Are We Born Gay? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• WHO IS JOSEPH ZIEGLER, THE GAY IRS WHISTLEBLOWER HUNTER BIN PROBE?
• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?

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

The study, which was based on an examatn of the geic material of almost half a ln dividuals, fively refut the ia that beg gay is an nate ndn that is ntrolled or largely pelled by one’s geic makp. Send, rebuttg s of wispread belief, the study tablished that “there is certaly no sgle geic termant (sometim referred to as the ‘gay gene’ the media)” that same-sex sexual behavr.

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. ” Other scientists volved the study, who are themselv gay, publicly opposed s publitn, voicg ncern that the fdgs would be “misnsted” to “advance agendas of hate.

In many such plac, the stggle for eedom today is not primarily for people who want to intify themselv as gay or lbian, but for people who want to avoid or rist such an intifitn for themselv. ” 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.

ARE WE BORN GAY?

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. ” 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.

” We uld also add the books Jephthah’s Dghters and Changed: #Oncegay Stori, each of which prents dozens of acunts of persons who have transned away om homosexual inty and behavr. 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 PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

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. 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.

Though he's retired today, Bean also spent many years as a sort of activist pastor: He found the Uny Fellowship Church, mistered to gays and lbians and was vol durg the AIDS crisis. 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.

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

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

“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. Patrick Grzanka, Assistant Profsor of Psychology at Universy of Tennsee, for stance, has shown that some people who believe that homosexualy is nate still hold negative views of gays. 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. 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.

WHO IS JOSEPH ZIEGLER, THE GAY IRS WHISTLEBLOWER HUNTER BIN PROBE?

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.

” 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? Begng om his observatn that there are more gay relativ on a mother’s si than a father’s, Hamer turned his attentn to the X chromosome (which is passed on by the mother).

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

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.