S EXUAL ORIENTATION REFERS TO ADULT STABLE SEXUAL ATTRACTIONS, DESIRES, fantasies, and expressions toward other adult men and women. As defined, the orientation of a person cannot be determined until emerging adulthood. Early pubertal and adolescent behavior is best viewed as exploratory rather than as indicative of any particular orientation. Psychologists distinguish sexual orientation from a...

Homosexual and nonhomosexual (relative to genetic sex) female-to-male transsexuals (FTMs) were compared on a number of theoretically or empirically derived variables. Compared to nonhomosexual FTMs, homosexual FTMs reported greater childhood gender nonconformity, preferred more feminine partners, experienced greater sexual rather than emotional jealousy, were more sexually assertive, had more s...

To answer the question ‘‘Who’s gay?’’—and its logical follow-up, ‘‘Does it matter?’’—researchers usually define homosexuality with reference to one of three components or expressions of sexual orientation: sexual/romantic attraction or arousal, sexual behavior, and sexual identity. Yet, the three components are imperfectly correlated and inconsistently predictive of each other, resulting in dis...

OBJECTIVE Our study was designed to explore additional outcome variables of a suicide case-control study to determine the association between sexual orientation and gender identity in suicide completion in children and adolescents. METHOD Fifty-five child and adolescent suicide victims and 55 community control subjects were assessed using semi-structured, proxy-based interviews and questionna...

OBJECTIVES Sexual minority youth face health disparities and a high risk of substance abuse. This study sought to fully characterize the disparity of tobacco use and risk factors in this high-risk subpopulation. METHODS Using data from the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the current use of various tobacco products (cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, cigars, and e-cigarettes) was compared accordi...

Since the early 1990s, there has been a surge in interest in the study of infants, children, adolescents, and adults with physical intersex conditions or other congenital conditions that affect, among other things, the configuration of the external genitalia. Regarding psychologic evaluation, an important aspect of both short-term and long-term outcome concerns gender differentiation. This arti...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s pooled Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data show that nationally, 1.3% of high school students identified themselves as gay or lesbian, 2.5% reported having intercourse with same sex only, and 3.3% reported having sex with both sexes.1,2 Sexual minority students are adolescents who identify themselves as gay or lesbian, bisexual, or unsur...