Why would people 'choose' to be gay? | Science | The Guardian

Contents:

• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• DO GAYS HAVE A CHOICE?
• ARE YOU BORN GAY OR IS A CHOICE? SCIENTISTS MIGHT HAVE FOUND THE ANSWER
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• IS A PERSON ‘BORN GAY’, OR IS BEG GAY A LEARNED BEHAVR?
• DO THE BIBLE SAY BEG GAY IS A CHOICE?
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• IS IT A CHOICE TO BE GAY? IT DEPENDS ON THE MEANG OF 'IT'
• BEG GAY NOT A CHOICE: SCIENCE CONTRADICTS BEN CARSON
• HOMOSEXUALY & CHOICE: ARE GAY PEOPLE 'BORN THIS WAY?'
• IS BEG 'GAY' A CHOICE? SCIENCE SAYS Y (BUT NOT THE WAY YOU'RE THKG)
• WHY WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?
• HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY
• 5 MYTHS ABOUT GAY PEOPLE DEBUNKED
• ‘EX-GAY’ MEN FIGHT BACK AGAST VIEW THAT HOMOSEXUALY CAN’T BE CHANGED
• GAY BY CHOICE? THE SCIENCE OF SEXUAL INTY
• HOW TO LEAD A HETEROSEXUAL LIFTYLE IF YOU ARE GAY
• BEG GAY: A LIFE STYLE CHOICE?
• CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?
• CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?
• 'GAY GEN': SCIENCE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, WE'RE BORN THIS WAY. LET’S AL WH .
• HOW TO SUPPORT, EMPATHIZE WH, AND AFFIRM LGBTQ+ PEOPLE
• HOW DO YOU RELATE TO A GAY FAY MEMBER?
• CYNTHIA NIXON: GAY BY CHOICE?

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

If we fe beg gay as engagg homosexual behavr (the ncept of “gay” as an inty is a Wtern cultural ncept – people who have sex wh both men and women may ll themselv gay, straight or bisexual, pendg on the l of their culture or subculture), then people stop beg gay as soon as they stop engagg this behavr.

DO GAYS HAVE A CHOICE?

If sexual preference n be altered, then people who support gay rights n’t rely on the argument that gay people should be protected om discrimatn bee gay people have no choice but to be gay – an argument that seems like an apology for homosexualy, as if homosexualy is a disease for which there is no cure. In the 1968 edn of the Diagnostic and Statistil Manual of Mental Disorrs (DSM)—the dispensable diagnostic tool ed by therapists—homosexualy appeared the sectn on sexual viatns as an stance of an aberratn which sexual terts are “directed primarily toward objects other than people of the oppose sex.

ARE YOU BORN GAY OR IS A CHOICE? SCIENTISTS MIGHT HAVE FOUND THE ANSWER

Bee of the enormo prsur phg all of toward the straight end of the Sexual Orientatn Contuum om the time we are very young, is reasonable to assume that most of the people who currently live as homosexuals were probably close to the gay end of the ntuum to beg wh; other words, they probably have strong geic tennci toward homosexualy. The mothers were then classified further to one of five groups: those wh gay male only-children (n = 8), those wh gay male offsprg that had no olr brothers (n = 23), those wh gay male offsprg wh olr brothers (n = 23), those wh heterosexual male only-children (n = 11), and those wh heterosexual male offsprg wh siblgs (n = 61).

As birth weight tends to crease over succsive pregnanci, the parisons were limed to first live-born sons only (n = 63); this left 4 gay male only-children, 7 gay mal wh no olr brothers, 14 heterosexual mal wh gay younger brothers, 10 heterosexual male only-children, and 28 heterosexual mal wh siblgs. On the other hand, if this is a more general immune reactn agast fetal bodi, regardls of their sex, we would not expect such a pattern ( might also predict that mothers takg immunosupprsants would be ls likely to have gay offsprg/misrry, but thgs are unlikely to be that simple owg to the fact that other effects would rult too). 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?

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. 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.

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. “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?

DO THE BIBLE SAY BEG GAY IS A CHOICE?

If Nixon feels this was her choice, so be at a mimum, is imperative to clear up the nfn between sexual attractn and sexual actn -- not bee a same-sex sexual attractn has anythg wrong wh (ed, the problem wh bracketg the moral qutn of choice is that wast an opportuny to argue that, the words of the late Frank Kameny, "gay is good"), but bee the suggtn that we chose our sexual attractns do not make sense ('s not jt wrong; 's lerally meangls). And here is equally imperative that we sist that those actns are dignified choic, not bee they're done behd closed doors or bee no one has the right to judge others' actns -- they do, jt as progrsiv rightly judge those who oppose payg tax or recyclg or treatg their children nonvlently -- but bee there's nothg wrong wh same-sex activy, and bee choosg to act a way that's nsistent wh your sexual orientatn -- gay, bi, or straight -- is a posive moral good.

Viewg attractn and actn this way -- distguishg between re parts of our inti and the choic we make as to how to exprs aspects of those inti -- uld go far toward puttg to rt the ia that we n choose to be gay, or the equally false ia that if we do choose a same-sex partner, there's anythg wrong wh that choice. The timele of events history that led to the propagatn of the “’s not a choice” unter-argument clearly shows that this is not herently a matter of gay-rights activism, but, rather, a necsary graspg unto somethg prented by a segment of the scientific muny that simultaneoly uld enable a need moment of relief om relentls attacks agast the soul. Ben Carson, a retired nrosurgeon and printial hopeful, recently apologized for a statement which he said beg gay is "absolutely" a an terview on CNN, the potential 2016 Republin printial ndidate mented that "a lot of people who go to prison, go to prison straight, and when they e out they're gay, so did somethg happen while they were there?

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

A gay man is more likely than a straight man to have a (blogil) gay brother; lbians are more likely than straight women to have gay 1993, a study published the journal Science showed that fai wh two homosexual brothers were very likely to have certa geic markers on a regn of the X chromosome known as Xq28.

IS IT A CHOICE TO BE GAY? IT DEPENDS ON THE MEANG OF 'IT'

Throughout history, marriag have been fluenced by fay relatns and by enomic adhere to cultural nstrats of monogamy spe beg attracted to people other than their culture affects your views on some societi, homosexualy is accepted, others, is owned upon but tolerated, yet others, is a ser crimal offense, possibly punishable by homosexual behavr was expected ancient Athens. Most Amerins would be probably be nseated if they learned that, when they thought they had been eatg beef, they were, fact, eatg dog, even though there is nothg herently unhealthy about dog you have learned about homosexualy as you were growg up will affect whether you nsir engagg homosexual acts to be sirable or people might argue that if you are “geilly gay” but the thought of homosexualy nseat you, then you jt haven’t accepted the fact that you really are gay.

BEG GAY NOT A CHOICE: SCIENCE CONTRADICTS BEN CARSON

That argument is based on the assumptn that sexual preference is purely blogil; therefore, has no place a discsn about the possible of BraThe stcture of the bra might fluence sexual 1991, a study published the journal Science seemed to show that the hypothalam, which ntrols the release of sex hormon om the puary gland, gay men differs om the hypothalam straight men.

HOMOSEXUALY & CHOICE: ARE GAY PEOPLE 'BORN THIS WAY?'

Perhaps one day we will be able to adjt sexual preference via surgery – focg on the particular regns of the bra that are associated wh sexual preference – or via nral implants or Sexual Preference Can Be ChangedEven if gay people n never stop beg attracted to members of the same sex, they n learn not to act on their already learn to stop smokg, to give up certa foods, and not cheat on their hbands or we fe beg gay as engagg homosexual behavr (the ncept of “gay” as an inty is a Wtern cultural ncept – people who have sex wh both men and women may ll themselv gay, straight or bisexual, pendg on the l of their culture or subculture), then people stop beg gay as soon as they stop engagg this they stop?

IS BEG 'GAY' A CHOICE? SCIENCE SAYS Y (BUT NOT THE WAY YOU'RE THKG)

)If sexual preference n be altered, then people who support gay rights n’t rely on the argument that gay people should be protected om discrimatn bee gay people have no choice but to be gay – an argument that seems like an apology for homosexualy, as if homosexualy is a disease for which there is no is an element of homophobia that argument– the implitn that gay people would bee straight, if only they uld. In fact, when we you do so, you rerce the belief that your behavr is has to prove that blogy forc them to vote for a particular polil party, practice a certa relign or follow a particular as gay people who are happy as they are should not be forced to change their sexual orientatn, gay people who want to be straight should have the right to change if they n – and the rrect word is “change” – not “cure” his blog post, Lowr stat, “Many crics will argue that appealg to blogy is the only way to protect agast the attacks of the relig right. Normally heterosexual characters sudnly displayg homosexual leangs when a boost viewg figur are need is a mon trope the days, so you n sort of see how this might make some people thk ’s a “choice”, if they lack more realistic sayg that sexualy is set stone om birth is also not que right, the ma emphasis of those g the choice argument is that homosexuals have weighed up their optns and nscly cid “I am gog to be gay om now on”.

WHY WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?

Comedian Todd Glass mak a brilliant pot his book (which is great, I got for Christmas), which is that if you genuely believe sexualy is a choice, then you’re not actually straight, you jt haven’t met anyone persuasive enough those who argue that homosexualy is a choice variably assert that is a wrong choice.

HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY

Most people the LGBTQ+ muny know om experience that acceptg your sexualy will lead to your beg a happier, more open this gui, the term gay has been ed to clu all forms of non-heterosexual attractn, whether that be people who are lbian, gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual, or otherwise not straight. S., " said UCLA psychologist Anne Pepl, -thor of a book chapter on the subject published the 2007 Annual Review of example, John Gottman, a Universy of Washgton emer profsor of psychology, and his lleagu llected data om homosexual upl across 12 years, and found that about 20 percent had broken up over that time. "The overall implitn of this rearch is that we have to shake off all of the stereotyp of homosexual relatnships and have more rpect for them as mted relatnships, " Gottman fact, the same study found that gay upl tend to be better at rolvg nflicts and enuragg posive pedophil are gay(Image cred: © Normasmond |)An pecially pernic myth is that most adults who sexually abe children are gay.

A number of rearchers have looked at this qutn to terme if homosexuals are more likely to be pedophil than heterosexuals, and the data dite that's not the example, a 1989 study led by Kurt Frnd of the Clarke Instute of Psychiatry Canada, scientists showed pictur of children to adult gay and straight mal, and measured sexual aroal. (Image cred: Dreamstime)While some claim that beg gay is a choice, or that homosexualy n be cured, evince is mountg that same-sex attractn is at least partly geic and blogilly tt whether gen play a role, rearchers have pared intil tws ( which all gen are shared) to aternal tws ( which about 50 percent of gen are shared). "The rults support the theory that differenc the central nervo system exist between homosexual and heterosexual dividuals and that the differenc are possibly related to early factors bra velopment, " said Sandra Welson of McMaster Universy Ontar, an thor on the 1998 ner ear fdg published the journal Proceedgs of the Natnal Amy of Scienc.

Smh is one of thoands of men across the untry, often known as “ex-gay, ” who believe they have changed their most basic sexual sir through some batn of therapy and prayer — somethg most scientists say has never been proved possible and is likely an men are often closeted, fearg ridicule om gay advot who acce them of self-ceptn and, at the same time, fearg rejectn by their church muni as tated oddi. Spzer, publicly repudiated as valid his own 2001 study suggtg that some people uld change their sexual orientatn; the study had been wily ced by fenrs of the this summer, the ex-gay world was nvulsed when Alan Chambers, the print of Exod Internatnal, the largt Christian mistry for people fightg same-sex attractn, said he did not believe anyone uld be rid of homosexual Nilosi, a psychologist and clil director of the Thomas Aquas Psychologil Clic Enco, Calif., which he scrib as the largt reparative therapy clic the world, disagreed. That’s the ual terpretatn of reparative therapy—that to the extent that do anythg, leads people to reprs rather than change their natural clatns, that s claims to change sexual orientatn are an outright d perpetrated by the relig right on people who have ternalized the homophobia of Amerin society, personalized the polil such a way as to reject their own sexualy and stunt their love liv.

5 MYTHS ABOUT GAY PEOPLE DEBUNKED

All the major psychotherapy guilds have barred their members om rearchg or practicg reparative therapy on the grounds that is herently uhil to treat somethg that is not a disease, that ntribut to opprsn by pathologizg homosexualy, and that is dangero to patients whose self-teem n only suffer when they try to change somethg about themselv that they n’t (and shouldn’t have to) change. Another anti-sodomy-law opponent, lawyer Karl Herich Ulrichs, proposed that homosexual men, or “Uranians, ” as he lled them (and he openly nsired himself a Uranian, while Kertbeny was y about his preferenc), were actually a third sex, their attractn to other men a maniftatn of the female soul ridg their male bodi. Hirschfeld was an outspoken opponent of anti-sodomy laws and champned tolerance of gay people, but he also believed that homosexualy was a pathologil state, a ngenal formy of the bra that may have been the rult of a parental “generacy” that nature tend to elimate by makg the fective populatn unlikely to reproduce.

Frd was psimistic that homosexualy uld be treated, but doctors abhor an illns whout a cure, and the 20th century saw therapists flict the bt of morn psychiatric practice on gay people, which clud, addn to termable psychoanalysis and unproven meditns, treatments that ed electric shock to associate pa wh same-sex attractn. You hear when Joe and Marian Allen take to the lectern to tell how God has lled them to “give ttimony” about their gay son who was murred by his lover, a tragedy that they manage to twist to a utnary tale about what happens when a “stggler” is told by a “well-meang therapist” that he was “born gay” and n’t change . They do seem to hug a lot—many reparative therapists are ex-gay themselv, and, someone explas, part of beg ex-gay is learng to be same-sex affectnate whout beg same-sex sexual—and maybe some of those hugs last a ltle too long, but ’s mostly like every other nventn: bad ffee, worse Danish, dry-as-dt lectur.

‘EX-GAY’ MEN FIGHT BACK AGAST VIEW THAT HOMOSEXUALY CAN’T BE CHANGED

Sometim he’s puckish—as when he says, “When to homosexualy, I’m pro-choice”—a ment sure to get a rise out of a crowd well versed the other moral disaster of 1973—and sometim glib (“the proper answer to the nature/nurture qutn is y”), but mostly he’s jt workmanlike as he reviews the rearch—much of , he is lighted to pot out, nducted by the “activists themselv. ” He c a study om Denmark—the first place that legalized civil unns and perhaps, he says, the most gay-iendly place the world— which gay people turned out to have mental illns at a higher rate than straights, which prov, he says, that an tolerant society is not the culpr when gay people suffer. He even shows vio of one of his treatment ssns, and giv a plsible-soundg asssment of the prospects for patients of reparative therapists—that one-third of them will bee heterosexual, one-third will rema gay, and one-third will move a few notch along the Ksey sle, enough to leave the liftyle and lim their unwanted feelgs and behavr.

GAY BY CHOICE? THE SCIENCE OF SEXUAL INTY

The study was full of veats and received wherg cricism om scientists who claimed that relied on a skewed sample—mostly people handpicked by reparative therapists like Byrd—but had passed peer review, and, even more importantly, had been nducted by none other than Robert Spzer, the same psychiatrist who had brokered the al that leted homosexualy om the dsm. In the last 15 years, rearchers have disvered differenc bra anatomy between gay and straight men—and found that the 6 percent of rams that have sex exclively wh other rams (jt one of hundreds of speci which homosexual behavr has been observed) have a siar nroanatomil difference; intified a gene sequence on the X chromosome that is mon to many gay men; traced genealogi to show that homosexualy ns fai, on the maternal si; proved that a man’s likelihood of beg gay creas wh the number of olr brothers he has, which scientists attribute to chang trtere chemistry; and learned how to e magic ronance imagg to tect sexual orientatn by watchg the bra’s rponse to pornography.

HOW TO LEAD A HETEROSEXUAL LIFTYLE IF YOU ARE GAY

The Supreme Court has led that the immutabily of a group’s intifyg characteristics is one of the creria that entle to heightened protectn om discrimatn (and some s tablishg gay rights were cid part on those grounds), but, acrdg to Suzanne Goldberg, director of the Sexualy and Genr Law Clic at Columbia Law School, there’s a far more fundamental reason for urts to protect gay people. The paper suggts that there is an iologil dilemma whereby both ‘born-this-way’ and ‘choice’ arguments n be unrstood as lludg wh anti-gay unrstandg of the nrochemil bas of human love and attachment, as well as of the geic, epigeic, hormonal, and experiential factors that nspire to shape an dividual’s sexual orientatn, is creasg exponentially. Rearch and polil implitns are discsed as well as the need for more effective clil strategi that tegrate nservative social inti wh same-sex article analyz the current dichotomy Amerin polil and popular culture between pro-gay blogil termism, which is ed to argue for LGBTQ rights, and anti-gay social nstctnist ias.

Buildg on Lisa Duggan’s notn of homonormativy, the thor scrib this discursive productn as blogil homonormativy, illtrated through an analysis of three key s: an exchange between lbian mic in Melissa Etheridge and Governor Bill Richardson durg an LGBT polil fom; the legal proceedgs of Perry v. Like nerds who grow up to nont their bulli, Suba executiv me to realize that the people opposg the acknowledgment of gays and lbians were not as imposg as they of the reasons that, the days, the rmaker’s role cultivatg s lbian-iendly image is ls well known is that so many straight people were bld to the subtext of the s first Suba ads, Mulryan/Nash hired women to portray lbian upl. While Volkswagen played y about whether an ad perceived as gay-iendly really portrayed a gay uple, Suba sponsored events like gay-pri paras, partnered wh the Rabow Card, a cred rd that stead of sh back offered donatns to gay and lbian , and hired Marta Navratilova, a former tennis pro and a lbian, to appear Suba ads.

A number of amics cricized rporate Ameri’s embrace of the LGBTQ muny: While pani wanted the profs that me om marketg a gay sense of style, they foced on upper-class and whe gay inti—rarely gay people of lor or those unable to afford medil treatment for HIV/ acrdg to Derrian, that perspective unrtimat the telligence of LGBTQ nsumers.

BEG GAY: A LIFE STYLE CHOICE?

CAN A PERSON BE BORN GAY?

CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?CAN YOU BE GAY BY CHOICE?

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

HOW TO SUPPORT, EMPATHIZE WH, AND AFFIRM LGBTQ+ PEOPLE

HOW DO YOU RELATE TO A GAY FAY MEMBER?

CYNTHIA NIXON: GAY BY CHOICE?