Then and now: recruitment, definition, diversity, and positive attributes of same-sex populations

It is not my intent to critique individual contributions in this special issue but to assess scholarly progress since the last special issue devoted to sexual orientation in Developmental Psychology (Patterson, 1995). Because not all steps forward can be catalogued in this limited forum, I focus on several long-standing challenges faced by developmental scientists as they investigate same-sex sexuality: recruitment and definition of same-sex populations, developmental diversity of same-sex oriented individuals, and "clinical traps" created by early research on same-sex populations.