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An article on the website for from Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment (H.O.M.E.) claims that sexual abuse has been shown to lead to Homosexuality:

It is a well-documented fact that many many homosexuals were sexually abused when young...

In other words, there is an abundance of evidence that many many homosexuals were born heterosexual but were disoriented by sexual abuse.

Conservapedia attempts to back-up this claim with several studies they say show that sexual abuse is a cause for Homosexuality including:

In 1999, Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, M.D. wrote the following regarding the position of sexual abuse being a contributing factor for homosexuality: “ Many studies demonstrate a sadly disproportionate extent of sexual abuse in the childhoods of homosexual men, suggesting at the least that both homosexual unhappiness and homosexuality itself derive from common causes...[30] ”

In 2001, the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior published a study entitled Comparative data of childhood and adolescence molestation in heterosexual and homosexual persons. The abstract for this article states the following: “ In research with 942 nonclinical adult participants, gay men and lesbian women reported a significantly higher rate of childhood molestation than did heterosexual men and women. Forty-six percent of the homosexual men in contrast to 7% of the heterosexual men reported homosexual molestation. Twenty-two percent of lesbian women in contrast to 1% of heterosexual women reported homosexual molestation. This research is apparently the first survey that has reported substantial homosexual molestation of girls.[31] ”

In 1998, Dr. William C. Holmes, M.D. and Dr. Gail B. Slap, M.D. reported in the medical journal JAMA the following:

“ Adolescent boys, particularly those victimized by males, were up to 7 times more likely to identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual than peers who had not been abused (P<.001).

This reasoning seems to stand counter to the idea that homosexuality has a biological origin rather than a social one.

Is there any truth to the claims that sexual abuse can lead to homosexuality?

Mark Rogers
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    Related: [Did a significant number of sex workers experience abuse as a child?](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1121/did-a-significant-number-of-sex-workers-experience-abuse-as-a-child) and [Is homosexuality innate?](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/564/is-homosexuality-innate) – Patches Apr 09 '11 at 06:03
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    There's a difference between correlation and causality. Bigger cities have (generally) more crime, but that does not mean people like to live in areas with crime rates. – apoorv020 Apr 09 '11 at 19:17
  • relevant websites (maybe someone can summarize to an answer): http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html – gatoatigrado Feb 09 '12 at 19:04
  • I disagree with the title change, I think it was overly complex, and thus more obscure. This title is more direct and how someone would normally phrase the question. – Mark Rogers Aug 25 '12 at 16:43

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Regarding Tomeo et al. 2001, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 30(5), 535-541:

DOI: 10.1023/A:1010243318426

The following shows what their criteria for "molestation" were (direct quote from the study): "These criteria require that the victim be under the age of 16 at the time of molestation, the perpetrator being at least 16 years of age and at least 5 years older than the victim."

  • So it doesn't really appear to be molestation and could easily include many homosexual's first sexual experiences, which would likely often be modified by the decreased availability of same-age partners, relative to heterosexuals who have the privilege of assuming that everybody is heterosexual.
  • Table 2 of Tomeo et al. 2001 shows that about 65% of the "victims" reported that they were homosexual prior to the "molestation" even occuring.
  • The other 35% may well have been unsure of their sexual orientation prior to the "molestation" and their first sexual encounter simply clarified it.
  • Some people express the (imo idiotic) notion that you can't really know your sexual orientation until you have had a sexual encounter. I suspect that may have been a factor among those 35%.
  • The heterosexual and homosexual participants were also recruited from different places (homosexual at a gay-pride march and hetero were college students).
  • The respondents were self-selecting, especially at the gay pride parade, where a booth was used, and the response rate was not known or documented by the researchers.

Refuting one study is enough for me anyway. The others aren't properly referenced anyway and the first doesn't actually look like a study but mere anecdotal opinion, while the second one doesn't even specify sexual abuse etc etc.

As previously detailed, a direct causal relationship would necessitate that all victims of molestation were homosexual. The studies cited (Tomeo et al. 2001) themselves instantly disprove this suggestion because they include heterosexuals who were molested...

Martin
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TruthS4yer
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    "So it doesn't really appear to be molestation", "which would likely often be modified by the decreased availability of same-age partners" **holy crap**. Are you saying what I think you are saying? Why wouldn't it be molestation? Why is victim in quotes? – user1873 Aug 25 '12 at 18:09
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    Memories aren't exactly set-in-stone (they actually change all the time), so you can't completely discount the idea that their sexual orientation changed (or this was the first time they noticed it) during/after being molested, and then their memories changed so "it's always been that way". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_errors – Brendan Long Aug 27 '12 at 15:27
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    " who have the privilege of assuming that everybody is heterosexual." Why is this a *privilege*? At most you could call this an *advantage*. But it's not something imposed by laws... it's a **biological fact** that sex organs evolved for a specific use and our sexual orientations evolved to match that use. So if you wanted you could say that homosexuals are evolutionarily biased when finding a partner, but using the derogative term *privilege* with something that naturally came to be in millions of years is, IMO, absurd. – Bakuriu Jun 08 '16 at 11:29
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    Again the notion that "cause" means "produces 100% of the time." Also, refuting a study, or claiming to, does *not* answer the question. –  Jul 30 '19 at 20:47
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    @user1873, to me, "molestation" implies lack of consent. *Tomeo et. al.*, on the other hand, appears to adopt a strictly chronological definition, meaning that the same action could be molestation one day, and consensual sex the next. – Mark Aug 12 '20 at 02:43
  • @Mark Drawing hard lines is always difficult, but age _is_ relevant for the notion of "informed consent", as can easily be seen by taking an extreme case of, say, a 5-year-old. If you accept that young children cannot give informed consent, then it is impossible to produce a definition without some boundary, which in this case is someone having sex the day before their 16th birthday, _with a 21-year-old_. The age gap is a significant addition, because it indicates an _unequal_ relationship. Note also that this is a definition of "molestation", not "rape", which is why it refers _only_ to age. – IMSoP Aug 12 '20 at 13:18
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    I agree with others that the dismissal of the definition of "molestation" is wrong, and undermines a useful point, which is that the direction of causation might be reversed. i.e. a homosexual child might be more likely to find themselves in a situation where they end up molested. To be really clear, though: a 15-year-old who seeks some kind of relationship with a 20-year-old is not automatically consenting to sex with them, regardless of sexuality or the availability of partners they find suitable. – IMSoP Aug 12 '20 at 13:26
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Childhood Sexual Abuse Does Not Cause Homosexuality

Is there any truth to the claims that sexual abuse can lead to homosexuality?

Obviously there is not a causal relationship between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality. If childhood sexual abused caused homosexuality then we could safely conclude that anyone who was sexually abused as a child would be homosexual. Such a statement can be disproved by finding a single person who was sexually abused as a child and who is not a homosexual. I am confident that somewhere in the seven or so billion people that populate this earth there exists at least one person who was sexually abused as a child yet identifies as a heterosexual. Ergo, sexual childhood abuse does not cause homosexuality.

Granted, the quotations you cited did not claim that childhood sexual abuse leads to homosexuality. Rather, they note that there is a strong link between the two. So let's talk about whether there exists a correlation between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality.

The Correlation Between Childhood Sexual Abuse and Homosexuality

Whether there is a higher incidence of childhood sexual abuse among homosexuals than heterosexuals depends on which studies you read. For instance, in The prevalence of child sexual abuse: Integrative review adjustment for potential response and measurement biases, authors Kevin Gorey and Donald Leslie note:

Female and male child sexual abuse prevalence estimates adjusted for response rates ... and adjusted for operational definitions ... were 14.5% and 7.2%.

In the study History of Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV Risk Behaviors in Homosexual and Bisexual Men, David Brennan et al find that "childhood sexual abuse was reported by 15.5% of the survey respondents." (Their survey was given to men, 99.5% of which identified as gay or bisexual.)

If we take these numbers at face value then we are led to the conclusion that the incidence of childhood sexual abuse in homosexuals and bisexuals is nearly twice of that of the general population.

The History of Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV Risk Behaviors in Homosexual and Bisexual Men study notes that victims of childhood sexual abuse are much more likely to engage in risky behaviors, including HIV status, STDs, drug use, and prostitution. And Wikipedia has a rather detailed look at the psychological and physiological harms caused by such abuse:

Psychological, emotional, physical, and social effects include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, eating disorders, poor self-esteem, dissociative and anxiety disorders; general psychological distress and disorders such as somatization, neurosis, chronic pain, sexualized behavior, school/learning problems; and behavior problems including substance abuse, self-destructive behavior, animal cruelty, crime in adulthood and suicide.

If we agree that there exists a higher incidence of childhood sexual abuse among homosexuals that implies a positive correlation, but one is left wondering whether the correlation can be described by other factors.

Men vs. Women

If there is a strong correlation between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality and if factors such as the genders of the abuser and abused are irrelevant then we would expect to see a higher percentage of lesbians than gay males in society, given the fact that women are nearly twice as likely to be the victims of sexual abuse than men. Yet according to The prevalence of homosexual behavior and attraction in the United States, the United Kingdom and France:

Examination of homosexual behavior separately finds that 6.2 ... and 3.6 ... of females in the United States ... report having had sexual contact with someone of the same sex in the previous 5 years.

Yet twice as many women suffer from childhood sexual abuse yet only half as many have homosexual experiences.

This would lead one to conclude that the correlation lies more between same-sex abuse and homosexuality. Presumably, most sexual abuse perpetrators are men, so girls are suffering from heterosexual abuse while boys are suffering from homosexual abuse.

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Scott Mitchell
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    Your personal opinion is actually irrelevant and falls under pseudo answers category. –  Apr 09 '11 at 12:35
  • It might also be noted that surveys of child sexual abuse and homosexuality are not necessarily going to be accurate. Nor are people necessarily homosexual or heterosexual: there are people who could go either way, and given different opportunities and social risk levels they may or may not have sex with other of the same sex. In other words, data is hard to collect. – David Thornley Apr 09 '11 at 14:10
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    Late sex researcher John Money maintained that abuse was a prime cause of paraphilia, but that homosexuality was not a paraphilia. Paraphilia being what in common parlance is termed a "fetish", sexualization of an object or activity which is not normally so. – M. Werner Apr 09 '11 at 14:42
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    I disagree with your statement that "we could safely conclude anyone who was sexually abused as a child would be homosexual". What evidence is there that sexual abuse would ALWAYS cause this? We know that HIV causes AIDS, but not everyone who has been exposed with HIV has AIDS. Maybe there could be an 'incubation' period, and the 'a single person who was sexually abused as a child and who is not a homosexual' hasn't 'changed' yet. I am not saying I believe any of this, but I don't thing your conclusion is valid. – fred Apr 11 '11 at 18:00
  • @fred: There is zero evidence that childhood sexual abuse causes homosexuality. It is a farce since to invalidate it all you would need to do would be to locate one person in the history of humanity who was sexually abused as a child and wasn't a homosexual. I would wager my life a million times over that you could find such a person, and, unfortunately, probably within walking distance of your house. The reason I mention causation is because sometimes you'll hear radical claims that there is a causal relationship, and the question sort of sounded like it was asking such. – Scott Mitchell Apr 11 '11 at 18:18
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    For the record, I do not think sexual abuse (SA) does. That is not my argument at all. My argument is purely with your logic. Finding one person who has been SA who is not homosexual ONLY proves that SA does not ALWAYS cause homosexuality. Maybe it causes homosexuality in 90% of the cases. Maybe in 17%. Maybe in 1%. If any of those were true (and again, I do NOT believe any of those to be the case), then simply finding one (or 10, or 100, or a million) would NOT disprove this theory. – fred Apr 11 '11 at 20:29
  • @fred: In statistics, if you say A causes B then it means that whenever A occurs, B *always* follows. If this is not the case, if there is only a 90% incidence or what not, then A and B are said to be *correlated*. My introductory paragraph simply notes that SA and homosexuality are not causal. It then goes on to investigate what sort of correlation exists. – Scott Mitchell Apr 11 '11 at 23:53
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    I think the "childhood sexual abuse was reported by 15.5% of [homosexual men]" statistic is pretty damning in and of itself. That means that 84% of gay and bisexual men were *not* abused as children. Anyone using this slight correlation for anything at all means that said person is looking for a way to cure homosexuality. – Ernie Jun 16 '11 at 16:16
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    "If childhood sexual abused caused homosexuality then we could safely conclude that anyone who was sexually abused as a child would be homosexual." -- By this logic I can argue that smoking cigarettes does not cause cancer. -1 – Russell Steen Aug 26 '11 at 13:14
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    @Russell: I am using the word "cause" in a statistical context. In statistics, if A causes B then it is always the case (100% of the time) that if A is present then B will be present. Otherwise, we say there is a *correlation* between A and B, but not a causal relationship. So because there exist cigarette smokers who do NOT have cancer then, yes, smoking cigarettes do NOT cause cancer. However, the two have a high positive correlation. – Scott Mitchell Aug 26 '11 at 22:30
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    several more big problems: 1) sexual abuse isn't shown to be more likely against women, all that's shown is that it's more often reported. 2) Same with abusers being men or women, all that's shown is that more men tend to get convicted than women (which can well be explained by stereotyping, men being more likely to get accused and finding it harder to fight false accusations (the old "accusation equals conviction" which seems to be prevalent in sexual abuse cases). – jwenting Nov 16 '11 at 10:58
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    @Scott, you say you are referring to "cause" in a "statistical context". Firstly, this use of causality to mean determinisitic causality is unconventional, even in a statistical context. Secondly, the original author almost certainly meant [probabilistic causality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality), so it is a strawman. – Oddthinking Nov 16 '11 at 12:02
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    The very fact that with your interpretation you can write "smoking does not cause cancer" shows how far your use is from the normal use. – DJClayworth Nov 16 '11 at 18:45
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    You say "the answer depends on which study you read", but as I read it both the studies you cite say that sexual abuse correlates with homosexuality. – DJClayworth Nov 16 '11 at 18:46
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    @Scott: Logical causation ≠ statistical causation. Furthermore, when you talk about how smoking is correlated with cancer, you are using the term correlation where a statistician would actually use the term causation. – Zano Nov 16 '11 at 19:03
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    "Cause" as others have pointed out, isn't used in.the way you use it. Having sex doesn't cause pregnancy, driving drunk doesn't cause accidents, falling out of a plane without a parachute doesn't cause sudden decceleration trauma, ... If you prefer, you can think of the OQ in this.manner, "Sexual Abuse of children increases the risk of them being homosexual." – user1873 Aug 25 '12 at 02:03
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    "we would expect to see a higher percentage of lesbians than gay males in society, given the fact that women are nearly twice as likely to be the victims of sexual abuse than men." - totally guessing without backing up. – user5341 Feb 24 '13 at 19:45
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    The logical deduction based on the data is wrong. You are not answering the question directly, but using several fallacies, and indirectly kinda answering your interpretation of the question. It sounds good and fancy but is very wrong. I am not against the conclusion and personally doesn't believe abuse causes homosexuality, but your answer is not a proper answer. – Wertilq Apr 23 '13 at 09:03
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    There's a lot of "presumation" in this answer. –  Jul 30 '19 at 20:44
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    "In statistics, if you say A causes B then it means that whenever A occurs, B always follows." No, that's not what it means. A statistician would be more willing, not less, to refer to something that does not always result in B as a "cause". "If this is not the case, if there is only a 90% incidence or what not, then A and B are said to be correlated." They're correlated only if there is a *higher* incidence. – Acccumulation Aug 12 '20 at 01:41
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    And the difference between cause and correlation isn't size of effect, it's whether B can be changed by changing A. If everyone in a hospital is sick, that doesn't mean that going to a hospital causes one to be sick, even though the incidence is 100%. The term for what you are talking about is *sufficient cause*. – Acccumulation Aug 12 '20 at 01:41
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    You clearly put a lot of effort into this answer, but since you have an abnormally high bar for what constitutes a causal relationship (e.g., car accidents are not causally related to injury), it does not seem like you could be convinced, regardless of the evidence. Proper skepticism requires willingness to be convinced. – piojo Aug 13 '20 at 10:28