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from Interviews/Testimonials
Understanding How We Think
about Homosexuality
by Linda Nicolosi
Professor Steven Goldberg, Chairman of the Sociology Department
at City College of New York, has some astute observations about
why we think the way we do on some very emotionally charged subjects.
He is an outspoken critic of two untouchable bodies of research:
Feminist Science and Gay and Lesbian Studies.
Goldberg's vigorous attack on these liberal "sacred cows"
would tempt one to label him a conservative. However he is insistent
that no scientist can serve an ideological master. Because many
scientists and academics do exactly that, he says, "fallacious
arguments dominate American universities and infuse our textbooks."
Many professors know the assumptions of Gay Studies and Femininist
Science are false, but they defend them as serving a humane purpose.
In his book When Wish Replaces Thought, he calls feminist
science mere nonsense that provides "nothing more than endless,
embarrassingly self-congratulatory discussion of terminology."
He says, "One would be hard-put to find another group that
talked so much about science without ever doing any science."
The feminist scientist's approach, Goldberg claims, "replaces
curiosity with narcissism" and "should long ago have
been laughed out of the university."
"Logical analyses and empirical explanations," Goldberg
reminds us, "are not conservative or liberal; they are relatively
correct or incorrect. Arguments of both the right and left invariably
attempt to smuggle in values hidden under empirical facts."
Goldberg has some penetrating observations about the nature of
conservative and liberal arguments. The conservative, he says,
usually acknowledges from the start the subjective assumptions
he holds. (Conservatives on the subject of homosexuality often
cite naturalistic or religious foundations for their belief that
the condition is disordered.) These foundations render his argument
incapable of persuading anyone that does not share his underlying
assumptions. Goldberg sees the conservative as often motivated
by a fear of his own emotions, which he projects onto a "barbarian
mob threatening to break through the gates."
Liberals, on the other hand, tend to believe that the subjectively
rooted argument is impotent. Therefore they are loathe to acknowledge
the subjective assumptions of their own argument because
they sense that--once these assumptions are exposed--no one will
feel logically compelled to agree with their reasoning. Therefore
the liberal attempts to camouflage his subjectivity.
The subjective motivation for the liberal's argument is often
guilt--"in some cases a free-floating guilt that everything
is his fault, and in others... fear of the anger of those who
are less fortunate than he is." Many observers would say
this described the bulk of psychiatrists who voted in l973 to
remove homosexuality from the list of disorders--fear of the anger
of an oppressed group, and desire to promote a humane purpose,
even if truth was sacrificed.
The liberal's favorite tactic, Goldberg explains, is to offer
"muddled empirical explanations in an attempt to camouflage
the subjective roots" of his argument. He says such false
arguments "infuse social science today and are responsible
for millions of people accepting explanations of the world that
have no logical consistency." The liberal's greatest tendency
seems to be his remarkable ability to confuse wish with reality,
Goldberg tells us.
"Indoctrination into a set of subjective beliefs is passed
off in today's universities as 'education.'" As an example,
he says, most sociology textbooks "have an ideological commitment
to a denial of the possibility that masculine and feminine behaviors
and emotions are rooted in male and female physiologies and that
all societies conform their social systems to the limits and directions
imposed by this reality."
Goldberg says that gays have an ideological commitment to proving
the normality of homosexuality, but they have not yet been able
to make a convincing argument for it.
We cannot grant gays affirmation of the normality of their behavior
unless they can give us a cause for homosexuality that can be
considered normal, he says. Most gays refuse to consider the common
environmental factors that have been found in the backgrounds
of homosexuals; they simply insist that causation is "irrelevant."
They expect, he says, that we should suspend criteria for normality
which psychologists apply in all other cases.
Many gay spokesmen actually tend to deny the logic of deeming
any behavior abnormal. Yet this approach does them little
good. What they really want to argue, Goldberg says, is that homosexuality
is normal, while other behaviors like necrophilia and coprophilia
are not. To make the argument that homosexuality is normal because
"all variant behaviors are 'normal,'" gays would then
be forced to deliver an argument explaining why necrophilia and
coprophilia should be viewed as perversions, while homosexuality
was healthy.
Goldberg discusses the prevailing psychoanalytic view of male
homosexuality--that it originates from parental influences, resulting
in an incomplete identification with the father. This view, founded
on a large and impressive body of older literature, is now derisively
dismissed as "outdated" by gay researchers.
But in reality, Goldberg says, "gay criticism has not addressed
the classic family configuration." Gays have merely "asserted
away the considerable evidence" for the existence of family
factors. Gay studies which attempt to disprove the existence of
the classic family pattern in homosexuality are "convincing
only to those with a need to believe," he tells us.
Reviewing the research, Goldberg postulates that parental influence
in the development of homosexuality varies from from low to high
in different cases. He thinks homosexual development may also
be affected by other childhood influences, such as early seduction
and peer-group labelling, with biological predisposition also
creating a vulnerability in some people.
But as for a genetic cause, Goldberg says, "Virtually all
of the evidence argues against there being a determinative physiological
causal factor and I know of no researcher who believes that such
a determinative factor exists... such factors play a predisposing,
not a determinative role... I know of no one in the field who
argues that homosexuality can be explained without reference to
environmental factors."
Gay apologists also justify their condition as normal by claiming
homosexuals exhibit no greater pathology than heterosexuals. Goldberg
answers this claim:
"...Virtually every homosexual spokesman who has argued that
homosexuals demonstrate no greater pathology has rested his case
on an article by Evelyn Hooker without noting that Professor Hooker
selected for individuals who did not manifest any of a
number of signs of pathology...to invoke this study as demonstrating
that homosexuals demonstrate no greater pathology than heterosexuals
is like selecting a sample of 30 six-foot-tall women and six-foot-tall
men and concluding that women are as tall as men."
Goldberg says that other studies have been able to discriminate
homosexuals from heterosexuals on the basis of psychological distress.
Professor Goldberg moves on to another key gay argument. Gay spokesmen
are torn between two positions--on the one hand they say (using
the Hooker study as proof) that gays are normal because they exhibit
no more pathology than straights. On the other hand, they agree
that there is more pathology (such as suicide and depression)
but claim it is due to society's oppression.
Goldberg cites a study by Williams and Weinberg (l974) which reveals
that the distress does not decrease as social tolerance is increased.
This study compared gay-friendly societies (such as Denmark)
with societies hostile to homosexuality (such as the U.S. in previous
years). The study's findings of psychological distress among gays
in all cultures suggest the pathology is linked to the homosexuality
itself, rather than oppression by society.
Goldberg is quick to admit that there are limits to scientific
investigation. Science, he says, is nothing more than the attempt
to find general empirical relationships. Whether or not any behavior
is moral is a completely different philosophical question from
what is taken to be "normal" in the view of the psychological
establishment.
Goldberg acknowledges that there is--indeed--a place for subjectivity
and ideology. Science is concerned only with empirical relationships.
How these empirical relationships are interpreted and applied
always requires some sort of subjective judgment. But before we
examine moral and sociological questions, he says, we must first
correctly understand their scientific and empirical foundations.
But once we have understood these foundations, Goldberg says,
the empiricist is worthless. He has nothing more to offer, for
science--like the nature it attempts to explain--cannot distinguish
good from bad, or psychologically healthy from unhealthy. A discussion
of psychological normality, he says we must acknowledge, will
never be a purely scientific discussion.
Interview with Dr. Goldberg
Question: You say, "There is no such thing as a purely
scientific perspective of what is normal and abnormal." How,
then, should we categorize disorders?
Answer: This is a very important question. First, psychology
must clearly acknowledge that it can never conclusively prove
any behavior to be normal or abnormal; there is always some final
element of subjective judgment. We must grant that knowing "what
is" cannot generate "what ought to be."
A useful way to proceed would be to develop heirarchies, in which
behaviors would be grouped by the level of subjectivity involved
in understanding them. We could all agree that suicide and depression
are harmful, for example. These would be Level One diagnoses.
Almost everyone would agree that narcissism is unhealthy; after
all, narcissism is equated with selfishness; so narcissism would
be in the Level Two category. We would move on down from there,
clearly acknowledging the amount of subjectivity involved in each
grouping. In all those higher categories, it would be clear there
had been that final arbitrary jump of subjective judgment.
Question: How do you think most people form their opinions
about whether homosexuality is disordered?
Answer: Most people form their opinions from the social
group they're in. There's strong anti-gay feeling in some social
subgroups, whereas on the other hand, liberals almost automatically
assume the condition is healthy. I'd guess only 1% of the people
came to their conclusion as a result of careful, reasoned thinking.
Of course, people don't have time to study every issue.
Even in studying those issues, most people aren't aware that the
facts they do have before them may be distorted. This is
true in the debate over money for AIDS research. Of course, if
someone has a loved one dying of AIDS, no help is ever enough.
But if you look at the reality of the issue, more money has actually
been spent on AIDS than on breast cancer research. There's been
a lot of fudging on the facts to make HIV infection look like
a mainstream disease--which at this point, it's not.
There are other distortions of the facts that are less benign.
Normalizing homosexuality is one of them. Science has to be consistent
in its understanding of what is abnormal; it's all got to hang
together logically. To call homosexuality normal, and other sexual
deviations like coprophilia or necrophilia abnormal, is logically
inconsistent.
Logic has also been twisted in the issue of biological causation.
What gays NEVER point out is the only fact we absolutely KNOW--that
homosexuality is not physiologically determined. Half of the identical
twin brothers in the Bailey and Pillard study were made up by
pairs where one was gay and one was heterosexual. So we KNOW there
is also an environmental component.
In some ways, the discovery of a possible biological influence
has been good, because it's taken some of the pressure off the
parents. No one knows how much biology contributed to making their
child gay, and how much their own parenting contributed. This
takes away a lot of the guilt, which should eventually result
in a more honest discussion of the problem.
Beyond that, we musn't distort the truth by calling homosexuality
normal. The term "normal" must mean something. Because
homosexuality is so clearly bound up with pathology--and because
we see so many Freudian-type backgrounds in the histories of homosexuals--we
have no justification for labelling the condition "normal."
Question: What pathologies are seen in homosexuality?
Answer: Besides the family backgrounds, you also see more
suicide and depression. Even in cultures where there is little
social sanction against homosexuality, such pathology does not
disappear. You also see more narcissism in homosexuality. And
if you've been around many gay men for very long, you notice an
element of compulsivity. Some of these men are seventy years old
and half the things in their houses are still phallic symbols.
Question: In the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of the A.P.A., the old disorders of pedophilia, sadism and masochism
are only considered disordered if the person is "distressed"
by his urges or significantly impaired in his work or social functioning.
Do you think this is a step toward normalizing these conditions,
as the A.P.A. did with homosexuality?
Answer: Not necessarily. In practice I think you'd always
find some dysfunction in the person's life which would have come
about through the pedophilia. If there was some unusual case where
you couldn't label the man a pedophiliac under the new definition,
well, then--call him normal and arrest him! Remember, even if
a behavior's labelled "not disordered," it may still
be illegal and immoral.
Question: The subject of your next book is "the process
of objectification in the U.S. and its effect on the undercutting
of American values." Please explain this.
Answer: When a society is bound together by certain values,
it functions in a manner analogous to the family. People get a
sense of belonging and a shared sense of what's right and wrong.
When a society loses its ability to inculcate its values in its
members, these values lose their strength, and soon we're in real
trouble.
Modernization entails a tendency to no longer be ruled by traditions.
Along with modernization comes science, and along with science
comes objectification. When you look at something objectively,
the sanctions against it begin to fall away. Studying marriage
as an institution, for example--freely examining the pro's and
con's from every angle--is very different from teaching, "Of
course everyone gets married." Soon people begin to seriously
consider the other options.
Look at sex education in the schools. It works against the deep
values people originally had associated with these matters. Now
"the love that dared not speak its name" just won't
shut up! Hardly anything is unspeakable or scandalous any more,
and that's an accurate measure of the loss of our values.
Question: Do you think homosexuality will ever be completely
acceptable in our society?
Answer: I doubt we'll ever have any society that
gives equal status to homosexuality. We've had thousands of cultures,
and it's never happened. This is anthropogically universal. The
sanction has varied from stoning homosexuals to death, to granting
them more or less equal freedom, but never has any society granted
them status parity.
There's never been a culture which hasn't seen gays as "men
with something missing."
Question: You say: "All groups require an acceptance
of their subjective beliefs by those who wish membership. But
when the group demands...acceptance of patently nonsensical or
fallacious explanations and...bogus facts, then the group makes
denial of truth a condition for acceptance...For people with my
constitution, this demand is intolerable."
How did this affect your working in a university sociology department,
in a world in which the only speech is politically correct speech?
Answer: When other sociologists review my books, nine out
of ten reviews are hatchet jobs. They simply ignore what I've
said. For 25 years, I've seen my work mangled to the point where
it was unidentifiable. For a long time, I've been saying that
people have been making up empirical evidence for political reasons--and
that doesn't win you a lot of fans.
But the subjects to which people attach emotion are always changing.
In another thirty years, our society will be focused on other
issues.
Updated: 3 September 2008
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