Are We Born Gay? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?
• BORN TO BE GAY : A HISTORY OF HOMOSEXUALY
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• ARE YOUNGER BROTHERS MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• JAGS' MAXEN IS FIRST MALE AMERIN PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY
• JAGUARS ASSISTANT KEV MAXEN IS FIRST MALE NFL ACH TO E OUT AS GAY

ARE WE BORN GAY?

” 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. 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.

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

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.

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

If the DNA sequence were the only thg termg whether someone is gay or not, we would expect intil tws to match 100% of the time. 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.

No matter why those gen are still around, we do know that beg gay is partly geic and partly termed before a baby is even born. In other words, 5-10% of people experience same-sex sexual attractn or behavr; of urse, this don't speak to what mak people gay.

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.

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

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.

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.

BORN TO BE GAY : A HISTORY OF HOMOSEXUALY

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.

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

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.

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 theory that people are “born gay” has been ed to argue that sexual orientatn is siar to race — that “gay is the new black.

When the qutn is posed whether some people are “born gay, ” the real qutn is, “Are some people oriented om birth toward homosexual attractns? In the early 1990s, there was great hope some circl that a “gay gene” would be found that would prove homosexualy to be fixed and termed geilly.

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

“There is no nsens among scientists about the exact reasons that an dividual velops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lbian orientatn.

For example, has been reported that men wh more olr brothers are more likely to be homosexual, and has been speculated that this uld relate to a blogil effect the mother’s womb. Most rearchers prr to the 1970s believed, as many still do today, that homosexual attractns are primarily a velopmental rult of childhood experienc. Even some people who self-intify as gay are rejectg the ia that they were “born that way” — and the fensivens of the implied argument, “I’m only like this bee I n’t help .

The “born gay” theory lacks scientific credibily, and — and polici premised on , such as the Equaly Act — should be abandoned. 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.

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

It mt be emphasized that even if a blogil predisposn to homosexualy some people exists, would not change God’s opposn to the behavr.

For a practil gui to overg homosexualy, the book Comg Out of Homosexualy by Bob Davi and Lori Rentzel would be helpful.

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. 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.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

Yet some fear that such a fdg uld be mised “cure” homosexualy, and most rearch teams have shied away om tacklg the topic. 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.

ARE YOUNGER BROTHERS MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY?

Natnal Cancer Instute and his lleagu published a paper suggtg that an area on the X chromosome lled Xq28 uld nta a “gay gene.

His study, which analysed the genom of 40 pairs of gay brothers, looked exclively at people who intified as homosexual. McCoy for The New York TimHis Sexualy Don’t Defe Him, but It Can Set Him ApartEric Bach is an openly gay broadster for the Frericksburg Natnals.

Three years earlier, while he was studyg journalism at Michigan State Universy, he had publicly e out as gay an say he wrote for the time of the say, he braced for a backlash, but nothg materialized.

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

He worked his way up om ternships to full-time broadstg jobs, and while anyone wh an ter nnectn uld learn he was gay, nobody asked, and he did not say so aga publicly. It was paful at the time — the worst thg that had happened to him as a gay man, he said — but has reced far enough to his memory that did not e to md an hourlong terview about his experienc as a gay broadster. As far as Bach knows — and as far as many of his unterparts wh other teams are aware — there are no other openly gay broadsters the sport.

McCoy for The New York TimBorn to BroadstLong before he knew he was gay, Bach knew he wanted to be a sports father was a ach, and a love of sports ran through the fay. ’”By the start of his sophomore year at Michigan State, Bach was ready to tell his parents that he was gay, tchg his father off guard but nfirmg what his mother had prevly assumed.

JAGS' MAXEN IS FIRST MALE AMERIN PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY

He did each job to the bt of his abily, and his sexualy never me, he has found that there’s a difference between beg a gay man baseball and beg pletely fortable as one.

“I feel like that’s the burn a lot of gay people live wh — tryg to be perfect for straight people, ” he job requir equent teractn wh the players and the achg staff — addn to his duti as play-by-play announcer, Bach also is the ma public relatns ntact for the team — and he said he hadn’t fully relaxed any of them. Mrer/Frericksburg NatnalsThat feelg is somewhat “self-flicted, ” Bach said, but he believ the solutn is to brg more openly gay people to sports and create a safe environment for those who are already there but have felt necsary to hi their League Baseball has touted self as a place of clivy.

JAGUARS ASSISTANT KEV MAXEN IS FIRST MALE NFL ACH TO E OUT AS GAY

Billy Bean, an openly gay former player, was named the league’s first ambassador for cln 2014 and has sce been promoted to senr vice print and special assistant to Commissner Rob Maned.

In Febary, Anrson Comás, a mor leaguer the Chigo Whe Sox anizatn, me out as gay wh a post on Instagram, and the announcement was met wh public support om his club and some people around the cints suggt there is more work to be done. The Boston Red Sox lled up a mor leaguer, Matt Dermody, who had posted an anti-gay msage on Twter 2021, and Anthony Bass, a reliever for the Toronto Blue Jays, reposted a vio on social media that lled for boytts of L. “Those of that are this very small mory sports have to keep on havg the nversatns, keep on workg really ick’ hard to earn your spot this space, ” he aspir to be a gay person at home a big-league booth.

McCoy for The New York TimA versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn A, Page 27 of the New York edn wh the headle: A Gay Broadster Climbs the Ladr, But It’s Been Lonely.