There is no ‘gay gene.’ There is no ‘straight gene.’ Sexualy is jt plex, study nfirms | PBS NewsHour

Contents:

• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?
• ARE YOU BORN GAY OR IS A CHOICE? SCIENTISTS MIGHT HAVE FOUND THE ANSWER
• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?
• CAN A CHILD BE GAY OM BIRTH?
• NO ONE IS BORN GAY

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

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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

ARE WE BORN GAY?

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. “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. ” 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.

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

It is worth keepg md that this study only vers some typ of sexualy — gay, lbian and cis-straight — but don’t offer many sights to genr inty. Humans have tried to unrstand human sexualy for centuri — and geics rearchers joed the ay the early 1990s after a seri of studi on tws suggted homosexualy ran fai. “As a teenager tryg to unrstand myself and unrstand my sexualy, I looked at the ter for “the gay gene” and obvly me across Xq28, ” said Fah Sathirapongsasuti, a study -thor and senr scientist at 23andMe, which he joked once led him to believe he hered his gayns om his mother.

“We worried a lot about volunteer bias, ” said Bailey, whose rearch clus a wily publicized study on Xq28 and gay brothers om 2018. The rearchers had members of the same-sex muny review the study’s sign and language, and they adm that their termology and fns for gay, lbian and heterosexual do not reflect the full nature of the sexualy ntuum.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

“[Our study] unrsr an important role for the environment shapg human sexual behavr and perhaps most importantly there is no sgle gay gene but rather the ntributn of many small geic effects sttered across the genome, ” Neale said.

Gay nrologist Simon LeVay explas that sexual orientatn is “the tra that predispos to experience sexual attractn” (Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why, 1). 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).

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

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. 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.

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

For example patterns of bra anisatn appear siar between gay men and heterosexual women and between lbian women and heterosexual men.

The fluence of blogy ns throughout our sexual and genred liv and those differenc, that diversy, is surely to be wrers tend to wave off the scientific evince by urgg to look to the history of sexualy or claim that homosexualy is a social nstctn (cue Michel Fouult and the like). Surely our choic are the rult of thgs we didn’t choose (our gen, personali, upbrgg, and culture) worry that scientific rearch will lead to “cur” for homosexualy (which is an odd worry to have if you don’t believe the “born this way” argument).

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

We are who we are, and our sexuali are part of human worry about the claims of social nstctn, choice and such like is that plays to the hands of homophobic iology, to the hands of the “aversn therapists”, and to the hands of a growg culture which seeks to mimise gay differenc. 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. 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. 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.

ARE YOU BORN GAY OR IS A CHOICE? SCIENTISTS MIGHT HAVE FOUND THE ANSWER

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. 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.

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

Although Hamer’s study sample was very small, he found a signifint lkage between gays and a marker on the maternal X chromosome, Xq28. Although may be easier, psychologilly, for a homosexual to believe that homosexualy is born, the accumulated scientific evince suggts otherwise.

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

Many homosexuals hold to the belief that they were born that way, and there are some rearchers who suggt, on the basis of several recent studi, that there may be a geic predisposn toward homosexualy some people. In any se, other scientists have challenged the studi, and there is prently no generally accepted scientific evince that the homosexual clatn is born. It mt be emphasized that even if a blogil predisposn to homosexualy some people exists, would not change God’s opposn to the behavr.

The largt ever study to the existence of a so-lled ‘gay gene’, nducted by NorthShore Rearch Instute, looked at 409 sets of gay brothers an effort to fally put the bate to rt. Lead scientist Alan Sanrs said that the work “eros the notn that sexual orientatn is a choice” – but said the study also did not intify a sgle gene which was the direct e of homosexualy. Though some rema sceptil, nroscientist Simon LeVay told the New Scientist: “His study knocks another nail to the ff of the ‘chosen liftyle’ theory of homosexualy.

“Y, we have a choice life, to be ourselv or to nform to someone else’s ia of normaly, but beg straight, bisexual or gay, or none of the, is a central part of who we are, thanks part to the DNA we were born wh. Richard Lane of Stonewall told the Inpennt: “While some people may choose to foc on the ntug bate of whether people are born gay or not, we’ll ntue to foc on makg sure everyone has the same rights and opportuni regardls of who they love. 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.

CAN A CHILD BE GAY OM BIRTH?

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. 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.

NO ONE IS BORN GAY

Between 2 and 11 percent of human adults report experiencg some homosexual feelgs, though the figure vari wily pendg on the survey. Homosexualy exists across cultur and even throughout the animal kgdom, as the thors of a mammoth new review paper on homosexualy wre. Female Japane maqu will even pete tersexually wh mal for exclive accs to female sexual ’s what we don’t know: What, specifilly, someone to bee gay, straight, or somethg between.

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.

) It shouldn’t matter whether people “choose” to be gay, but polilly, do—at least for of the most nsistent environmental explanatns for homosexualy is lled the “aternal birth orr effect. Studi have found that a man whout olr brothers has about a 2 percent chance of beg gay, but one wh four olr brothers has a 6 percent chance. Average prevalence 2013 (Sav-Williams and Vrangalova)Acrdg to the report, Blanchard now plans to tt mothers of gay and straight men for the prence of the antibodi.