Coming Around: Parenting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Kids Read Online Free PDF Page A

fag.” “You look like a fairy.”
                       Sadly, the pejoratives “that’s gay” and “you’re gay” seem in vogue with adolescents today, though this seems at odds with the growing trend of acceptance of homosexuality, especially among young people. When gay children hear references to their sexual orientation used as insulting banter, it’s disheartening. I suspect most teens who talk like this never give much thought as to what they are saying and how it might affect the gay adolescents among them. If you hear such language used in your church or school, demand that the adults in charge (teachers, principals, clergy) do something about it.
            •   “Did somebody do this to you (e.g., were you seduced, sexually abused)?”
                       The scientific community has come to no clear agreement as to the causes of homosexuality. Most experts suspect that sexual orientation is determined by multiple causes, both nature and nurture. This is true for most complex aspects of personality. There is no evidence to suggest that early abuse causes homosexuality, regardless of the abuser’s gender. No single factor, such as childhood sexual abuse, causes someone who is inclined toward heterosexuality to become gay. 1
     
    Sara’s Story
    Twenty-three-year-old Sara has been openly gay for several years. When she came home from college, she told her parents that she had been seeing a psychologist. She revealed to them that a boyfriend in high school raped her. She asked them, “Do you think I’m gay because I was raped?”
    There was only one urgent matter here: the rape. Sara shouldered this pain alone for years. I encourage all parents to take a “no rush” approach in regard to any decision about sexual orientation. First, Sara’s parents needed to communicate to their daughter that rape is never the fault of the victim and that she need not hide what happened to her. Second, the parents needed to support Sara’s efforts to come to closure. Talking it through with them and with her psychologist may have been enough, but some women feel a need to take action. While it was likely too late to press charges, there might have been something she could do, such as writing a letter to the rapist. (Safety is a prime concern in any contact with an abuser. A professional counselor or psychologist knows how to assess the risk associated with confrontation.)
    I’ve treated many people who suffered abuse and never has a heterosexual client asked if early sexual trauma caused him or her to be straight. Pathologizing homosexuality has led LGBTQs to pick through their pasts looking for a cause for their homosexuality. For those who’ve been sexually abused, there can be a strong temptation to “blame” their sexual orientation on the abuse.
    While there is no sufficient body of evidence that can tell us if there is a relationship between sexual abuse and sexual orientation, for either men or women, logic goes against a one-to-one relationship such as described in Sara’s case. About one in four women experience abuse at some point in their lives and the vast majority of perpetrators are male. If abuse causes homosexuality by driving women away from men, there should be many more homosexual women than are observed in the population.
    However, people’s experiences do play a role in shaping them. Bad sexual experiences can influence how a person feels about future sexual experiences. For instance, a woman with a history of sexual trauma will sometimes experience emotional distress or pain with intercourse, even within a loving and healthy relationship. Here, the impact of abuse on sexuality is clear. It is much murkier when one tries to infer causality between sexual abuse and sexual orientation. It’s possible that sexual abuse, in some people, results in a willingness to explore same-sex relationships. I’ve worked with abused womenwhose bitterness toward men