Today, I find our friends over at one of McVety's little mouth organs decided to quote Spanish psychiatrist Enrique Rojas' comments about homosexuality from a speech he gave in Buenos Aires:
Rojas characterized homosexual orientation as a "disorder" rather than an illness, and stated his opinion that 95% of cases are caused by environmental factors, according to the Spanish news service Terra.
The disorder, according to Rojas, is the result of an absent father, overweening mother, or sexual abuse in childhood.
Once again, we see the classic canard about "bad parenting" or other "family environment" problems as a causal explanation for why someone is gay. Of course, it falls apart when one considers studies such as twins studies where although there is an increased probability that both twins will be gay if one is, that is just a probability. At 55% probability, that is pretty close to even odds - not what one would expect from a dysfunctional parenting arrangement (where I would expect the effect to be considerably more pronounced). Nor does it explain the emergence of gay children from families that are clearly quite normal.
If this clown is some "eminent" (it's amazing how as soon as one of these people says something the fundies like, they immediately grant all kinds of authority to the person's utterances) psychiatrist, it seems to me that he is lacking the requisite background in current research on subjects he is claiming to be an authority on.
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Nor does it explain the emergence of gay children from families that are clearly quite normal.
Which, if the people I know are a representative sample, is almost all of them.
It also doesn't explain kids raised by gay parents, or one gay parent, who turn out to be straight. This sample is much smaller, but again, it's almost all of them.
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