There’s (Still) No Gay Gene | Harvard Magaze

Contents:

• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• 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 NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?
• IS BEG GAY YOUR DNA? SCIENTISTS KEEP TRYG TO FD A GEIC BASIS FOR SEXUAL ORIENTATN
• THERE’S NO ONE ‘GAY GENE,’ BUT GEICS ARE LKED TO SAME-SEX BEHAVR, NEW STUDY SAYS
• NEW STUDY FDS GEICS INFLUENCE LGBTQ SEXUALY, BUT STILL NO 'GAY GENE'
• THERE’S (STILL) NO GAY GENE
• GAY RIGHTS

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

In theory, humans and other animals who are exclively attracted to others of the same sex should be unlikely to produce many blogil children, so any gen that predispose people to homosexualy would rarely be passed on to future generatns. Yet same-sex attractn is wispread humans, and rearch suggts that is partly a study of data om hundreds of thoands of people, rearchers have now intified geic patterns that uld be associated wh homosexual behavur, and showed how the might also help people to fd different-sex mat, and reproduce.

The thors say their fdgs, published on 23 Augt Nature Human Behavur1, uld help to expla why gen that predispose people to homosexualy ntue to be passed down.

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

Most of the participants were born durg a time when homosexualy was eher illegal or culturally taboo their untri, so many people who were attracted to others of the same sex might never have actually acted on their attractn, and uld therefore have end up the wrong group the Monk, an elogist and evolutnary blogist at Yale Universy New Haven, Connecticut, thks that the veats are so important that the paper n’t draw any real nclns about geics and sexual orientatn. Instead, he thks the rearchers have found geic markers associated wh openns to new experienc, which uld expla the overlap between people who have had a homosexual partner and heterosexual people who have had many partners.

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. 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.

IS BEG GAY GEIC?

Specifilly, the fact that geics n expla up to 32 percent of the fact that someone is gay or lbian, do not mean that sexual inty is termed primarily by environmental factors – not to mentn social on. “Bee we had this uniquely large study, ” he ntued, “which allowed to have robt nclns, and bee we had the technology to measure the geic markers of so many dividuals, the time was right to nfirm somethg that we expected: There is no one specific gay gene. ”At the same time, adds Ganna, a geicist at Harvard Medil School and at Fland’s Instute of Molecular Medice, “Not everyone is terpretg the fact that there’s no sgle ‘gay gene’ the right way.

” which wonred, skeptilly: If the study prov that homosexualy is related to the environment, above all, and not to heredy – why isn’t right and proper, scientific terms, to allow those who so sire to unrgo treatment orr to rce their same-sex sir, which have now been shown not to be geic? An article published two years ago (about a study which all the subjects had taken part a gay pri para Toronto) found a nnectn between that hand and the gay person’s “role bed”: that is, the proportn of left-hand gays who fed their sexual behavr as passive or versatile (i.

A gay pri para Toronto, Geoff Robs / AFPIn rearch nducted over the years on the subject of the nnectn between sexual orientatn and other attribut of the body, the hand holds a place of honor. However, no such differenc were found between gay and straight year a team of scientists led by a Brish psychologist measured the fgers of 18 pairs of intil female tws, one lbian, the other straight.

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

And, they add to bolster their argument, fdgs of studi volvg those fgers have not been replited scientific field of “gay science” has been on a roll recent years, but has a far longer history.

A leadg scientist this field is Brish-Amerin nroblogist Simon LeVay, who 1990 performed topsi on the bodi of 41 people: 19 gay men, 16 straight men and ne women.

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

He disvered that the bra cells known as INAH-3 among the ceased gay men were relatively small, and closer size to those of women than to heterosexual mal.

WHAT DO THE NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?

“In 1991, ” LeVay told Haaretz a phone nversatn, “I published a study that got a lot of media attentn, related to my observatn that there was a regn si the hypothalam that was different size between men and women, and also between gay and straight men… My addnal fdg was the difference size between gay and straight men this regn si the hypothalam that is volved the regulatn of sexual behavr. “And that is characteristic geics of somethg on the X chromosome – bee mal get their X chromosom om their moms… That led to look fai where there were gay brothers, to see if they shared anythg on the X chromosome.

For example, we’ll fd a gene that is rponsible for the productn of ttosterone, and if s functng was low, would be possible to say that this is the e of homosexualy a particular person…. ”As Hamer se , “If you look for those five markers, or even jt the three strongt markers, they are not necsarily found people who actually intify as gay or lbian. Ksey had nducted a survey of men, which found that 37 percent of his subjects said they had unrgone a homosexual experience of some kd, and 10 percent said they had been exclively gay for three years of their adult life – a statistic which to this day is generally said to reprent the proportn of people engagg same-sex behavr.

IS BEG GAY YOUR DNA? SCIENTISTS KEEP TRYG TO FD A GEIC BASIS FOR SEXUAL ORIENTATN

' At the same time, subsequent studi reveal that the percentage of people who fe themselv as “exclively” homosexual is far lower, though fluctuat om one article to the next. ”One of the lsons, and one of the most tertg pots arisg om the study has to do, says Ganna, wh the mo of measurement that had been e sce 1948, when Ksey’s sle ranked dividuals as beg between 0 (totally heterosexual) and 6 (totally homosexual) “Basilly, the tenncy is to lote dividuals on a ntuum. You n supposedly be anywhere between 100 percent heterosexual to 100 percent homosexual, which impli that the more you’re homosexual, the ls you’re heterosexual, and vice versa.

What we’re now dog is, rather than askg people to put themselv on a sle somewhere between beg exclively heterosexual or exclively homosexual, we ask them how much they’re attracted to men and women. I don’t thk ’s val for gay liberatn to prove that ‘gay people n’t help but be gay’ – there are plenty of other reasons [for acceptg them], cludg basic human rights.

THERE’S NO ONE ‘GAY GENE,’ BUT GEICS ARE LKED TO SAME-SEX BEHAVR, NEW STUDY SAYS

”In recent years, “there have been many studi showg that people’s attus toward homosexualy are closely tied to their beliefs about what mak people gay, ” says LeVay, cg a survey that showed there was a high probabily that people who thk homosexualy is a choice will object to a gay person beg their children’s teacher – which a way might make sense, he adds: “If you thk beg gay is somethg fect, socially ntag, and you didn’t want your kid to be gay, then you wouldn’t want their teacher to be gay... One of the parameters nsirs are geic rrelatns between gen that are ascribed to homosexualy, and certa psychologil, the psychologist: “One thg that was perceived as ntroversial, was to look for – and fd – a geic overlap between homosexual sex gen and gen associated wh prsn.

NEW STUDY FDS GEICS INFLUENCE LGBTQ SEXUALY, BUT STILL NO 'GAY GENE'

There are assumptns that the higher rat of prsn among gay men and lbians is due to the way they are mistreated by society, but the evince for that is not so overwhelmg. There is also the fact, for example, that you have as high a rate of prsn among homosexual men the Netherlands, which is very tolerant, as you have some ls tolerant plac, like the Uned Stat. In 2017, for example, two rearchers om Stanford published an article statg that “gay men are predicted to have smaller jaws and chs, slimmer eyebrows, longer nos, and larger foreheads; the oppose should be te for lbians.

THERE’S (STILL) NO GAY GENE

The program was able to distguish between gays and lbians and heterosexuals wh an accuracy of 81 percent for men and 71 percent for women, ntrast to an average rate of succsful human gus of 61 percent and 54 percent, rpectively. Even though the program achieved relatively imprsive rults, the study as such drew wispread cricism – not unual for rearchers engaged such Stanford “gays intifitn” program may be an extreme example, this rpect, but ’s also a byproduct of the nsirable surge studi this field, a trend that began the early 1990s.

The first one, nducted 1977, found that only 13 percent of the rponnts believed that homosexualy is an nate tenncy, while 56 percent attributed to environmental factors. The latt survey, om the end of last year, showed this trend ntug: More than half of the Amerin public believ that gay people are born wh their sexual orientatn, whereas only 30 percent attribute to environmental factors (10 percent said both factors play a part, 4 percent ced other factors and 6 percent said they weren’t sure). The latt Gallup poll shows that an absolutely majory (88 percent) of those who believe that homosexualy is an nate tra also support legimizg same-sex marriag.

“Public opn polls asked people whether they thk [gays] were born this way or not, and we know that believg that homosexualy is nate rrelat wh havg posive feelgs toward gay rights. It very much appears that same-sex sexual attractn is not a choice but actg on is; so if you fe gay as the mere prence of same-sex attractn, then om everythg we unrstand, beg gay is not a choice.

GAY RIGHTS

If, on the other hand, you nsir someone to be gay only if they act on their same-sex attractn then beg gay n be nsired a choice pendg on an dividual's behavr. 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.