There is no ‘gay gene.’ There is no ‘straight gene.’ Sexualy is jt plex, study nfirms | PBS NewsHour

Contents:

• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

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

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.

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

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.

When lookg at large fai, scientists saw that men wh lots of olr brothers were 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. Even though the evince is pretty strong for homosexualy beg partly geic, some people don’t accept .

The argument monly go: If gay men and women are ls likely to have babi, they won’t pass on their gen.

ARE WE BORN GAY?

One possible explanatn is that the same gen that make a man gay n also make a woman more fertile. 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.

In 1996, The Advote, a gay and lbian magaze, asked rears what they believed the potential impact would be to the advancement of gay and lbian rights if a scientific disvery prov a blogil basis for homosexualy. About 61 percent of the magaze’s rears asserted that such scientific rearch would advance the e of gays and lbians and lead to more posive attus toward homosexualy.

For example, if one n be born gay, much as one n be born wh brown ey, then a fair society uld not possibly nmn him as beg unnatural or immoral. To that end, gay activists and the liberal media have actively enuraged the ia that homosexualy is hered and unchangeable, and rearchers have diligently sought scientific evince to back up that claim.

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

Unfortunately for the pro-homosexualy movement, the rearch on this subject has failed to tablish any scientific evince that shows a purely geic basis for homosexualy. In 1991, LeVay tted the bras of 41 davers and noted differenc between homosexual vers heterosexual mal.

The hypothalam, an area believed to regulate sexual activy, was smaller homosexual mal than heterosexuals. LeVay believed the differenc proved a blogil basis for homosexualy, but he failed to nsir a variety of reasons, other than geic, that the bras were different.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

First, all 19 of the homosexual davers had died of AIDS, a disease known to affect the nrologil system.

Could the stctural bra differenc have started wh the difference thoughts between homosexuals and heterosexuals, rather than wh geics? Dean Hamer, a pro-gay activist, ma the astoundg claim his rearch that there may be a gene for homosexualy. His team of rearchers began a seri of gene lkage studi, which fai wh several homosexuals unrwent geic analysis to terme if any chromosomal variants uld be found the fay and if the variant rrelated wh those dividuals who displayed the homosexualy.

Although Hamer’s study sample was very small, he found a signifint lkage between gays and a marker on the maternal X chromosome, Xq28.

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

Even if there were some geic monali among homosexuals, associated characteristics do not prove a al lk.

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

There are many rearchers who ce environmental factors as major ntributors to homosexual feelgs. Although may be easier, psychologilly, for a homosexual to believe that homosexualy is born, the accumulated scientific evince suggts otherwise. Clil experience has shown that, wh help, some homosexuals n change learned rpons and fense mechanisms to early paful experienc.

Environment, culture, and choice make one a thief, and the same factors make one a homosexual.

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE 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.

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. 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.