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

Contents:

• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN GAY”
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?
• PROOF YOU N'T BE 'BORN GAY'
• WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A MYTH BUT BEG GAY IS 'NATURAL,' SAY SCIENTISTS
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• NO ONE IS BORN GAY!
• THERE’S (STILL) NO GAY GENE

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

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.

ARE WE BORN 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. “Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy.

” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame. ”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.

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.

CLIL STUDY CONFIRMS PEOPLE ARE NOT BLOGILLY “BORN GAY”

“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.

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

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. And when I published my say on choosg to be gay, an irate Amerin lbian activist wrote me that had “jt been nfirmed” to her that my wrg was “directly rponsible for four gay aths Rsia. 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.

”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.

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

” 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. ”The other problem wh Born This Way science is summed up nicely by Simon Copland: “Scientists are askg whether homosexualy is natural when we n’t even agree exactly what homosexualy is.

” 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.

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

“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. “Then there was a shift, and the lears of the movement chose to jump on board wh a ls nuanced argument that people already unrstood: jt like race, people are born wh their homosexualy.

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. If people were born wh geic dg to practice homosexualy, that geic would soon be erased om human DNA bee would not be passed along to subsequent generatns (bee homosexualy isn’t procreative). Supreme Court lg that sanctned so-lled “gay marriage, ” ma their lg, part, bee of the claim that homosexualy was blogilly nate to certa dividuals, and therefore to prohib their marriage, was discrimatory.

PROOF YOU N'T BE 'BORN GAY'

“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.

The most effective, and I would argue the only, way to stop the homosexual polil agenda is to direct discsns to a topic that homosexuals have succsfully protected om public bate; whether people are "born gay. Such people support homosexual objectiv out of passn; but this passn too often has overridn their own theologil beliefs and the time-tted Juo-Christian prcipl upon which our untry was found.

WHAT DO THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT BEG BORN GAY?

The article, "Are people really 'born gay'?, " om the June 14, 2010 issue of CizenLk do an effective job of refutg the claim by examg studi, providg expert opn and showg the flaws of the homosexual muny's posn. The laws of evolutn and of geic succsn are particularly harsh on any tra that prevents reproductn, so let's start wh a simple formula that pats a stark picture: "One gay man + one gay man = zero gay children. " While you are at , propose any percentage of gays the startg populatn and any fertily rat for gays and straights, and ask for the mathematil lculatns of how rapidly a homosexual gene would die out.

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

This scenar has two possible : 1) Sally nverted om hetero to homo, and there is no anic basis for sexual orientatn, or 2) rearchers built their studi on the premise that Sally and those like her were hetero, only to have to disrd all their rearch bee 's based on flawed assumptns. If those bras labeled "straight" clud homosexuals who have not yet e out, while the bras labeled "gay" clud straights that are really jt nfed and only thought they were homosexual, the rearcher is jt parg one group of gay and straight bras wh another group of gay and straight bras. Also, if people are "born gay, " please expla whether pedophil were born that way and if not, why is there such an sistence that their behavr mt have been learned or chosen, but that of heterosexuals and homosexuals uld not have been?

Wispread unrstandg of this material uld signifintly damage the foundatn upon which the gay rights polil agenda and iology are built, thereby g the posns to be easily feated social, polil public policy bat. In 1988, he published an article accurately predictg the homosexual mand for "total acceptance of homosexualy by all of society" and their creasg effective attempts to silence the opposn.

They asked more than 477, 000 participants whether they had ever had sex wh someone of the same sex, and also qutns about sexual fantasi and the gree to which they intified as gay or straight.

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

“A lot of people want to unrstand the blogy of homosexualy, and science has lagged behd that human tert, ” says William Rice, an evolutnary geicist at the Universy of California, Santa Barbara, who also was not volved the work.

The news this week that the largt study of s kd failed to nfirm the existence of a "gay gene" is not so much a disappotment for those lookg to unrstand the LGBTQ muny, as is an acknowledgement that science do not need to tell what should be plaly obv: gays, lbians, bisexuals and pansexuals are who they are. While the variatns the gen are not enough to raise a rabow flag and label anyone as unqutnably gay, the rearchers say the blogil variants may at the very least partly fluence sexual behavr.

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

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. 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).

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

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). 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.

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. 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.

NO ONE IS BORN GAY!

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. 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.

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. 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.

THERE’S (STILL) NO GAY GENE

In an overview of her prev rearch, Diamond acknowledg that early studi of homosexualy foced maly on the “g out” mols of young men, wh the velopmental sequence movg om an awarens of same-sex attractn at 9 or 10 years old, to a gradual sexual experimentatn wh other mal, to a regnn and acknowledgement of a homosexual orientatn, to an ultimate adoptn and announcement of gay self-inty. But she also acknowledged that ’s been almost impossible to accurately accs male homosexualy bee the sampl have been small, non-random and self-selected, and the right kds of qutns haven’t been asked. That figure is based on a flty terpretatn of the Ksey rearch, which actually reported that approximately 10 percent of the male populatn had engaged homosexual behavr at some time durg their life.

To asss the nsistenci among sexual inty, attractn and behavr ― the send “pillar” ― Diamond did her own samplg of 300+ Salt Lake Cy rints who were almost equally divid between those who self-intified as homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual. But this was not the se; for example, 42 percent of lbian women and 40 percent of gay men reported some attractn to the oppose sex the prev year, and 31 percent of gay men reported havg had romantic feelgs for women. But nohels, her rearch is an example of hont and relatively impartial scientific quiry that refut several of the false notns about homosexualy that perva our culture and Church ― cludg the belief that the clatn is immutable and nnot be changed.

Public opn studi over the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s routely showed that, among large segments of the public, lbian, gay, and bisexual people were the target of strongly held negative attus.