What Science Knows About Why People Are Gay

Contents:

• I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN
• ARE HOMOPHOBIC PEOPLE REALLY GAY AND NOT ACCEPTG IT?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• WHAT SCIENCE KNOWS ABOUT WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• SECTN 2: KNOWG GAYS AND LBIANS, RELIG CONFLICTS, BELIEFS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALY
• IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?
• CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?

I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN

A seri of studi recently published the prtig Journal of Personaly and Social Psychology found higher levels of homophobia dividuals wh unacknowledged attractns to the same sex, particularly when they grew up wh thorarian parents who also held homophobic attus.

In the Universy of Rochter's prs release, Netta Weste, the study's lead thor, said, "Individuals who intify as straight but psychologil tts show a strong attractn to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lbians bee homosexuals remd them of siar tennci wh themselv. Acrdg to the team of rearchers, this study is the first to document the role that both parentg and sexual orientatn play the formatn of anti-gay attus, cludg self-reported homophobic attus, discrimatory bias, implic hostily towards gays, and endorsement of anti-gay polici. They were then shown the words "gay, " "straight, " "homosexual, " and "heterosexual" as well as pictur of straight and gay upl, and the puter tracked precisely their rponse tim.

ARE HOMOPHOBIC PEOPLE REALLY GAY AND NOT ACCEPTG IT?

In the experiments, participants who reported themselv to be more heterosexual than their performance on the reactn time task dited were most likely to react wh hostily towards gay people. This ngence between implic and explic measur of sexual orientatn predicted a variety of homophobic behavrs, cludg self-reported anti-gay attus, implic hostily towards gays, endorsement of anti-gay polici, and discrimatory bias such as the assignment of harsher punishments for homosexuals.

However, the meantime what is also important is that you fd iends, teachers, unselors who know that is ed wonrful that you are realizg that you are growg to a fabulo gay, lbian, bisexual, or transgenr person and who n keep remdg you of this. “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

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.

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.

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

” 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. “Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy.

” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame. ”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.

WHAT SCIENCE KNOWS ABOUT WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

Patrick Grzanka, Assistant Profsor of Psychology at Universy of Tennsee, for stance, has shown that some people who believe that homosexualy is nate still hold negative views of gays. 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. 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. And when I published my say on choosg to be gay, an irate Amerin lbian activist wrote me that had “jt been nfirmed” to her that my wrg was “directly rponsible for four gay aths Rsia.

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

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. ” 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?

IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?

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.

”The other problem wh Born This Way science is summed up nicely by Simon Copland: “Scientists are askg whether homosexualy is natural when we n’t even agree exactly what homosexualy is. ” 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. I want to be very clear: I’m not claimg I simply began to ‘grow to’ my homosexualy, or that as I beme more fortable wh beg gay, I allowed myself the eedom to exprs what had always been latent wh me. “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?

CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?

“That’s a very narrow unrstandg of what jtice looks like, ” says about the ncern that homophob will want to ‘enurage’ gay people to be straight if there’s no blogil basis for sexualy?