Facts versus beliefs

August 7, 9:45 PMNY Lesbian Relationship ExaminerMimi Valentine

Are you one of those kids who grew up hearing that being gay was an evil thing, that the bible calls it a sin and therefore you will go to hell?

Were you told that being gay is not natural?

Do you think it true?

Think again.

I'll start off today by citing an article published by the American Psychological Association in 2001, which addresses the question of "normalcy" in regards to our behavior.

The article summarizes the fact that no one is 100 percent heterosexual 100 percent of the time, as stated by Linda Garnets, PhD, a researcher at UCLA.

Here's a small excerpt from the article: "People's erotic attractions can be surprisingly fluid when it comes to erotic attractions, and science fails to support the conventional wisdom that people's sexuality can be neatly placed in rigid categories, she said."

Click on the link below to read the entire article: Our erotic personalities are as unique as our fingerprints: http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr01/erotic.html

I'm sure you have heard of the Kinsey studies at one of those required psychology classes you took in school. They took place over 50 years ago, and back then they were considered revolutionary and taboo. There is no doubt that the final figures on female sexuality are outdated, however, some of his valuable findings still apply today, and I'll quote below some of that.

About the study:
5300 white males and 5940 white females provided almost all the data, with the majority of participants being younger white adults with some college education.

Method:
Kinsey used in-depth, face-to-face interviews by highly trained interviewers. In each history a subject would be questioned on up to 521 items, depending on his/her specific experience (the average in each case being near 300). Histories covered social and economic data, physical and physiologic data, marital histories, sexual outlets, heterosexual histories, and homosexual histories.

Scope:
Data was gathered from 1938 to 1963, when the project was closed.

Conclusions by Kinsey:

Kinsey’s conclusions similar to Linda Garnets, (the Dr. quoted in the article mentioned above). He devised a heterosexuality/homosexuality scale whereby no one was classified as absolutely gay nor absolutely straight.

He concluded that: “The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects, (p 639)…. An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life...  (ref link: http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/research/ak-hhscale.html ) (Source:http://www.research.iu.edu/centers/kinsey.html )

As a result of these findings, he published two books about fifty years ago. The second one was the long-awaited book on women's sexuality, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, which quickly became a bestseller.

Obviously a lot has changed since then and although his findings broke taboos and opened the door to a new way of thinking about human sexuality, --and many studies have come about after, but none like his-- there is a need for more current statistical data and research. The good news is that the Kinsey Institute is started conducting its next large study on human sexuality. For more information on the Kinsey Institute and its studies, please visit: http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/services/index.html

Bottom line, science has deemed homosexuality as another behavior found in nature. As the Kinsey studies found, no one is absolutely gay or absolutely straight. Sexuality is fluid. When someone starts quoting the bible to make the case against homosexuality, remind them that there are many things written in the bible that today would be considered barbaric or outdated. Here is a two-minute great clip of The West Wing's President Bartlett, addressing the very question, smartly and concisely. One worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zhNiGlogQ

It is important to read up on what scientific researchers, who study human behavior find about the bisexual and gay lifestyle, for women. After all, science is knowledge and it'll inoculate you against the false beliefs and prejudices we have all been exposed to during our lives.

Don't forget that knowledge is power.