Sexual Orientation is a 20th Century Understanding of Human Sexuality

If a person who lived before the turn of the 20th century were asked about their sexual orientation, they would have been bewildered by the question. Though a wealth of literature depicts same-sex behavior as far back as the ancient Greeks, people at that time would not have understood terms or concepts like “heterosexual” or…

Read More

What Research Led to the Designation of Homosexuality as a Mental Illness? None

  In 1896, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) founded a new strain of psychology and called it psychoanalysis. Most of his theories, resolutions, and treatments linked to assumptions he had formulated about various stages of sexual subconsciousness, from infancy through its progression during childhood and into adulthood. Most mental illnesses, he speculated, began with sexual abuse, fear…

Read More

Gays Didn’t “Steal” the Rainbow or the Word

Every year around June when the majority of Gay Pride Events take place you’ll apt hear, “We want God’s rainbow back; the gays stole it.” Just as no one culture or group “owns” the rainbow, we’ll see the gays did not “steal” the rainbow, and likewise, they did not steal the word “gay.” I was taught the acronym Roy…

Read More

How Did Homosexuality Come to be Labeled as a Mental Illness?

On a lovely October evening, I spent three delightful hours talking with Dr. Kenneth Lewes, a pioneer who challenged the American Psychoanalytic Association’s (APsaA) stances on homosexuality in the late 1980s. Dr. Lewes had already graciously given me over two hours of his time on a phone call several months before and had fact-checked a…

Read More