Dear en,
On reading the November en, Christian Concern’s brief report on USA sexual orientation research provided a very helpful background to reading, just a couple of pages on, ‘While the church sleeps’ by Dr Lisa Nolland, alerting the church to the extraordinary success of the LGBT’s penetration of schools etc. in the UK.
I took time to read some of the report reviewed by Christian Concern and realised that it is one of the most comprehensive reviews ever undertaken of the literature on the origins of same sex attraction and LGBT self-identification generally. It finds that the only statistically significant evidence for future homosexual or transgender self-identities is sexual, physical or psychological abuse /trauma in childhood, often evidenced also in psychological suffering in adulthood. Neither genetic nor hormonal factors have any objective explanatory value.
The lead author of the research, Dr Laurence Meyer, is a specialist in the field of medical and biometric statistics. He is sympathetic to the social stigmatisation and far higher than average mental suffering experienced by many homosexual people, so in the Preface he dedicates this research ‘first, to the LGBT community, which bears a disproportionate rate of mental health problems compared to the population as a whole. We must find ways to relieve their suffering.’
Co-author Dr Paul McHugh, is one of the very top psychiatrists in the world.
Turning to Dr Nolland’s warning to churches to be better informed, this research by Meyer and McHugh could become a vital part of a programme to encourage pastors and all Christians to know that we are not obscurantists, unwilling to face up to modern, supposedly scientific, findings about the objectivity of sexual orientation. Quite the opposite is the case: it is organisations like Stonewall that are scientifically misleading in the way that they have built an establishment illusion of objectivity around primarily subjective preferences.
Yours sincerely,