Homosexualy & Choice: Are Gay People 'Born This Way?' | HuffPost Impact

Contents:

• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• CG PSALM 51, PROMENT PASTOR RA VERNON CLAIMS SCRIPTURE PROV SOME GAY PEOPLE ARE BORN THAT WAY
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS
• HOMOSEXUALY & CHOICE: ARE GAY PEOPLE 'BORN THIS WAY?'
• NEWS: 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT... (THE GUARDIAN) - BEHD THE HEADL
• SECTN 2: KNOWG GAYS AND LBIANS, RELIG CONFLICTS, BELIEFS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALY

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

Fdg evince for a blogil basis should not sre or unrme gay, lbian and bisexual (LGB) rights (the studi I refer to do not clu transgenred dividuals, so I’ll nfe my ments to lbian, gay and bisexual people). Gen uld themselv nudge one towards a particular sexual orientatn or gen may simply teract wh other environmental factors (such as sex hormon the womb environment) to fluence later sexual bras of gay and heterosexual people also appear to be anised differently.

The fluence of blogy ns throughout our sexual and genred liv and those differenc, that diversy, is surely to be wrers tend to wave off the scientific evince by urgg to look to the history of sexualy or claim that homosexualy is a social nstctn (cue Michel Fouult and the like). Surely our choic are the rult of thgs we didn’t choose (our gen, personali, upbrgg, and culture) worry that scientific rearch will lead to “cur” for homosexualy (which is an odd worry to have if you don’t believe the “born this way” argument). We are who we are, and our sexuali are part of human worry about the claims of social nstctn, choice and such like is that plays to the hands of homophobic iology, to the hands of the “aversn therapists”, and to the hands of a growg culture which seeks to mimise gay differenc.

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. 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.

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

” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy.

”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.

”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay. 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.

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

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. There is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejectedLet’s first be clear that whatever the origs of our sexual orientatn, there is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejected.

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.

”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.

ARE WE BORN GAY?

” 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. I’m claimg that at some pot durg llege, my sexual and romantic sir beme reoriented toward menThkg back to my llege romanc wh women and men, I n beg to unrstand how my own experienc might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my sire for homosexualy.

“Limg our unrstandg of any plex human experience is always gog to be worse than allowg to be plited, ” he gay rights activists pared sexualy to relign - a ccial part of our life that we should be ee to practise however we like (Cred: Ignac Lehamann)So what are we to do wh the Born This Way rhetoric? ”Acrdg to surveys, ls than half of Generatn Z intify as "100% heterosexual", suggtg more and more people have embraced their sexual fluidy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Perhaps is time to look to the begng of the gay rights movement.

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

“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. “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.

“[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.

CG PSALM 51, PROMENT PASTOR RA VERNON CLAIMS SCRIPTURE PROV SOME GAY PEOPLE ARE BORN THAT WAY

But many members of the LGBTQ muny reject this narrative, sayg only benefs people who feel their sexualy and genr are fixed rather than fluid, and qutng why the digny of gay people should rt on the notn that they were gay om their very first breath. “There are a lot of lbians who subscribe to the ‘born this way’ narrative, part bee 's bee almost an obligatory story, ” said Jane Ward, a profsor of genr studi at the Universy of California-Riversi and thor of Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men. ’”An important reason why the science on sexual orientatn is limed, van Anrs says, is that the ways which scientists fe sexual orientatn for the purpos of their studi — who unts as gay, who unts as lbian, who unts as bisexual — assum we n draw bright l, when we n't.

"Most aspects of human experienc are actually bpsychosocial: a long word which means that they volve our blogy, our psychology, and the social world around , wh all of those thgs fluencg each other plex feedback loops, makg impossible to tease apart each element or the directn of any e-effect relatnships, " Barker "born this way" mantra of the gay rights movement is both simple and absolute, spe the science that shows human sexualy is plex and fluid.

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

Speakg on a recent episo of his podst, tled “The Elephant The Church - Homosexualy And Christiany, ” Vernon said he was driven to addrs the topic bee, as the largt predomantly Ain Amerin Church Cleveland, he also has more “lbians, gay brothers and sisters, [and] queer Christians who attend here. Anybody that tells you differently, they haven’t read enough or they are jt overly, extremely homophobic, even theologilly homophobic, which is crazy bee you jt n’t get that om Scripture that you n’t have a stggle if you nsir a stggle, ” he Vernon is fully nvced about the “born this way” theory on homosexualy, J. Homosexualy, Science, and the Scriptur that “while there are geic and blogil factors that rrelate wh a higher cince of same-sex attractn and homosexual behavr, as of yet there is no proof of geic or blogil atn for homosexualy.

HOMOSEXUALY & CHOICE: ARE GAY PEOPLE 'BORN THIS WAY?'

”Vernon himself also ntends that he has learned om his 20 years of experience leadg his church that some people engage homosexual behavr to experiment, while there are others who were troduced to the liftyle through abe. The news this week that the largt study of s kd failed to nfirm the existence of a "gay gene" is not so much a disappotment for those lookg to unrstand the LGBTQ muny, as is an acknowledgement that science do not need to tell what should be plaly obv: gays, lbians, bisexuals and pansexuals are who they are. See alsoChildren and genr intyFemizg hormone therapyFemizg surgeryGynelogil re for trans menTransgenr health ncernsHealth issu for gay menHealth issu for lbiansMasculizg hormone therapyMasculizg surgery.

Dpe the persistence of stereotyp that portray lbian, gay, and bisexual people as disturbed, several s of rearch and clil experience have led all mastream medil and mental health anizatns this untry to nclu that the orientatns reprent normal forms of human experience. Helpful rpons of a therapist treatg an dividual who is troubled about her or his same sex attractns clu helpg that person actively pe wh social prejudic agast homosexualy, succsfully rolve issu associated wh and rultg om ternal nflicts, and actively lead a happy and satisfyg life.

The phrase “g out” is ed to refer to several aspects of lbian, gay, and bisexual persons’ experienc: self-awarens of same-sex attractns; the tellg of one or a few people about the attractns; wispread disclosure of same-sex attractns; and intifitn wh the lbian, gay, and bisexual muny.

NEWS: 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT... (THE GUARDIAN) - BEHD THE HEADL

Th, is not surprisg that lbians and gay men who feel they mt nceal their sexual orientatn report more equent mental health ncerns than do lbians and gay men who are more open; they may even have more physil health problems.

Lbian, gay, and bisexual youth who do well spe strs—like all adolcents who do well spe strs—tend to be those who are socially petent, who have good problem-solvg skills, who have a sense of tonomy and purpose, and who look forward to the future. If they are a heterosexual relatnship, their experienc may be que siar to those of people who intify as heterosexual unls they choose to e out as bisexual; that se, they will likely face some of the same prejudice and discrimatn that lbian and gay dividuals enunter. When lbians, gay men, and bisexual people feel ee to make public their sexual orientatn, heterosexuals are given an opportuny to have personal ntact wh openly gay people and to perceive them as dividuals.

A gay man is more likely than a straight man to have a (blogil) gay brother; lbians are more likely than straight women to have gay 1993, a study published the journal Science showed that fai wh two homosexual brothers were very likely to have certa geic markers on a regn of the X chromosome known as Xq28. This led to media headl about the possibily of the existence of a “gay gene” and discsns about the ethics of abortg a “gay” have also been headl about an “alholism gene”, which mak people bee alholics, and a “warrr gene”, which mak people unually n’t ntrol behavr pletely, though. Throughout history, marriag have been fluenced by fay relatns and by enomic adhere to cultural nstrats of monogamy spe beg attracted to people other than their culture affects your views on some societi, homosexualy is accepted, others, is owned upon but tolerated, yet others, is a ser crimal offense, possibly punishable by homosexual behavr was expected ancient Athens.

SECTN 2: KNOWG GAYS AND LBIANS, RELIG CONFLICTS, BELIEFS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALY

Most Amerins would be probably be nseated if they learned that, when they thought they had been eatg beef, they were, fact, eatg dog, even though there is nothg herently unhealthy about dog you have learned about homosexualy as you were growg up will affect whether you nsir engagg homosexual acts to be sirable or people might argue that if you are “geilly gay” but the thought of homosexualy nseat you, then you jt haven’t accepted the fact that you really are gay.