Is There a “Gay Gene"? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• SEARCH FOR 'GAY GEN' COM UP SHORT IN LARGE NEW STUDY
• IS THERE A “GAY GENE"?
• WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• NEW THEORY: THE GAY TRA IS PASSED DOWN FROM PARENT TO CHILD
• WE MAY KNOW WHY YOUNGER BROTHERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY
• THE REAL STORY ON GAY GEN
• A 'GAY GENE'? IT'S PLITED, ACRDG TO NEW REARCH ON SAME-SEX BEHAVR
• IS THE “GAY GENE” REAL?

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

Fdg evince for a blogil basis should not sre or unrme gay, lbian and bisexual (LGB) rights (the studi I refer to do not clu transgenred dividuals, so I’ll nfe my ments to lbian, gay and bisexual people). Gen uld themselv nudge one towards a particular sexual orientatn or gen may simply teract wh other environmental factors (such as sex hormon the womb environment) to fluence later sexual bras of gay and heterosexual people also appear to be anised differently.

IS BEG GAY GEIC?

The fluence of blogy ns throughout our sexual and genred liv and those differenc, that diversy, is surely to be wrers tend to wave off the scientific evince by urgg to look to the history of sexualy or claim that homosexualy is a social nstctn (cue Michel Fouult and the like).

Surely our choic are the rult of thgs we didn’t choose (our gen, personali, upbrgg, and culture) worry that scientific rearch will lead to “cur” for homosexualy (which is an odd worry to have if you don’t believe the “born this way” argument).

SEARCH FOR 'GAY GEN' COM UP SHORT IN LARGE NEW STUDY

We are who we are, and our sexuali are part of human worry about the claims of social nstctn, choice and such like is that plays to the hands of homophobic iology, to the hands of the “aversn therapists”, and to the hands of a growg culture which seeks to mimise gay differenc. The logic of the two rults—low herabily and high polygenicy—clearly monstrate that the domant cultural narrative about sexual orientatn—which se homosexual persons as a distctly bound blogil class of people who were “born that way”—simply nnot be te.

” The termist logic of this cisn has empowered those who formerly advoted that homosexual persons may marry someone of the same sex to now advote that, if they marry, homosexual persons mt marry someone of the same sex.

Numero legislative and judicial efforts are currently unrway to outlaw voluntary therapy or to ny the legimacy of adults who experience some level of same-sex attractn but choose not to engage same-sex relatns or intify themselv as gay or lbian, on the grounds that such actns ny their immutable nature. Yet many now seek to ny the same people the eedom to cle to intify as gay and to marry someone of the oppose sex, if they so choose, on the premise that they would thereby be dog vlence to who they “really” are. Followg Polrman’s study, a team of proment sexualy rearchers terpreted the replited low level of herabily to suggt that, while ternal sexual attractn may not be socially malleable, the adoptn of a sexual inty unnstraed by ternal attractn—homosexual, heterosexual, or somethg else—is well wh the range of velopment for most people.

IS THERE A “GAY GENE"?

” The kds of choic and therapy to support them, they note, are most mon among the religly observant, and “likely expla claims by ex-gays and ex-lbians that they are no longer leadg a ‘homosexual liftyle.

On the General Social Survey (a biennial statistil profile of the US populatn fund by the Natnal Science Foundatn), 57 percent of people who intify as gay (40 percent of gay men and 78 percent of lbian women) report havg had one or more oppose-sex sex partners sce age eighteen. In 100, 300 terviews that asked about sexual orientatn on the 2013-2015 Natnal Health Interview Survey, 13 percent of currently partnered gay persons reported beg an oppose-sex, not same-sex, sexual partnership.

WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?

As the studi have both found, most persons wh a genotype parable to that of gay or lbian persons end up, for var reasons of social environment or velopment or personal prciple, not engagg same-sex relatns. If ever did make sense on the premise that gay persons were geilly termed, the absence of a pellg geic difference, is impossible reasonably to mata that tolerance of homosexual behavr requir tolerance of heterosexual behavr.

And bee the rearchers didn't fd gene variants that rrelated wh a gradient of sexual behavr, she says, unrcuts Aled Ksey's s-old sle, which ranked people on a spectm of sexualy, om exclively heterosexual to exclively homosexual. It is important to note that the same-sex soc-sexual behavr observed the study is distct om homosexual behavr bee s motivatn and purpose are social, said Jean-Baptiste Le, who studi primate behavr at the Universy of Lethbridge Canada and was not volved the new rearch. This topic has long been a ntroversial area, wh some believg the existence of a “gay gene” that ultimately term orientatn and preferenc, while others assure that the tra is purely termed by surroundgs and environment.

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

In other words, this pattern of rults would appear to place gay men at the two extrem of the “mascule” sle, wh heterosexual mal occupyg the middle ground, “bottoms” at the lower end, and “tops” at the higher end. But nsirg that the tra disurag the type of sex that leads to procreatn — that is, sex wh women — and would therefore seem to thwart s own chanc of beg geilly passed on to the next generatn, why are there gay men at all? For several years, studi led by Andrea Camper Ciani at the Universy of Padova Italy and others have found that mothers and maternal nts of gay men tend to have signifintly more offsprg than the maternal relativ of straight men.

The rults show strong support for the "balancg selectn hypothis, " which is fast beg the accepted theory of the geic basis of male theory holds that the same geic factors that duce gayns mal also promote fecundy (high reproductive succs) those mal' female maternal relativ. Through this tra-off, the maternal relativ' "gay man gen, " though they aren't exprsed as such, tend to get passed to future generatns spe of their tenncy to make their male herors no one knows which gen, exactly, the might be, at least one of them appears to be loted on the X chromosome, acrdg to geic molg by Camper Ciani and his lleagu.

Mal her only one X chromosome — the one om their mother — and if clus the gene that promot gayns mal and fecundy femal, he is likely to be gay while his mom and her female relativ are likely to have lots of kids. Prevly, the Italian rearchers suggted that the "gay man gene" might simply crease androphilia, or attractn to men, thereby makg the mal who posss the gene homosexual and the femal who posss more promiscuo. The androphilic pattern that we found is about femal who crease their reproductive value to attract the bt mal, " Camper Ciani told Life's Ltle out, the moms and nts of gay men have an advantage over the moms and nts of straight men for several reasons: They are more fertile, displayg fewer gynelogil disorrs or plitns durg pregnancy; they are more extroverted, as well as funnier, happier and more relaxed; and they have fewer fay problems and social anxieti.

NEW THEORY: THE GAY TRA IS PASSED DOWN FROM PARENT TO CHILD

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.

WE MAY KNOW WHY YOUNGER BROTHERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY

” 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. ”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.

THE REAL STORY ON GAY GEN

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.

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.

A 'GAY GENE'? IT'S PLITED, ACRDG TO NEW REARCH ON SAME-SEX BEHAVR

”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? 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.

IS THE “GAY GENE” REAL?

” 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?

”Acrdg to surveys, ls than half of Generatn Z intify as "100% heterosexual", suggtg more and more people have embraced their sexual fluidy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Perhaps is time to look to the begng of the gay rights movement. I’m thankful for a new generatn that is pable of imagg sexualy a way that transcends the gay/straight bary, that uldn’t re ls about what happened to their bodi and mds to make them who they are today. Some people believe gay people make a choice to be gay, while others believe they were born that "gay gene" has been found to expla homosexualy, but a recent analysis published by The Quarterly Review of Blogy suggts a new theory: The tra uld be due to chang the regulatn of gen the womb, and not the gen themselv, and uld be passed down om parent to child.