Abstract
IN A RECENT ARTICLE Glass, Deuel and Wright2 compared androgen and estrogen analyses of urine obtained from so-called normal and homosexual males. For the homosexuals they reported androgenestrogen ratios which they consider “significantly lower than those obtained in 31 normal males.“ These conclusions are in line with wide-spread and long-standing popular opinion that homosexual behavior depends on some inherent abnormality which, since the time of the discovery of the sex hormones, is often supposed to be glandular in origin. This assumption is offered as specific explanation in some of the psychology and sociology texts, and some of the psychiatrists are treating homosexuality as an organic disease which is to be cured, if at all, by endocrinologic adjustments. Since these recently published studies are practically the first to test the validity of the current opinion, they are likely to attract some attention; and it is, therefore, desirable to examine the bases of the conclusions and, in fact, to consider the possibility of any hormonal explanation fitting the picture of homosexual behavior as it actually occurs in the human being.
View more >>