Research debunks long-held notionsabout sexual orientation.
The gay rights' movement notwithstanding, the bulk of the public is still not ready to accept the fact that people display a range of sexual and affectional proclivities, says Linda Garnets, PhD, a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles. People's erotic attractions can be surprisingly fluid when it comes to erotic attractions, and science fails to support the conventional wisdom that people's sexuality can be neatly placed in rigid categories, she said. Emerging research from hundreds of studies debunks a number of notions about sexual orientation, Garnets said. Instead, new research finds that sexual orientations exist along a continuum, like colors in the spectrum of a rainbow. People can be sexually, affectionally or erotically attracted to people of the same gender, the other gender or both genders, she said.