Heterosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction or sexual behavior between people of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to people of the opposite sex. It "also refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions." Someone who is heterosexual is commonly referred to as straight.
The relationship between biology and sexual orientation is a subject of on-going research. While scientists do not know the exact cause of sexual orientation, they theorize that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences. However, evidence is weak for hypotheses that the post-natal social environment impacts sexual orientation, especially for males.
Gay bashing is an attack, abuse, or assault committed against a person who is perceived by the aggressor to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+). It includes both violence against LGBT people and LGBT bullying. The term covers violence against and bullying of people who are LGBT, as well as non-LGBT people whom the attacker perceives to be LGBT.
Joseph Nicolosi was an American clinical psychologist who advocated and practised "reparative therapy", a form of the pseudoscientific treatment of conversion therapy that he claimed could help people overcome or mitigate their homosexual desires and replace them with heterosexual ones. Nicolosi was a founder and president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Medical institutions warn that conversion therapy is ineffective and may be harmful, and that there is no evidence that sexual orientation can be changed by such treatments.
Charles William Socarides was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, physician, educator and author. He focused much of his career on homosexuality, which he believed could be altered. He helped found the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) in 1992 and worked extensively with the organization until his death.
Simon LeVay is a British-American neuroscientist.
Dennis Patkin Altman is an Australian academic and gay rights activist.
INAH-3 is the short form for the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus, and is the sexually dimorphic nucleus of humans. INAH-3 is significantly larger in males than in females regardless of age. One study has shown that INAH-3 is larger in heterosexual males than in homosexual males and heterosexual females, although this data has not been successfully reproduced.
George Alan Rekers is an American psychologist and ordained Southern Baptist minister. He is emeritus professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. Rekers has a PhD from University of California, Los Angeles and has been a research fellow at Harvard University, a professor and psychologist for UCLA and the University of Florida, and department head at Kansas State University.
Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research is a 1997 book by the philosopher Timothy F. Murphy about scientific research on sexual orientation.
Les Guérillères is a 1969 novel by Monique Wittig. It was translated to English in 1971.
The relationship between the environment and sexual orientation is a subject of research. In the study of sexual orientation, some researchers distinguish environmental influences from hormonal influences, while other researchers include biological influences such as prenatal hormones as part of environmental influences.
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, to more than one gender, or to both people of the same gender and different genders. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, which is also known as pansexuality.
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, viewed homosexuality, like all forms of sexuality, as being caused by a combination of biological, social and psychological factors. According to Freud, humans are born with unfocused sexual libidinal drives; he regarded homosexuality as a particular form of variation in the developmental process of the sexual function.
Peter H. Wyden was an American journalist and writer.
Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation is a book by the neuroscientist Simon LeVay and published by Oxford University Press. The book received mainly positive reviews, praising it for LeVay's wide-ranging overview of scientific research on sexual orientation. In 2012, it received the Bullough Book Award for the most distinguished book written for the professional sexological community published in a given year.
The Sexual Brain is a 1993 book about brain mechanisms involved in sexual behavior and feelings, and related topics such as sexual orientation, by the neuroscientist Simon LeVay. The book was praised as a well-written work on science. However, some reviewers pointed out factual errors, and stated that LeVay failed to prove that homosexuality has a biological basis.
The Homosexualization of America, The Americanization of the Homosexual is a 1982 book about LGBT rights in the United States by the gay rights activist Dennis Altman, in which the author discusses the emergence of gay people as a minority group. The book received positive reviews, crediting Altman with providing a useful discussion of gay people in the United States.
The history of conversion therapy can be divided broadly into three periods: an early Freudian period; a period of mainstream approval of conversion therapy, when the mental health establishment became the "primary superintendent" of sexuality; and a post-Stonewall period where the mainstream medical profession disavowed conversion therapy.
