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?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?
• ARE YOU BORN GAY OR IS A CHOICE? SCIENTISTS MIGHT HAVE FOUND THE ANSWER

ARE WE BORN GAY?

Will our child grow up to be gay or straight? ) and adult homosexualy.

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. Plörl pared self-clared homosexual or heterosexual inti adults to their memori of genr nformy childhood. 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.

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

Beg gay is not a choice for people. What we do know is that there isn’t one sgle gene that explas homosexualy. The most nvcg data about the geic basis of homosexualy om lookg at tws.

Beg gay has a lot to do wh geics. Some of the bt evince that homosexualy has a strong geic part om tw studi.

Tw studi of homosexualy have shown that intil tws are about twice as likely to both be gay pared to aternal tws. This means that beg gay is partly geic, and not simply somethg that a person learns or choos.

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

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. If one tw is gay, the other is gay about 50% of the time as well.

What other factors might fluence whether someone is gay? When lookg at large fai, scientists saw that men wh lots of olr brothers were more likely to be gay. Men wh lots of olr brothers are more likely to be gay.

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. And there are plenty of gay men wh no olr brothers! Even though the evince is pretty strong for homosexualy beg partly geic, some people don’t accept .

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

The argument monly go: If gay men and women are ls likely to have babi, they won’t pass on their gen. So any “gay gen” should disappear. Ergo, beg gay n’t be geic.

One possible explanatn is that the same gen that make a man gay n also make a woman more fertile. The looked at the female relativ of gay men, both on the mother’s and father’s si.

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 sgle gene rponsible for a person beg gay or a lbian.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

The study of nearly a half ln people clos the door on the bate around the existence of a so-lled “gay gene. In s stead, the report fds that human DNA nnot predict who is gay or heterosexual. 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.

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

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.

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG 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.

In other words, tri to judge if a person leans gay, straight or bisexual. “[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. 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). 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”).

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

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. For example, plex psychologil tras have many al gen (not simply “a gay gene”).