on my left eye around 730pm central time tonight.  If all goes well, they'll do my right eye in a few weeks.  I have no idea if I'll be blogging at all tomorrow - I've already warned the boys that I may not even be able to see my computer (but I think I may poke the left lens out of my glasses and try anyway). So posting might be light for the next 24 hours, or it might not.

I'm curious to hear from any of you who have had cataract surgery.  How did it go?  If you had glasses before were you able to get rid of them?  Any problems with insurance?  Did you have insurance?  Fortunately, mine seems to cover 90% of the surgery, even though I'm "away" from my usual network in DC.  Weigh in in the comments, particularly if you've had the surgery (but not exclusively).

Hopefully I'll be reporting in tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.  JOHN Read the rest of this post...

On Maddow, Gabriel Arana talks ex-gay therapy and Spitzer's retraction of his study

Last week, Gabriel Arana wrote a powerful article, My So-called Ex-gay Life, at The American Prospect about his own experience with ex-gay therapy. He also wrote a post for AMERICAblog Gay about the bombshell revelation from Dr. Robert Spitzer, recanting his study supporting ex-gay therapy:

Robert Spitzer—the guy who led the charge to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973—published a controversial study in 2001 saying that some gay people could change their sexual orientation. The study continues to be cited by proponents of "ex-gay therapy" (the notion that you can pray away the gay) as the chief piece of evidence that such therapy works; the fact that he is not a flack for the ex-gay movement and is an atheist made it hard to say he was biased. But when I met Spitzer in March, he asked me to retract the study.

Last night, Gabriel was on Maddow talking about the issue. Very cool. And, very proud of him. Excellent and important. And, Rachel is right. It's "a remarkable piece of reporting."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read the rest of this post...

Prominent psychiatrist Spitzer retracts study saying "ex-gay" therapy works

For three and a half years, I underwent therapy to change my sexual orientation, from gay to straight, with Joseph Nicolosi, co-founder and former president of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). I've written a piece for The American Prospect magazine that tells the story of the ex-gay movement over the last 20 years, as well as recounting my own experiences in therapy (spoiler alert: it failed miserably). I encourage AMERICAblog readers to check it out, but there is one key piece of information I wanted to share.

Robert Spitzer—the guy who led the charge to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973—published a controversial study in 2001 saying that some gay people could change their sexual orientation. The study continues to be cited by proponents of "ex-gay therapy" (the notion that you can pray away the gay) as the chief piece of evidence that such therapy works; the fact that he is not a flack for the ex-gay movement and is an atheist made it hard to say he was biased. But when I met Spitzer in March, he asked me to retract the study:

Spitzer was drawn to the topic of ex-gay therapy because it was controversial—“I was always attracted to controversy”—but was troubled by how the study was received. He did not want to suggest that gay people should pursue ex-gay therapy. His goal was to determine whether the counterfactual—the claim that no one had ever changed his or her sexual orientation through therapy—was true.

I asked about the criticisms leveled at him. “In retrospect, I have to admit I think the critiques are largely correct,” he said. “The findings can be considered evidence for what those who have undergone ex-gay therapy say about it, but nothing more.” He said he spoke with the editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior about writing a retraction, but the editor declined. (Repeated attempts to contact the journal went unanswered.) …

Spitzer was growing tired and asked how many more questions I had. Nothing, I responded, unless you have something to add.

He did. Would I print a retraction of his 2001 study, “so I don’t have to worry about it anymore”?

It's quite a stunning reversal, and I got the sense that this had troubled Spitzer for some years.

While I share the criticisms many psychiatrists and gay-rights supporters levied at the 2001 study, it strikes me that Spitzer's decision to pursue it evinces an admirable characteristic.  When we spoke, Spitzer told me it's important to question "whether everything you've been taught is wrong." In the early '70s, there was a near consensus in the psychiatric community that homosexuality was a mental disorder—and a pretty bad one at that. Interactions with gay-rights activists made Spitzer doubt the conventional wisdom in the same way that encounters with ex-gay activists made him question whether change therapy worked (and led him to pursue the 2001 study). In the latter case, the result was more harmful than good, but the drive to think independently—even when there is enormous social pressure to hew to the party line—seems the defining mark of a true intellectual. Of course every strength is also a weakness, but were it not for Spitzer's capacity for self-doubt, my husband and I might be sitting in a psychiatric ward instead of happily married.

On a broader note, this has been a story I've wanted to tell since I first became a writer. The experience of researching and writing it, however, was difficult. It's one thing, to paraphrase Joan Didion, for a writer to sell other people out; it's another to give away embarrassing details about yourself and your past (which, in the service of truth, I had to). Reaching into my painful adolescence was a bit dislocating. It cut loose a lot of memories from therapy, of being an insecure teenager—a time I'm sure many would prefer to forget.

But, at the risk of being aggrandizing, I think the way my story ends is edifying. I'm convinced that we never really "get over" traumatic experiences—whether it's a parent or spouse's death, a car accident, or childhood abuse; they remain part of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

I'm an atheist, but whenever I think about trauma, I'm reminded of a passage in one of Christian writer C.S. Lewis' books (I can't remember which). He compares the human condition to a symphony; the fall of Adam and Eve, he says, is like a wrong note that threatens to spoil the entire composition. But the divine composer comes to the rescue by turning the errant note into the start of a new melody.

With trauma, one must indeed turn the errant note into the start of a new and better symphony. Read the rest of this post...

Study: Homophobes may be big old closet cases

Science Daily:

"Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves," explains Netta Weinstein, a lecturer at the University of Essex and the study's lead author.

"In many cases these are people who are at war with themselves and they are turning this internal conflict outward," adds co-author Richard Ryan, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester who helped direct the research.

Hello? Have you ever looked at the male leaders of the religious right, not to mention a few of the females as well? Gay gay gay gay gay. Read the rest of this post...

A stroke can make you gay

At first I thought this story was a bit weird, and then counter-productive. Then I realized it was proof of the biological origins of sexual orientation, as the story itself concludes. After watching the video, which includes an interview with the guy who changed, I'm not entirely convinced that the guy was 100% straight to begin with. Via Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress:

Read the rest of this post...

No place for gay-bashers on the Planet of the Apes

Slate:

Homosexual behavior has been documented in hundreds of animal species, but the same does not hold for gay-bashing. For starters, few animals are exclusively gay. Two female Japanese macaques might have playful sex with each other on Tuesday, then mate with males on Wednesday. Pairs of male elephants sometimes form years-long companionships that include sexual activity, while their heterosexual couplings tend to be one-night stands. For these and many other species, sexual preferences seem to be fluid rather than binary: Gay sex doesn’t make them gay, and straight sex doesn’t make them straight. In these cases, the concept of homophobia simply doesn’t apply.

Researchers believe that gay sex is even rewarded in certain species. For bonobos, sexual activity serves as an instrument of social harmony: It reinforces bonds and keeps the peace. For instance, when a female bonobo migrates into a new group, she often ingratiates herself to the clan’s other ladies by having a lot of sex with them. Far from being shunned, this homosexual behavior is welcomed. And former Stanford researcher Joan Roughgarden has argued that among male bighorn sheep bisexuality may be the norm; those that don’t participate end up as outcasts.

Read the rest of this post...

NYT says to leave Cynthia Nixon alone, then proceeds to say she's entirely wrong

Frank Bruni, in Sunday's NYT, uses the Cynthia Nixon "I chose to be gay" kerfuffle as a starting point for questioning why it matters, on a civil rights level, whether or not we were born gay.

And it's a good question.  Though it has little to do with what Nixon said.

Cynthia Nixon didn't question whether we were born gay.  She questioned whether we "choose" to be gay.  That's a different question, and it's absurd.  No one chooses whether they tend to find men, or women, or both, sexually pleasing to the eye and to the touch.  We choose whether we act on those urges, to be sure.  But I challenge any of Nixon's defenders to give me the name of one person - not whose orientation appeared to fluctuate throughout their life, that isn't what Nixon said - but rather, who willfully made their own orientation fluctuate, who was able to decide on a given day whether they would find men or women attractive, simply through the power of their own mind.

With that in mind, I have a problem when the NYT describes the controversy as:

[Nixon's critics] complained that she represented a minority of those in same-sex relationships and that she had furthermore handed a cudgel to our opponents, who might now cite her professed malleability as they make their case that incentives to change, not equal rights, are what we need. [emphasis added]

Wrong.  No one said she represented a minority of gay people (though Nixon herself claimed to).  We said that she represents absolutely no one - not even herself - because she's flat our wrong, no one chooses their sexual orientation, and likely using incredibly imprecise language to describe her own experience.

No one's sexual orientation is the result of a conscious choice as to who we will find attractive.  And it's time for Nixon's defenders to explain to us all how this little bit of magic actually works.  We know electroshock and lobotomies don't work.  And while the religious right claims otherwise, prayer hasn't been too successful either (ask Mrs. John Paulk, whose "ex-gay" poster-boy husband was caught by Wayne Besen hitting on young men in a seedy gay bar a few years back).  Nixon is likely using imprecise language to describe either bisexuality, whether it's 50-50 or not (Bruni himself concludes that she's bisexual), or some kind of fluid sexuality (or postponed self-realization) whereby someone honestly does think they're straight, only to find later in life they're much happier dating their same gender.  Such a change may be rooted in genetics, maybe in hormones, who knows, but it's not rooted in a conscious decision to will yourself to find a gender physically attractive that you previous did not.

As I've written before, you don't choose what flavor of ice cream you like - your only choice is whether to partake in that particular flavor.  And it's even possible that over time, for a small minority of ice cream lovers, one's taste in ice cream changes (some even hate ice cream all together).  But your favorite flavor never changes simply because you say to yourself, "I've always hated chocolate ice cream, but today I've decided that I will love chocolate ice cream."

Does Cynthia Nixon have the right to disagree?  Sure, no one is going to throw her in jail.  Well, that's not entirely true.  The only other people who believe you can change your sexual orientation through willpower want to throw us in jail simply for being gay, and they use the "choice" argument to justify it.  It is interesting, however, that you never hear Nixon's defenders defending the right of religious right "ex-gays" to define their sexuality the way they wish.  I was accused of being a typical man trying to tell a woman what to think.  Am I also a misogynist for showing disdain for the pray-away-the-gays?

Silence.

All of this isn't entirely relevant to the discussion of whether we deserve our civil rights regardless of whether being gay is a choice, except that it's a false choice.  Why should we cede any ground at all to the religious right, and their GOP enablers, and accept, even arguendo, that maybe it is a choice?  To use an extreme example, should we also argue that maybe some of us are pedophiles (to use another popular religious right lie), but even pedophiles deserve rights?  Why cede a lie?  One that is intended to harm us.

Now, you can cede the "born gay" argument, if you like, and still perhaps convince people that we deserve our civil rights nonetheless - though poll after poll shows that people are far more supportive of our civil rights when they do not think being gay is a choice.  But there is no need to cede whether it's a "choice."  Interestingly, many of Nixon's defenders wrongly conflate the "born gay" issue with the "it's a choice" issue; If you don't think it's a choice then you naturally must think you were born gay (and thus, if we can cast doubt on homosexuality being 100% genetic, then Nixon has won her case).  I think that's a non sequitur.  Even were your sexual orientation a result of environmental factors, rather than birth (or more specifically, genetics), that doesn't make your orientation your choice.  This isn't about whether or not we're born gay, it's about modern science saying a lot of things about how people end up gay, and being able to choose who, or even what gender, you find hot isn't high up on the list.

As Bruni concedes, even Nixon herself admits, finally, that she's basically bisexual: "In a Daily Beast interview after the Times article appeared, she clarified that she has experienced an unforced, undeniable attraction to individuals of both sexes. In other words, she’s bisexual, not whimsical. She just happens not to like that term, she said."  But much more important than whether she's bi is the fact that by her own admission she had these urges for both sexes, urges that she never really says came about because she chose to have those urges.  And that is what this entire discussion is about.  Not whether you find men women, or both attractive.  Not even whether that attraction, for some people, has changed over the course of their lives.  But rather, whether someone can turn on and off that attraction at will.  If it were that simple to stop being attracted to someone, breaks up would be a hell of a lot easier.

In the end, I think Nixon means she chose "a gay lifestyle" over her previously straight one.  There's really no other word to use that adequately explains her choice of words.  And in that, she's correct - she ceased her life with a man and chose to settle down instead, have a life, with a woman.  In her mind, that may constitute "choosing to be gay" - i.e., choosing a gay relationship when she could just as well choose a straight one.  But that's not choosing to be gay, and it's certainly not the way the loaded phrase is used in America today.  And Nixon knows it.  She chose to act on her unchosen urges and live her life in a lesbian relationship.  And that's great.  But it's not choosing to be gay.

Cynthia Nixon didn't weigh in on whether we're born gay or whether some of our orientations fluctuate.  She said that some people make a conscious decision to choose their own sexual orientation, that in essence they can will themselves to suddenly find women attractive when they never did before.  I'm arguing that even if your orientation is fluid, even if it's changed since high school, or throughout your life, it didn't change because you wrote on your to-do list, "Tuesday at 10:00am, become a lesbian." Read the rest of this post...

AP covers the Cynthia Nixon "gay by choice" story

I wrote last week about Sex & the City star Cynthia Nixon telling the NYT recently that she "chose" to be gay.  I was somewhat critical of Nixon in a few posts.  The story keeps gaining traction.  AP does a pretty job covering it now as well. They also note a few more reasons her argument is risky, shall we.

Among the activists most horrified by Nixon's comments was Truth Wins Out founder Wayne Besen, whose organization monitors and tries to debunk programs that claim to cure people of same-sex attractions with therapy. Besen said he found the actress' analysis irresponsible and flippant, despite her ample caveats.
"Cynthia did not put adequate thought into the ramifications of her words, and it is going to be used when some kid comes out and their parents force them into some ex-gay camp while she's off drinking cocktails at fancy parties," Besen said. "When people say it's a choice, they are green-lighting an enormous amount of abuse because if it's a choice, people will try to influence and guide young people to what they perceive as the right choice."

Nixon also did an interview with the Daily Beast, which may not earn him any kudos among bisexuals.

Q: You’ve been very vocal and political about marriage equality and helped lead the successful fight for it in New York. So congratulations on your own marriage. But before you met and fell in love over seven years ago now with Christine—who, through a sperm donor, gave birth to your son Max Ellington almost a year ago—you were in a 15-year relationship with Danny Mozes, whom you first met in high school. You had two children with him—Samantha, who is now 15, and Charles Ezekiel, who is 9. You’ve been quoted as saying about these two relationships in your life: “In terms of sexual orientation, I don’t really feel I’ve changed ... I’ve been with men all my life and I’d never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn’t seem so strange. I’m just a woman in love with another woman.” I’m a bit confused. Were you a lesbian in a heterosexual relationship? Or are you now a heterosexual in a lesbian relationship? That quote seemed like you were fudging a bit.

CN: It’s so not fudging. It’s so not. I think for gay people who feel 100 percent gay, it doesn’t make any sense. And for straight people who feel 100 percent straight, it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t pull out the “bisexual” word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals.

Q: But it is the “B” in LGBT.

CN: I know. But we get no respect.

Q: You just said “we,” so you must self-identify as one.

CN: I just don’t like to pull out that word. But I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met Christine and I fell in love and lust with her. I am completely the same person and I was not walking around in some kind of fog. I just responded to the people in front of me the way I truly felt.

Fine. And that has absolutely nothing to do with "choosing" to be gay. It's sounding more and more like Nixon thinks "entering a gay relationship" is the same thing as "choosing to be gay." She chose to act on her already-existing gay yearnings (or yearnings that at least existed the moment she met her current girlfriend) so she thinks that's "choosing to be gay." This is why I kept harping on the imprecision of her language. She most certainly has the right to define herself. And just like with the "ex-gays," when she and they say things that make no sense, and potentially harm us and our movement, we have the right, and the obligation I'd add, to call her out on it. Especially when she had fair warning that this was a problem, and in the initial interview with the Times seemed almost as if she wanted to poke a stick at people who thinks she's out to lunch on this. Well, we poked back. Read the rest of this post...

Cynthia Nixon’s "gay by choice" might not play well in court

UPDATE: I'm going to let this dead horse lie shortly.  But I wanted to make one more point, since I'm seeing a number of people, elsewhere, "correct" me while ignoring what Nixon actually said.  Some people are arguing that a small subset of women, say 15%, go back and forth in life between same-sex partners and opposite-sex partners.  So Nixon is right, they argue, about this subset. Again, I'd argue that the logic is imprecise.  That might suggest that the 15% is bisexual, not that the 15% "chose" to be bisexual (and acting on your bisexuality is a choice, being bisexual is not a choice, it is not something you will to happen).

I suspect what this argument really is getting at is the notion that for some people their sexual orientation itself, which gender their attracted to, shifts back and forth over life.  So that people like Nixon aren't really bi since they're not into both genders at the same time, they're only attracted to one gender at a time, but that gender keeps shifting over time.  If that's the case, how do you get from the existence of this fluidity to it being a "choice" that the attraction shifts back and forth?  That is my point.  Nixon claimed that she willed the attraction into existence where it previously did not exist - she didn't just choose to be with a woman, she chose to find women sexually attractive, in essence, she chose the fluidity (and the flip side, she could choose to shut down the fluidity and lock her attraction to only one gender).  I don't buy it.

I think Nixon is using sloppy language to describe her fluidity.  I think she's defining "gay" as a lifestyle, to use the verboten word.  She's defining "gay" as being paired with someone of the same gender, not simply being attracted to someone of the same gender (or having 51% of your attractions being to that gender).  So she "chose" to be gay because she "chose" to act on an errant desire she had for a particular woman, and now lives a "gay lifestyle", lives as a woman with another woman.  That's not choosing to be gay any more than a gay person who chooses not to date or have sex - Catholic priests come to mind - has chosen to be cured.  And I said I was cured because I hadn't had a date in a while, no one would launch a PC defense of my right to define my own sexuality.

LA Times op ed:

[I]n the courts, as the lawsuit against Proposition 8 wends its way through the appellate process, this issue could have very high stakes. Under the 14th Amendment, the courts have historically said that discriminatory laws must pass a very high legal bar to remain law, if they affect a "discrete" and "insular" community that has traditionally been singled out for discrimination. Traditionally, this has included ethnic and racial minorities, and women. In his ruling on the Proposition 8 case, then-U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker wrote that this surely applied to the gay and lesbian communities as well.

Historically, though, one of the criteria for such groups is that they must be a minority because of an unchangeable characteristic. If, as Nixon says, sexual preference can be a choice, then couldn't gays and lesbians simply "choose" otherwise?

No one is saying that she's going to be quoted in a court case. They are saying, however, that her argument, were it more widely adopted by the gay community, just might cut us out of civil rights victories at the judicial level because we'd be admitting (false, I might add) that our sexual orientation is not "immutable."

I still want anyone who defends her, and claims that she has the right to define her own sexual orientation, to explain to me how exactly it works.  Because the proposition is absurd.  You don't choose your sexual orientation.  She's not into girls today, and has no interest in guys, but tomorrow says "I will it that I will find guys sexually attractive, but no longer find women sexually attractive" and voila, it happens.

I'm sorry.  No one, no one, has ever - ever - shown it to be true that someone can change their sexual orientation on a dime by willing it so.  That's what she said, she "chose" to be gay, she chose her sexual orientation.  That's what people are defending.  So if they're going to defend it, they should drop the pseudo-psychology babble and explain in normal English how someone CHOOSES willfully to change their sexual orientation.  That's what "choice" means.  It doesn't mean your sexual orientation slowly changed on its own, or that it's fluid - as one guy wrote yesterday - because that wouldn't be willful, it wouldn't be a "choice." That would simply be, as I wrote before, choosing among flavors you already like.  That's not choosing to be gay, that's just choosing which gay you saddle up with.

She said she "chose" to be gay. It means through the power of her mind she willfully turned herself from straight to gay.   Right, and through the power of my mind I can turn myself into a toaster.  (And please don't tell me otherwise, because you'd be violating my right to define my own sexuality as I wish.) Read the rest of this post...

Ambassador Hormel on being gay

Jim Hormel was America's first openly gay ambassador, appointed by President Clinton in 1999 (after the GOP held up his appointment for years simply because he is gay).  Amb. Hormel penned an op ed for CNN. Here's a small excerpt:

As a young boy growing up in Austin, Minnesota, teachers forced pens into my right hand in the futile hope of correcting my left-handedness. If they had known I was gay, they might have tried to fix that, too. They would have failed.

I spent the first 35 years of my life trying very hard not to be gay, to the extent that I married my college sweetheart and created a beautiful family of five children with her. Hard as I tried to make that life work, I could not escape my attraction to men. Choice had nothing to do with it.

Read the rest of this post...

So does Herman Cain want to do guys but he simply "chooses" women instead?

Now we know what kind of pizza Herman Cain likes.

I'm always fascinated by people who think being gay is a choice. It says to me that for them, being straight is a choice. Meaning, they're bisexual - they like both, and therefore of course they think it's a "choice" to be gay, because for them it was a "choice" to be straight (i.e., a choice to have sex with women instead of acting on their desires to have sex with men).

I think Herman Cain just shared a bit more than he bargained for. Piers Morgan on CNN via Politico:

Morgan: You're a commonsense guy..You genuinely believe that millions of Americans wake up in their late teens normally and go, you know what, i kind of fancy being a homosexual? You don't believe that, do you?

Cain: Piers, you haven't given me any evidence to believe otherwise.

Morgan: My gut instinct, Herman, tells me that it has to be a natural thing.

Cain: So it's your gut instinct versus my gut instincts. I respect their right to make that choice. You don't see me bashing them. I respect them to have the right to make that choice. I don't have to agree with it. That's all I'm saying

Morgan: It would be like a gay person saying, Herman, you made a choice to be black.

Cain: You know that's not the case. You know I was born black.

Morgan: Maybe if they say that, they would find that offensive.

Cain: Piers, Piers. This doesn't wash off. I hate to burst your bubble.

Morgan: I don't think being homosexual washes off.

Neither does being a bigot. Read the rest of this post...

Slate kinda sorta confirms gaydar

They didn't realize they were confirming it, but read this from Slate:

In early childhood, in some cases. A hefty pile of research shows that boys as young as 3 years old who break from traditional gender roles have a high likelihood of becoming gay adults. Predictive behaviors include playing with Barbie dolls, shying away from roughhousing, and taking an interest in makeup and women's clothing. (Read the Explainer's take on why boys prefer to play with sticks while girls go for dolls here.) The relationship isn't one-to-one, however, and it's certainly not the case that all boys who love Barbie dolls will later identify as gay. The correlation is much weaker in the other direction: A disproportionate number of boys who don't conform to gender stereotypes turn out to be gay men, but lots of gay men played with G.I. Joe as boys and quarterbacked the high-school football team. Neither does the relationship appear to be as strong among girls. Tomboys aren't as likely to become lesbian adults.

I've said for a long time that yes, lots of gay men come off as straight. But not a lot of straight men come off as gay... and are really straight. That's gaydar in action. Read the rest of this post...