Deviant behavior: causes, theories, and social implications

Deviant Behavior

Homosexuality is a concept with many legal and social implications; these implications create a sense of social change and even deviance, as the definition of deviance is anything that is not the norm or the majority. The concept would seem to be easily defined, as homosexuality would seem to be a simple manifestation of a desire by any individual to couple with someone of the same gender rather than someone of the opposite gender. Yet, the social and legal definitions of homosexuality are hardly simple in this culture or really in a global sense. The legal and social definitions of homosexuality, though mutable and changing, with regard to rights and recognition are the same and different and deserve analysis. (Zingo & Early, 1994, p. 1)

Socially homosexuality is considered deviant, by many, as it does not meet the social needs of the development of a traditional family, capable of creating offspring. Though the definition of family is changing even as this work is being written, the homosexual, same gender couple cannot and will likely never be able to create offspring, without the intervention of an outside party. Many would also say that the social implications of a homosexual couple of either gender raising a child is deviant as said child would then not be exposed to the norm of the family with regard to a man a woman and a child, or all the implications of it. (Zingo & Early, 1994, p. 1)

Setting aside the religious objections to homosexuality, of which we all know there are many it would render, in theory such children incapable of creating a "normal" non-deviant relationship in the future. (Johnson, 1995, p.25) Though this does not play out completely in anecdotal evidence and/or literature it is a common social belief. Additionally many individuals believe that the expression of homosexuality and especially publicly, to a child or otherwise is damaging as it implies that such relationships are "normal" and acceptable and it exposes people to ideas about "deviant" behavior that are not acceptable to some which in the mind of many can result in the individual(s) exposed displaying such behavior themselves.

Marriage, with its double blessing -- procreation and friendship -- is a real common good. Moreover, it is a common good that can be both actualized and experienced in the orgasmic union of the reproductive organs of a man and a woman united in commitment to that good. Conjugal sexual activity, and -- as Plato and Aristotle and Plutarch and Kant all argue -- only conjugal activity is free from the shamefulness of instrumentalization that is found in masturbating and in being masturbated or sodomized.(Baird & Baird, 1995, p. 44)

It is therefore the act of sexuality that defines the social definition of homosexuality, regardless of the fact that it is the desire that drives the behavior, rather than the act itself. This is a widely debated issue in the social and legal debate regarding sexuality.

The more legalized an issue, such as in the case of heterosexual marriage the more accepted it is, and this is the underlying fear behind the legal challenges that have been waged both for and against homosexual unions in the present day. Marriage is a legal state, and has been for most of written history, it is therefore difficult for many to allow the legal definition of homosexuality to become one that is an accepted alternative to the broader world, through legislation. Legally homosexuality, is as socially defined by the act of choosing to establish a sexual partnership with a person of the same gender as one's self rather than with the opposite gender. Historically, the legal aspects of homosexuality must be addressed in order to come to an even partial understanding of the similarities and differences between the social and legal definitions of homosexuality. The similarities, between the two are striking, as the legal definition is once again engrained in the acts of sexuality performed that stress the deviance, see sodomy laws, most of which are rarely enforced unless a crime such as rape has been committed, yet are still there, potentially even to be enforced upon heterosexual couples in consensual relations, and for many an even more frightening concept to be enforced in consensual relations between homosexuals.