News: 'Gay gen': science is on the right... (The Guardian) - Behd the headl - NLM

Contents:

• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• 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?
• SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS
• 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 .
• NEWS: 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT... (THE GUARDIAN) - BEHD THE HEADL
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN 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. 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.

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.

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

“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. 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. Natnal Cancer Instute and his lleagu published a paper suggtg that an area on the X chromosome lled Xq28 uld nta a “gay gene.

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

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.

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE 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. A group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexuals get that tra om their oppose-sex parents: A lbian will almost always get the tra om her father, while a gay man will get the tra om his heredary lk of homosexualy has long been tablished, but scientists knew was not a strictly geic lk, bee there are many pairs of intil tws who have differg sexuali. Scientists om the Natnal Instute for Mathematil and Blogil Synthis say homosexualy seems to have an epigeic, not a geic thought to have some sort of heredary lk, a group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexualy is lked to epi-marks — extra layers of rmatn that ntrol how certa gen are exprsed.

In homosexuals, the epi-marks aren't erased — they're passed om father-to-dghter or mother-to-son, explas William Rice, an evolutnary blogist at the Universy of California Santa Barbara and lead thor of the study. "There is pellg evince that epi-marks ntribute to both the siary and dissiary of fay members, and n therefore feasibly ntribute to the observed faial herance of homosexualy and s low nrdance between [intil] tws, " Rice and his team created a mathematil mol that explas why homosexualy is passed through epi-marks, not geics.

Evolutnarily speakg, if homosexualy was solely a geic tra, scientists would expect the tra to eventually disappear bee homosexuals wouldn't be expected to reproduce. But bee the epi-marks provi an evolutnary advantage for the parents of homosexuals: They protect fathers of homosexuals om unrexposure to ttosterone and mothers of homosexuals om overexposure to ttosterone while they are gtatn.

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

"The epi-marks protect fathers and mothers om excs or unrexposure to ttosterone — when they rry over to oppose-sex offsprg, n e the masculizatn of femal or the femizatn of mal, " Rice says, which n lead to a child beg gay. Rice not that the markers are "highly variable" and that only strong epi-marks will rult a homosexual scientists have long spected some sort of geic lk, Rice says studi attemptg to expla why people are gay have been few and far between. " Homosexual behavr has been observed black swans, pengus, sheep, and other animals, he 's mol still needs to be tted on real-life parent-offsprg pairs, but he says this epigeic lk mak more sense than any other explanatn, and that his team has mapped out a way for other scientists to tt their work.

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.

But here's the quote that will light opponents of LGBTQ rights, some of whom sist they n "nvert" gay people to choose to be straight by prayg the gay away:. "There is no ‘gay gene’ that term whether someone has same-sex partners, ” said Ganna, who is also a geicist at the Broad Instute of MIT and Harvard as well as the Universy of Helski.

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

While the variatns the gen are not enough to raise a rabow flag and label anyone as unqutnably gay, the rearchers say the blogil variants may at the very least partly fluence sexual behavr. This new rearch, he said “provis even more evince that beg gay or lbian is a natural part of human life, a ncln that has been drawn by rearchers and scientists time and aga. This new rearch also renfirms the long tablished unrstandg that there is no nclive gree to which nature or nurture fluence how a gay or lbian person behav.

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

Geics nnot tell "the whole story, " as Eric Vila, director of the Center for Geic Medice Rearch at Children’s Natnal Health System, told the Post, about what "mak" somebody gay. But even if people are not "Born This Way, " as Lady Gaga sang, at last now we n jo Gloria Gaynor sgg, "I Am What I Am.

” 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. Bee of the fluence of Schorr put siarly Natnal Review: “To suggt that social suggtibily uld be playg a role the skyrocketg numbers of young girls’ exprsg their sire to bee mal, for example, is not of urse to say that gay and transgenr people would not exist whout the topics’ beg discsed the public square. ”This fear is based on an unrstandg of genr and sexualy as alarmgly agile, easily undone by a gay teacher or a trans TikTok fluencer.

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

This is the first time Amerin history that gay and trans people have been able to live as themselv any real way, wh jobs and marriag and dogs and ts and visibily. 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.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

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. 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”).

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. 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.

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

For example patterns of bra anisatn appear siar between gay men and heterosexual women and between lbian women and heterosexual men. 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).

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.

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

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. Between 2 and 11 percent of human adults report experiencg some homosexual feelgs, though the figure vari wily pendg on the survey. Homosexualy exists across cultur and even throughout the animal kgdom, as the thors of a mammoth new review paper on homosexualy wre.

Female Japane maqu will even pete tersexually wh mal for exclive accs to female sexual ’s what we don’t know: What, specifilly, someone to bee gay, straight, or somethg between. 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.

(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.