Homosexuality Research Paper

Tags: Writing A Creative StoryFundraising Business Plan TemplateGroup Projects EssaysMathxl Homework AnswersEssay On Social NetworkingShort Argumentative Essay About TechnologyThesis On Hinduism And BuddhismLegal Structure Of A Business Plan

Modern attitudes toward homosexuality have religious, legal, and medical underpinnings.He believed all human beings were innately bisexual, and that they become heterosexual or homosexual as a result of their experiences with parents and others (Freud, 1905).Nevertheless, Freud agreed with Ellis that a homosexual orientation should not be viewed as a form of pathology.Many of the early American colonies, for example, enacted stiff criminal penalties for sodomy, an umbrella term that encompassed a wide variety of sexual acts that were nonprocreative (including homosexual behavior), occurred outside of marriage (e.g., sex between a man and woman who were not married), or violated traditions (e.g., sex between husband and wife with the woman on top).The statutes often described such conduct only in Latin or with oblique phrases such as "wickedness not to be named").Condemnation of homosexual acts (and other nonprocreative sexual behavior) as "unnatural," which received official expression in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and others, became widespread and has continued through the present day (Boswell, 1980).[Bibliographic references are on a different web page] Religious teachings soon were incorporated into legal sanctions.Before the High Middle Ages, homosexual acts appear to have been tolerated or ignored by the Christian church throughout Europe.Beginning in the latter twelfth century, however, hostility toward homosexuality began to take root, and eventually spread throughout European religious and secular institutions.208-209, from the American Journal of Psychiatry, 1951, 107, 786).Later psychoanalysts did not follow this view, however.