FactCheck Q&A: are people born gay?

Contents:

• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• ARE YOU BORN GAY OR IS A CHOICE? SCIENTISTS MIGHT HAVE FOUND THE ANSWER
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• ARE GAYS BORN OR MA?
• ARE GAYS ‘BORN THAT WAY’? MOST AMERINS NOW SAY Y, BUT SCIENCE SAYS NO
• MAJORY U.S. NOW SAY GAYS AND LBIANS BORN, NOT MA
• BORN GAY OR MA GAY? HOW, WHY, AND DO MATTER?

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

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. 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.

ARE WE BORN GAY?

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.

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

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. 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.

“[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.

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).

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

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.

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

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. 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).

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 was, LeVay acknowledg, the perfect Frdian recipe for homosexualy-only he was nvced Frd had e and effect backward: hostile fathers didn't make sons gay; fathers turned hostile bee the sons were "unmascule" to beg year, LeVay, now a nroscientist at the Salk Instute La Jolla, Calif., got a chance to exame his hunch up close. Snng the bras of 41 davers, cludg 19 homosexual mal, LeVay termed that a ty area believed to ntrol sexual activy was ls than half the size the gay men than the heterosexuals.

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

It was perhaps the first direct evince of what some gays have long ntend-that whether or not they choose to be different, they are born Bart, meanwhile, got an opportuny to make his own ntributn to the se.

Two years ago he was reced for an amb study of homosexualy tws, unrtaken by psychologist Michael Bailey, of Northwtern Universy, and psychiatrist Richard Pillard, of the Boston Universy School of Medice. Published last December, only months after LeVay's work, the rults showed that if one intil tw is gay, the other is almost three tim more likely to be gay than if the tws are aternal-suggtg that somethg the intil tws' shared geic makp affected their sexual both studi, the implitns are potentially huge. For s, scientists and the public at large have bated whether homosexuals are born or ma-whether their sexual orientatn is the rult of a geic roll of the dice or a batn of formative factors their upbrgg.

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

"It would rce beg gay to somethg like beg left-hand, which is fact all that is, " says gay San Francis journalist and thor Randy stead of rolvg the bate, the studi may well have tensified .

"A geic ponent sexual orientatn says, ' This is not a flt, and 's not your flt', " says the timatn that an actual gene for gayns might be found some forebodg. "No parent would choose to have a child born wh any factor that would make life difficult for him or her, " says Lrie Coburn, program director of the Feratn of Parents and Friends of Lbians and Gays (ParentsFLAG) this subject, feelgs are seldom rtraed. "It's part of the society's trsic sexism, " says Penny Perks, public-tn ordator for Lambda Legal Defense and Edutn Fund, which works to promote lbian and gay men's rights.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

Franc Stevens, edor chief of Denve, a lbian news magaze, adms her personal history supports blogil ; although she me om a wholome "Brady Bunch" fay, she knew she was gay "om day one. " That's somethg rearchers still have to fd men have their own reasons to be irate: as they see , lookg for a "e" of homosexualy impli is viant and heterosexualy is the norm.

When John De Cec, profsor of psychology at San Francis State Universy and edor of the Journal of Homosexualy, began one of his class recently by suggtg stunts discs the of homosexualy, someone lled out, "Who r? Acrdg to John Boswell's 1980 book, "Christiany, Social Tolerance and Homosexualy, " thgs didn't turn tly nasty until the 13th century, when the church, on the heels of a diatribe om Sat Thomas Aquas, began to view gays as not only unnatural but our own century of sex et lux, begng wh Sigmund Frd, psychiatrists ascribed male homosexualy to unnsc nflicts and fixatns that have their roots early childhood. ) But that view was officially dropped 1973, when more strgent diagnostic standards-and the lobbyg of gay activists-persuad the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn to expunge homosexualy om the list of emotnal disorrs.

ARE GAYS BORN OR MA?

But younger psychiatrists now are tght that rather than tryg to "cure" homosexuals, they should help them feel more fortable about rolved to look for sex differenc the bra after the slow, wrenchg ath om AIDS of his pann of 21 years (box). 30, 1991, was based on his own yearlong study of the hypothalam 41 davers, cludg 19 self-avowed homosexual men, 16 heterosexual men and 6 heterosexual women.

What emerged wh almost startlg clary was that, wh some exceptns, the clter of nrons known as INAH 3 (the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam, which LeVay lls "the bs end as far as sex go") was more than twice as large the heterosexual mal as the homosexuals, whose INAH 3 was around the same size as the women. Later, fact, he examed the bra of a homosexual who died of lung ncer, and aga found INAH 3 much trickier qutn is whether thgs might work the other way around: uld sexual orientatn affect bra stcture? Many the study were not only disrdant, but dramatilly sexualy studi e the Ksey sle, which rat orientatn on a seven-pot spectm om strictly heterosexual to exclively homosexual.

"If you look at all societi, " says Frerick Wham, who has rearched homosexualy cultur as diverse as the Uned Stat, Central Ameri and the Philipp, "homosexualy occurs at the same rat wh the same kds of behavr. In a 1989 study of attus toward gays four different societi, those who believed homosexuals "were born that way" reprented a mory but were also the least homophobic. Perhaps the most voluble spokman for the "fix " school is Charl Soris, a New York Cy analyst who claims a flourishg practice turng troubled homosexuals to "happy, fulfilled heterosexuals.

ARE GAYS ‘BORN THAT WAY’? MOST AMERINS NOW SAY Y, BUT SCIENCE SAYS NO

") "Psychology and psychiatry have sentially abandoned a whole populatn of people who feel dissatisfied wh their feelgs of homosexualy, " says psychologist Joseph Nilosi, thor of "Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexualy" (Jason Aronson. In graduate school, says Nilosi, he found the stance was that if a client me plag about his gayns, the therapist's job was to teach him to accept . "Rearch has shown repeatedly that a poor relatnship wh a distant, aloof father and an overposssive, domeerg mother uld e homosexualy mal, " he fact, some of that rearch, datg back to the 1950s, has been discreded bee of flty techniqu, among other problems.

Perhaps the most appropriate answer om Evelyn Hooker, who showed an important 1950s study that is impossible to distguish heterosexuals om homosexuals on psychologil tts.

MAJORY U.S. NOW SAY GAYS AND LBIANS BORN, NOT MA

If we unrstand s nature and accept as a given, then we e much closer to the kd of attus which will make possible for homosexuals to lead a cent life society.

-*Not his real nameIn the long-nng bate over whether homosexualy begs the gen or the nursery, Simon LeVay was an unlikely champn for the geic si. At the Chigo-area office of ParentsFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lbians and Gays), the natnal support anizatn Brenner joed, parents often ll tears.

BORN GAY OR MA GAY? HOW, WHY, AND DO MATTER?

I was at a pot my life where eher I was a homosexual and I was gog to be open and public about , or I was not gog to be a homosexual and be otherwise.

"I kept searchg for somebody to help me, but you always heard that nothg uld be done about this and anybody who me to your attentn was ually a gay therapist.