How Earnt Rearch Into Gay Geics Went Wrong | WIRED

Contents:

• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• NEW STUDY FDS GEICS INFLUENCE LGBTQ SEXUALY, BUT STILL NO 'GAY GENE'
• GAY GEICS
• IS THERE A 'GAY GENE'? THE PROBLEM WH STUDI NNECTG GEICS AND LGBTQ INTY
• WHAT DO THE NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?
• THERE’S NO ONE ‘GAY GENE,’ BUT GEICS ARE LKED TO SAME-SEX BEHAVR, NEW STUDY SAYS
• IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?
• NO ‘GAY GENE’: MASSIVE STUDY HOM ON GEIC BASIS OF HUMAN SEXUALY
• MANY GEN INFLUENCE SAME-SEX SEXUALY, NOT A SGLE ‘GAY GENE’
• SEARCH FOR 'GAY GEN' COM UP SHORT IN LARGE NEW STUDY
• HOW EARNT REARCH INTO GAY GEICS WENT WRONG
• THE LIFE OF THE GAY GENE: OM HYPOTHETIL GEIC MARKER TO SOCIAL REALY
• SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• GEICS MAY DETERME IF GAY MEN ARE TOPS OR BOTTOMS
• IS YOUR CHILD GAY?
• IS THERE A "GAY GENE"? MAJOR NEW STUDY SAYS NO
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A TOTAL MYTH, MASSIVE STUDY CONCLUS
• SCIENCENO SGLE 'GAY GENE', REVEALS THE LARGT-EVER STUDY OF THE GEICS OF SAME-SEX SEXUAL BEHAVUR
• NO SGLE GENE ASSOCIATED WH BEG GAY
• SCIENTISTS FD DNA DIFFERENC BETWEEN GAY MEN AND THEIR STRAIGHT TW BROTHERS
• GEN LKED TO BEG GAY MAY HELP STRAIGHT PEOPLE GET MORE SEX
• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS

Most of the participants were born durg a time when homosexualy was eher illegal or culturally taboo their untri, so many people who were attracted to others of the same sex might never have actually acted on their attractn, and uld therefore have end up the wrong group the Monk, an elogist and evolutnary blogist at Yale Universy New Haven, Connecticut, thks that the veats are so important that the paper n’t draw any real nclns about geics and sexual orientatn. “The people participatg our study are terted ntributg to this kd of scientific knowledge and want to unrstand at least part of how they me to be the way they are, ” Sanrs search for ‘gay gen’ go back to 1993, when a US team led by Dr Dean Hamer scribed a regn of DNA loted on the X chromosome lled Xq28.

Nippl are another example of a sexually antagonistic tra: they’re need for feedg babi, but velopg nippl men is a waste of the body’s rourc and allow errors leadg to breast search for sexualyEven if Camper Ciani’s fecundy factors are the same as Hamer’s gay gen, don’t tell what the specific gen actually do. The rearchers say that, although variatns the gen nnot predict whether a person is gay, the variants may partly fluence sexual Ganna, lead thor and European Molecular Blogy Laboratory group lear at the Instute of Molecular Medice Fland, said the rearch rerc the unrstandg that same-sex sexual behavr is simply “a natural part of our diversy as a speci.

Environmental effects may be a factor for some people; for stance, havg olr brothers creas the odds that younger brothers will be gay, which rearchers spect may have to do wh chang to the mother’s immune system rponse to the earlier Stok, chief programs officer for GLAAD, said a statement that the new rearch on the geics “provis even more evince that beg gay or lbian is a natural part of human life, a ncln that has been drawn by rearchers and scientists time and aga.

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

Through this tra-off, the maternal relativ' "gay man gen, " though they aren't exprsed as such, tend to get passed to future generatns spe of their tenncy to make their male herors no one knows which gen, exactly, the might be, at least one of them appears to be loted on the X chromosome, acrdg to geic molg by Camper Ciani and his lleagu. The androphilic pattern that we found is about femal who crease their reproductive value to attract the bt mal, " Camper Ciani told Life's Ltle out, the moms and nts of gay men have an advantage over the moms and nts of straight men for several reasons: They are more fertile, displayg fewer gynelogil disorrs or plitns durg pregnancy; they are more extroverted, as well as funnier, happier and more relaxed; and they have fewer fay problems and social anxieti.

NEW STUDY FDS GEICS INFLUENCE LGBTQ SEXUALY, BUT STILL NO 'GAY GENE'

“There is no ‘gay gene’, ” says lead study thor Andrea Ganna, a geicist at the Broad Instute of MIT and Harvard Cambridge, and his lleagu also ed the analysis to timate that up to 25% of sexual behavur n be explaed by geics, wh the rt fluenced by environmental and cultural factors — a figure siar to the fdgs of smaller studi. He and others noted that olr participants me of age when homosexual behavr was crimalized Bra and that for much of their life homosexualy was classified as a psychiatric Reilly and others said such stark differenc between olr and younger participants show the tricks of tryg to draw reprentative blogil rmatn om a study populatn so strongly fluenced by society’s changg attus. A group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexuals get that tra om their oppose-sex parents: A lbian will almost always get the tra om her father, while a gay man will get the tra om his heredary lk of homosexualy has long been tablished, but scientists knew was not a strictly geic lk, bee there are many pairs of intil tws who have differg sexuali.

"There is pellg evince that epi-marks ntribute to both the siary and dissiary of fay members, and n therefore feasibly ntribute to the observed faial herance of homosexualy and s low nrdance between [intil] tws, " Rice and his team created a mathematil mol that explas why homosexualy is passed through epi-marks, not geics. “In 1991, ” LeVay told Haaretz a phone nversatn, “I published a study that got a lot of media attentn, related to my observatn that there was a regn si the hypothalam that was different size between men and women, and also between gay and straight men… My addnal fdg was the difference size between gay and straight men this regn si the hypothalam that is volved the regulatn of sexual behavr.

GAY GEICS

Ksey had nducted a survey of men, which found that 37 percent of his subjects said they had unrgone a homosexual experience of some kd, and 10 percent said they had been exclively gay for three years of their adult life – a statistic which to this day is generally said to reprent the proportn of people engagg same-sex behavr. ”In recent years, “there have been many studi showg that people’s attus toward homosexualy are closely tied to their beliefs about what mak people gay, ” says LeVay, cg a survey that showed there was a high probabily that people who thk homosexualy is a choice will object to a gay person beg their children’s teacher – which a way might make sense, he adds: “If you thk beg gay is somethg fect, socially ntag, and you didn’t want your kid to be gay, then you wouldn’t want their teacher to be gay...

Even though the program achieved relatively imprsive rults, the study as such drew wispread cricism – not unual for rearchers engaged such Stanford “gays intifitn” program may be an extreme example, this rpect, but ’s also a byproduct of the nsirable surge studi this field, a trend that began the early 1990s. The latt survey, om the end of last year, showed this trend ntug: More than half of the Amerin public believ that gay people are born wh their sexual orientatn, whereas only 30 percent attribute to environmental factors (10 percent said both factors play a part, 4 percent ced other factors and 6 percent said they weren’t sure). Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.

IS THERE A 'GAY GENE'? THE PROBLEM WH STUDI NNECTG GEICS AND LGBTQ INTY

In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance. The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors. ” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way?

Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at. Compared to straight men, gay men are more likely to be left-hand, to be the younger siblgs of olr brothers, and to have hair that whorls a unterclockwise rearchers are fdg mon blogil tras among gay men, feedg a growg nsens that sexual orientatn is an born batn of geic and environmental factors that largely ci a person's sexual attractns before they are fdgs - cludg a highly anticipated study this wter - would further rm the bate over whether homosexualy is nate or a choice, an unrcurrent of California's recent Proposn 8 mpaign which televisn mercials warned that "schools would beg teachg send-grars that boys uld marry boys", suggtg homosexualy would then scientists say the polil and moral bate over same-sex marriage equently strayed om tablished scientific evince, cludg ments by Republin vice-printial ndidate Sarah Pal that homosexualy is "a choice" and "a cisn" 2007, CNN polls had found that a majory of Amerins believed gay people uld change their sexual orientatn if they chose to; was only last year that a majory for the first time said homosexualy was an born tra. One proment psychiatrist, Dr Robert Spzer of Columbia Universy, found ntroversial evince that therapy n e some gay people to change to a heterosexual orientatn, although the study nclud that a "plete change" was sexual behavur may be chosen, the preponrance of rearchers say attractn is dictated by blogy, wh no monstrated ntributn om social factors such as parentg or other factors after birth.

"In the past , I thk the pendulum has swung more toward blogil theory and blogil , " said Richard Lippa, a psychology profsor at California State Universy-Fullerton, who has studied hair patterns and other blogil tras gay Bocklandt, a geicist at the David Geffen school of medice at UCLA, is bewilred by the argument that people choose their sexual attractn. What scientists ll "the aternal birth orr effect", the fact that each succsive boy born to the same mother has a greater chance of beg gay, may be due to an creasg immunologil rponse by a mother's body to each male foet her discreded are theori that parentg - one mid-20th century theory held that boys raised by a domeerg mother wh a distant father were more likely to be gay - has anythg to do wh sexual orientatn.

WHAT DO THE NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?

Rearchers are eagerly awag a DNA study of male siblgs wh at least one gay brother by Bailey and other scientists at Northwtern Universy due early 2009, bee may shed light on the role geics plays sexual rearchg 800 sets of brothers, by far the largt study of s type, the Northwtern study is searchg for the specific gen that fluence some brothers to be gay and others to be may have more fluidy of sexual exprsn than men, but that don't mean they don't have a specific sexual orientatn, said Lisa Diamond, a profsor of psychology and genr studi at the Universy of Utah who studi female sexual explanatn is that women's sexual behavur is driven more by some women, "your sexual orientatn do not provi the last word on the sorts of behavurs and inti you might experience your lifetime, " Diamond said. The mothers were then classified further to one of five groups: those wh gay male only-children (n = 8), those wh gay male offsprg that had no olr brothers (n = 23), those wh gay male offsprg wh olr brothers (n = 23), those wh heterosexual male only-children (n = 11), and those wh heterosexual male offsprg wh siblgs (n = 61).

On the other hand, if this is a more general immune reactn agast fetal bodi, regardls of their sex, we would not expect such a pattern ( might also predict that mothers takg immunosupprsants would be ls likely to have gay offsprg/misrry, but thgs are unlikely to be that simple owg to the fact that other effects would rult too). So on the basis of some earlier, shakier rearch, along wh a good dose of mon sense, Bailey and Zucker hypothized that homosexuals would show an verted pattern of sex-typed childhood behavrs—ltle boys preferrg girls as playmat and beg fatuated wh their mother's makp k; ltle girls strangely enamored of field hockey or profsnal wrtlg—that sort of thg.

No dividual gene alone mak a person gay, lbian or bisexual; stead, thoands of gen likely fluence sexual orientatn, a massive new study of the genom of nearly half a ln people human societi and both sex, between 2% and 10% of people report engagg sex wh a member of the same sex, eher exclively or addn to sex wh a member of the oppose sex, the rearchers said.

THERE’S NO ONE ‘GAY GENE,’ BUT GEICS ARE LKED TO SAME-SEX BEHAVR, NEW STUDY SAYS

If sexual preference n be altered, then people who support gay rights n’t rely on the argument that gay people should be protected om discrimatn bee gay people have no choice but to be gay – an argument that seems like an apology for homosexualy, as if homosexualy is a disease for which there is no cure. Scientists have aga bunked the ia of a sgle "gay gene", the largt study to date of the geics of same-sex sexual pots:Rearchers snned the human genome for geic markers associated wh same-sex sexual behavurMany gen fluence a person's likelihood of havg had same-sex partners, but they have only a small effect on behavurSome people qutn whether the benefs of this type of rearch outweigh the potential dangersRather, their fdgs pat a diverse and plex picture of human sexualy, and the geic factors that fluence half a ln people took part the study, mostly om the Uned Kgdom and the Uned Stat, which was published the journal Science we've known om prev tw and fay studi that our sexual preferenc are fluenced by our gen, 's been difficult for scientists to ppot whether any specific geic markers uld play a most prev studi have volved only a few hundred or a few thoand participants, this ternatnal llaboratn is at least 100 tim larger and more able to draw robt nclns, the rearchers said.

"We tly nsir this a team scientific effort tend to help crease our llective unrstandg of the geics of sexual behavur, which is actually a very, very personal topic for me as a scientist, but also as a gay man, " said study -thor Fah Sathirapongsasuti om geic ttg pany the rearchers didThe data ed the study, which was predomantly drawn om the UK Bbank and 23andMe, looked at the male and female participants' DNA and qutns they had answered about their sexual behavur, cludg whether they'd ever had sex wh someone of the same rearchers snned the entire human genome to fd markers that were signifintly associated wh same-sex sexual the past, some studi have poted to a geic marker on the X chromosome, Xq28, that uld fluence male sexual rearchers didn't fd this marker was signifintly associated wh same-sex behavur. Rearcher for the Universy of Wisns-Green Bay's "Our Voic: LGBTQ+ Stori of Northeastern Wisns" Dennis Jab said bar patrons often experienced backlash om Appleton rints who believed homosexualy was wrong and didn't like havg a gay bar patrons were safe to be themselv si the bar, Jabs said people knew to not enter or leave the bar alone as they faced vlence om straight people and many fights took place outsi the bar.

IS BEG GAY GEIC?

However, the Lambda Lounge's prence Appleton paved the way for other LGBTQ bars, such as The ReMixx Neenah, Rasls Appleton and the now-closed Pivot A Neenah LGBTQ club is creatg a growg love for drag shows the Fox CiMore: Rasls has long been a gay refuge AppletonBook clubs allow gay people to fd munyBook clubs have often been a place for people wh shared inti to fd muny while discsg lerature pertag to their liv and provi a safe space for gays and lbians to socialize, Appleton Public Library llectns ordator Michael Nz and Lawrence Universy Profsor Dick Wslow found a book club named the Lavenr Salon 15 years, the group met each Sunday members' hom wh potluck meals and discsns on books and club was exclive to gay people, so members — whether they were openly gay or not — were able to be themselv and safely meet other people the LGBTQ muny. Participatn the club grew om seven members to over 60 at a time, brgg people om Marette and Sheboygan for the weekly stunts' fight for gay-straight alliance clubDurg the turn of the century, stunts Madison and Milwkee high schools started creatg gay-straight allianc, or GSA clubs, to provi supportive environments for LGBTQ word about the clubs grew, a number of stunts at Neenah High School 2001, cludg Nick Ross — a current Appleton School Board member — wanted to create an official club for LGBTQ stunts to discs experienc and issu they were gog of the stunts were already LGBTQ support groups at the school and the muny, but Ross said was important for them to create an official group to give visibily to LGBTQ stunts and let other stunts know there was a safe space the school to discs their, when the stunts applied for club regnn, Neenah High School Prcipal Mark Duerwaechter nied them, sayg a GSA has polil goals and would go agast district policy, acrdg to Post-Crcent archiv.

"It was extremely terrifyg and sry for all the reasons of beg out public as LGBTQ, but also super excg bee we put ourselv out there and ma thgs happen, " Ross Neenah stunts' ph for a GSA and the attentn gathered the Fox Ci spired other stunts to create the club their own schools and a year later all three Appleton high schools had a High School Gay Straight Alliance club om an Oct. "In the last 15 years wh the cy of Appleton, we were dog some pretty active support of LGBTQ folks bee we were tired of seeg teens harmed and havg hate crim our parks, " Flor, who also prevly served as Appleton's diversy ordator, told The first time Appleton got volved LGBTQ issu was 2012 when the cy passed domtic partnership protectn for gay cy employe and their a time when same-sex marriage wasn't legal, domtic partnership benefs allowed cy employe and their partners the same benefs as spo, such as health surance and sick next time the cy got volved LGBTQ issu was Augt 2013 when the cy passed fair hog based on genr inty and exprsn, beg the third cy the state to ban hog discrimatn for transgenr people. So they unleashed a mache learng algorhm on the data to search for regulari that distguished the epigenom of homosexual tw-pairs om tws which only one was ne pact regns sttered across the genome, they found patterns of epigenomic differenc that would allow a predictn far more accurate than a random gus of an dividual’s sexual orientatn, Ngun reported Thursday.

McCarthy and other experts utned that the disvery of epigenomic marks suggtive of homosexualy is a far cry om fdg the of sexual distctive epigenomic marks observed by Ngun and his lleagu uld rult om some other blogil or liftyle factor mon to homosexual men but unrelated to their sexualy, said Universy of Utah geicist Christopher Gregg. But the existence of intil tw pairs which only one is homosexual “nclively suggt that gen don’t expla everythg, ” Bailey Ngun’s rearch needs to be replited larger studi of tws, advanc the fful procs of better unrstandg how — and when — a boy’s sexual orientatn velops, Bailey me on Twter @LATMelissaHealy and “like” Los Angel Tim Science & Health on rarely get ncer, now scientists thk they know whyThree rearchers w Nobel Prize chemistry for studi of DNA repairMars had a long-lastg seri of lak, NASA’s Cursy rover fds. ”Details of the unpublished study have been scribed a public rearch plan, two scientific abstracts, and by rearchers at a scientific meetg held June at the Broad Instute, a genome rearch center Cambridge, hunt for sexual orientatn gen—which was to the polarizg qutn of whether people are born gay or bee so—is part of a boom genomics rearch that aims to unveil how gen shape behavr, not jt diseas.

WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?

They scribed their tent to perform a genome-wi associatn study, a technique origally veloped to lote geic sceptibili to diseas like macular generatn and stead of surg for associatns between people’s illns and featur of their genom, they would rry out a vast statistil analysis parg the DNA of hundreds of thoands of people wh rmatn about their sexual ’s already well known that beg gay is partly geic—as all other behavrs, gen play a role.

NO ‘GAY GENE’: MASSIVE STUDY HOM ON GEIC BASIS OF HUMAN SEXUALY

MANY GEN INFLUENCE SAME-SEX SEXUALY, NOT A SGLE ‘GAY GENE’

SEARCH FOR 'GAY GEN' COM UP SHORT IN LARGE NEW STUDY

HOW EARNT REARCH INTO GAY GEICS WENT WRONG

THE LIFE OF THE GAY GENE: OM HYPOTHETIL GEIC MARKER TO SOCIAL REALY

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

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

GEICS MAY DETERME IF GAY MEN ARE TOPS OR BOTTOMS

IS YOUR CHILD GAY?

IS THERE A "GAY GENE"? MAJOR NEW STUDY SAYS NO

THE 'GAY GENE' IS A TOTAL MYTH, MASSIVE STUDY CONCLUS

SCIENCENO SGLE 'GAY GENE', REVEALS THE LARGT-EVER STUDY OF THE GEICS OF SAME-SEX SEXUAL BEHAVUR

NO SGLE GENE ASSOCIATED WH BEG GAY

SCIENTISTS FD DNA DIFFERENC BETWEEN GAY MEN AND THEIR STRAIGHT TW BROTHERS

GEN LKED TO BEG GAY MAY HELP STRAIGHT PEOPLE GET MORE SEX

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?