Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth

Geoffrey L. Ream

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are youth who claim a lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) identity and/or knowingly experience same-sex attractions. Positive development refers to resiliency to and avoidance of risk factors, the accumulation of developmental assets, and the achievement of positive outcomes. Beliefs about the origins of sexual orientation underlie whether individuals and institutions interpret homosexuality as a natural variation of development or as psychopathology and moral failure. Early psychoanalytic perspectives of homosexuality hold that humans are inherently heterosexual and that homosexuality develops in childhood from improper gender socialization, identification with the opposite-sex parent, alienation from the same-sex parent, or other family system characteristics. Although some sources, usually affiliated with conservative Evangelical or Roman Catholic organizations, still claim that homosexuality develops in this way and is amenable to change through therapy, mainstream psychology and medicine repudiate these views. Reliable research has never upheld purely psychogenic theories of homosexuality and ...

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