Homosexuality
in a Changing World: Are We Being Misinformed?
|
By
Dr. Nadia El-Awady
IslamOnline’s
Health & Science Editor
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17/02/2003
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What
Constitutes Normal?
NARTH
comments on the issue of normality in an
article that summarizes a paper written by Irving Bieber, M.D called “On
Arriving at the American Psychiatric Association Decision on
Homosexuality." The article notes that Dr. Bieber was one of
the key participants in the historical debate that culminated in the
1973 decision to remove homosexuality from the psychiatric manual.
His paper describes psychiatry’s attempt to adopt a new
“adaptational” perspective of normality. During this time, the
profession was beginning to sever itself from established clinical
theory-particularly psychoanalytic theories of unconscious
motivation-claiming that if we do not readily see "distress,
disability and disadvantage" in a particular psychological
condition, then the condition is not disordered.
On
first consideration, such a theory sounds plausible. However, we see
its startling consequences when we apply it to a condition such as
pedophilia. Is the happy and otherwise well-functioning pedophile
"normal"? As Dr. Bieber argues in this article,
psychopathology can be ego-syntonic and not cause distress; and
social effectiveness-that is, the ability to maintain positive
social relations and perform work effectively-"may coexist with
psychopathology, in some cases even of a psychotic order."
Indeed,
as some prominent cultural observers have noted, the political drive
toward ever-greater equality has turned Americans against any
conclusion which entails values and consequences- resulting in our
culture's trend toward rejection of all evaluative conclusions as
unkind and "undemocratic." Legal scholar Robert Bork sees
this as a natural consequence of democracy untethered from its
Judeo-Christian roots of self-restraint and responsibility, after
which it began to be dominated by the philosophy of radical
egalitarianism.
Dr.
Bieber describes the deletion of homosexuality from the American
Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
as "the climax of a sociopolitical struggle involving what were
deemed to be the rights of homosexuals." He describes the
difficulty of putting homosexuality in an appropriate category: Is
it a developmental arrest, or an illness? Is it a constitutional
disorder, a genetic misprint, a habit? Through his long-term
research on the subject, Dr. Bieber concludes that homosexuality is
not a normal sexual adaptation.
Gay
activist groups believed that prejudice against homosexuals could be
extinguished only if, as homosexuals, they were accepted as normal.
"They claimed that homosexuality is a preference, an
orientation, a propensity; that it is neither a defect, a
disturbance, a sickness, nor a malfunction of any sort." To
promote this aim, Dr. Bieber reports, "Gay activists impugned
the motives and ridiculed the work of those psychiatrists who
asserted that homosexuality is other than normal."
Lesbian
activist Camille Paglia offers the following observation:
Homosexuality
is not “normal”. On the contrary it is a challenge to the
norm…. Nature exists whether academics like it or not. And in
nature, procreation is the single relentless rule. That is the
norm. Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction…. No
one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous…homosexuality is an
adaptation, not an inborn trait….We should be honest enough to
consider whether homosexuality may not indeed be a pausing at
the prepubescent stage where children anxiously band together by
gender….current gays can’t insist that homosexuality is
‘not a choice;’ that no one would choose to be gay in a
homophobic society. But there is an element of choice in all
behavior, sexual or otherwise. It takes an effort to deal with
the opposite sex; it is safer with your own kind. The issue is
one of challenge versus comfort.
A
simple definition of normality offered more than 50 years ago is
that it is “that which functions in accordance with its design.”
Homosexuality would quite obviously not follow that simple
definition.
