Gay rights shouldn’t depend on how a person came to be gay, and we should embrace the fact that sexuality can change, says developmental psychologist Lisa Diamond in an interview with New Scientist reporter Lisa Grossman.
LG: Much of your work explores what you call “sexual fluidity”. What does it mean?
LD: It means that people are born with a sexual orientation and also with a degree of sexual flexibility, and they appear to work together. So there are gay people who are very fixedly gay and there are gay people who are more fluid, meaning they can experience attractions that run outside of their orientation. Likewise for heterosexuals. Fluidity is the capacity to experience attractions that run counter to your overall orientation.
LG: Did that argument feature in the recent Supreme Court case that legalised same-sex marriage throughout the U.S.?
LD: What was interesting was that Justice Anthony Kennedy actually said, almost as an offhand comment, that studies suggest sexual orientation is immutable. It’s kind of hilarious because he doesn’t elaborate: he sort of throws it out there – like “oh, we all know that” – but importantly, that was not the basis on which the ruling was made. That shows conventional wisdom still holds the idea that sexual orientation is immutable, but that’s not the basis for legal reasoning in the US. And it shows that we don’t need to be considered a protected class in order to make strong and successful arguments about civil rights.
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