Sexuality and Homosexuality

Sexuality and Homosexuality

   Sexual inadequacies and distortions take their inevitable toll in epidemic proportions: impotence, frigidity, pornography, masochism, sadism, promiscuity--and homosexuality.
   Homosexuality, like these other manifestations of dis-ease, is a symptom of disturbed personality. Its origins lie in the same breeding grounds as those that stunt the maturation of so many heterosexuals.
   Dr Robert Kronemeyer,
   author of Overcoming Homosexuality
   (Macmillan 1980)

   In the spring a young man's fancy
lightly turns to thoughts of love.
   Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

   Today it is different. As our society slips further and further away from Nature and people become more and more anxious about the future, they have become increasingly dependent all year round on the sensual 'pleasures of the flesh' to fill a void in their lives which should not be there. Like health, happiness, love and contentment are the natural birthrights of all people but which, however, to a great extent we have been deprived of by our modern way of life. This deprivation is the void we attempt to fill by more or less artificial means. And as with using medicine to treat a physical disorder, all that this attempt yields is temporary relief until the effect of the medicine wears off.

   Chasing sexual gratification in the attempt to fulfil the natural desire for romantic love and security (of which combination sex is an important component) is an act more of desperation than natural desire. Preoccupation with sex, like greed and corruption, is a sign of sickness in a population just as much as are the ever-increasing rates of other mental illnesses and other common diseases of degeneration.

   A healthy appetite for sex is natural, but when pornography, violence and cacophonic noise begin to dominate our sources of entertainment, bringing us stress instead of happiness, and when these affronts to decency become accepted, even desirable, in society, then what we see is the beginning of a slide which will make the decline and fall of the Roman Empire look like a Sunday School picnic.

   Over-sexuality is a form of neurosis, not a sign of vigor and health, and like homosexuality it is an abnormal condition which does not occur among any species of animals on Earth , including humans, when a natural environment prevails.

   People often conjecture about the 'purpose of life'. Why are we here? It seems the main purpose of life is to ensure the continuation of the species, and for this reason every kind of living thing on earth, plant or animal, is abundantly endowed--over-endowed--with the capability of procreation. So nobody can say that a healthy sex appetite is unnatural. It is imperative in Nature that there is always an overproduction of individuals in any species in case of adverse circumstances which could threaten the survival of the species as a whole. If the individuals comprising the surplus are not needed and cannot be sustained in the prevailing circumstances, they simply die, but always the total remains as high as the circumstances of space and food supplies allow.

   Plants have an advantage over animals in that if their survival is threatened they can produce seeds which can lie dormant for years if necessary until favorable circumstance return. Thus in drought conditions, grasses, weeds and other plants, sensing death by dehydration, will go prematurely to seed before dying of thirst. Animals of course have the advantage over plants in that they are mobile and can travel in search of water and food.

   Fruit-growers, knowing these things about plants, realize that if conditions are too favorable for their fruit trees the trees won't trouble to produce as much fruit, so by manipulating the watering at the right time they induce stress to the trees to encourage them to produce more fruit. The tree does this to ensure there will be more seeds, and the farmer gets a better crop. Thus the urge to reproduce is increased in life-threatening situations.

   What about animals? Stress influences the chemistry of the blood, the most well known of the various effects being that of the secretion of adrenalin to arouse the senses and increase the metabolic rate in threatening situations. Denied the chance of fighting or fleeing the threat of death, a 'last-resort' animal instinct is that to reproduce. Sensing the imminence of death, cattle awaiting slaughter at abattoirs will become sexually aroused, while people awaiting death in the gas chambers in Nazi extermination camps in World War II would, in a similar fashion, indulge in sex.

   Another illustration of abnormal sexual activity is given in Louis Kuhne's New Science of Healing (1894):

   'It is an old and well-known fact to farmers, that an unnaturally increased sexual impulse among cattle is a sure sign of a disease having broken out. And it is the same with man, as anyone can observe who will look about him. I need only mention here the abnormal sexual excitement on the part of consumptives.

   Sexual impulse in healthy man is something altogether different from that unbridled lust we see so often today.'

   In situations in which animals are deprived of freedom and normal healthy activity, they will display sexual depravity along with brutality and other unnatural behavior they would never in their natural environment indulge in. Dr Solly Zuckerman was a distinguished professor of anatomy at Birmingham University in the 1920s and 30s, and in the study of humans and the other primates wrote a book from which it was intended humans could learn more about themselves. The book, The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes (1932), described various behavioral patterns of primates in captivity in the London Zoo but, as Robert Ardrey pointed out in his book African Genesis (1961), conclusions drawn from behavior in captivity are not representative of an animal's true instinct in nature:

   'The famous anatomist cannot be blamed for presuming that the sex-obsessed activities of London baboons reflected true primate behavior, or for drawing the logical conclusion that the powerful magnet of sexual attraction must be the force that holds primate societies together. But over and over we shall encounter in this narrative the disastrous consequences of applying utter logic to a false premise. [Which goes to show that doctors are not the only people who jump to wrong conclusions by applying logic to a false premise.] And Zuckerman's premise was false. The creature whom we watch in the zoo is one denied by the conditions of his captivity the normal flow of his instinctual energies. Neither the drives of hunger nor the fear of the predator stir the idleness of his hours. Neither the commands of normal society nor the demands of territorial defence pre-empt the energies with which Nature has endowed him. If he seems a creature obsessed with sex, then it is simply because sex is the only instinct for which captivity permits him an outlet.'

   Desmond Morris has pointed out that to call a city an 'asphalt jungle' is totally wrong because it is much more like a 'human zoo', in which zoo flourishes crime, homosexuality, rape and obsession with food, drink and sex. Nor outside of cities are humans free and natural either, but they are freer and closer to Nature than their city counterparts and are blessed accordingly. It is clear that the further a community is distanced from an unnatural environment and the closer it conforms to Nature, the better is the likelihood its inhabitants will resemble true and proper human beings.

   The fact that the majority of people prefer to live in cities demonstrates the natural instinct in humans to congregate, for mental stimulus and other advantages, but in man's primitive evolutionary past high density living was not possible and the appetite for carnivals and excitement had to be satisfied by the annual tribal get-togethers like the corroborees of Aboriginals or the singsings in the New Guinea highlands. Cities are man-made traps as much as are alcohol, cigarettes, junk food, medicine and pollution, and to those who are aware of the pitfalls they need present no great hazard.

   The ways of Nature, mysterious and exact, are always directed at restoring homeostasis, not only within the body but within whole population groups. If for instance in a community of bees of a certain hive a greater than usual proportion of worker bees is lost due to bushfire or some other reason, or if a lot of soldier bees are killed defending the hive from predatory ants, straight away the output of eggs by the queen bee is altered to produce a higher proportion of either worker bees or soldier bees as the situation requires to restore the correct balance in the hive's population. In human populations, the death rate among males is slightly higher than among females, and this is compensated for by a similar slightly higher proportion of male children born than female. What mysterious natural force controls this ratio? Is this ratio variable should there be a change for some reason in danger factors among humans?

   One factor associated with aggressiveness and oversexuality is the high consumption of meat in the diet, and when people give up eating meat to become vegetarian they report that their natures become more placid and less sexually aggressive. Statistics show that vegetarians, generally, have a far better life expectancy than meat-eaters, and therefore it is a reasonable supposition that vegetarians feel less urgency to reproduce. The self-regulating mechanism within all living things to increase the reproductive urge when survival is threatened works, it seems, not only to increase the urge in humans who eat a lot of meat, but takes into account also that the wastage rate among male meat-eaters is greater than that among females. Statistics can be used to prove anything so they say; what do you make of this one? A 1987 report from official British statistics stated that in 1980-82, for every 100 girls fathered by butchers and meat-cutters there were 121 boys, compared with the national average of 105.6 boys for every 100 girls. This fact, in light of how Nature works to preserve balance, would seem to confirm that meat-eating is a hazard, and in the further light of the fact that meat-eating tends to excite sexual arousal more than does vegetarianism, thus is provided another example of how 'living dangerously' leads to sexual excesses.

   For what it's worth, a recent article in Brisbane's The Courier Mail asserted that a woman could plan to influence the sex of her future child by means of diet. It said that if a woman's diet (obviously for some time before conception) included lots of lettuce, watercress, broccoli, asparagus, radishes, cucumber, cabbage and cauliflowers she would have a great chance of having a girl. And if she ate lots of ham, bacon, smoked salmon, salty mineral water, dried beans and broad beans, she would have 'a sterling' chance of producing a boy. Whether butchers ever marry vegetarians the author has no idea.

   Thus it should never be assumed that what appear to be peculiar quirks of Nature are simply random errors. Not at all; they are predictable consequences of abnormal circumstances, more often than not man-made.

Homosexuality

   Recently, in calling for a change in laws regarding homosexuals, a group of more than forty psychologists in Queensland agreed that the latest research showed that homosexuals made up a large proportion of the population and that homosexuality was quite natural.

   But it is absurd to conclude that homosexuality is quite natural simply because a large proportion of the population is comprised of homosexuals. That the diseases of civilization are all natural consequences of an unnatural lifestyle doesn't mean we should regard the diseases as natural. Cancer, heart disease and the other diseases of civilization do not occur in animals living in Nature, but they often do in domesticated animals. The only thing natural about them is that they occur as a natural reaction to unnatural circumstances. Homosexuality is a disorder not in accord with Nature and, like cancer, heart disease or neurosis, is a reaction to circumstances non-existent in Nature but common in man-made circumstances.

   In calling for recognition that homosexuality is natural, the panel of psychologists at the same time referred to three different studies in which the rates of attempted suicide of young homosexuals were reported as twenty per cent, eighteen per cent and twenty-one per cent respectively. The reports did not reveal how many of the suicide attempts succeeded, but whereas the psychologists presumed the attempts resulted from the despair of non-acceptance in society by an otherwise normal person, to other psychologists the same facts indicate an underlying personality disorder, which disorder in the first place is the reason for homosexuality.

   The tendency to regard homosexuality as more or less normal is influenced by data from the Kinsey Report on sexual behavior, which gave the impression that almost everybody has within them the potential to become homosexual in circumstances which deprive them of contact with the opposite sex. That such segregation as in prisons and boarding schools, etc, results in homosexual behavior is well known, but the Kinsey data showed that only about one third of jail prisoners indulged in such behavior and that no heterosexual prisoner continued with homosexual relations once they became free. Homosexuals, however, are people who at no time are sexually attracted to the opposite sex, even finding the opposite sex sexually repugnant, but instead have a powerful and constant desire for sexual relations with people of their own sex.

   An argument used to demonstrate that homosexuality is natural is that male animals are commonly observed to mount each other and appear to perform sexually, but whether they achieve satisfaction or not does not denote homosexuality, because homosexuality means complete aversion to sexual relations with the opposite sex and complete sexual desire for one's own sex, a situation which does not occur in Nature among dogs or any other animals.

   The Kinsey data concluded that in the USA one person in every ten was a homosexual, and this proportion has been, by rule of thumb, accepted to be pretty much the same in all populations. But other studies have shown otherwise. Whereas history records the existence of homosexuality as far back as history goes, and records the homosexual behavior of emperors, kings, queens, scholars and scientists over the centuries, there are also records showing that in some remote and more primitive populations homosexuality is unknown, while in other population groups it occurs in widely varying degrees. That the highest incidence of homosexuality coincides with the general level of stressful influences in a community and that the lowest incidence coincides with the degree of happiness and health in remote and unstressed populations indicates that, like many conditions of physical disease, it is just as unnatural as the mental breakdowns, depression and neuroses so common in civilization.

   Studies of primitive natives reveal that while in some populations homosexuality is non-existent or rare, in other populations it is fairly common; but the same pattern still holds-among the placid, happy, untroubled people homosexuality did not occur, while among fighting tribes and headhunters it did.

   Dr Robert Kronemeyer of New York, after twenty-five years of clinical experience helping homosexual men and women, wrote a book, Overcoming Homosexuality (Macmillan, 1980). In this book Dr Kronemeyer related the observations of Dr Margaret Mead, who earlier this century studied the behavior of many native groups of the South Seas. Describing the people of Samoa, Dr Mead called them 'peaceful and constructive . . . a people who plant and reap, fish and build, feast and dance in a world where no one is hurried . . . and life is harmonious and uninhibited'. Babies were breastfed generously, and 'children are loved and cared for and reared in large stable families that do not rely on some tenuous tie between two parents for their own security'. Dr Mead noted the only homosexuality observed among the Samoans was the casual relationships between adolescent boys which they soon outgrew.

   Other healthy populations in which homosexuality was never known were the Comanche Indians, and the Hunzas. It is significant that, as reported by Dr McCarrison, in nine years he worked in Hunza he observed not one case of cancer or heart disease either.

   'Informed opinion' of psychologists agrees that sexual orientation is developed in early childhood and that, once formed, homosexuality is not amenable to clinical intervention. One psychologist stated that research showed homosexuality was not an unnatural or psychiatric disorder, that it was like being left- or right-handed, and that no amount of intervention can change it. But hold on for a minute--not long ago heart disease was said to be irreversible, cancer was considered always fatal and today so too is AIDS. But as we have seen, these opinions were wrong. just as epidemiological studies of heart disease and cancer have revealed the underlying causes of these illnesses, the same kind of studies reveal the factors underlying homosexuality; and the fact that homosexuality is an effect produced by unnatural human factors means that homosexuality is not natural in humans at all, but is an aberration which need not occur.

   A study of 1500 San Francisco gays by the Institute for Sex Research in 1978 concluded that homosexuality in itself is not abnormal and that most homosexuals are not dissatisfied with their lives; most of them are 'stable, happy, and well adjusted'. Twenty per cent of the men said they had attempted suicide and about half of them each admitted to having had at least 500 sexual partners. Does this indicate happiness and adjustment? Having seen the movie Word is Out, produced by homosexuals about homosexuals, social commentator Harriett Van Horne wrote in her syndicated column: 'Their stories are mostly very sad . . . By any standard, most are lost, lonely, sick, and altogether heart-breaking . . . Whatever possessed these people to call homosexuals 'gay'?'

   Studies have shown the single factor shared invariably by all homosexuals, male and female, is an unhappy childhood which in most cases commenced with an incomplete mother/child relationship, and was perhaps further degraded by parental discord and feelings of insecurity. In view of this fact, the findings of a recent report are not surprising. The British research body 'One plus One', in its report 'Marital Breakdown', stated that the children of divorced parents were twice as likely to display delinquent behavior, four times as likely to suffer stomach ulcers or colitis before age twenty-six, were more accident prone, troubled, drifting, underachieving, and as adults far more prone to psychiatric illness and drinking problems.

   'Homosexuals are made, not born 'that way' ', said Dr Kronemeyer, 'from my twenty-five years' experience as a clinical psychologist, I firmly believe that homosexuality is a learned response to early painful experiences and that it can be unlearned. For these homosexuals who are unhappy with their life and find effective therapy, it is ,curable'. '

   So many factors affect a person's prospect for health and happiness, however, it is foolish to try and blame perhaps only one or two for any particular upset. A person's prospects for the future begin with the parents' health before they are even conceived. Most crucial is the diet and behavior of the mother while she is pregnant, and after birth breastfeeding and loving care and training continue the influence which will determine the wellbeing or otherwise of the future adult. It is common knowledge that the effects of emotional stress, poor diet, alcohol and smoking on a pregnant woman have consequential adverse effects on the baby she is carrying, effects such as physical deformities and mental retardation in varying degrees. That drugs, either 'recreational' or medical, have similar effects, in some cases very severe, is also well known. Therefore it is quite possible that tendency towards homosexuality may be acquired to some extent congenitally as was demonstrated by Dr Francis Pottenger's dietary experiments with animals at San Diego in the 1940s (see pp. 18 and 211).

   In his book The Wonderful World Within You (1987), Dr Roger J. Williams described abnormalities in children that commonly occur due to dietary deficiencies experienced by mothers in pregnancy and by children in early life. Speaking of deficiencies of pantothenic acid and folic acid, which are only two nutrients out of many, he says that a deficiency of them alone may cause all sorts of deformities including malformation of hormone-producing glands. 'When we realize', he said, 'that these two relatively unfamiliar vitamins are essential to reproduction in animals and that deficiencies in these may produce serious deformities, we are led to wonder if deficiencies in human prenatal and postnatal nutrition may not also be responsible for many unexplained defects and deformities.'

   A recent study tending to support this view showed that there are biological differences between adult homosexuals and heterosexuals. The study, by neurologist Simon Le Vay at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California, found that the hypothalamus--the part of the male brain governing sexual urges--is much smaller in homosexuals than in heterosexuals, and typically resembled a woman's rather than a heterosexual man's. Le Vay said: 'I don't think this tells us the answer to the question 'are you born gay', but it does tell us that the topic of human sexuality can be studied biologically. Up to now it's been pretty much left to psychology.'

   The Spada Report, a survey of male homosexuality (James Spada 1979) described a study by F. J. Kellman of 85 homosexuals who had twin siblings. He found that among the 45 pairs in the survey who were fraternal twins, the incidence of homosexuality was about the same as between ordinary brothers and sisters, ie rarely were both homosexual. Among the 40 identical twins (those with the same genetic makeup), invariably both twins were homosexual, ie the incidence was 100%. These findings tend to indicate (but not prove) that it may well be that people are born gay.

   Significant findings at the Brigham Young University in the USA indicate that stress during pregnancy can result in homosexual offspring. Dr D. E. Fleming and Dr R. W. Rhees, in experiments, subjected pregnant rats to psychological, nutritional and hormonal stress and then measured the behavioral characteristics of their male offspring. The results were compared to 'normal' offspring of unstressed rats. 'We found demasculinization and feminization tendencies,' reported Dr Fleming. 'Demasculinization, in that the test rats were not as active sexually in the male role; feminization was found where the males exhibited female-type behavior when placed with other males who were sexually aggressive. We are exploring possibilities that may have relevance to humans.' The researchers observed that a definite correlation exists between the endocrinal systems of rats and humans. The predisposition towards homosexuality of male rats of the stressed mothers occurs because when the mother is under stress her body produces hormones that suppress production of androgen, necessary for the development of maleness in a male, although the male physical make-up appears normal. This occurs in the critical third trimester of the development of the fetus. The defect can be corrected by environmental influences--feminized male rats, when placed for long periods of time with females, will begin to exhibit normal male behavior. Three groups of mother rats were each subjected to a different form of stress, and in each group fifty per cent of the male offspring were affected. One way or another, homosexuality is not a chosen way of life, and to quote Dr Kronemeyer again:

   'Homosexuality is a symptom of neurosis and of a grievous personality disorder. It is an outgrowth of deeply rooted emotional deprivations and disturbances that had their origins in infancy. It is manifested, all too often, by compulsive and self-destructive behavior that is the very antithesis of fulfilment and happiness. Buried under the 'gay' exterior of the homosexual is the hurt and rage that crippled his or her capacity for true maturation, for healthy growth and love.

   If I insist that homosexuality--the exclusive or predominant preference for same-gender sex relations for orgasmic satisfaction--is symptomatic of a psychic disorientation, I hasten to point out that I do not consider it any different, except possibly in the degree of pathology, from other neurotic manifestations of many heterosexuals . . .

   The earliest psychologists--Sigmund Freud, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis--were in agreement that homosexuality is a psychological malfunction that should be treated with tolerance and compassion. They might have disagreed on its cause, but they concurred that it was neither a crime nor a sin.'

Conclusion

   What is natural and what is unnatural? Rats kept in crowded captivity and fed on laboratory 'balanced' food display most unnatural behavior, they are nervous and agitated, they fight, they kill and eat their own young. Cats confined in pens and fed pasteurized milk, lost condition and agility and their next generation was depleted by stillbirth, miscarriage and spontaneous abortion, with the survivors displaying many physical defects--neurosis and other abnormalities such as less anatomical differences between the sexes and homosexuality.* Similar defects occurred among zoo animals (Philadelphia Zoo) fed leftovers from restaurants, etc, which defects cleared after the animals' diets were changed to natural raw food.

*The Effect of Heat Processed Foods and Pasteurized Vitamin D Milk on the Dentofacial Structures of Experimental Animals, Dr Francis Pottenger, 1946, and Disease in Captive Wild Animals and Birds, Dr H. Fox, 1923.

   What do captive zoo animals fed on defective diets have in common with humans? Zoologist Desmond Morris, introducing his book The Human Zoo (McGraw-Hill, 1969), had this to say:

   'Under normal conditions, in their natural habitats, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, masturbate, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, become fetishists, suffer from obesity, form homosexual pair-bonds, or commit murder . . .

   The zoo animals in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human comparisons. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo . . .

   Trapped, not by a zoo collector, but by his own brainy brilliance, he has set himself up in a huge, restless menagerie where he is in constant danger of cracking under the strain.'

   We have already discussed the deplorable health and moral standards of supposedly normal humans and how diet, liquor, nicotine and other drugs can cause mental and physical defects in their offspring. It is not a far-fetched notion then that a tendency towards homosexuality could already exist in a newborn child of a mother stressed and not in the best of health herself, and that factors in childhood and adolescence tilt the balance one way or the other or perhaps result in a bisexual personality. Be that as it may, let us take further advice from Dr Kronemeyer:

   'We would do well to bear in mind that effects indeed have causes and that 'there but for the grace of God go I . . .'

   Because it is a disabling neurosis, homosexuality merits an attitude of sympathy and understanding. Common decency prohibits us from discriminating against people who stammer or are hard of hearing or have birthmarks. To be biased against gays is comparably indecent--and absurd. Public and private strictures against homosexuals should be protested in the strongest terms. No burden of deportment, capability or reliability should be placed on homosexuals greater than that imposed on any other person. As with all other disaffections, society should concern itself with increasing its awareness of the cause of homosexuality and the ways to prevention and cure'.'