Homosexuality ‘learned’

Press, 24 April 1979, Page 8

Homosexuality ‘learned’

I NZPA-Reuter New York The pioneer sex researchers, William Masters and Virginia Johnson, argue that homosexuality is learned, not genetically predetermined, in their new book “Homosexuality in Perspective” to be published today by Little Brown and Company. Dr Masters and Dr Johnson, the husband-and-wife team who have been studying sexual behaviour for 25 years, outlined their latest finding in an interview on N.B.C.’s “Meet the Press” programme. i “People are not genetically

'determined to be hornoi sexual or heterosexual” Dr Masters said. “We learn our sexual preferences and not infrequently change our sexual preferences.” The couple reported a failure rate of only 12 per cent in therapy they have developed at the St Louis research centre to “convert” homosexuals to hetrosexuality. They emphasised, however, that the people they had worked with were carefully selected for their high degree of motivation to be converted and they did not believe that anyone could or should be converted except

at his or her request and demonstration of genuine desire for a change of sexual life. The couple argreed that their new finding—including the conclusion that homosexuals, from physiological point of view, are no different from heterosexuals in their response to sexual stimulation, would probably produce as much controversy as their landmark study, “Human Sexual Response,” in 1966. For their latest work, the couple interviewed more than 300 homosexual men and women over a 25-year 'period.