Myths about Homosexual Persons
MYTH: Gays and lesbians have a recognizable lifestyle.
FACT: Just as there is no such thing as a heterosexual lifestyle, there is no such thing as a gay lifestyle. The idea that homosexuals have only one identity, that of being gay, and that their lives revolve around sex and sexual encounters is false and a harmful stereotype. The lives and occupations of gays and lesbians are as varied as the lives of heterosexuals.
MYTH: Gays and lesbians are promiscuous.
FACT: Promiscuity has nothing to do with one’s sexual orientation, but rather with one’s values and faith. Just as in the heterosexual community, some gay people are promiscuous, but most are not.
MYTH: Homosexuals are more likely to molest children.
FACT: The most likely person to sexually abuse a child is a heterosexual male, often a family member or close family friend. Pedophiles who molest children of the same sex are almost never homosexual in their adult sexual relations.
MYTH: Homosexual friends will try to seduce their heterosexual friends.
FACT: Sexual orientation determines attraction. Therefore homosexual friends will remain friends of heterosexuals, no more, no less.
MYTH: Gay men come from families with domineering mothers and weak fathers, and lesbians have strong fathers and weak mothers.
FACT: That now discredited notion comes from early efforts to explain homosexuality through environmental factors. Whatever environmental factors may contribute to forming a homosexual identity, the theories offered today are more complex and varied. In any given family with a homosexual child, other children are heterosexual. Moreover, children where one or both parents are gay are no more likely to be gay than children of heterosexual parents.
MYTH: Gay men are effeminate; lesbians are masculine.
FACT: Some gay men seem effeminate and some lesbians, masculine, just as some heterosexual men seem effeminate and some heterosexual women, masculine. Traits designated as either masculine or feminine are found on a continuum in both the heterosexual and homosexual populations. Therefore, it is impossible to gauge someone's sexual identity through traits perceived as either masculine or feminine.