Is a person ‘born gay’, or is beg gay a learned behavr? - The Tech Interactive

Contents:

• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• WHO IS JOSEPH ZIEGLER, THE GAY IRS WHISTLEBLOWER HUNTER BIN PROBE?
• CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN GAY”
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS
• MARCIA GAY HARN
• ARE SOME PEOPLE BORN GAY?
• GAY PRI
• ARE CHILDREN "BORN GAY"?

ARE WE BORN GAY?

But on the other, he totally wrtl wh the image produced by the ia that one might be "born gay, " of a ltle male neonate appearg wh illy pk diapers and graspg a Barbie doll. Plörl pared self-clared homosexual or heterosexual inti adults to their memori of genr nformy childhood.

IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?

First, by ncentratg on the left si of the graphs, the rear n see that there is a segment of adult gay men who remember beg highly genr non-nformg as kids.

But there were a signifint number of genr-nformg men who, nohels, veloped a gay or bisexual inty adulthood. Maybe we n agree that the image evoked by "born gay"—that ltle girl neonate appearg wearg overalls and graspg a toy tck—do not help thk through qutns of sexual sire and inty.

WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

Tw studi of homosexualy have shown that intil tws are about twice as likely to both be gay pared to aternal tws. If the DNA sequence were the only thg termg whether someone is gay or not, we would expect intil tws to match 100% of the time. When lookg at large fai, scientists saw that men wh lots of olr brothers were more likely to be gay.

Of urse, this isn’t the only environmental explanatn for how people are born gay – there are plenty of men wh olr brothers who are not gay. Even though the evince is pretty strong for homosexualy beg partly geic, some people don’t accept .

The argument monly go: If gay men and women are ls likely to have babi, they won’t pass on their gen. One possible explanatn is that the same gen that make a man gay n also make a woman more fertile. This uld mean that there are some gen that are passed down om the mother’s si that make women more fertile and make men more likely to be gay.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

No matter why those gen are still around, we do know that beg gay is partly geic and partly termed before a baby is even born. Estimat as to the number of gay people the populatn range om 1--20 to 1--10, so why are some people gay?

In other words, 5-10% of people experience same-sex sexual attractn or behavr; of urse, this don't speak to what mak people gay. No one knows for certa why any dividual is gay, but the current thought is that beg gay is not a choice.

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

Morn science is workg to show that geics is one of the of beg gay, although some science nflicts this area.

Study of fay history reveals that homosexual men have more homosexuals their fay tree than do heterosexuals.

The precise gen volved the of beg gay have not yet been intified but they appear to e om the mother. Addnally, some studi have found that the bras om homosexuals differ om the bras of heterosexuals. While psychologil factors may crease the likelihood that someone is gay, no sgle factor is known to e homosexualy.

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

It very much appears that same-sex sexual attractn is not a choice but actg on is; so if you fe gay as the mere prence of same-sex attractn, then om everythg we unrstand, beg gay is not a choice. If, on the other hand, you nsir someone to be gay only if they act on their same-sex attractn then beg gay n be nsired a choice pendg on an dividual's behavr. Whether science n ultimately prove the blogy of beg gay or not, 's important to support all adults their choic no matter how they intify.

Gay nrologist Simon LeVay explas that sexual orientatn is “the tra that predispos to experience sexual attractn” (Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why, 1). However, if we broan sexualy to clu non-sexual and non-romantic appreciatn for bety, then everybody would be gay. ” Many people, cludg sex rearchers and scientists, believe that sexual orientatn is like a sle wh entirely gay on one end and entirely straight on the other.

'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .

Sexual inty is how you label yourself (for example, g labels such as queer, gay, lbian, straight, or bisexual). Some people may engage same genr sexual behavr but not intify themselv as bisexual, lbian, or gay.

So, let’s take the person who says, “I was born gay, ” and they mean they have some geic atn for their attractn to people of the same sex. Then there’s the person who says “I was born gay” and may mean “I have the sir for persons of the same sex and I didn’t nscly choose them. In 1996, The Advote, a gay and lbian magaze, asked rears what they believed the potential impact would be to the advancement of gay and lbian rights if a scientific disvery prov a blogil basis for homosexualy.

WHO IS JOSEPH ZIEGLER, THE GAY IRS WHISTLEBLOWER HUNTER BIN PROBE?

About 61 percent of the magaze’s rears asserted that such scientific rearch would advance the e of gays and lbians and lead to more posive attus toward homosexualy. For example, if one n be born gay, much as one n be born wh brown ey, then a fair society uld not possibly nmn him as beg unnatural or immoral.

To that end, gay activists and the liberal media have actively enuraged the ia that homosexualy is hered and unchangeable, and rearchers have diligently sought scientific evince to back up that claim. Unfortunately for the pro-homosexualy movement, the rearch on this subject has failed to tablish any scientific evince that shows a purely geic basis for homosexualy. In 1991, LeVay tted the bras of 41 davers and noted differenc between homosexual vers heterosexual mal.

CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN GAY”

The hypothalam, an area believed to regulate sexual activy, was smaller homosexual mal than heterosexuals. LeVay believed the differenc proved a blogil basis for homosexualy, but he failed to nsir a variety of reasons, other than geic, that the bras were different. First, all 19 of the homosexual davers had died of AIDS, a disease known to affect the nrologil system.

Could the stctural bra differenc have started wh the difference thoughts between homosexuals and heterosexuals, rather than wh geics?

Dean Hamer, a pro-gay activist, ma the astoundg claim his rearch that there may be a gene for homosexualy. His team of rearchers began a seri of gene lkage studi, which fai wh several homosexuals unrwent geic analysis to terme if any chromosomal variants uld be found the fay and if the variant rrelated wh those dividuals who displayed the homosexualy.

THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS

Although Hamer’s study sample was very small, he found a signifint lkage between gays and a marker on the maternal X chromosome, Xq28. Even if there were some geic monali among homosexuals, associated characteristics do not prove a al lk.

MARCIA GAY HARN

Although may be easier, psychologilly, for a homosexual to believe that homosexualy is born, the accumulated scientific evince suggts otherwise. Clil experience has shown that, wh help, some homosexuals n change learned rpons and fense mechanisms to early paful experienc. A clear geic lk would suggt that gay people are “born this way, ” as opposed to havg ma a liftyle choice.

Yet some fear that such a fdg uld be mised “cure” homosexualy, and most rearch teams have shied away om tacklg the topic. They asked more than 477, 000 participants whether they had ever had sex wh someone of the same sex, and also qutns about sexual fantasi and the gree to which they intified as gay or straight. Dpe the associatns, the thors say that the geic siari still nnot show whether a given dividual is gay.

ARE SOME PEOPLE BORN GAY?

“It’s the end of the ’gay gene, ’” says Eric Vila, a geicist at Children’s Natnal Health System Washgton, D. “A lot of people want to unrstand the blogy of homosexualy, and science has lagged behd that human tert, ” says William Rice, an evolutnary geicist at the Universy of California, Santa Barbara, who also was not volved the work.

Natnal Cancer Instute and his lleagu published a paper suggtg that an area on the X chromosome lled Xq28 uld nta a “gay gene. His study, which analysed the genom of 40 pairs of gay brothers, looked exclively at people who intified as homosexual.

In a recent Guardian article, Simon Copland argued that is very unlikely people are born gay (or prumably any other sexual orientatn). Fdg evince for a blogil basis should not sre or unrme gay, lbian and bisexual (LGB) rights (the studi I refer to do not clu transgenred dividuals, so I’ll nfe my ments to lbian, gay and bisexual people).

GAY PRI

Evince om pennt rearch groups who studied tws shows that geic factors expla about 25-30% of the differenc between people sexual orientatn (heterosexual, gay, lbian, and bisexual). Tw studi are a first look to the geics of a tra and tell that there are such thgs as “gen for sexual orientatn” (I hate the phrase “gay gene”).

Three gene fdg studi showed that gay brothers share geic markers on the X chromosome; the most recent study also found shared markers on chromosome 8.

ARE CHILDREN "BORN GAY"?

Perhaps this is due to the stereotype that female sexualy is “too plex” or that lbians are rarer than gay are far om the whole story. Gen uld themselv nudge one towards a particular sexual orientatn or gen may simply teract wh other environmental factors (such as sex hormon the womb environment) to fluence later sexual bras of gay and heterosexual people also appear to be anised differently. For example patterns of bra anisatn appear siar between gay men and heterosexual women and between lbian women and heterosexual men.

Gay men appear, on average, more “female typil” bra pattern rpons and lbian women are somewhat more “male typil”.