Are We Born Gay? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• ARE YOU BORN GAY OR IS A CHOICE? SCIENTISTS MIGHT HAVE FOUND THE ANSWER
• CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN GAY”
• PROOF YOU N'T BE 'BORN GAY'
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

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

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.

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

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. 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.

ARE WE BORN GAY?

“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.

Sanrs llaborated wh Bailey on those earlier studi and said their work had always admted that there was no sgle “gay gene. 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.

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.

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

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. 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.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

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?

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

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. Clil experience has shown that, wh help, some homosexuals n change learned rpons and fense mechanisms to early paful experienc.

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.

CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN GAY”

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

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

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.

PROOF YOU N'T BE 'BORN GAY'

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.

If people were born wh geic dg to practice homosexualy, that geic would soon be erased om human DNA bee would not be passed along to subsequent generatns (bee homosexualy isn’t procreative). For several s, the prevalence of homosexualy among siblgs and certa fai has led soclogists to prume – whout any scientific backg – that homosexualy mt, therefore, be geic. Supreme Court lg that sanctned so-lled “gay marriage, ” ma their lg, part, bee of the claim that homosexualy was blogilly nate to certa dividuals, and therefore to prohib their marriage, was discrimatory.

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

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.

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.