In 1983, John DeCecco, Professor of Psychology at San Francisco State University and Editor of The Journal of Homosexuality , published a paper that further challenged the positivist view of homosexuality. DeCecco and his colleagues found that 228 major studies on the concept of sexual orientation were unable to define the meaning of sexual orientation, much less come up with any scientific evidence for its existence. DeCecco's and other studies indicate that concepts of homosexuality and heterosexuality are abstractions endowed with great significance and power for purposes of social control. They are social artifacts rooted in the history of oppression, not characteristics rooted in the individual. Kinsey stated that patterns of human sexual behaviors need no explanation other than that the human animal tends to repeat pleasurable experiences.
Sexual preference indicates little more than a pattern of repeated pleasurable behaviors.
Our sexuality is the last element to emerge in the development of our individual personalities. As with all other forms of human experience, sexual experience reflects a very complex response to our internal and external environments, an elaborate compromise between social and genetic conditioning. To contend that any single biological or psychological factor is the cause of sexual pleasure is simplistic and lacking any scientific evidence. The belief of Freud and Kinsey in our basic bisexuality has been confirmed by countless studies in several disciplines the world over. Ever since journalist Karl Maria Kertbeny proposed in 1869 that a medical condition called homosexuality was the cause of sodomy and a raft of other prohibited behaviors, doctors have been hacking away at gray matter and gonads in the attempt to find its cause.