Homosexuality Debate Nurture 3

Homosexuality – Nature or Nurture?

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Good morning adjudicator, audience and debaters. What causes homosexuality? Is it genes as the affirmative team believes or upbringing? First of all I would like to address some flaws that the affirmative team has falsely pointed out about their so called truth about homosexuality. If homosexuality were ‘fit’ enough the majority of the population would have same-sex partners. However Doctors Paul and Kirk Cameron who attended the Eastern Psychological Association Convention report that less than 2% of the population is gay. So out of about 6 billion people in the world only ___ are supposedly born gay. Homosexuality is evidently not as ‘fit’ as the affirmative team claim. Evelyn said that convincing evidence of hormonal differences determined homosexuality. While fetal development depends on various levels of hormones such as estrogen, testosterone and androgen, how about the other multitude of other hormones that fetal development is also dependant of and their interaction as such. Further research, provided by Evelyn presented different brain activity between homosexuals and heterosexuals, but just how and what was that difference? What was the criterion to par take, what measures of testing proved their sexual orientation, how many participants were tested and so forth? It certainly is easy to bring preconceptions to scientific investigation but where is the evidence of research to justify their opinion. Furthermore, Friedman, a _____, states that scientific ‘concepts are often somewhat imprecise and admittedly fail to do justice to the rich variability of human behaviour’.
There is an understandable apprehension by many people towards claims that biology plays a significant role in the etiology of homosexuality. _THEME_. Our argument is based upon how homosexuality is a social responsibility rather than a genetic responsibility. I will be explaining how family influences the adjustment of children and adolescents and the mother-archetype established by theorist Carl Jung. Our second speaker, Andrew, will continue our argument with evidence from Sigmund Freud about the mother-son complex; as well as expanding on family and environmental issues concerning the flaws of nurturing children and their affect. Belinda, our third speaker, will reiterate and affirm how _THEME_
Around 1930 Jung came to the conclusion that homosexuality came to be because of the mother archetype. An archetype is a tendency to experience things in a certain way. The archetype has no form of its own, but it acts as an “organising principle” on the things we see or do. It creates an indefinite yearning which, nevertheless, can be satisfied by some things and not by others. We would have never survived if we were without a mother or substitute; a nurturing mother during our times as helpless infants. A man with a powerful mother had but two choices he had to commit to: homosexuality or Don Jaunism. To avoid homosexuality – marrying a female tyrant would tear him physically away from his mother and on the other hand if he were to marry a submissive woman she would be hated for not being able to tear the bond between mother and son. Homosexuality occurred when the boy’s heterosexual libido remained fixated on his mother and was consequently unavailable for any other woman; ultimately turning to men for sexual fulfillment. Don Juanism, on the other hand was the quest for the ideal woman who is ‘all mother’, but since the role is already filled and by definition no ‘normal’ woman can fit the job description, the man must be forever doomed to promiscuity.
In keeping with Jung’s mother archetype studies by Bell and Miller frequently found studies surrounding mothers who make the key decisions and ran the family. Bell reports in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, that ‘fewer homosexuals than heterosexuals reported that their fathers had dominated their mother, and more homosexual men said that their mothers dominated their fathers. This finding is traditionally interpreted as a characteristic of the structure of families that produce homosexuality. Research has shown backed up by Blanchard and Bogaert that gays tend to cluster in families and that gays on average have a greater number of older brothers than do heterosexual males. Childhood gender nonconformity (disliking stereotypic male activities and participating in stereotypic female activities) is a strong correlate of male sexual orientation this is evidenced by the works of Bailey and Zucker and Dawood and his colleagues. A second potential contribution of the study of gay sibling pairs concerns the possibility of sibling influence. That is, siblings may exert influences on each other’s sexual orientation. Specifically, it is conceivable that having a gay brother is an environmental cause of male homosexuality. For example, knowing that one’s brother is gay could make it more likely that one would consider the possibility oneself, leading to the discovery or acknowledgment of previously hidden sexual feelings.
Variables of the family process are predictors of child adjustment. Family support has a critical impact on adolescent health and adjustment. The primary task of parenting lies in the ability to nurture and protect one’s child. Children have different upbringings, education, religions and culture, psychosocial backgrounds, socio economic attributes and emotional or traumatic events, which impact and mould who that child is and the way in which the parent’s or parent copes with these challenges is reflected on their child. For that reason __ says the qualities of the relationship are better predictors of child adjustment than variables of family structure (REF).
To bring my part of the argument to a close homosexuality essentially is the primary responsibility of the social and cultural environments in which we live in. Family influences shape us at those influential stages in our life which determine our ways of life predisposing us to certain sexual orientations whether that is heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.

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