Religious Upbringing and Culture Affects Rates of Homosexuality

2007-11-15T05:01:04Z

Beatrice:

'''Religious upbringing and culture affects rates of homosexuality'''. Dr. Neil Whitehead is a research scientist and [[biochemistry|biochemist]] and is his wife Briar Whitehead is a writer.<ref>[http://www.narth.com/docs/mygenes.html Book Review: My Genes Made Me Do It: A Scientific Look at Sexual Orientation
by Neil and Briar Whitehead]</ref> Dr. Whitehead coauthored a book with with his wife entitled ''My Genes Made Me Do it - a scientific look at sexual orientation'' which argues that there is no [[gene]]tic determinism in regards to [[homosexuality]] (homosexuals are "not born that way") and that there is abundant documentation that individuals are able to leave homosexuality and become heterosexuals.<ref>http://www.mygenes.co.nz/download.htm</ref>
[[Image:Rabbi_02.jpg‎|right|250px|thumb|Homosexuality appears to be rare in [[Orthodox Judaism|Orthodox Jews]]. Here a group of completely heterosexual Orthodox men are seen with their "life partners."]]
Dr. Whitehead and Briar Whitehead state in their aforementioned book the following:
{{Cquote|If homosexuality were significantly influenced by [[gene]]s, it would appear in every culture, but in twenty-nine of seventy-nine cultures surveyed by Ford and Beach in 1952, homosexuality was rare or absent. It was very rare in the [[Siriono]], even though there were no prohibitions on homosexual relationships in that culture. The researcher observed only one man displaying slight homosexual traits but apparently not sexually involved with another man. Homosexuality appears to be rare among [[Orthodox Judaism|Orthodox Jews]], so much so that learned rabbis, the interpreters of Jewish law, usually allowed men to sleep in the same bed, because likelihood of sexual contact was considered negligible. [[Alfred Kinsey|Kinsey]] also found very low homosexual incidence among Orthodox Jews...

This evidence comes from missionaries who commonly spend 25 years of their lives living in one culture, far
more than almost any anthropologist....Overall they can be considered as reliable witnesses. For example, in contrast to groups like the [[Sambia]] in the [[New Guinea]] highlands, where homosexuality was compulsory, only about 2-3 percent of Western [[Dani]] (also in the New Guinea highlands) practiced it. However, in another group of Dani who were genetically related, homosexuality was totally unknown. Missionaries report that when they were translating the [[Bible]] into Dani for this group, their tribal assistants, who knew their own culture intimately, were nonplused by references to homosexuality in [[Romans]] 1; they did not understand the concept. Another missionary, with the same group for 25 years, overheard many jests and sexually ribald exchanges among the men, but never a single mention of homosexuality in all that time. When Dani went to help with missionary work among the Sambia, they were astounded at some of the homosexual practices they saw for the first time. Although it is always difficult for a foreigner to be completely sure whether a rare and stigmatized behavior exists, it is certainly true that if three such different experiences of homosexuality can occur in groups of people so closely related genetically, genetically enforced homosexuality is an impossibility.<ref>[http://www.mygenes.co.nz/download.htm My Genes Made Me Do it - a scientific look at sexual orientation by Dr Neil Whitehead and Briar Whitehead - Chapter 6]</ref>}}

[[Dennis Prager]] wrote the following regarding Orthodox Judaism and homosexuality:
{{Cquote|In the Syballine Oracles, written by an Egyptian Jew probably between 163 and 45 B.C., the author compared Jews to the other nations: The Jews "are mindful of holy wedlock, and they do not engage in impious intercourse with male children, as do Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Romans, specious Greece and many nations of others, Persians and Galatians and all Asia." And in our times, sex historian Amo Karlen wrote that according to the sex researcher [[Alfred Kinsey]], "Homosexuality was phenomenally rare among Orthodox Jews."<ref>[http://catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0003.html Judaism’s Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality byDENNIS PRAGER ]</ref>}}

Herbert Hendin wrote:
{{Cquote|Anthropologists had observed that relatively uncompetitive primitive cultures such as those that do not distinguish or reward the best hunters in distinction to the other men in the tribe have virtually no homosexuality."<ref>"Kardiner and Linton, in a psychoanalytic anthropological study of Tanala, examined homosexuality in the context of the entire Tanalese culture (1939). They showed that a dramatic rise in homosexuality when social and economic forces inflamed competitiveness was one of several manifestations of frustrated rage (crime was another) among young men who were having particular difficulty with the pressures the culture was exerting on them. [http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=jaa.006.0479a Homosexuality: The Psychosocial Dimension] - ''Journal of American Academy of Psychoanalysis'', 6:479-496(1978) </ref>}}
===Individuals Raised in Large Cities Versus Individuals Raised in Suburbs, Towns, and Countryside===
In 1994, the book ''Sex in America: A definitive survey'' by Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, Edward O. Laumann, and Gina Kolata stated the following:
{{Cquote|We discovered that people who were raised in large cities were more likely to be homosexual than people who were raised in suburb, towns, or the countryside. This relationship also showed up in the General Social Survey, an independent national sample.<ref>[http://www.ucmpage.org/articles/jmiles9.html Sex in America: A definitive survey, Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, Edward O. Laumann, and Gina Kolata, Boston, Little, Brown, 1994, page 182]</ref>}}

The aforementioned authors Dr. Whitehead and Briar Whitehead similarly wrote:
{{Cquote|There is a much higher incidence of homosexuality among those who have been raised in large cities, rather than in rural areas, arguing that the environment is much more powerful than genes in the development of homosexuality.<ref>http://www.mygenes.co.nz/summary.htm</ref>}}

==See Also==
*[[Homosexuality]]
*[[Homosexuality and Genetics]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

[[Category:Homosexuality]]
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Sociology]]

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Religious Upbringing and Culture Affects Rates of Homosexuality