Homosexuality / Transgender and the APA

[_jskains]

http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/fe ... y_disorder

It's interesting that people are so desprate to stop viewing homosexuality and transgender behavior as a mental disorder. But are the decisions of the APA truly honest or are they strongly influenced by social/political pressure?

I'm interested in honest dialog. The obvious snipe at the LDS church as "only changing due to social pressure" can be assumed and avoided please?

Thanks,
JMS

[_Buffalo]

http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/feature/2009/05/20/gender_identity_disorder

It's interesting that people are so desprate to stop viewing homosexuality and transgender behavior as a mental disorder. But are the decisions of the APA truly honest or are they strongly influenced by social/political pressure?

I'm interested in honest dialog. The obvious snipe at the LDS church as "only changing due to social pressure" can be assumed and avoided please?

Thanks,
JMS

I don't know anything about transgender issues, but homosexuality can't really be called a mental disorder. First, in and of itself, it's harmless. Second, there are a lot of physical differences (not just brain differences) between homosexuals and heterosexuals. I seem to remember a Mormon Stories podcast from a BYU professor on the subject, but I don't remember the details.

[_jskains]

I don't know anything about transgender issues, but homosexuality can't really be called a mental disorder. First, in and of itself, it's harmless. Second, there are a lot of physical differences (not just brain differences) between homosexuals and heterosexuals. I seem to remember a Mormon Stories podcast from a BYU professor on the subject, but I don't remember the details.

Could you cite a reference that there are physical differences? I question the brian issue merely because I am not sure we understand if they are homosexual because their brain is different or if their brain is different because they are homosexual.

In other words, other conditions like alchoholism or depression I beleive also cause different brain patterns, but we still consider them mental disorders.

Lastly, has an honest study been done that links homosexuality to other disorders? In other words, can it be shown that it is not harmful and not linked to other mental conditions?

JMS

[_Mephitus]

The problem is that its an extremely deep and complex issue. As a lay person, i would be willing to say that my personal experience has led me to the understanding that some people can be gender dysphoric due to mental instability of one kind or another. Just like some people are straight, gay, or bi due to mental disorder.

In fact theres a sad case of a (future) inlaw that is married and straight purely because of mental issues pushed on him from Mormonism. Its a long story, but he is so obviously gay it pains both me and my fiance every time we interact with them as we can see the damage it causes their relationship.

As even a personal item, would i be a furry if not for the mental/sexual dysphoria that the church put on me during my formative years? Even i can't answer that.

Either way, i find it sad that an area of science would shy away from a sensitive subject in need of more research and understanding.

[_Droopy]

http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/feature/2009/05/20/gender_identity_disorder

It's interesting that people are so desprate to stop viewing homosexuality and transgender behavior as a mental disorder. But are the decisions of the APA truly honest or are they strongly influenced by social/political pressure?

I'm interested in honest dialog. The obvious snipe at the LDS church as "only changing due to social pressure" can be assumed and avoided please?

Thanks,
JMS

I notice this is the American Psychiatric Association, not the American Psychological Association, which heavily moderated its rather politically correct position on homosexuality some years ago and admitted that reparative therapy could be quite effective for those committed and dedicated to it and who were uncomfortable with their homosexual desires/feelings.

This sentence caught my attention:

At this year's APA meeting, in San Francisco, it is transgender activists who are demanding that the organization depathologize their identity.

The unleashed forces of democracy and moral relativism converge, on occasion, with a tsunami-like vengeance.

That homosexuality and, most especially, transsexuality, are psychologically pathological should not be arguable. That they qualify as "mental illness" is a much longer shot. I'm not a big fan of psychiatry, in any event (though sundry concepts and modalities within psychology have substantial value) because of its historic embedding in the reductionistic, medical model of Freudianism (as well as the tortured claims of Freudian psychodynamics per se), so I usually shy away from the the use of medicalized terms (mental "illness") to describe what are primarily psychological phenomena.

[_Buffalo]

I don't know anything about transgender issues, but homosexuality can't really be called a mental disorder. First, in and of itself, it's harmless. Second, there are a lot of physical differences (not just brain differences) between homosexuals and heterosexuals. I seem to remember a Mormon Stories podcast from a BYU professor on the subject, but I don't remember the details.

Could you cite a reference that there are physical differences? I question the brian issue merely because I am not sure we understand if they are homosexual because their brain is different or if their brain is different because they are homosexual.

In other words, other conditions like alchoholism or depression I beleive also cause different brain patterns, but we still consider them mental disorders.

Lastly, has an honest study been done that links homosexuality to other disorders? In other words, can it be shown that it is not harmful and not linked to other mental conditions?

JMS

I'll try to find the information - I'm working from fuzz memory.

[_jskains]

I want to clarify my other thought.

In computers, you write data to a magnetic disk, which makes a very calculated ajustment to the drive's field to create peaks and valleys to represent 0's and 1's. I am simplifying, but I don't want to write a long winded post on magnetic hard drive mechanics.

The question I have and have yet to see properly answered is if the "difference" in a homosexual's brian is because of the method the brain records conditions or if the brain's structure is actually causing the homosexuality. I think that is an important question IMHO.

JMS

[_jskains]

Why was this moved? IMHO, it eventually comes down to a very core issue leveled at the LDS Church.

I think the moderation crew pulled the trigger IMHO. I hope it wasn't to bury the topic.

JMS

[Guest]

there are a lot of physical differences (not just brain differences) between homosexuals and heterosexuals. I seem to remember a Mormon Stories podcast from a BYU professor on the subject, but I don't remember the details.

What Buffalo is referring to is most likely two things, the first being the thoroughly discredited 1991 study by Simon LeVey which purported to show alterations in the brains of homosexuals relative to heterosexuals. There are some differences, to be sure, but the upshot of it all is that those differences only appear in some homosexuals, the brains of many others being in no sense different than the brains of heterosexuals.

Two years later, another scientist, Dean Hamer, published a study in Science in which he claimed that there may be a gene for homosexual orientation. This created a flurry of mainstream media activity over the discovery of a "gay gene." that explained homosexuality as primarily genetic in origin, but the entire thing foundered on the rocks of evidential vacancy.

No such gene is known to exist, and there is no discernible, discreet, biological "cause" of homosexuality known to science.

Its far more complex - and subtle - than that.

[_Buffalo]

Here you go, quick link, I'll try to find more tomorrow:

http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/readi ... inger.html