What do the new ‘gay gen’ tell about sexual orientatn? | New Scientist

Contents:

• STUDY OF GAY BROTHERS SUGGTS GEIC BASIS OF MALE HOMOSEXUALY
• THERE’S NO ONE ‘GAY GENE,’ BUT GEICS ARE LKED TO SAME-SEX BEHAVR, NEW STUDY SAYS
• HOW GAY UNCL PASS DOWN GEN
• THE 'GAY GENE' IS A TOTAL MYTH, MASSIVE STUDY CONCLUS
• STUDY PROVIDES NEW EVIDENCE OF GAY GENE'
• WHAT DO THE NEW ‘GAY GEN’ TELL ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN?
• THERE’S (STILL) NO GAY GENE
• BORN GAY? HOW BLOGY MAY DRIVE ORIENTATN
• GAY MOSW · CY GUI
• GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

STUDY OF GAY BROTHERS SUGGTS GEIC BASIS OF MALE HOMOSEXUALY

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?

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

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.

HOW GAY UNCL PASS DOWN GEN

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.

THE 'GAY GENE' IS A TOTAL MYTH, MASSIVE STUDY CONCLUS

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.

“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…. 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.

STUDY PROVIDES NEW EVIDENCE OF GAY GENE'

”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.

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

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. ”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...

THERE’S (STILL) NO GAY GENE

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. 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.

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.

BORN GAY? HOW BLOGY MAY DRIVE ORIENTATN

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). A geic analysis of over 409 pairs of gay brothers found that two areas of the human genome, a portn of the X chromosome and a portn of chromosome 8, were associated wh the men's sexual orientatn. Over several years, the study’s lead thor Alan Sanrs, of the NorthShore Rearch Instute Illois, llected blood and saliva sampl om 409 pairs of gay brothers, cludg sets of non-intil tws.

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.

“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 rearchers say that, although variatns the gen nnot predict whether a person is gay, the variants may partly fluence sexual Ganna, lead thor and European Molecular Blogy Laboratory group lear at the Instute of Molecular Medice Fland, said the rearch rerc the unrstandg that same-sex sexual behavr is simply “a natural part of our diversy as a speci. Some of the variants were rrelated wh same-sex sexual behavr men, others women, and some Vila, director of the Center for Geic Medice Rearch at Children’s Natnal Health System, said the study marks the end of “the simplistic ncept of the ‘gay gene.

GAY MOSW · CY GUI

Environmental effects may be a factor for some people; for stance, havg olr brothers creas the odds that younger brothers will be gay, which rearchers spect may have to do wh chang to the mother’s immune system rponse to the earlier Stok, chief programs officer for GLAAD, said a statement that the new rearch on the geics “provis even more evince that beg gay or lbian is a natural part of human life, a ncln that has been drawn by rearchers and scientists time and aga. 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. Rearch has nfirmed that male homosexualy is at least partly heredary – tends to clter fai, and intil tw brothers of gay men are more likely to be gay than aternal tw brothers, who do not share intil scientists have been puzzled about how the gen are perpetuated, sce homosexual mal are ls likely to reproduce than straight mal.

"If fa'afafe have really been selected to be avuncular and this is an adaptatn, then they would not be redirectg rourc to non-k children, " Vasey rearchers published their fdgs a Febary issue of the journal Psychologil k selectn hypothis was first proposed the 1970s, but prev efforts to tt among gay male populatns Wtern societi found no effect. Even if many Wtern gay men wanted to be dotg uncl, their fai might not always enurage said the next step is to tt whether this trend exists other non-Wtern cultur where mal wh same-sex attractns are also accepted as a unique also said that he don't thk the k selectn hypothis entirely acunts for the endurance of gay gen, but that likely plays a role batn wh other blogil 10 Gay Animals: Alternate Liftyl the WildSex Quiz: Myths, Taboos and Bizarre FactsMom's Geics Could Produce Gay Sons.

GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

Rears would do well to discern and distst every variety of psdo-science, whether voked to jtify a relig philosophy (as evolutn for philosophil humanism), a polil iology (as evolutn for both Nazism and Socialism), or a qutnable human behavr (as the ‘gay gene’ myth for homosexual nduct). In an effort to affect public policy and ga acceptance, the assertn often is ma that homosexuals serve equal rights jt as other mory groups—and should not be punished for, or forbidn om, exprsg their homosexualy.