Are Younger Brothers More Likely to Be Gay? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• GAY GEICSMOST OF BELIEVE THAT WE WERE BORN THAT WAY, BUT IS SEXUAL ORIENTATN OUR DNA? JV CHAMARY GO SEARCH OF THE GAY GENEJV CHAMARYPUBLISHED: MAY 31, 2009 AT 11:00 PMGAY GEICS
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF BEG GAY?
• A PROBABILY SAMPLE OF GAY MAL
• IS YOUR CHILD GAY?
• MEN WH OLR BROTHERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY, STUDY SUGGTS
• WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATN IS GAY?
• ARE YOUNGER BROTHERS MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY?
• BOYS WH OLR BROTHERS MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY, STUDY SAYS

GAY GEICSMOST OF BELIEVE THAT WE WERE BORN THAT WAY, BUT IS SEXUAL ORIENTATN OUR DNA? JV CHAMARY GO SEARCH OF THE GAY GENEJV CHAMARYPUBLISHED: MAY 31, 2009 AT 11:00 PMGAY GEICS

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. 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.

) It shouldn’t matter whether people “choose” to be gay, but polilly, do—at least for of the most nsistent environmental explanatns for homosexualy is lled the “aternal birth orr effect. Studi have found that a man whout olr brothers has about a 2 percent chance of beg gay, but one wh four olr brothers has a 6 percent chance.

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

Average prevalence 2013 (Sav-Williams and Vrangalova)Acrdg to the report, Blanchard now plans to tt mothers of gay and straight men for the prence of the antibodi. But gaps will rema, such as why some firstborn sons are gay, why some intil tws of gay sons are straight, and why women are gay, to name jt a review-paper thors do le out one explanatn for homosexualy, however: That tolerance for gay people enurag more people to bee gay. “Homosexual orientatn do not crease equency wh social tolerance, although s exprsn ( behavr and open intifitn) may do so, ” they reasong—that a tolerant society somehow enurag homosexualy to flourish—has been ed to support anti-gay legislatn Uganda, Rsia, and elsewhere.

“Conservative, right-wg people hated bee they felt that was sayg that beg gay is like beg black, that was -born, that would somehow ‘exce’ gay people or give them more rights, ” says Hamer. “On the other hand, gay people hated too bee, at that time, there were fears that the disvery would be mised to abort gay babi and wipe gay people off the face of the Earth. Although the fears rema, recent years the search for ‘gay gen’ has bee more accepted by the gay muny, no small part bee a blogil explanatn wouldunrme arguments that beg gay is a social or liftyle choice.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF BEG GAY?

For stance, intil tw brothers (siblgs rived om the same fertilised egg) are more likely to both be gay than aternal tws (tws that velop om separate eggs).

A PROBABILY SAMPLE OF GAY MAL

Now chief of the gene stcture and regulatn sectn at the US Natnal Cancer Instute, his study revealed a cur pattern: gay men tend to have more gay uncl and gay male s on their mother’s si of the fay than on their father’s.

To track down the DNA regn lked to the gay tra, Hamer ed a technique lled ‘lkage mappg’, an approach that lets geicists fd a gene even when they don’t know what do or where ’s loted. So, if you study many pairs of gay brothers and fd a DNA regn that’s the same more than 50 per cent of s, ’s likely to be lked to homosexualy.

Asi om a few superficial differenc (among them penis and rg-fger length – both longer homosexuals), gay and straight men’s bodi appear the same.

IS YOUR CHILD GAY?

The exceptn is homosexual men’s bras, which show remarkable siari to the bras of heterosexual women, suggtg that sexual orientatn pends on the effect hormon have on the velopg bra. In 1996 Blanchard and Profsor Tony Bogaert revealed a peculiar phenomenon: the more olr brothers a boy has, the greater their chanc of beg homosexual.

MEN WH OLR BROTHERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY, STUDY SUGGTS

Blanchard believ that homosexualy is “100 per cent blogil”, and timat that the aternal birth orr effect acunts for 15-30 per cent of gay men the populatn. Not only did he replite Blanchard’s birth orr effect, he also tected herance of homosexualy on the mother’s si, supportg Hamer’s ia of a gay gene on chromosome X. Natural selectn oppos anythg that might e even a small rctn the number of offsprg you produce, so a gay tra would soon disappear om the gene pool.

After Camper Ciani scribed the observed patterns pedigre of homosexualy – the effects of maternal herance and birth orr – his dghter suggted that he re-check his data to see if the female relativ of gay men had more children on the mother’s si. “Mothers and nts on the maternal le of homosexuals had around one-fifth to one-fourth more kids than the heterosexual parison, and also than the paternal le.

WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATN IS GAY?

In this stance, the ‘gay gen’ don’t exist to make men homosexual, stead they’re a nsequence of ‘fertily factors’ that help women reproduce. While they may nfirm the ia that homosexualy has a blogil basis, many people fear that the rults uld be ed to discrimate agast gay people. “People we talked to at gay pri ftivals have signer-baby kd of worri – a geic tt employed a pre-natal way, or for employment and surance discrimatn, maybe the ary too.

However, blogists have documented homosexual behavr more than 450 speci, argug that same-sex behavr is not an unnatural choice, and may fact play a val role wh populatns.

So-lled genome-wi associatn studi intified a gene lled SLITRK6, which is active a bra regn lled the diencephalon that differs size between people who are homosexual or heterosexual.

ARE YOUNGER BROTHERS MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY?

While there is no sgle “gay gene, ” there is overwhelmg evince of a blogil basis for sexual orientatn that is programmed to the bra before birth based on a mix of geics and prenatal ndns, none of which the fet choos. Specifilly, many aspects of the velopment of homosexualy (both the male and female varieti) are not as well unrstood as they should be to make some of the claims that many people felt nfint exprsg. There's a lot to discs regardg the rults of the paper (Skorska et al, 2016): The rearchers were examg the possibily that a maternal immune rponse might play a key role the velopment of a homosexual orientatn mal.

Effectively, then, the mother's immune system would (sometim) treat certa male protes produced by the fet as a foreign pathogen and attempt to attack , rultg out that uld clu a homosexual orientatn, but also fetal loss if the reactn was strong enough (i. Already there is a lot to like about this hypothis on a theoretil level, as don't pos any hidn adaptive benefs for a homosexual orientatn (as such proposed benefs have not received sound empiril support historilly). The rearchers reced approximately 130 mothers and classified them on the basis of what kd of children they had: those who had at least 1 gay son (n = 54), and those who only had heterosexual sons (n = 72).

BOYS WH OLR BROTHERS MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY, STUDY SAYS

The mothers were then classified further to one of five groups: those wh gay male only-children (n = 8), those wh gay male offsprg that had no olr brothers (n = 23), those wh gay male offsprg wh olr brothers (n = 23), those wh heterosexual male only-children (n = 11), and those wh heterosexual male offsprg wh siblgs (n = 61). When nsired terms of the rat of misrriag to live to births, a siar picture emerged: mothers of gay male only-children reported more misrriag to live births (M = 1. As birth weight tends to crease over succsive pregnanci, the parisons were limed to first live-born sons only (n = 63); this left 4 gay male only-children, 7 gay mal wh no olr brothers, 14 heterosexual mal wh gay younger brothers, 10 heterosexual male only-children, and 28 heterosexual mal wh siblgs.

The rults mirrored those of the fetal-loss data: mothers of gay male only-children tend to give birth to fants that weighed signifintly ls (M = 2970 grams), than all other groups (d = 1. In sum, then, mothers of gay male only-children tend to have a greater number of misrriag and give birth to signifintly lighter offsprg than mothers of other kds. While 's important to not get rried away wh this fdg given the relatively small sample size (I wouldn't put too much stock an N of 8), there is some suggtive evince here worth pursug further that somethg is atypil fetal velopment the se of gay male offsprg.