Evo and Proud: The gay germ hypothis

Contents:

• GREG COCHRAN’S “GAY GERM” HYPOTHIS – AN EXERCISE THE POWER OF GERMS
• THE GAY "GERM" HYPOTHIS
• DID A GERM MAKE YOU GAY?
• ON GREGORY COCHRAN AND HIS “GAY GERMS”
• GAY GERM CENSORSHIP
• GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI
• GAY MOSW · CY GUI

GREG COCHRAN’S “GAY GERM” HYPOTHIS – AN EXERCISE THE POWER OF GERMS

The posts don’t seem to all show up unr the “Homosexualy” tegory there, and I wanted lks to them to be all one place. The “gay germ” hypothis is very much Cochran’s, not me (I haven’t ntributed anythg to , except, perhaps, the name).

G., high rate of disrdance between intil tws, the evolutnary maladaptivens of obligate male homosexualy and the paradox of how uld have bee so mon, how pathogens n affect bra functn). Paternal Age and Homosexualy – Explas why geic load (burn of accumulated leter mutatn) n’t expla the existence of male homosexualy, pecially at s relatively high prevalence.

THE GAY "GERM" HYPOTHIS

Not that unlike afflictns that likely are ed by geic load, there don’t seem to be creased cince of homosexualy the children of olr fathers. Homosexualy, epigeics, and zebras – Why velopmental noise, cludg -utero epigeic modifitns, nnot expla male homosexualy ( short, natural selectn has a strong centive to prevent low-fns phenotyp om maniftg, so such ngenal fects are all rare). Appropriately tled, Cochran v discsn on the social and scientific nsequenc of nailg down the blogil e of homosexualy – any e, regardls if that turned out to be the pathogen as he spects.

(As we’ve seen, public discsn of any blogil termant of homosexualy will have nsequenc, and as I’ve discsed, not necsarily good on. Not the ubiquo impact of gen, but the often highly direct nature of this impact, which may expla the low but non-zero herabily of homosexualy. Now, I hontly shouldn’t even have to say this, but let me state clearly that I have nothg agast gays, I actually do have several gay iends.

Que often (not all the time, but more than a few tim), when I discs Cochran’s hypothis, I’m acced of beg homophobic. This is pecially tertg nsirg that one of the biggt proponents of the gay germ hypothis, “misdreav” (whose lorful mentary was featured my prev post – and whose ments over at Wt Hunter have add valuable sight to the gay germ mol) is himself gay. But biggt of all is that the gay germ mol is suggtive of the poorly rearched role that pathogens n have some many other areas, both illns and behavrs.

DID A GERM MAKE YOU GAY?

All the nsired, is rather shameful that rearchers the human scienc don’t take more of a ser tert the “gay germ” hypothis (and pathogenic mols general). Objectn om non-scientists is somewhat unrstandable; no one (other than homophob) wants to believe that gays are lerally “diseased”, spe the fact that this is likely te. How patently ridiculo is that ser thkers uld really believe at this pot that any other explanatn for male homosexualy is more likely.

Irony bee (obligate homosexual men, who what most are ncerned wh) were not “born that way” at all, sce male homosexualy almost certaly is the rult of a childhood fectn.

ON GREGORY COCHRAN AND HIS “GAY GERMS”

Worse still, homophobia (or homoaversn, as should properly lled, acrdg to Greg Cochran) is self herable, at least 54% so. Now, I have said that there will likely be some unpleasant nsequenc if knowledge of the gay germ were to bee wispread.

At least belief a geic e leav the promise of a “fix” way off some uncerta pot the future (when we uld say, screen embryos for whatever putative gay gen).

GAY GERM CENSORSHIP

(As for the qutn of female same-sex attractn (SSA) – which is likely a pletely separate phenomenon om male homosexualy – I will state that my current spicn is that likely a si effect of other eful functns. But, even larger than the issue of homosexualy, the fact that pathogens n affect behavr means that they uld be a big part of what is that mak different om one another – part of the “unexplaed variance” – the difference seen intil tws raised together (see ’s not nature and nurture… | hbd* chick). The diseas that afflict man, om homosexualy to ncer and heart disease, uld be the rult of nasty anisms that filtrate our bodi and mds and attack om wh.

But no, rearchers have been stead been generally wastg their time pursug “liftyle” as the ma explanatn for the illns (except the se of homosexualy, as noted above). Ewald, a blogy profsor at Amherst College Massachetts, and Gregory Cochran, an pennt physicist Albuquerque, New Mexi, have a new theory about homosexualy: You tch . In a refully word e-mail, Ewald, for his part, asserts only that “the argument about fect atn of homosexualy is a feasible hypothis and should be treated as such—no more and no ls.

Few gay men and lbians are likely to wele wh Vuln impartialy the ia that their love liv got their distctive twist om a germ.

GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

Asked about the risk of angerg the gay muny, Cochran rponds by e-mail, “Should we drop a theory that has a chance of beg rrect on the grounds that might upset people? SEVERAL YEARS AGO, Cochran, who has worked as a nsultant to a number of aerospace pani, had an unorthodox ia: What if homosexualy were ed by a germ that manipulated s human host’s behavr, perhaps to the germ’s advantage?

What Cochran spected about homosexualy, he and his lleague now believe to be te for a large number of ndns—namely, that microb, not gen, are rponsible for them.

Unhappily for her, morn homosexuals have only one fifth as many children as heterosexuals do, acrdg to a San Francis study published 1981. As lbians and gay men have won liberatn and e out of the closet, they have probably bee ls likely to marry and produce children; some rearchers have suggted, therefore, that the past, when homosexuals lived more closeted liv, they reproduced at a rate closer to that of heterosexuals.

GAY MOSW · CY GUI

Acrdg to the bt available timat, however, 3 to 4 percent of men and 1 to 2 percent of women the Uned Stat are exclively homosexual. If Ewald and Cochran are right, we’ll soon be hearg that scientists have found germs behd obssive-pulsive disorr, polycystic-ovary syndrome, schizophrenia, breast ncer, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy—and homosexualy. On the one hand, William Byne, a bra rearcher at the Mount Sai School of Medice New York, spects that Cochran and Ewald are guilty of pathologizg homosexualy.

“It’s hard for most people to enterta the ia that homosexualy might be a natural variant of human sexual behavr, ” says Byne. AS COCHRAN AND EWALD venture to the mefield of public opn, they will fd the ground already occupied by another dre of scientists—those who announced several years ago that homosexualy is herable. Pillard, a profsor of psychiatry at Boston Universy, showed that male intil tws were roughly twice as likely as male aternal tws to share a homosexual orientatn.

Hamer at the Natnal Cancer Instute found that fai where homosexualy ran on the mother’s si, homosexual brothers often shared geic material at a spot on their X chromosom known as Xq28. In a new, still unpublished study of men and women listed the Atralian Tw Registry, rearchers found that tws appeared to share a homosexual orientatn much ls equently than earlier studi dited. However, acrdg to Bailey (who thored both the Atralian study and the origal tw studi is said to refute), the Atralian data, once they are analyzed, will reveal a siar timate of the role that heredy plays homosexualy—50 percent.