There is no ‘gay gene.’ There is no ‘straight gene.’ Sexualy is jt plex, study nfirms | PBS NewsHour

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?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• ARE HOMOSEXUAL PEOPLE REALLY “BORN GAY”?
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

ARE WE 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. 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. “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.

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

“[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. What scientists refer to as “aternal birth orr effect” is based on the fact that fai wh several children there is a greater probabily of the velopment of homosexualy children further down the birth orr than there is the first or send child. 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.

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.

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

(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. 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.

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

While there is no sgle “gay gene, ” there is overwhelmg evince of a blogil basis for sexual orientatn that is programmed to the bra before birth based on a mix of geics and prenatal ndns, none of which the fet choos.

Rpondg to a qutn om dience member and Christian pastor Matt Prater about the Prime Mister’s support for same-sex marriage, Rudd fend his posn by g the startg pot that gay people are born that way, rather than cidg at some later stage to be straight or gay. In 1976, 9% reportedly claimed to be born gay, the figure creased to 35% by 1989, and by 2004, one gay muny, more than 90% of gays reported that they believe gen are a signifint factor their orientatn— which would suggt a ten-fold crease  28 years.

By repeatg this claim over and over aga for s now, gay activists have managed to w over a large percentage of heterosexual “believers” to their e, whout any substantial basis fact to validate the claim that they were “born that way. ” “Born gay” is, fact, a hoax of mammoth proportns that has been accepted by many stutns, anizatns and dividuals  our culture, even by those the “Christian church” and even by many apparently “born-aga Christians” (1). The cril qutn is whether homosexualy is already termed at birth by blogil factors and is immutable (unchangeable), or velops later as a rult of post-natal experienc and fluenc, and is fluid (changeable).

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

As you will see, the evince strongly supports the view that homosexualy velops primarily as a rult of post-natal experienc and fluenc, and is fluid (changeable); all pre-natal fluenc bed (cludg geics, epi-geics and hormon) have, at most, a weak and non-termative role. This rearch has foced primarily on possible geic ntributns to the velopment of homosexualy, but other potential blogil factors, such as epi-geics and pre-natal hormon, have received nsirable attentn as well and rema viable theori. In this regard, is important to note at the outset that if homosexualy were geilly termed (as opposed to merely beg geilly fluenced), most likely would have been bred out of existence only several generatns.

Acrdg to this theory, durg a cril stage of fetal velopment, exposure of a male fet to a high level of ttosterone would lead to typil heterosexual orientatn, whereas exposure to a sufficiently lower level would lead to homosexualy. Support for this theory primarily om direct evince rived om animal studi, speculatn based on hormone effects on other aspects of sexual differentiatn humans, bra studi that fail to show any signifint chang bra stcture before the ag of 8-11 years old (32) and clil ndns wh signifint prenatal hormone chang that are associated wh creased cinc of homosexualy.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

The mol would expla homosexualy on the basis of epi-mark-ntrolled prenatal ttosterone (a sex hormone) levels, to the virtual excln of a role for eher a strictly geic fluence or post-natal environmental fluenc.

Acrdg to the mol, when this mistake is ma, epi-mark regulated ttosterone overexposure a female fet would rult a masculized female who will prefer femal (a lbian), whereas epi-mark regulated ttosterone unrexposure a male fet would rult a femized male who will prefer mal (a gay). The low nrdance tw studi would be explaed not by a low-level geic fluence, as is ually assumed, but by the ocsnal passg of ttosterone-enhancg epi-marks om father to dghter (creatg a lbian) and of ttosterone-limg epi-marks om mother to son (creatg a gay man).

It is tertg to note that this mol poss homosexualy as an aberrant accint of nature, which normal prenatal velopment of a fet produc the tend effect (heterosexualy), and abnormal prenatal velopment produc an untend effect (homosexualy) by mistake.

ARE HOMOSEXUAL PEOPLE REALLY “BORN GAY”?

Abnormal prenatal velopment rults when a mistake is ma and an epi-mark  a parent is not erased, but is, stead, passed on to the offsprg, where s effect (homosexualy) is seen the subsequent generatn. Although this mol is highly speculative and prently has very ltle, if any, direct experimental support, do have mer as a scientific hypothis, bee 1) would expla both male and female homosexualy, 2) uld expla the low nrdance for homosexualy found tw studi, 3) seems to provi a feasible explanatn for the long-term survival of a reproductively leter tra the human populatn, and 4) is, at least to some extent, ttable.

Only further rearch will terme whether or not this theory will jo the many prev theori purportg to reprent an almost exclive fluence on the velopment of homosexualy, all of which have failed. Tw Studi Overview: As dited above, most of the more recent rearch has foced on the gree to which gen, along wh other prenatal factors such as hormon and epi-geics, may fluence the velopment of homosexualy. The former approach of recg intil tws via advertisements gay and lbian publitns is now known to have a very strong “volunteer effect” that produced the appearance of relatively large geic effects (8).

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

Whehead and Whehead (8) have prented and discsed, some tail, the and other problems herent tw studi of homosexualy and have prented reasons to expect that the geic fluence on, or ntributn to, homosexualy will eventually be agreed to be the 10%-15% range (i. They studied 46 tw pairs havg homosexualy prent one or both of the tws each pair and found that 54% of the tw pairs had discsed their sexual orientatn wh each other, 89% had “shared knowledge” of each other’s sexual orientatn, and 30% of the tw pairs had actually had sex wh each other. Bee intil tws intify so closely wh each other, and post-natal experienc – pecially close fay relatnships – strongly affect the velopment of homosexualy, seems plsible, if not likely, that a homosexual member of a tw pair would fluence the other member of that pair to embrace and explore homosexualy also, th flatg the apparent geic fluence reported intil tw studi.

That is to say, a signifint portn of what may appear, intil tw studi, to be a geic fluence on the velopment of homosexualy may turn out to be, stead, a post-natal, environmental fluence volvg shared knowledge of sexual orientatn and shared sexual experienc wh intil tw pairs.

Now, pare this rult to the range of theoretilly possible out where no tw pairs would both be homosexual (= 0%) and where all tw pairs would both be homosexual (= 100%) and you n see, tuively, that a pair-wise nrdance of only 13. Therefore, on the basis of pair-wise nrdance intil tws, seems appropriate to nclu that there is, at the most, only a mor geic ntributn to the velopment of homosexualy, and that this relatively mor fluence n be overe (i.

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

Classil Tw Studi: While pair-wise nrdance giv an tuive ditn of the geic fluence on homosexualy as exprsed intil tws, do not provi rmatn on what factors may provi the remag, non-geic fluence.

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

In a meta-analysis, Whehead (18), g the rults om seven of the recent tw registry studi that were signed to reveal ntributns of both geic and non-geic factors to homosexualy, found that the mean ntributn of geics to male homosexualy was around 22%, and to female homosexualy, around 33%. Furthermore, the non-shared, post-natal environmental ntributn to homosexualy is morate to strong, around 64%-78%, has a relatively small standard viatn and is nsistently around the same percentage (18), ditg that homosexualy is fluenced primarily by post-natal environmental factors and experienc that are not directly related to prenatal ntributns of any kd or batn. ) on the velopment of homosexualy adults is only weak to morate, is important to unrstand that all of the blogil theori discsed above n addrs only this weak to morate fluence, while ignorg the far more important post-natal fluenc (discsed below).

Furthermore, the rults clearly support the ference, based on rults obtaed through therapy and unselg (14, 20, 21, 22), that post-natal, environmental fluenc have a far greater role the velopment of homosexualy than do pre-natal fluenc. Homosexualy do not nform to any geilly prcribed mol, but do appear to have an overwhelmgly cultural ponent, ebbg and flowg wh chang cultural valu and expectatns and wh personal experienc (4). In addn to the cultural fluenc on the velopment and practice of homosexualy mentned above, there are several other social and experiential factors that have been shown to have an important role.

” For example, men whose parents divorced before their sixth birthday were 39% more likely to “marry” homosexually than peers om tact parental marriag, and the figure for men whose habatn wh both parents end before age 18 years was the range of 55%-76% (30). In a related study, Wells, et al., (37) found that habg wh two heterosexual, non-blogil parents until the age of 16 was associated wh a two-fold crease homosexualy adulthood, pared to habg wh both blogil parents. Schumm (26) found that adults wh a homosexual parent are 12 to 15 tim as likely to self-intify as homosexual or bisexual as are adults whout a homosexual parent, which dit that post-natal environmental factors associated wh havg a homosexual parent (such as havg a homosexual adult role mol and unequivol acceptance of homosexualy) n play a major role the velopment of a homosexual orientatn.