A literature review, which is often called a study by the media, conducted by Johns Hopkins professor Dr. Paul R. McHugh and epidemiologist Dr. Lawrence S. Mayer has led to an outcry by the Left and LGBTQ community due to their findings. McHugh is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and had served as a psychiatrist-in-chief for the Johns Hopkins University Hospital and Mayer works at the Arizona State University.
In the executive summary, the authors point out that:
- “The understanding of sexual orientation as an innate, biologically fixed property of human beings — the idea that people are “born that way” — is not supported by scientific evidence.
- “While there is evidence that biological factors such as genes and hormones are associated with sexual behaviors and attractions, there are no compelling causal biological explanations for human sexual orientation. While minor differences in the brain structures and brain activity between homosexual and heterosexual individuals have been identified by researchers, such neurobiological findings do not demonstrate whether these differences are innate or are the result of environmental and psychological factors.
- “Compared to heterosexuals, non-heterosexuals are about two to three times as likely to have experienced childhood sexual abuse.
- “Members of the transgender population are also at higher risk of a variety of mental health problems compared to members of the non-transgender population. Especially alarmingly, the rate of lifetime suicide attempts across all ages of transgender individuals is estimated at 41%, compared to under 5% in the overall U.S. population.
- “Compared to the general population, adults who have undergone sex-reassignment surgery continue to have a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes. One study found that, compared to controls, sex-reassigned individuals were about 5 times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.”
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