Anyone want to help me tear this to bits?

[velvetpage]

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20061028/25636.htm

Here are the things I noticed:

1) The study doesn't recognize bisexuality at all. This is a major flaw, since there are at least half a dozen people on my friends list who identify as bi and are married/in heterosexual long-term relationships. Behaviour is only one indication of sexual preference, and it is not necessarily the definitive one.

2) There's an underlying equivalence here between "social" and "environmental" that needs to be challenged. Environmental factors could include physical things like pollution that are not controllable on an individual level but could have an effect (to the best of my knowledge, that has not been ruled out as a scientific factor - someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.)

3) The conclusion - "Taken together, the study’s findings suggest that intact parents bearing multiple children and living in rural areas increase the probability of heterosexual pairings in their children." Really. I thought it showed a connection - but I didn't see any evidence of causality. It seems to me that the more insular and religious your family life, the less likely you are to be open about your sexuality if it doesn't match expected norms, leading to fewer homosexual marriages. Thus, social expectations increase repression rather than decreasing homosexuality.

All in all, I dislike the tone that parents can avoid that most horrible of outcomes, a homosexual child, if they just obey the teachings of their church regarding their own marriages. Of course, it's what I would expect from this source, but still - it grates.

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. What a flawed study. I'll have to take more of a look at this after I've worked on my homework. First off, there's the classic mistake of correlation implying casuality. It does not. If that were so, I would conclude that the number of transexual hooker ads in Philly's City Paper predicted the stock market. I actually did a quickie spreadsheet on this and there is a correlation, but I have a hard time seeing a causality. Just because you have two trends moving in phase does not mean that one is dependent on the other. In my suitably ludicris example here, my guess is that the stock market drives the hooker ads because well heeled pervs have more money during a bull market. Environment is a tougher nut to crack still. First off, how do you know someone is homosexual? They have to tell you, volunteer for your study, or your previous work has to have proved telepathy and produced 100% reliable telepaths. So your sample is self selected. Even if you did a longitudinal study of several thousand people from all over a nation, following them from childhood through adulthood, you rely on the fact that your study group has told your their orientation. This is problematic because people in the closet are often in there for good reason. The other thing going on with sexuality in urban areas is the strength of weak ties, referring to Granovetter's seminal paper on social networks. Strong ties are your family and long time friends. Weak ties are your co-workers and other less familiar people. Strong tied networks tend to share the same information and thus do not provide transformative information. Weak ties, tie people of different classes and backgrounds together through their day to day interactions and their heterogenity means that diverse types of information are shared. While Granovetter studied this with regard to socioeconomic standing, I bet this obtains in matters of sexuality. If you know you're attracted to members of the same sex in a small town, chances are your perception of these feelings will stay rooted in the teachings of your church and the expectations of your family. If these institutions teach that homosexuality is negative, then you will struggle with your feelings and probably keep them hidden. If you live in a city, your weak ties will stand a better chance of putting you in touch with others who have the same feelings. Maybe you'd come to the conclusion that you're bi, maybe you'll find a partner just like and come to want to get married. But in any case, your understandings will undergo a transformation.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

A study stating what I summed up in my third point - nice. I believe it probably holds true in almost all situations. Small towns and rural communities tend to be more religious and conservative than cities, and this is the reason - a higher ratio of strong to weak ties in the rural communities.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I don't know that anyone has studied social network theory and how it might relate to sexuality. However, there's been a lot of work on social networks in information seeking behavior. I don't know that you could construct a good study on sexual orientation given that your sample is necessarily self selected from the general population. This is something I have to ask about in my stats class. I do think it would be useful to examine how avowed homosexuals and bisexuals found about their wider communities and whether it necessitated a move from their place of birth to a city, specific city at that. This is probably a big reason why Gays as a demographic tends to have high levels of education. I'm betting that a lot of homosexual young people only really come to terms with their sexuality on college both because of the open learning environment and because they have gotten away from their original place and come into contact with people just like them. At any rate, I cam up with plenty of anecdotal evidence, but stastical data is going to be very flawed. I think it would be very instructive to conduct studies of of how people who migrate from a rural to an urban environment change in general. One question of many would concern sexual orientation.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Just a quick clarification: When I use the term Gay, I mean homosexuals who are open and not in the closet. There's plenty of people who are homosexual, but are not open about their sexuality. So, the hyopthesis here is that young people who are homosexual have a better chance of coming to terms with their sexuality in college than not. I'm betting this holds true even of urbanites. In my experience growing up in a very working class section of LA, homosexuality was not accepted and , depending on your peer group, could even be life threatening if your orientation was found out. So, the gays were banished Wilshire-ward to West Hollywood, Santa Monica and so on. The funny thing was that gay outsiders who moved into my area were just accepted as a type of foreigner with strange habits. Working class urbanites can be just as insular and intolerant of other lifestyles as rural folk, especially during times of economic upheaval.

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that proponents of same-sex couples' rights should spend a lot less time arguing about the causes of sexual orientation. I think the appropriate response to articles like that is, "it doesn't matter why people prefer same-sex relationships, what matters is that everyone has the right to form lifelong monogamous relationships with equal social support, because lifelong monogamous relationships are good for society regardless of sexual orientation."

Because, really - what if someone proved that there are environmental factors contributing to homosexuality? Would anyone really say, "oh, OK then, I guess homosexuality IS avoidable, and therefore same-sex couples don't deserve the same rights as everyone else"? I hope not! Because the moral argument ultimately has nothing to do with the causality argument, and by letting the enemies of same-sex rights force us fight this battle on causality grounds, we're tacitly accepting their bigoted assumptions that homosexuality is something that should be prevented if it can be prevented.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right, and thank you for framing it so beautifully. I had some half-formed idea of that, myself, but hadn't managed to articulate it.

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

It is a peculiar problem I've run into many times. There seems to be a blanket assumption that human sexuality is a polar issue; either you are nromal or you are abberrant, and all points in between are merely drifting points of ambivalence failing to make a choice.

I've been a non-praciticing bisexual since 1992. I've had exactly two relationships with men that could be considered sexual. I'm not involved with any men at this time. Nor do I intend on taking up another bisexual relationship in the forseeable future. It's neither a political decision nor a decision based on my current marital status. It's actually based on my preferences.

I'm neither gay nor straight. I've known it for much of my life. It took me about seventeen or eighteen years to figure out, and when I got to the point where I understood it was part of me, I settled down and stopped worrying.

I did arrive at a conclusion based on my limited experiences with the gay culture in Hamilton, which was that it probably wasn't worth pursuing actively. I actually still feel that way. Joining the community in some larger cities allows you a great deal of leeway in how you conduct relationships, even if you are in fact actively bisexual. Joining the community in Hamilton foces you into the fringe, and I never particularly cared for being locked into any box, no matter how many great people I could find in there.

I know how I work. I know how I feel. I know whom I feel sexual attraction to. I know in fact that I prefer women. This is just how I am wired. But I don't lie about my other proclivities either. There is no sense in deceiving people about your sexual interests. It's important that the people you care about most know who you are and what you're about. But beyond that, your actual sexual conduct, particularly when you are neither Gay nor Straight but nevertheless involved in a monogamous relationship, has to be measured by other standards.

The fact that a study can't flush out the truth and prevalence of bisexuality in modern monogamous relationships does not surprise me. Hamilton isn't an accurate barometer of these things, but the fact is, most people who want to have a legitimized alternative sexual lifestyle find that they have to make a decision about which world they want to be socially accepted in; the Gay or the Straight World. These two worlds acknowledge and begrudgingly work with and around each other. But they much prefer that there not be any serious intermingling in the romantic arena.

Bisexuality works in complete contravention of that. Ther eis a traitor in our midst. Aliens are among us. Being close personal friens with a Gay (or Straight) person is not frowned on (well, here in Hamilton, perhaps a little still, but in major city centers like Toronto and NYC and the like...), but being with someone who might be sexually interested in either you or someone you know who is not of the opposite sex leads to some frank discussions. And spending time with someone who may be interested in sex with you if you are of the appropriate sex, but who might also be interested in a friend of yours who is not usually leads to a great deal of friction.

As such, most Bis are forced to choose a side or keep their head down and play the game, hoping to find people who are also open minded; usually other Bis. This is not as easy as it should be, given that the practical numbers for possible Bis is much larger than people are willing to admit.

Fact is, Bisexuality slips below the radar because it's still too controversial and messes up too many people. You cross too many peoples' safe zones and upset more than you settle. As such, most folks who may be so inclined just do not go there. It's easier.

That said, relationships are tricky even staying within the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour. Owning up to Bisexuality is not for everyone. It loses its flavour on the bedpost overnight. So if it doesn't come up on the radar, even in the 21st century, I just nod and say 'Yeah, that figures. No problem.'

Lee.

[snobahr.livejournal.com]

Fact is, Bisexuality slips below the radar because it's still too controversial and messes up too many people. You cross too many peoples' safe zones and upset more than you settle. As such, most folks who may be so inclined just do not go there. It's easier.

I agree with this statement (Hi, I'm bi/male preferred). I've found the biggest problem with people making sweeping statements about homosexuality vs heterosexuality is that any mention of bisexuality completely ruins everyone's arguments for a black-and-white argument/answer. I've found that the more rabid homo/hetero-phobes just can't wrap their heads around my stance - The plumbing is a secondary concern with regards to the person whose company I'm keeping.

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

Lee.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

I've heard it described as 'non-gender-fetished,' too, which I really like. :-)

(also bi, slightly male-biased)

[lasarina.livejournal.com]

I was told by one of my homosexual friends that "Bi-sexuals were really homosexuals who weren't admitting the truth (actually a bit cruder phrase) to themselves or others." *snort* I told her to grow up.

Bi, slight male pref, in a long-term relationship with another bi, slight female pref (we enjoy ALL the artwork ;)

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

3) The conclusion - "Taken together, the study’s findings suggest that intact parents bearing multiple children and living in rural areas increase the probability of heterosexual pairings in their children."

Seems to me it increases the probability that their children lie to themselves and others. Doesn't seem healthy to me.