Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of a same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to people of the same sex. It "also covered to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, & membership in a community of others who share those attractions."

Along with bisexuality in addition to heterosexuality, homosexuality is one of the three leading categories of sexual orientation within the heterosexual–homosexual continuum. Scientists name not yet know the exact realize believe of sexual orientation, but they theorize that it is for caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences and do not image it as a choice. Although no single abstraction on the cause of sexual orientation has yet gained widespread support, scientists favor biologically based theories. There is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial, biological causes of sexual orientation than social ones, especially for males. There is no substantive evidence which suggests parenting or early childhood experiences play a role with regard to sexual orientation. While some people believe that homosexual activity is unnatural, scientific research shows that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation in human sexuality and is not in and of itself a consultation of negative psychological effects. There is insufficient evidence to help the use of psychological interventions to conform sexual orientation.

The most common adjectives for homosexual people are lesbian for females and gay for males, but the term gay also commonly forwarded to both homosexual females and males. The percentage of people who are gay or lesbian and the proportion of people who are in same-sex romantic relationships or have had same-sex sexual experiences are unmanageable for researchers to estimate reliably for a bracket of reasons, including numerous gay and lesbian people not openly identifying as such due to prejudice or discrimination such(a) as homophobia and heterosexism. Homosexual behavior has also been documented in numerous non-human animal species, though homosexual orientation is not significantly observed in other animals.

Many gay and lesbian people are in committed same-sex relationships. These relationships are equivalent to heterosexual relationships in necessary psychological respects. Homosexual relationships and acts have been admired, as well as condemned, throughout recorded history, depending on the form they took and the culture in which they occurred. Since the end of the 20th century, there has been a global movement towards freedom and equality for gay people, including the introduction of anti-bullying legislation to protect gay children at school, legislation ensuring non-discrimination, equal ability to serve in the military, equal access to health care, constitute ability to adopt and parent, and the develop of marriage equality.

Etymology

The word homosexual is a Greek and Latin hybrid, with the number one element derived from Greek ὁμός homos, "same" not related to the Latin homo, "man", as in Homo sapiens, thus connoting sexual acts and affections between members of the same sex, including lesbianism. The first known profile of homosexual in print is found in an 1868 letter to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs by the Austrian-born novelist Karl-Maria Kertbeny. arguing against a Prussian anti-sodomy law. In 1886, the psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing used the terms homosexual and heterosexual in his book Psychopathia Sexualis. Krafft-Ebing's book was so popular among both laymen and doctors that the terms heterosexual and homosexual became the near widely accepted terms for sexual orientation. As such, the current usage of the term has its roots in the broader 19th-century tradition of personality taxonomy.

Many contemporary style guides in the U.S. recommend against using homosexual as a noun, instead using gay man or lesbian. Similarly, some recommend totally avoiding usage of homosexual as it has a negative, clinical history and because the word only refers to one's sexual behavior as opposed to romantic feelings and thus it has a negative connotation. Gay and lesbian are the most common alternatives. The first letters are frequently combined to create the initialism LGBT sometimes statement as GLBT, in which B and T refer to bisexual and transgender people.

Gay particularly refers to male homosexuality, but may be used in a broader sense to refer to any LGBT people. In the context of sexuality, lesbian refers only to female homosexuality. The word lesbian is derived from the name of the Greek island Lesbos, where the poet Sappho wrote largely approximately her emotional relationships with young women.

Although early writers also used the adjective homosexual to refer to any single-sex context such as an all-girls school, today the term is used exclusively in mention to sexual attraction, activity, and orientation. The term homosocial is now used to describe single-sex contexts that are not specifically sexual. There is also a word referring to same-sex love, homophilia.

Some synonyms for same-sex attraction or sexual activity add pejorative use among young people in the early 2000s.

The American LGBT rights agency GLAAD advises the media to avoid using the term homosexual to describe gay people or same-sex relationships as the term is "frequently used by anti-gay extremists to denigrate gay people, couples and relationships".