Free We Are Our Brains by D. F. Swaab Page A

potentially life-threatening to make seropositive individuals think that they’ve been cured in this way and no longer need to take any medication.
    The outmoded notion that we’re free to choose our sexual orientation and that homosexuality is therefore a wrong choice is still causing a lot of misery. The stories I heard when I gave a lecture to ContrariO, a Christian gay association, showed that homosexuals brought up in the Dutch Reformed Church tradition can still struggleterribly with their sexual orientation. Indeed, until recently, homosexuality was still regarded as a disease by the medical community. Only in 1992 was it removed from the ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases). Before that time, doctors had striven to “cure” men of their homosexuality.
    The idea that our social environment shapes our sexual orientation has led to mass persecution. The Nazi notion, as expressed by Hitler himself, that homosexuality was as infectious as the plague led to the unimaginable in Germany: first voluntary castrations, then compulsory castrations, and finally the systematic murder of homosexuals in concentration camps.
    An important argument against the idea that homosexuality is a “lifestyle choice” or caused by environmental factors is the demonstrable impossibility of ridding people of their homosexuality. Every conceivable thing that could be devised has been tried: hormone treatments, castration, and treatments that influence libido rather than sexual orientation. Electroshock therapies have been tried, as well as epileptic insults. Prison sentences have proved equally ineffectual, as seen in the sad case of Oscar Wilde. Testicular transplants have been carried out, leading to a “success story” in which a homosexual man pinched the nurse’s bottom after the operation. Psychoanalysis has also been tried, of course, as well as giving homosexuals apomorphine, a drug that induces nausea, in combination with homoerotic images, as a form of aversion therapy. The story goes that this didn’t diminish the men’s erotic desires; its only effect was to make them start vomiting as soon as the therapist entered the room. Brain operations have also been performed on homosexual prisoners with a view to reducing their sentences if the treatment proved effective. Naturally, the men all said that it was effective.
    Since none of these approaches has led to a well-documented change of sexual orientation, there can be little doubt that by adulthood our sexual orientation has been determined and can no longer be influenced. If churches were finally to accept this fact, the lives ofmany of their young members and clergy would be a great deal happier.
HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
    Homosexual behavior has now been observed in around 1,500 animal species, from insects to mammals. The male penguin couple Roy and Silo in New York’s Central Park Zoo are a famous example. They copulated, built a nest together, took care of an egg that a kindly keeper gave them (hatching it out after thirty-four days), and together looked after the baby. If a female rat develops alongside a male rat in the womb, thus being exposed to more testosterone during early development, it will mount other female rats. Two percent of oystercatchers, a monogamous bird species, form a trio of two females and a male, after which all three guard the same nest. A trio of this kind produces more offspring than a conventional pair, because they are better able to look after and protect the nest.
    Behavioral scientists have also shown that homosexual behavior in animals is often used to make peace with enemies or obtain the help of others against possible attackers. Primatologist Frans de Waal has found bonobos to be completely bisexual, a perfect 3 in the Kinsey scale. Where possible, bonobos solve problems in the group by sexual means, through both heterosexual and homosexual behavior. De Waal has found that