The Erosion Of Heterosexuality

Psychiatry falters, America sleeps

By Charles W. Socarides, M.D.

Homosexuality cannot create a society or keep one going for very long.
It operates against the cohesive elements of society. The sexes are
driven in opposite directions, and no society can long endure when
either the child is neglected or the sexes war with each other. Those
who reinforce the disintegrating elements in our society will get no
thanks from future generations.

A significant portion of society today holds the belief that
homosexuality is a normal form of sexual behavior different from, but
equal to, that of heterosexuality. Many religious leaders, public
officials, educators, social and mental health agencies--including
those at the highest level of government, departments of psychiatry and
psychology, and mental health clinics--have been taken in by a wide
spread sexual egalitarianism and by accusations of being undemocratic
or prejudiced if they do not accept certain assertions that are thrust
upon them, as if they were deprived of all intellectual capacity to
judge and reason.

This revolutionary change in our sexual mores and customs has been
ushered in by a single act of considerable consequence: The removal of
homosexuality from the category of aberrancy by the American
Psychiatric Association in 1973. It is, furthermore, a fateful
consequence of our disregard for established psychoanalytic knowledge
of human sexual behavior.

This act was naively perceived by many psychiatrists as the "simple"
elimination of a scientific diagnosis in order to correct injustices.
In reality, it created injustices for the homosexual and his family, as
it belied the truth and prevented the homosexual from seeking and
receiving help. At the social, group, and community level, it proved to
be the opening phase of a two-phase sexual radicalization; the second
phase being the raising of homosexuality to the level of an alternative
lifestyle--an acceptable psychosexual institution--alongside
heterosexuality as a prevailing norm of behavior.

The motivating force behind this movement was the wish to protect the
homosexual against injustices and persecution. This could have been
legitimately effected by the demand for equal rights for the
homosexual, a demand arising from the humanitarian philosophy so deeply
embedded in our humanistic science. Instead, the false step of removing
homosexuality from our manual was substituted. This amounted to a full
approval of homosexuality and an encouragement to aberrancy by those
who should have known better, both in the scientific sense and in the
sense of the social consequences of such removal.

To many American psychiatrists, this action remains a chilling reminder
that if scientific principles are not fought for they can be lost--a
disillusioning warning that unless we make no exceptions to science, we
are subject to the snares of political factionalism and to the
propagation of untruths to an unsuspecting and uninformed public, to
the rest of the medical profession, and to the behavioral sciences.

The devastating clinical fallout from this decision was yet to follow.
Those who would prefer to retain homosexuality as a valid diagnosis
have been essentially silenced in lectures, meetings, and publications;
a silencing that originates both within our association and from other
sources as well. Political parties and religious leaders have been
utilized to reinforce this silence. The press has been influenced in
addition to the electronic media. Television and movies promote
homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle and censor movies that might
show homosexuality as a disorder. Homosexual sex education has entered
our schools and colleges; pro-gay activists--homosexual or
otherwise--portray their way of life as normal and as "American as
apple pie," while intimidating those with different views.

In essence, this movement has accomplished what every other society,
with rare exceptions, would have trembled to tamper with: a revision of
the basic code and concept of life and biology, that men and women
normally mate with those of the opposite sex and not with each other.
This psychiatric nonsense and social recklessness bring with it many
individual tragedies, as men and women who no longer appreciate their
own appropriate sexual roles create confusion in the very young for
generations to come. Gender identity disturbance is bound to increase,
and more true homosexual deviations result as parents distort the
maleness or femaleness of their infants and children.

Young men and women with relatively minor sexual fears are led with
equanimity by some psychiatrists and non-medical counselors into a self
despising pattern and lifestyle. Adolescents, nearly all of whom
experience some degree of uncertainty as to sexual identity, are
discouraged from assuming that one form of gender identity is
preferable to another. Those persons who already have a homosexual
problem are discouraged from finding their way out of self destructive
fantasy, discouraged from learning to accept themselves as male or
female.

The forces allied against heterosexuality are formidable and
unrelenting. Charges of being "undemocratic," "cruel and inhuman," or
"irresponsible, homophobic, and prejudiced," are leveled at those who
would question the normality of homosexuality. These accusations are
then reinforced by the media and motion pictures, and render the
ordinary citizen who disapproves of such practices (as well as
faint-hearted members of the psychiatric and psychological professions)
mute before their onslaught.

The counteraction for such forces is the knowledge that heterosexuality
has self-evident, adaptive value. Man is not only a sexual animal, but
a care-bonding, group-bonding, and child-rearing animal. The
male-female design is taught to the child from birth and culturally
ingrained through the marital order. The male-female design is thus
perpetually maintained and it is only overwhelming fear or man's false
pride and misdirected individual enterprise that can disturb or divert
it.