Psychiatry and Orthodoxy: Nope Homosexuality is not normal

[Everlasting33]

Good article. As a psychology graduate, I believe homosexuality is very unhealthy and there are many factors, including temperment, that can determine homosexuality. One day, I would like to write my own thesis and/or project about homosexuality since its one of the few subjects that I am so firmly insistent on.

 

[Photini]

There's a part of the Betrothal service where the priest asks both the groom and the bride to confirm that they are doing this of their own free will.

I do a lot of things by my own free will that are still not exactly what I want or desire to do.

 

[Philothei]

I will simply point out that the great majority of her fellows disagree with her.

Like what? the last 10-15 years? Or shall we say that in 15 years from now even pedophilia would be considered normal... This is "progress" in phychiatric through? Nah...it is "anything goes" for we are born as the animals were...Let's lower our standards to be able to live "free" of any responsibility that God has entrusted us. Let's go back to the caveman state.

 

[Thekla]

Exactly. In America, it really shouldn't be shocking to us that homosexuals want to be able to marry. As a society, we have already accepted that it is okay to choose a spouse based on romantic feelings and physical attraction. So there is nothing "on a whim" about this situation.

Just look at movies... I have never seen arranged marriages painted in a positive light that I can remember. It is always a "tragedy" that the princess has to marry someone other than her "true love". Up until recently, I viewed arranged marriages as even oppressive and cruel.

And making romance the center of marriage seems to make breaking marriage more likely - as one can say the "romance" is gone.

My dad used to say that divorce became widely acceptable because it added to the GNP. All those new households being set up ... repeatedly

 

[Philothei]

It's clear which train of thought overrides in that interview.

A train of thought that is seen by its fruit... for sure. I think that being honest is what science is all about. Seeking the truth of your science subject is admiting that individuals regardless their condition are happy, heathly and productive in society. I think that a survey alone would prove that this group unfortunately suffers from most "endogenous" maladies. At least the surveys I have seen testify to that. The results may be inconclusive to some as this issue has not had long history. But still the fact remains that the ones who are practicing homosexuality are somehow malajasted.
That has already be proven by psychiatrists though. So if you are crying foul about the interview I would think twice...

 

[Dorothea]

And making romance the center of marriage seems to make breaking marriage more likely - as one can say the "romance" is gone.

My dad used to say that divorce became widely acceptable because it added to the GNP. All those new households being set up ... repeatedly

Yes, I agree with you and Photini. And you are right about the movies being saturated with basically infatuations. This "romance" thing.

What the psychiatrist said about this world only understanding love as sex is so true. It's really sad how limited and shallow we can be.

Also, some of the comments in here from visitors tells me this society and culture has so molded us, and done so without most of our knowledge, in making things that are truly sinful into being "normal" or "ok." This is the main concern I have, even though that is how it is to be in these end times, and especially the very end. What was once right will be considered wrong, and what was once wrong will be considered right. I just worry a bit about my children and the generation after them growing up in such a mesh of wrong influences, and done so subtly, as I said before, that one usually doesn't even realize they've been morphed into believing such stuff. If it wasn't for the church and our spiritual fathers, we'd all likely be victims to some of the mess out there. We already struggle as it is with the guidances of the church and our priests. Can you imagine if we didn't have that? Ugh.

 

[rusmeister]

A response to various ideas expressed here - I think we need to drag in GKC, but will address the thoughts of others first - don't you hate it when it seems no one responds to your thoughts at all and they keep talking as if you never said a word? In genuine (honest) debate that seeks to prove the truth, opponents listen carefully, with bated breath, to every word of their opponent, seeking weakness in their ideas. In modern political debate they simply do not listen to each other at all but merely harp on "talking points".

So, because I HAVE been reading what y'all have posted here...

"It lasts": The feeling of 'falling in love' does not last. Period. Ever.
A marriage, however, can last, even if you do not always enjoy his or her company. So saying that a marriage can't last because desired feelings have ended is not true. Feelings come and go, and they can even be created by how we are with the other person. It is very hard to hate someone who is consistently loving you, and very easy to experience positive feelings. Divorce cannot be justified merely because we have grown tired of the person we pledged our lives to.

Our society HAS based the idea of marriage as based on a feeling. What is NOT wrong with that idea is that the feeling of falling in love can and does serve as an excellent way of 'starting the car' like a battery does. It is a terrible generator, though, and trying to use the battery as a generator will fail in the end. IOW, everything else is wrong about the idea of a marriage based on feelings. (I'll avoid the evil euphemism "relationship" - something we should try to delete from our vocabulary due to its intensive use regarding marital relations without the marriage itself.) But focusing on a marriage 'arranged' by feelings vs one arranged by parents is going in the wrong direction. That is not the issue. However the marriage comes about, the issue is of the vow as a sacred thing that seals the marriage for life and creates a new family and new relations (called "in-laws" in English), once that are not negated by the mere superstition of divorce.

Saying "I believe" is rather dangerous. It is both good and true, but it also seems to reduce the idea to one's mere personal opinion, rather than an absolute truth binding on all regardless of how they feel about it.

Philothei brings up an excellent point. I would expand on it by saying that the problem of the modern insanity is based heavily on what Mr. Spock of Star Trek once called "two-dimensional thinking" (for those old enough to remember the reference). They only see what is NOW. They can barely see what was 15 years ago, and have been fed a nearly completely false view of history (with grains of truth to hold the false view in place). Comments like what colleagues may think of our heroine psychiatrist (I quite mean that) now are symptomatic of this. It is not asked what colleagues of a hundred years ago said - the idea occurs to no one. It is assumed that our ancestors of 50, 100, 200 or 500 years ago were benighted individuals who were inferior in both knowledge and wisdom. It is precisely for this reason that I find so much the modern "psych" sciences to be suspect. Amazingly, humanity got along for centuries, even after the Renaissance, without the benefit of those 'sciences' (and I do think there is real science in there). The fact that they arose in the aftermath of the so-called "Enlightenment" (read "Endarkenment"), which was about 'casting off the shackles of religion' speaks volumes. And later some, aided by Darwinian ideas that Darwin himself did not hold, decide that there IS no soul! And in that soup the "psych" sciences - sciences of the soul - were born, in a very atmosphere of science already rejecting God. The sould would henceforth be 'treated' without any reference to divine human origin - and if there be no soul, so much the better (from that perspective). We would learn to be our own gods.

 

[cobweb]

"It lasts": The feeling of 'falling in love' does not last. Period. Ever.
A marriage, however, can last, even if you do not always enjoy his or her company. So saying that a marriage can't last because desired feelings have ended is not true. Feelings come and go, and they can even be created by how we are with the other person. It is very hard to hate someone who is consistently loving you, and very easy to experience positive feelings. Divorce cannot be justified merely because we have grown tired of the person we pledged our lives to.

Exactly.

I have been married 13 years. My parents have been married 35 years. My grandparents have been married 56 years. My great-grandparents were married 63 years until death seperated them.

They all would have agreed.

 

[.Iona.]

That has already be proven by psychiatrists though. So if you are crying foul about the interview I would think twice...

I work in psychiatry myself, so have a good idea about what research has suggested. I also know a lot about what shouldn't happen in psychiatry. I won't post it here though, but perhaps will create a thread on the issue elsewhere in the forums.

 

[rusmeister]

Exactly.

I have been married 13 years. My parents have been married 35 years. My grandparents have been married 56 years. My great-grandparents were married 63 years until death seperated them.

They all would have agreed.

In everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one would do it, except for necessity or honor. It is then that the Institution upholds a man and helps him on to the firmer ground ahead. Whether this solid fact of human nature is sufficient to justify the sublime dedication of Christian marriage is quite an other matter, it is amply sufficient to justify the general human feeling of marriage as a fixed thing, dissolution of which is a fault or, at least, an ignominy. The essential element is not so much duration as security. Two people must be tied together in order to do themselves justice; for twenty minutes at a dance, or for twenty years in a marriage In both cases the point is, that if a man is bored in the first five minutes he must go on and force himself to be happy. Coercion is a kind of encouragement; and anarchy (or what some call liberty) is essentially oppressive, because it is essentially discouraging. If we all floated in the air like bubbles, free to drift anywhere at any instant, the practical result would be that no one would have the courage to begin a conversation. It would be so embarrassing to start a sentence in a friendly whisper, and then have to shout the last half of it because the other party was floating away into the free and formless ether. The two must hold each other to do justice to each other. If Americans can be divorced for "incompatibility of temper" I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.

GK Chesterton; "What's Wrong With the World" pt 1 ch 7

This year makes 20 for my wife and me, although we are completely "incompatible"". Both Orthodox, 4 kids depending on us, and I plan on going the distance, even though we don't have the common interests people look to these days to hold us together - we still manage to love each other, and it ain't always easy - so here's to twenty more!

 

[Photini]

A response to various ideas expressed here - I think we need to drag in GKC, but will address the thoughts of others first - don't you hate it when it seems no one responds to your thoughts at all and they keep talking as if you never said a word? In genuine (honest) debate that seeks to prove the truth, opponents listen carefully, with bated breath, to every word of their opponent, seeking weakness in their ideas. In modern political debate they simply do not listen to each other at all but merely harp on "talking points".

So, because I HAVE been reading what y'all have posted here...

"It lasts": The feeling of 'falling in love' does not last. Period. Ever.
A marriage, however, can last, even if you do not always enjoy his or her company. So saying that a marriage can't last because desired feelings have ended is not true. Feelings come and go, and they can even be created by how we are with the other person. It is very hard to hate someone who is consistently loving you, and very easy to experience positive feelings. Divorce cannot be justified merely because we have grown tired of the person we pledged our lives to.

Our society HAS based the idea of marriage as based on a feeling. What is NOT wrong with that idea is that the feeling of falling in love can and does serve as an excellent way of 'starting the car' like a battery does. It is a terrible generator, though, and trying to use the battery as a generator will fail in the end. IOW, everything else is wrong about the idea of a marriage based on feelings. (I'll avoid the evil euphemism "relationship" - something we should try to delete from our vocabulary due to its intensive use regarding marital relations without the marriage itself.) But focusing on a marriage 'arranged' by feelings vs one arranged by parents is going in the wrong direction. That is not the issue. However the marriage comes about, the issue is of the vow as a sacred thing that seals the marriage for life and creates a new family and new relations (called "in-laws" in English), once that are not negated by the mere superstition of divorce.

Saying "I believe" is rather dangerous. It is both good and true, but it also seems to reduce the idea to one's mere personal opinion, rather than an absolute truth binding on all regardless of how they feel about it.

Philothei brings up an excellent point. I would expand on it by saying that the problem of the modern insanity is based heavily on what Mr. Spock of Star

I was only postulating about what might have brought us to our current situation because someone mentioned that we can't redefine marriage 'on a whim'. This situation did not press itself on us out of the blue. We shouldn't be shocked that we are having to address it as a society, since from our youth we are so faced with the notions of romantic love and physical attraction. And now that people are generally choosing their own spouses, it is no surprise that homosexuals would want to choose a spouse based on the same things the rest of us do.

I am most decidedly NOT a formal debater. I do not enter threads that are formal debate. If that is what this thread is, then I will bow out. I was only thinking out loud, and I stated as much.

 

[Thekla]

I work in psychiatry myself, so have a good idea about what research has suggested. I also know a lot about what shouldn't happen in psychiatry. I won't post it here though, but perhaps will create a thread on the issue elsewhere in the forums.

Looking at pubmed, I noticed that recent studies have found an increased rate of psychiatric (both neurotic and psychotic) phenomenon in nonheterosexuals independent of environmental - including social - factors.

How has this information been reflected in the professional community ?

 

[rusmeister]

I was only postulating about what might have brought us to our current situation because someone mentioned that we can't redefine marriage 'on a whim'. This situation did not press itself on us out of the blue. We shouldn't be shocked that we are having to address it as a society, since from our youth we are so faced with the notions of romantic love and physical attraction. And now that people are generally choosing their own spouses, it is no surprise that homosexuals would want to choose a spouse based on the same things the rest of us do.

I am most decidedly NOT a formal debater. I do not enter threads that are formal debate. If that is what this thread is, then I will bow out. I was only thinking out loud, and I stated as much.

No, no, that's fine. I wasn't looking for a fight.
But there's no need to guess or surmise - one can KNOW what happened to bring us to this pass, and as I said, Chesterton laid it out stunningly. I even got my mother on this one (she's currently Mennonite); when I told her about the shift from a society based on the vow to a society based on the contract, she gasped (you should've heard the intake of breath!) "That's right!!"

I really think that work I linked to one of the most important of our time; that it really does 'put paid' to all of the modern ideas on marriage by identifying what we all know it to be.

On that note...

It is futile to talk of reform without reference to form. To take a case from my own taste and fancy, there is nothing I feel to be so beautiful and wonderful as a window. All casements are magic casements, whether they open on the foam or the front-garden; they lie close to the ultimate mystery and paradox of limitation and liberty. But if I followed my instinct towards an infinite number of windows, it would end in having no walls. It would also (it may be added incidentally) end in having no windows either; for a window makes a picture by making a picture-frame. But there is a simpler way of stating my more simple and fatal error. It is that I have wanted a window, without considering whether I wanted a house. Now many appeals are being made to us to-day on behalf of that light and liberty that might well be symbolised by windows; especially as so many of them concern the enlightenment and liberation of the house, in the sense of the home. Many quite disinterested people urge many quite reasonable considerations in the case of divorce, as a type of domestic liberation; but in the journalistic and general discussion of the matter there is far too much of the mind that works backwards and at random, in the manner of all windows and no walls. Such people say they want divorce, without asking themselves whether they want marriage. Even in order to be divorced it has generally been found necessary to go through the preliminary formality of being married; and unless the nature of this initial act be considered, we might as well be discussing haircutting for the bald or spectacles for the blind. To be divorced is to be in the literal sense unmarried; and there is no sense in a thing being undone when we do not know if it is done.

http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/divorce.txt
That's the beginning of sensible thinking about marriage. What I found as I went further along was that most of what he speaks of is directly applicable to the issue of 'gay marriage'.

Yes, Chesterton does take his time getting to points. But when he does, he shows that the time taken was well worth it.

Now you just have to get to the bit about mice in the second paragraph...

 

[Dorothea]

A response to various ideas expressed here - I think we need to drag in GKC, but will address the thoughts of others first - don't you hate it when it seems no one responds to your thoughts at all and they keep talking as if you never said a word? In genuine (honest) debate that seeks to prove the truth, opponents listen carefully, with bated breath, to every word of their opponent, seeking weakness in their ideas. In modern political debate they simply do not listen to each other at all but merely harp on "talking points".

So, because I HAVE been reading what y'all have posted here...

"It lasts": The feeling of 'falling in love' does not last. Period. Ever.
A marriage, however, can last, even if you do not always enjoy his or her company. So saying that a marriage can't last because desired feelings have ended is not true. Feelings come and go, and they can even be created by how we are with the other person. It is very hard to hate someone who is consistently loving you, and very easy to experience positive feelings. Divorce cannot be justified merely because we have grown tired of the person we pledged our lives to.

Our society HAS based the idea of marriage as based on a feeling. What is NOT wrong with that idea is that the feeling of falling in love can and does serve as an excellent way of 'starting the car' like a battery does. It is a terrible generator, though, and trying to use the battery as a generator will fail in the end. IOW, everything else is wrong about the idea of a marriage based on feelings. (I'll avoid the evil euphemism "relationship" - something we should try to delete from our vocabulary due to its intensive use regarding marital relations without the marriage itself.) But focusing on a marriage 'arranged' by feelings vs one arranged by parents is going in the wrong direction. That is not the issue. However the marriage comes about, the issue is of the vow as a sacred thing that seals the marriage for life and creates a new family and new relations (called "in-laws" in English), once that are not negated by the mere superstition of divorce.

Saying "I believe" is rather dangerous. It is both good and true, but it also seems to reduce the idea to one's mere personal opinion, rather than an absolute truth binding on all regardless of how they feel about it.

Philothei brings up an excellent point. I would expand on it by saying that the problem of the modern insanity is based heavily on what Mr. Spock of Star Trek once called "two-dimensional thinking" (for those old enough to remember the reference). They only see what is NOW. They can barely see what was 15 years ago, and have been fed a nearly completely false view of history (with grains of truth to hold the false view in place). Comments like what colleagues may think of our heroine psychiatrist (I quite mean that) now are symptomatic of this. It is not asked what colleagues of a hundred years ago said - the idea occurs to no one. It is assumed that our ancestors of 50, 100, 200 or 500 years ago were benighted individuals who were inferior in both knowledge and wisdom. It is precisely for this reason that I find so much the modern "psych" sciences to be suspect. Amazingly, humanity got along for centuries, even after the Renaissance, without the benefit of those 'sciences' (and I do think there is real science in there). The fact that they arose in the aftermath of the so-called "Enlightenment" (read "Endarkenment"), which was about 'casting off the shackles of religion' speaks volumes. And later some, aided by Darwinian ideas that Darwin himself did not hold, decide that there IS no soul! And in that soup the "psych" sciences - sciences of the soul - were born, in a very atmosphere of science already rejecting God. The sould would henceforth be 'treated' without any reference to divine human origin - and if there be no soul, so much the better (from that perspective). We would learn to be our own gods.

Excellent post, Rus. I agree. I do think marriage becomes richer and more spiritually connected over the years when the couple is devoted to God and through their love for God, they treat each other with love in this way. The physical will not always be there, and it shouldn't be the most important aspect of a marriage. But nowadays, it's all about "keeping the fire going," if you will. You see this in commercials when they're advertising pills to help the older men and women to prolong the sexual aspect of their marriage as if if they don't have that, the marriage is doomed to dissipate to nothing. Well, if that is what the couple thinks, then it will dissipate.

So yes, the "falling in love" feelings don't last. But at times throughout the marriage, there is that feeling of union through love that returns ever so often, but is not the main part of the marriage. It's much more than that.

And also, your point on how we look at people from 50-200 or so years ago as archaic, and that we are all smarter than them now because we know more things through science and such. This is very apparent in our world, and also you see this same mindset in some Christians that think the Church Fathers don't know as much as they do now. The ego is certainly involved in all of that.

I do think this Dr. Lynne really has much wisdom and when reading the interview, there were so many things she said that were so profound...below the surface of the person's being and such, that it really opened my eyes. So easily, we fall into the worldly thoughts, and have to be awakened to that fact on a regular basis, as I said before, to know what we are up against.

 

[cobweb]

Has anyone seen the Facebook Group that is being talked about on the various Orthodox news sites? It is quite controversial.

Log In | Facebook

I was surprised to see several people that I know there.

 

[Protoevangel]

There is an answer to that (sad) page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/200212643361559/

 

[Dorothea]

Has anyone seen the Facebook Group that is being talked about on the various Orthodox news sites? It is quite controversial.

Log In | Facebook

I was surprised to see several people that I know there.

oh....my....gosh..... this is my reaction from reading some of the stuff in there. Simply stunned.

 

[Dorothea]

There is an answer to that (sad) page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/200212643361559/

That article in there is sick. It's become apparent to me these past few days of living in my spiritual desert (for the past few weeks), and feeling about all this stuff being normalized, truly how many mentally ill people are out there. We all are to a little degree, but really.....this illness of the soul, not only the head, is very sad. What is the world coming to?

 

[Protoevangel]

That article in there is sick. It's become apparent to me these past few days of living in my spiritual desert (for the past few weeks), and feeling about all this stuff being normalized, truly how many mentally ill people are out there. We all are to a little degree, but really.....this illness of the soul, not only the head, is very sad. What is the world coming to?

The article in the page I linked to?

 

[Dorothea]

The article in the page I linked to?

yeah, the article about pedophilia on that page you linked.