science and the bio-genesis of homosexuality

  By Wilfred Chiwetalu (Vanguard)
                                           
April 18, 2006: Aristotle warned that: “A small error at the outset can lead to great errors in the final conclusion”.  This warning draws my attention to the current debate on homosexuality and especially to Mr. Douglas Anele’s contribution in the Sunday Vanguard of January 29.  I would have allowed this esteemed philosopher, at least, to arrive at a conclusion.  But to nip a progressing error in the bud, I had to put down these thoughts on paper.  Furthermore, beauty and goodness might be estranged if Mr. Anele’s article is left without questioning. This statement finds its meaning at the conclusion.

Principally, I intend to re-trace the bio-genesis of homosexuality, a course which Mr. Anele derailed just in order to sustain his position. In essence, I purpose here to unravel the jaundiced position that homosexuality is genetically and hormonally-based, and as such, the homosexual has no other option besides acting the way she/he is made.  Homosexual behaviour is determined by the chromosonal structure of an individual, that is to say, it is not a behavioral problem.   To begin in earnest, therefore, what actually is homosexuality?

Homosexuality simply means same gender sexual attraction. It is differentiated from heterosexuality which is opposite gender sexual attraction. There is another category, bi-sexuality, which means same gender and opposite gender sexual attraction. The nineteenth-century awareness that some persons were homosexual was, indeed, something new since before that period, all evidence indicates that persons were anti-introspective and not psychologically minded at all.  That means that even if persons were “homosexual”, the same-gender sexual orientation would be ascribed to ethnic custom, popular custom, traditional convention, or some other group-specific social practices.  To further illustrate homosexuality and its scientific pursuit and interpretation, let us look at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which contains cases of psychopatholy.

During the compilation of psychopathological cases in DSM-1, homosexuality was to be considered a pathological behaviour, that is to say, it is a sort of mental disease.  It was as such that homosexuality was categorized a mental disease.  Later on, recurring events necessitated the removal of homosexuality under pathological behaviour as formerly contained in DSM-I.  To exclude homosexuality from DSM-I then implies scientifically that homosexuality is no longer among the lists of mental disorders.

The shift of homosexuality from pathologism to non-pathologism, it should be noted, was not as a result of any scientific research, but was sequel to a hearing before the Nomencleture Committee of the American Psychiatric Association, on February 8, 1973.  Charles Silverstein, a gay psychologist, reminded the committee  that earlier psychiatric manuals had contained such obsolete and now-humorous categories as “vagabondage”, “pathologic” “mendacity”, and “cruel”.  He argued that no evidence indicates greater  emotional disturbance among male and female homosexuals than among heterosexuals.

By 1974, “homosexuality” was to be formally dropped from DSM-2, but not without a sub-category “sexual orientation disturbance”, which refers to those who are sexually oriented to people of the same sex and are disturbed by their orientation.   DSM-3, which was the most current category as at 1998, terms it dyshomophilia.  The bottom line is that homosexuality has been omitted from the listing of mental disorders, but later appeared with a new name: dyshomophilia.  Its resurgence underscores a point; it is a behavioural illness, which is why it had always been associated with social tensions and legislations.  Nigeria’s case could not but be the same.  We need to explain the meaning of dyshomophilia as entered in DSM-3.

•Ms. Chiwetalu, a social critic, writes from Lagos.

Continued