Why would people 'choose' to be gay? | Science | The Guardian

Contents:

• WHEN DO GAY KIDS START “ACTG GAY”?
• WHY HAVE ALL MY BOYIENDS TURNED GAY?
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• THE GRIM TTH OF BEG GAY PRISON
• WHY WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?
• WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

WHEN DO GAY KIDS START “ACTG GAY”?

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.

WHY HAVE ALL MY BOYIENDS TURNED GAY?

”Puttg the name-llg asi, there is some tth to the all gay men were molted as boys (sce there are multiple for homosexualy) and not all boys who are molted turn out gay (probably bee they were ls predisposed towards homosexualy). Robert Epste, the pro-gay edor--chief of Psychology Today, noted that gay rears who were upset wh an ad that ran his publitn 2002 sent him letters assertg “that gays have a right to be or abive bee they themselv have been abed” (this obvly clud beg sexually abed). )As for the notn that people are born gay, not only would that suggt that fants n relate to the ncepts of sexual and romantic attractn (which they obvly nnot), but would also ignore the fact that our upbrgg and environment have profound effects on .

”But aga, none of this should surprise the least, sce the environment which we are raised, pecially if upled wh major, trmatic childhood experienc, has a profound effect on our ongog mental and emotnal and social when to homosexualy, is taboo to nnect childhood sexual abe wh subsequent gay inty sce: 1) this would ntradict the “born gay” myth; and 2) would unrsre the fact that homosexual attractns are not natural and explaed ndidly by the lbian femist and amic Cale Paglia, “Every sgle gay person I know has some sort of drama gog on, back childhood. )In keepg wh this, all the profsnal unselors I have spoken wh (cludg traed pastors and psychologists or psychiatrists) have told me that the vast number of gays they have unseled were sexually abed as mors (some told me this was the se every stance they enuntered) might say, “But gays hardly have a monopoly on this. More disturbgly, gay circl, such relatnships are often looked at as posive and nurturg, sce, is surmised, the boy was already aware of his same-sex attractn and the olr man served as a mentor of the words of Harry Hay, the gay in and founr of the Amerin gay movement, “If the parents and iends of gays are tly iends of gays, they would know om their gay kids that the relatnship wh an olr man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anythg else the world.

”That’s why “man-boy love” has been celebrated homosexual culture through the centuri, that’s why there’s a page listg “Historil perastic upl” on a gay Wikipedia se, and that’s why Gee Takei uld speak glowgly of his first sexual enunter at the age of 13 (wh a 19-year-old male mp unselor), at a time when he adms he didn’t know he was this light, the outrageo statement by philosopher Michael Foult, argug for lowerg the age of nsent, don’t sound as outrageo: “It is que difficult to lay down barriers [particularly sce] uld be that the child, wh his own sexualy, may have sired the adult. This too is sickeng beyond realy is that children, pecially pre-teens and young teens, are tremendoly imprsnable and malleable, as nfirmed by this acunt shared by a Christian fay activist (reflectg on his pre-Christian youth): “When I was about 14 or 15, I spent an afternoon smokg pot wh a ‘gay’ guy his 20’s who explaed that young people durg puberty have a very fluid sexual inty and how easy had been for him to turn young teen boys to sex partners....

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

”Ex-gay Robert Lopez, raised by his mother and her lbian partner, had this to say: “In a society soaked porn where sexual orientatn is discsed openly ont of small children, there will certaly be 12- and 13-year-olds who thk they want sex and thk they are ready for .

And wh the terribly paful issue of childhood sexual abe g to the fore recent days, let’s e this as a teachable n do this by: 1) beg on the lookout for signs that our own children may have been abed; 2) refg to allow our kids to be experimental pawns the culture wars, bee of which we strongly oppose sex-based LGBT curricula the schools; and 3) no longer nyg the mon nnectn between childhood sexual abe and adult homosexualy, thereby providg a path for healg and dog the thgs, we will not only make this a teachable moment, we will make a remptive one. 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. 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.

THE GRIM TTH OF BEG GAY PRISON

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.

Gay 3-year-old boys n’t verbalize their sire to be wh a man when they grow up—although many such children exhib cshlike behavr toward adult men—but they may be tryg to learn the behavr that will later attract a male partner. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change.

WHY WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?

But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup.

Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to. ”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns.

In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance. “It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists.

WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?

Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins. The efforts are potentially harmful, acrdg to the APA, “bee they prent the view that the sexual orientatn of lbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illns of disorr, and they often ame the abily to change one’s sexual orientatn as a personal and moral failure.

The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors.

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

”Siarly, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn wr a 2013 statement that while the of heterosexualy and homosexualy are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial cludg blogil and behavral roots which may vary between different dividuals and may even vary over time.

” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way? Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at. ” Our sir may exprs themselv many different ways that do not all nform to existg notns of ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or ‘bisexual’ is one of the bt takeaways of Ward’s Not Gay, a peratg analysis of sex between straight whe men.

”Gay or not, our sir are oriented and re-oriented throughout our liv (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In fact, the straight-intified men Ward studied for her book sometim found themselv suatns that sparked the sire for homosexual sex: aterni, ployments, public rtrooms, etc.