Gay is not good
Contents, preface, foreword
and chapter 1
Contents
2 ● Advantages of the homosexual lifestyle
Pseudo-advantages
Real advantages
3 ● A Brief history of sexuality
Famous homosexuals
The Bible on sex and the family
Other religions: Sex and the family
The Legacy of the Greeks
Socrates: A homosexual case history
The Greek love paradox
Generalizations on sexuality from
history
PART 2. Scientific aspects of homosexuality
4 ● Biological considerations
The rediscovery of heredity
Normal sexual development
Abnormal sexual development
Other biological factors in sexuality
The biological categorical imperative
Universal heterosexual love
5 ● Psychological considerations
Miscellaneous stimulus-response
principles
Conditioning and learning
Psychodynamics of sexuality
Psychodynamic Paradigms
The decent homosexual — Psychological factors
Concomitants of homosexuality
6 ● The homosexual and society – 1
What do homosexuals want?
The homosexual citizen
The homosexual caregiver
7 ● The homosexual and society – 2
Problems with the homosexual administrator
Homosexual politics
What will be the result of
homosexual politics?
Complex social issues
8 ● Homosexual fallacies: A primer
Loopholes in homosexual arguments
Homosexual errors
Inverse generalizations
Special topics
The weak scientific foundation:
Kinsey, Bell
and Weinberg, Masters and Johnson
PART 3. Prevention of homosexuality
9 ● Immunization against homosexuality
Principles of healthy
psychological development
Guiding children through critical
periods
Sexual options
When the child leaves the home
Psychosexual emergencies
10 ● Effective diagnosis
and prognosis of homosexuality
A ● Medical evaluation
B ● Diagnostic evaluation
Types of homosexuals
Other possible homosexual types
A simplified classification of homosexuals
Prognostic evaluation
PART 4. Treatment of homosexuality
11 ● General treatment considerations
Early diagnosis and treatment
Beginning the treatment
The right therapist
12 ● Chemotherapy and surgery
Chemicals and drugs
Surgical therapy
13 ● Behavior therapy
Pavlov, Skinner, and beyond
What homosexuals think about therapy
14 ● Psychotherapy
Depth psychotherapy
Psychoanalytic methods
15 ● The homosexual influence – Now and beyond
Politics
Science
Appendix A. Special
biological problems in homosexuality
Appendix B. An
Official government statement on homosexuals
Appendix C. Analysis of the Kinsey H-Scale
Appendix D. Building a library on healthy sexuality
Appendix E. Pre-homosexual checklist: Males
Appendix F. Pre-homosexual checklist: Females
Appendix G. Homosexual checklist: Males and females
Appendix H. Factors
contributing to the higher incidence of male homosexuality
Bibliography
Index
Preface
This book is the culmination of years of research on homosexuality.
As a professor of psychology for more than a quarter century, I have
counseled hundreds of students. As a licensed psychologist I have worked with
many patients. But the main motivation behind the thousands of hours required
to bring this book to completion has come from my five children, four of whom
are boys. Homosexuals have repeatedly approached my children, and I have
counseled them in their encounters.
In the last twenty years homosexual activists have achieved amazing
political successes in obscuring the issues, derogating thousands of years of
human experience and research on the subject, and changing attitudes in the
general population. Only recently has the general public become fully aware and
increasingly alarmed at the consequences.
The last five years have seen a large number of books on homosexuality
presented from the moral and religious point of view. During this time little
or nothing has been published utilizing rational and scientific arguments
regarding pathological aspects of homosexuality. This has amounted to an
effective censorship within the scientific community, as well as among the
general public. (I owe a special debt of gratitude to Thomas Nelson Publishers
for having the courage, good sense, and sufficient concern for the future of
our society to publish this book.)
At the same time
there has been a plethora of both popular, political, and scientific publications presenting homosexuality in a positive
light. The result is that millions of people are left without rational and empirical foundations
for their belief that gay is not good.
Professionals, and there are many, such as myself led the fight to
decriminalize homosexuality. We insisted that homosexuals be considered as
legal patients, not illegal criminals. Homosexuals deserve our compassionate
concern.
But homosexual activists were not content with decriminalization. The
momentum generated for an enlightened public by professional caregivers was
used to subvert and redirect these high aims. Now homosexual militants insist
that there is nothing wrong with their behavior, that homosexuality and
heterosexuality are equal and normal preferential lifestyles. This simply isn't
so.
In order to fill the need for a book that was both readable and
informative, I deliberately selected the simplest and least formidable method
of referring to original sources. This was accomplished by using numbers in
parentheses in the text to indicate the location of a source in the
bibliography. Footnotes were intentionally omitted since they often intimidate
all but the most persistent readers or professional academicians.
In most instances sources referred to in the text corroborate the statement
made; in a few instances original sources give an antithetical viewpoint. But
in all instances they are relevant to the issue discussed.
Pam Jenkins, my secretary, helped not only in the typing but in
correcting, editing, and organizing the manuscript.
I am grateful to my wife, Dorothy, without whose help this book would
not have been possible.
Frank M. du Mas Augusta,
Georgia Spring, 1979
Foreword
What is a
homosexual? What is a heterosexual? Is gay O.K.? Sooner or later parents and
other caregivers have to answer such questions asked by young children. The
answers are typically brief, devoid of scientific language, and given not so
much to bring about understanding of the issue as to create a general attitude
calculated to protect the young child until he matures enough to understand more
complete answers. We reply: A homosexual is a boy who has sex with other boys or a girl who has sex
with other girls. A heterosexual is like Mommy and Daddy, a man and a woman who
make love to each other. No. Gay is not O.K.
But when these same children begin to mature, they discover new and
powerful sexual emotions. A girl may now ask: Why can't I have sex with boys? A boy might ask: What's wrong with being gay? or Tom had sex with another boy; is he a homosexual? Sooner or later
such questions come up; the answers designed for small children are no longer
adequate. What are the best answers to these questions?
The same young people leave high school as young adults. A son goes into
military service. A daughter takes a job in the big city, or a young person
goes on to college. At college they have new experiences, gain new knowledge,
discuss new ideas. When these independent, bright young people come home they
no longer ask questions of their parents or former caregivers. All too often
there are far fewer questions and many more pronouncements incorporating their
newfound knowledge.
A young man states: "According to Kinsey, everybody has a little
homosexuality in them. Dad, do you think you are smarter than Socrates? He and
other intellectuals during the Golden Age of Greece were homosexuals, and they
said that the love you and Mother have for each other is second-rate. They say
Greek love, the sexual love between two men, is the best of all."
Or, a young woman comes home from college and states emphatically:
"Mother, it's O.K. to have sex, but I don't want the bother and pain of
pregnancy. Children are a drag anyway. The family is finished. I want to be
carefree and gay!"
How are we to respond to these bright and knowledgeable, but still
inexperienced, young people? It isn't easy. The typical parent is middle-class,
of average intelligence, has a high school education, and possesses limited
knowledge about sexuality. When a young person returns from the big city, military
service, or the university, he has often had contact with highly intelligent,
well-educated, articulate individuals with wide experience, not only in sex but
also in other aspects of life. The average parent or caregiver finds it
difficult to compete for the minds and hearts of these young people against
such formidable influences. In the special field of sexuality, he needs the
assistance of professionals who can help him guide young people in his care in
the proper sexual direction.
Caregivers often find it difficult to refer young people to the right
books and articles that can effectively answer their questions. This book meets
this need by suggesting a three-stage library: Basic, expanded, and complete.
So that these books can be acquired quickly, author, title, and publisher are
given for each book. (See Appendix D.)
But all books presently available have certain limitations. Some are
technical and written for professionals, while others are a little out of date
because of new knowledge. Some do such an excellent job on specific aspects of
sexuality that it would be hard to make another significant contribution in
that particular area. For example, Cleckley's Caricature of love is an excellent analysis by a well-known
psychiatrist of sexual sickness as it exists in literature and the arts. Dr.
Hatterer's Changing homosexuality in the
male gives so many excellent verbatim clinical case studies that another
book in this area would be redundant. Dr. Bieber's Homosexuality is probably
the finest psychoanalytic study on the subject ever made.
One book, Wyden and Wyden's Growing
up straight, requires special consideration. (322) It is the only book I
have found written for the average parent or caregiver with a specific intent
of showing what is wrong with homosexuality and what is right about
heterosexuality. It also gives readable, practical guidance on bringing up
children and young adults to full and satisfying heterosexuality.
But even the Wydens' excellent little hook has some obvious omissions:
They have little to say about the biological aspects of homosexuality; very
little is said about homosexuals as caregivers and administrators; their
comment on Greek love and the dialogues of Plato is very limited; and they have
little to say about homosexual militants (H-militants), homosexual fallacies,
homosexuality as a disease, the analysis of Kinsey's H-scale, the highly
questionable conclusions drawn from cross-cultural and animal studies, and
chemotherapy and behavior therapy for homosexuals. As far as it goes, the work
of the Wydens has been done very well, and to a certain extent, this book is an
attempt to extend or complete what they did not emphasize or left out.
Consequently, all of the subjects above are discussed in this book.
This book is not intended to be a balanced presentation of the
homosexual versus the heterosexual point of view. This book is one-sided
because it presents heterosexual answers and alternatives to the many biased
homosexual statements and demands.
This book fills a need for four groups of people: Parents, caregivers,
individuals who are in conflict over their own sexual identity and want to know
about the heterosexual's counter-arguments to the homosexual point of view, and
those homosexuals or bisexuals who want to change to exclusive heterosexuality.
FMD
Part 1
Background
Chapter 1
Gay:
Good or not good?
Gay is good!
Ten
thousand homosexuals roared this militant slogan of the Gay Liberation Front
(GLF) in Atlanta, Georgia. CBS television videotaped
this scene for a special report, Homosexuality
in America, aired in the fall of 1973. A woman stood on the platform facing
the crowd and spoke into the public address system:
Gay is beautiful.
Gay is beautiful! The crowd repeated in a roaring
refrain. In an echo magnified many times, the crowd repeated several such
three-word sentences on the glorification of homosexuality. The litany finally
ended with these two refrains:
Gay is normal! Gay is healthy!
Is
gay good? Beautiful? Normal?
Healthy? Children and young adults are asking their parents, teachers, doctors,
and clergymen these questions. Magazines, books, movies, and other mass media
are discussing homosexuality quite openly. Many commentaries on the subject are
made in such a way as to suggest that gay is, as the GLF says, good, beautiful,
normal, and healthy. (129) Children and young people seldom have the knowledge
and expertise to defend themselves from such homosexual propaganda. They read
and listen to these statements and then ask adults whom they love and respect
questions about homosexuality.
Physical and mental
pitfalls of homosexuality
Physical Pitfalls
Those
of us entrusted with the care and guidance of young people are faced with the
increasingly difficult homosexual problem. We are careful to protect our
children from many dangerous pitfalls of modern living: We train them to be
careful in crossing streets; we give them driver education so that they can
survive on the highways; we teach them to be careful with fire; we instruct
them on the proper use of knives and guns, and so on.
We
even guide them past invisible dangers, such as deadly microbes, through
physical hygiene. Some physical dangers are easily seen by anyone, such as poor
driving habits, which result in terrible automobile accidents that maim and
kill. Some physical pitfalls, such as disease-carrying germs, the growing child
cannot see, so he must take on faith the guidance and direction furnished by
those who care for him.
Mental pitfalls
There
are also mental pitfalls that caregivers attempt to guide young people safely
around. As with physical pitfalls, some of these mental, or behavioral, dangers
are more visible than others. We try to teach young people that certain
behaviors, when practiced repeatedly, become habits that ultimately lead to
degradation, unhappiness, and misery. For example, we attempt to train our
children not to steal because they could be imprisoned or shot when caught in
the act. We train our children not to hit others because the consequences can
be painful, disfiguring, or even fatal when the other fellow violently
reciprocates.
There
are also mental pitfalls whose consequences lie farther in the future and are
far less visible. To train our children to avoid these is a much more difficult
task. It is more difficult because not only are the rewards and punishments for
these behaviors and mental habits more unreal to the growing child, but also
the re-wards and punishments often lie far in the future. For example, we teach
the growing child principles of reality testing, that is, to differentiate
between facts and what really happens in contrast to daydreams and fantasy. We
know that to habitually not discriminate between fact and fantasy is to
encourage schizophrenia.
When
we see a young person with a special aptitude, a knack or talent for athletics,
mathematics, writing, science, music, or art, we help him to get the
instruments or equipment he needs to advance in his area of interest. We spend
much time and money to facilitate the full flowering of the young person's
potentialities. It may be twenty or thirty years before the successful habits
of living we have helped to establish in the child come to full fruition as an
adult concert pianist, scientist, or physician.
Caregivers
cannot do for the child what he must do for himself, but they can give him time
and wisdom to help him on his way towards the successful achievement of distant
goals. When we help our children establish good habits of living, we help them
to avoid two prevalent pitfalls of modern civilization: Psychotic breakdown and
wasted talent.
The
establishment of good habits of living is called mental hygiene. Mental hygiene
can be taught just as physical hygiene can be taught. Physical hygiene
establishes the habit of cleanliness to avoid the misery of physical disease;
mental hygiene establishes emotional habits to avoid the misery of mental
disease.
It
is obviously more difficult to teach mental hygiene than physical hygiene. This
is partly due to the fact that habits involved in physical hygiene are usually
demonstrable, cognitive, and conscious because the cerebrum is the part of the
central nervous system most concerned with this sort of training. In mental
hygiene, we are developing emotional habits that are less demonstrable, more
complex, and more unconscious since they mainly involve the autonomic nervous
system.
The
cerebrum is involved in the highest level of rational and conscious mental
activities. The autonomic nervous system is involved in the more diffuse
activities, such as digestion, reflex behavior, endocrine glandular responses,
and emotional reactions. Its functions are largely unconscious. The autonomic
system is much more difficult for the individual to control voluntarily, and
once autonomic or emotional habits are established, they are much more
difficult to modify, inhibit, or erase. For example, it is easy to break the
bad mathematical (cognitive) habit that says that 2+2=5. It is much more
difficult to correct the bad social (emotional) habit of stage fright.
Reevaluation of homosexuality
In
the International classification of disease
(ICD-8) and the Diagnostic and statistical
manual (DSM-II) of the American Psychiatric Association, homosexuality has
been listed as a mental disorder under the general title of Diseases. (149,70)
During
the CBS program previously mentioned, two opposing views were expressed
regarding a change in the classification of homosexual behavior. In the last
decade or so, homosexuality has increased in the United States, although its status
in the rest of the world seems to have remained much the same. (185, 284, 285)
An American psychiatrist suggested that homosexuality be reclassified as a disorder of sexual orientation and did
not seem to feel that homosexuality, even though widely practiced, was
something to be particularly concerned about. It is interesting to note that
CBS found it desirable to go outside the United States to get an individual
who expressed a view opposing a reclassification that would reflect a bland
definition of homosexuality. The British psychiatrist who opposed the
reclassification said that to take the proposed step towards the devaluation of
the pathological aspects of homosexuality would be disastrous to our society.
The
implications of the preceding discussion have tremendous relevance for the
future. Parents who rear their children, teachers who already teach physical
hygiene and will be expected to teach mental hygiene in the future, family
physicians, and clergymen will be placed in the position of deciding how to
guide young people toward the good life. If the present trend continues, it is
reasonable to expect that caregiving adults will teach children that they have
sexual needs to be satisfied and that there are several good ways in which this can be done. Since emergence of the gay is good philosophy, homosexuality
has become in the eyes of many, an alternative, normal, and healthy way for
developing humans to satisfy their needs for sex and love. If the trend
continues, children of the future may well be taught that homosexuality is not
only good but is as good as
heterosexuality.
There
have been a number of influential writers, such as Andre Gide, Edward
Carpenter, and Oscar Wilde, who have said that homosexuality is not simply good
nor just as good as heterosexuality, (120, 121) but the best possible way of
satisfying a human being's needs for sex and love. The number of influential
people who hold this "superlative" view of homosexuality seems to be
increasing in both number and influence. (33, 57, 58, 210)
It
is still true, even in the United
States, however, that the great majority of
people believe that heterosexuality is the best solution to a human being's
need for sex and love. But the average parent does not have the necessary
acquaintance with scientific research and literature on the subject to guide
his children in any objective way. His convictions stem largely from his own
personal beliefs and experiences in sexual relations. The average parent is
also reluctant to discuss the subject openly and frankly with his children. If
a parent or teacher is bold enough to broach the subject at a PTA meeting and
wonder aloud why such things are not taught in school, the chances are very
good that he will be greeted by cold silence, evasion, or hostility.
But
parents are not alone in being uncomfortable discussing homosexuality with
young people. Teachers, physicians, clergy-men, and social workers all find the
subject a difficult and controversial issue.
Intimidation of
heterosexuals
As a
practicing psychologist and the father of five children, I myself have been
increasingly concerned with the militancy of the Gay Liberation Front. Many
worried parents and teachers have discussed these matters with me, asking for
information and help in regard to the homosexual problem. I have searched the
library for a book I could recommend, one that would present an understandable
exposition of the relationship of health and happiness to heterosexuality.
In
looking at some of the more popular and widely read psycho-logical treatises,
such as Eric Berne's Games people play
(35) and Benjamin Spook's Decent and indecent,
(281) I found they give very little space to the subject. However, the
impression one gets is that these writers do not feel that homosexuality or the
sexual perversions are the best ways to satisfy one's need for sex. But there is
a veritable deluge of books, magazines, and articles boldly pushing the concept
that gay is good, normal, and healthy.
In
contrast to the homosexual writers' aggressive claims, those who have recently
published books in which heterosexuality is discussed positively have played
down or are almost apologetic when speaking of differences between male and
female and emphasizing the significance of heterosexuality for health and happiness.
An example will clarify what I mean.
Dr.
Benjamin Spock is a physician with an international reputation. He is one of
the first medical men ever to be board certified in both pediatrics and psychiatry.
His book Baby and child care has been
translated into many languages and has sold tens of millions of copies. (280)
He also has authored or coauthored several other books on the care and rearing
of children and problems faced by parents.
Dr.
Spook's book Decent and indecent was
printed in 1969 and modified in 1970 and 1971. Of the five sections in the
book, two discuss problems relating to sexuality: Section 1: Where does idealism come from? and section
2: Problems of sex and sexual role.
Dr. Spock presents, in my opinion, a rather advanced and healthy view of the
various aspects of sexuality he discusses. But throughout his discussions he
seems very careful not to antagonize the ultra-liberals, the members of the new
left, homosexuals, women's liberationists, or advocates of gay liberation. He
gives a scrupulously fair and healthy view of pornography, obscenity, and
brutality in the mass media; and yet he chooses to term his view as a reactionary view of obscenity and
brutality.
As
we shall see in later chapters, not only homosexuals but those involved in
other subdivisions of the sexual perversions are organizing into political
pressure groups who can, if they choose, make it extremely difficult for
parents, teachers, clergymen, or physicians to speak out against homosexuality.
I was a professor of psychology for many years, and I know that any professor
who honestly feels and teaches that homosexuality is a perversion and that
people who practice it should have help of some kind is in for a very difficult
time at many colleges and universities in the United States. A highly
articulate and politically effective group of intellectuals can be expected to
form and work for his harrassment and degradation in order to force him out or
keep him from disseminating such ideas. Consequently, few intellectuals and
writers today dare to speak out.
Oberholtzer
(234) has edited a book whose title is the question Is gay good? Kameny (163) and Shelley (273) have each authored
separate publications whose titles are identical affirmative answers to
Oberholtzer's question: They reply Gay is
Good. Although it is late in coming, it should seem reasonable and fair for
someone to take the opposite point of view and write a book entitled Gay is not good. This book, then, can be
regarded as completing the third corner of the discursive triangle on
homosexuality.
