Are We Born Gay? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• FOR GAY MEN, HAVG A BLOGIL CHILD N BE PLITED

ARE WE BORN GAY?

Will our child grow up to be gay or straight? ) and adult homosexualy. 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.

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

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.

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). 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).

FOR GAY MEN, HAVG A BLOGIL CHILD N BE PLITED

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. For example, plex psychologil tras have many al gen (not simply “a gay gene”).