What Science Knows About Why People Are Gay

Contents:

• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• ABOUT THE CENTERSCE 1983 THE CENTER HAS BEEN SUPPORTG, FOSTERG AND CELEBRATG THE LGBT MUNY OF NEW YORK CY. FD MORE RMATN ON AND OUR WORK ABOUT THE CENTER. VIS ABOUT THE CENTEROUR MISSNCYBER CENTERCENTER HISTORYRACE EQUYMEDIA CENTERLEARSHIP & STAFFEMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNICORPORATE PARTNERSHIPSANNUAL REPORTS & FANCIAL INFORMATNCONTACT USHOURS & LOTNSEMAPSUPPORT THE CENTER
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• WHAT SCIENCE KNOWS ABOUT WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• WHAT MAK PEOPLE GAY? (AN UPDATE)
• SCIENTISTS REVEAL WHAT MAK A MAN GAY
• UNRSTANDG GAY & LBIAN INTI
• WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• WHY WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?

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

Scientists may have fally solved the puzzle of what mak a person gay, and how is passed om parents to their children.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 mother.The 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. Scientists om the Natnal Instute for Mathematil and Blogil Synthis say homosexualy seems to have an epigeic, not a geic lk.Long thought to have some sort of heredary lk, a group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexualy is lked to epi-marks — extra layers of rmatn that ntrol how certa gen are exprsed.

ABOUT THE CENTERSCE 1983 THE CENTER HAS BEEN SUPPORTG, FOSTERG AND CELEBRATG THE LGBT MUNY OF NEW YORK CY. FD MORE RMATN ON AND OUR WORK ABOUT THE CENTER. VIS ABOUT THE CENTEROUR MISSNCYBER CENTERCENTER HISTORYRACE EQUYMEDIA CENTERLEARSHIP & STAFFEMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNICORPORATE PARTNERSHIPSANNUAL REPORTS & FANCIAL INFORMATNCONTACT USHOURS & LOTNSEMAPSUPPORT THE CENTER

In homosexuals, the epi-marks aren't erased — they're passed om father-to-dghter or mother-to-son, explas William Rice, an evolutnary blogist at the Universy of California Santa Barbara and lead thor of the study."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 not.Rice and his team created a mathematil mol that explas why homosexualy is passed through epi-marks, not geics. But bee the epi-marks provi an evolutnary advantage for the parents of homosexuals: They protect fathers of homosexuals om unrexposure to ttosterone and mothers of homosexuals om overexposure to ttosterone while they are gtatn."The epi-marks protect fathers and mothers om excs or unrexposure to ttosterone — when they rry over to oppose-sex offsprg, n e the masculizatn of femal or the femizatn of mal," Rice says, which n lead to a child beg gay. Rice not that the markers are "highly variable" and that only strong epi-marks will rult a homosexual offsprg.Though scientists have long spected some sort of geic lk, Rice says studi attemptg to expla why people are gay have been few and far between."Most mastream blogists have shied away om studyg bee of the social stigma," he says.

Well there are many exampl of homosexualy nature, 's very mon." Homosexual behavr has been observed black swans, pengus, sheep, and other animals, he says.Rice's mol still needs to be tted on real-life parent-offsprg pairs, but he says this epigeic lk mak more sense than any other explanatn, and that his team has mapped out a way for other scientists to tt their work."We've found a story that looks really good," he says. How Olr Brothers Influence HomosexualyHomosexualy might be partly driven by a mother’s immune rponse to her male fet—which creas wh each son she MacGregor / RtersHere’s what we know: Homosexualy is normal.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?

Part of the explanatn is geic, but bee most intil tws of gay people are straight, heredy don’t expla “why” qutn is important bee “there is a strong rrelatn between beliefs about the origs of sexual orientatn and tolerance of non-heterosexualy, ” acrdg to the report thors, who are om seven universi spanng the globe. (When Atlantic ntributor Chandler Burr proposed his 1996 book, A Separate Creatn, that people are born gay, Southern Baptists lled to boytt Disney films and parks prott agast the publisher, Disney subsidiary Hypern.

But gaps will rema, such as why some firstborn sons are gay, why some intil tws of gay sons are straight, and why women are gay, to name jt a review-paper thors do le out one explanatn for homosexualy, however: That tolerance for gay people enurag more people to bee gay. “Homosexual orientatn do not crease equency wh social tolerance, although s exprsn ( behavr and open intifitn) may do so, ” they reasong—that a tolerant society somehow enurag homosexualy to flourish—has been ed to support anti-gay legislatn Uganda, Rsia, and elsewhere. The Amerin Medil Associatn is agast therapy that is “based on the assumptn that homosexualy is a mental disorr or that the person should change their ’s important to know that there is nothg wrong wh lovg people of the same genr as you.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

There's a lot to discs regardg the rults of the paper (Skorska et al, 2016): The rearchers were examg the possibily that a maternal immune rponse might play a key role the velopment of a homosexual orientatn mal. Effectively, then, the mother's immune system would (sometim) treat certa male protes produced by the fet as a foreign pathogen and attempt to attack , rultg out that uld clu a homosexual orientatn, but also fetal loss if the reactn was strong enough (i.

Already there is a lot to like about this hypothis on a theoretil level, as don't pos any hidn adaptive benefs for a homosexual orientatn (as such proposed benefs have not received sound empiril support historilly). The rearchers reced approximately 130 mothers and classified them on the basis of what kd of children they had: those who had at least 1 gay son (n = 54), and those who only had heterosexual sons (n = 72). 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).

WHAT SCIENCE KNOWS ABOUT WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

As birth weight tends to crease over succsive pregnanci, the parisons were limed to first live-born sons only (n = 63); this left 4 gay male only-children, 7 gay mal wh no olr brothers, 14 heterosexual mal wh gay younger brothers, 10 heterosexual male only-children, and 28 heterosexual mal wh siblgs. While 's important to not get rried away wh this fdg given the relatively small sample size (I wouldn't put too much stock an N of 8), there is some suggtive evince here worth pursug further that somethg is atypil fetal velopment the se of gay male offsprg.

WHAT MAK PEOPLE GAY? (AN UPDATE)

Skorska et al (2016) pos that this might have somethg to do wh some mothers showg a greater immune rponse agast male offsprg, rultg more fetal loss, the rult beg that such mothers are both ls likely to have any children at all and more likely to have gay male children particular.

If mothers of gay men do not tend to have a greater rat of female-to-male offsprg, this would st some doubt on the explanatn (and, sce the only data I've heard reports that gay men tend to have more olr brothers, seems they would have noticed the sister pot by now if existed). 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).

SCIENTISTS REVEAL WHAT MAK A MAN GAY

As every gay man knows who has been sulted or asslted for his actual or perceived sexual orientatn, there are steep penalti for vlatg the Boy Co as there are for anyone who is “different” om the prumed (typilly whe, heterosexual, middle-class) standard. Robert Pollack says the most important thg a fay n do to support their gay son is to keep lovg him, “to nvey to him, as soon as he shar his feelgs, that he is still loved through and through, that his sexual orientatn will not any way dimish how much he is admired and rpected. Fortunately there is a long history of gay men who bucked the accepted fns of masculy and created liv that exprsed their unrstandg of themselv and how they choose to exprs their inty as men who don’t necsarily f tradnal molds.

The late Harry Hay often lled "the father of the morn gay movement, " found the Mattache Society Los Angel the fall of 1950 for gay men to gather and ponr the qutns Hay had long been askg: Who are gay people? Hay didn’t tend the Mattach to be a polil anizatn per se, but a group that would e together to enhance their self-unrstandg and explore the ntributns gay people had ma to the human race through the ag. In a 1987 say tled “A Separate People Whose Time Has Come, ” Hay scribed homosexuals as “spir people, ” who, throughout the ag, had served society their rol as “msengers and tercers, shamans of both genrs, prits and prits, imagemakers and prophets, mim and rhapsos, poets and playwrights, healers and nurturers, teachers and preachers, tkers and tkerers, searchers and rearchers.

Recently, scientists announced that they found some gen that might be associated wh sexual orientatn and a blogil explanatn for the reason gay men tend to have olr the field of sexual orientatn rearch is far broar and more plited than two studi—and Lisa Diamond, a psychologist and sexual orientatn rearcher at the Universy of Utah, knows that better than most. While there is no sgle “gay gene, ” there is overwhelmg evince of a blogil basis for sexual orientatn that is programmed to the bra before birth based on a mix of geics and prenatal ndns, none of which the fet choos.

UNRSTANDG GAY & LBIAN INTI

So if one of them turned out to be gay and the other straight — which their childhood behavr suggted would statistilly be the mostly likely oute — that would expose the aquacy of the long duelg nature-vs. Then aga, the gay populatn is small, and scientists have suggted multiple explanatns for why homosexualy has the se for geics, even before Hamer’s bombshell, were studi of tws done by Mike Bailey and others that found homosexualy to be shared at a higher rate among intil tws, who share 100 percent of their gen, than among aternal tws, who share about Hamer’s study was based on jt 40 pairs of brothers.

In his talk at Lethbridge, Sanrs says the study found that gay brothers share geic markers on their X chromosome, replitg Hamer’s fdg on the so-lled Xq28 regn, as well as a more robt, statistilly signifint fdg on chromosome 8, replitg a follow-up fdg om Hamer’s rults, Sanrs says, offer more solid evince of gen’ fluence on what mak people gay. If a man wh no olr brothers has a 2 percent chance of beg gay, that number sl up wh each olr brother, so that a guy wh four olr brothers would have a 6 percent chance of beg the two s sce, that fdg has been nsistently replited cross-culturally, and numero alternative explanatns for the effect have been led out. “Some gay people owe their sexual orientatn to the aternal birth orr effect, others to geics, some to prenatal hormonal factors or other nrovelopmental factors, ” Rahman says, “and many to teractns between the.

Rule’s study focg on face regnn found that people who were shown photos of gay and straight people were able to intify the homosexuals at nsirably higher rat than chance after seeg the imag for jt 50 lisends. While the ia of gaydar may sound like a parlor trick, Rule strs ’s important to be aware of , bee appears to prejudice people subnscly hirg and other important the sights Rule shared wh me about his personal life ma a bigger imprsn.

WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?

“The world is such a different place, ” he says, flashg a satisfied, like so many of his fellow rearchers, he is surprised and a b chagred that while public acceptance of homosexualy has ma giant leaps, the science of sexual orientatn has advanced a seri of baby steps. Some rearchers, cludg Eric Vila and Mike Bailey, worry that the dramatic shift public opn may be persuadg parents the only passnate rponse is to get on the rapidly movg trans tra of blockers and (effectively irreversible) cross-sex hormon and genal surgery, when that approach might not turn out to be their child’s bt recent studi ntue to suggt that most genr dysphoric kids will outgrow their genr-bendg behavr — wh the majory of the boys turng out to be gay or bisexual — and have no lgerg genr inty nfn.

Most “persisters” would have never been able to succsfully supprs their dysphoria for years, so the fact that his seems to have gone away suggts he tly did outgrow , like the majory of kids wh childhood genr nonnformy the rearch bears out, ’s likely Patrick will be gay. Geic factors acunt for between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of what cis whether a man is gay or straight, acrdg to the largt vtigatn nducted to the more: Thgs straight people n learn om gay peopleThe US rearchers strs that environmental forc, such as hormon the womb, play a more important they said this did not imply that upbrgg or other social factors, or dividual choice, had a bearg on sexual orientatn. "The rearch volved ttg the DNA blood sampl taken om more than 409 gay brothers and their heterosexual nfirmed that a regn prevly lked to male sexualy on the X chromosome, known as Xq28, is more likely to be shared by gay pairs of brothers than siblgs who do not have homosexualy mon.

A send geic regn, on chromosome 8, also appeared to crease the chanc of a man beg Bailey did not le out the possibily of a geic "gayns" tt before birth, but thought would only provi a vague ditor of a baby's future sexual orientatn. Prevly some experts have dismissed the ia of a geic ponent to homosexualy bee of the so-lled "Darwian paradox" suppos that if gayns was geic, the gen rponsible for homosexualy would be extguished by natural selectn over men would be ls likely than heterosexual men to reproduce and pass on their sexual orientatn gen.

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

However, one study by Italian scientists has suggted that gen lked to male homosexualy may crease fertily women, thereby helpg to prerve new fdgs were prented at a Science of Sex and Attractn event attend by experts has no nnectn wh the Amerin Associatn for the Advancement of Science's annual nference also takg place the cy. Although n sometim seem like one type of gay person is shown over and over aga the media or on TV, gay people aren’t tomatilly effemate, and lbian women aren’t tomatilly mascule – fact, those stereotyp leave out a lot of other personali and characteristics. The associatn of HIV/AIDS wh gay and bisexual men and the accurate belief that some people held that all gay and bisexual men were fected served to further stigmatize lbian, gay, and bisexual people.

WHY WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?

Dpe the persistence of stereotyp that portray lbian, gay, and bisexual people as disturbed, several s of rearch and clil experience have led all mastream medil and mental health anizatns this untry to nclu that the orientatns reprent normal forms of human experience. Helpful rpons of a therapist treatg an dividual who is troubled about her or his same sex attractns clu helpg that person actively pe wh social prejudic agast homosexualy, succsfully rolve issu associated wh and rultg om ternal nflicts, and actively lead a happy and satisfyg life. The phrase “g out” is ed to refer to several aspects of lbian, gay, and bisexual persons’ experienc: self-awarens of same-sex attractns; the tellg of one or a few people about the attractns; wispread disclosure of same-sex attractns; and intifitn wh the lbian, gay, and bisexual muny.

Th, is not surprisg that lbians and gay men who feel they mt nceal their sexual orientatn report more equent mental health ncerns than do lbians and gay men who are more open; they may even have more physil health problems.