'Gay gen': science is on the right track, we're born this way. Let’s al wh . | Qazi Rahman | The Guardian

Contents:

• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• 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
• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• ARE YOU BORN GAY OR IS A CHOICE? SCIENTISTS MIGHT HAVE FOUND THE ANSWER
• SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN GAY”
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS
• ARE SOME PEOPLE BORN GAY?
• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

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

However, if we broan sexualy to clu non-sexual and non-romantic appreciatn for bety, then everybody would be gay.

ARE WE BORN GAY?

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. But there were a signifint number of genr-nformg men who, nohels, veloped a gay or bisexual inty adulthood.

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. ” 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.

Sexual inty is how you label yourself (for example, g labels such as queer, gay, lbian, straight, or bisexual). 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. Morn science is workg to show that geics is one of the of beg gay, although some science nflicts this area.

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

Study of fay history reveals that homosexual men have more homosexuals their fay tree than do heterosexuals.

While psychologil factors may crease the likelihood that someone is gay, no sgle factor is known to e homosexualy. 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

“We worried a lot about volunteer bias, ” said Bailey, whose rearch clus a wily publicized study on Xq28 and gay brothers om 2018.

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

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.

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

Tw studi of homosexualy have shown that intil tws are about twice as likely to both be gay pared to aternal tws. 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. 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.

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.

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

“It’s the end of the ’gay gene, ’” says Eric Vila, a geicist at Children’s Natnal Health System Washgton, D.

“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. 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. In a recent Guardian article, Simon Copland argued that is very unlikely people are born gay (or prumably any other sexual orientatn). 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).

CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN GAY”

Evince om pennt rearch groups who studied tws shows that geic factors expla about 25-30% of the differenc between people sexual orientatn (heterosexual, gay, lbian, and bisexual). Tw studi are a first look to the geics of a tra and tell that there are such thgs as “gen for sexual orientatn” (I hate the phrase “gay gene”).

Three gene fdg studi showed that gay brothers share geic markers on the X chromosome; the most recent study also found shared markers on chromosome 8. Perhaps this is due to the stereotype that female sexualy is “too plex” or that lbians are rarer than gay are far om the whole story.

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

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. For example patterns of bra anisatn appear siar between gay men and heterosexual women and between lbian women and heterosexual men. Gay men appear, on average, more “female typil” bra pattern rpons and lbian women are somewhat more “male typil”.

Differenc bra anisatn mean differenc psychology and study after study show differenc gnn between heterosexual and gay people.

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).

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

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. The theory that people are “born gay” has been ed to argue that sexual orientatn is siar to race — that “gay is the new black.

ARE SOME PEOPLE BORN GAY?

When the qutn is posed whether some people are “born gay, ” the real qutn is, “Are some people oriented om birth toward homosexual attractns?

In the early 1990s, there was great hope some circl that a “gay gene” would be found that would prove homosexualy to be fixed and termed geilly. “There is no nsens among scientists about the exact reasons that an dividual velops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lbian orientatn. Studi of intil tws show that, when one tw is homosexual, the other (geilly intil) tw is ually not homosexual.

For example, has been reported that men wh more olr brothers are more likely to be homosexual, and has been speculated that this uld relate to a blogil effect the mother’s womb. Most rearchers prr to the 1970s believed, as many still do today, that homosexual attractns are primarily a velopmental rult of childhood experienc. Even some people who self-intify as gay are rejectg the ia that they were “born that way” — and the fensivens of the implied argument, “I’m only like this bee I n’t help .

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

The “born gay” theory lacks scientific credibily, and — and polici premised on , such as the Equaly Act — should be abandoned.

” The edian Bill Maher said on his show that by 2054, if we follow what he se as the current trajectory, “we will all be gay, ” addg that the rise the number of younger people intifyg as transgenr seemed spic.