Strength Of Gay Rights Movement - Research Paper Example

The Psychological Aspect It was in the early 1960s that the social movement for gay rights began to take place. According to Lancaster and di Leonardo (1997), the deep and lasting impact regarding the outlook and conceptualization of sexuality in the private and public domain was created by the series of social movements that began in the Anglo-European world during the beginning of 1960s (Miller & Green, 2002, p. 55). . 55). According to Parker (1999), it was the transformation of historical and cultural aspects that changed the perspectives about sexuality in academic and non-academic circles (Miller & Green, 2002, p. 55). Previous to an upsurge of gay rights movements, sexuality was understood only on the basis of biology.

Tiefer (1996) rightly stated that the narrow understanding of sexuality, gender, sexual health, and sexual abnormality, which were constructed only on the basis of biology and medicine, was challenged by the social movements of the 1960s (Miller & Green, 2002, p. 55). According to Tiefer (1996), the gay rights movement made it clear that without understanding historical or cultural prejudice, sexuality cannot be understood (Miller & Green, 2002, p. 55). However, what really helped the gay rights movement to gain momentum and acceptance were the studies in the field of psychology.

Contribution Of Psychology With the beginning of social movements regarding sexuality and the gay rights movement in the early 1960s, the world of medicine began to search for a reason for the development of gay and lesbian sexual orientation in human beings. According to Dorner (1988), it was assumed that the sexual orientation of a person, i.e. heterosexual and homosexual orientation, was due to the difference in hormones (Weiten, 2011, p. 313). However, according to Bailey (2003), studies revealed that hormones are not linked to sexual orientation in any way as the differences in circulating hormone levels in people with gay and straight sexual orientation were found to be very small and inconsistent (Weiten, 2011, p.313). Even the studies conducted on identical twins were not able to prove the genetic predisposition to homosexuality strongly.