FactCheck Q&A: are people born gay?

Contents:

• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• 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
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN GAY”
• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?
• NO ONE IS BORN GAY
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• JOHNS HOPKS REARCH: NO EVINCE PEOPLE ARE BORN GAY OR TRANSGENR
• ARE YOU BORN GAY OR IS A CHOICE? SCIENTISTS MIGHT HAVE FOUND THE ANSWER

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

“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.

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

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.

CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN 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. Gay nrologist Simon LeVay explas that sexual orientatn is “the tra that predispos to experience sexual attractn” (Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why, 1).

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

However, if we broan sexualy to clu non-sexual and non-romantic appreciatn for bety, then everybody would be gay. 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. While psychologil factors may crease the likelihood that someone is gay, no sgle factor is known to e homosexualy.

CAN A PERSON BE BORN 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.

NO ONE IS BORN GAY

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).

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

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.

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.

JOHNS HOPKS REARCH: NO EVINCE PEOPLE ARE BORN GAY OR TRANSGENR

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

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

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.

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.