Born gay?

Born gay?

Are we born gay, or is it a choice?

Sexual identity is wired into the genes, which discounts the concept that homosexuality and transgender sexuality are a choice, according to researchers in California. “Our findings may help answer an important question – why do we feel male or female?” Dr. Eric Vilain, a genetics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, said in a statement. “Sexual identity is rooted in every person’s biology before birth and springs from a variation in our individual genome.” His team has identified 54 genes in mice that may explain why male and female brains look and function differently.

Since the 1970s, scientists have believed that oestrogen and testosterone were wholly responsible for sexually organising the brain. Recent evidence, however, indicates that hormones cannot explain everything about the sexual differences between male and female brains. Published in the journal Molecular Brain Research, the UCLA discovery may also offer physicians an improved tool for gender assignment of babies born with ambiguous genitalia. Mild cases of malformed genitalia occur in 1 percent of all births – about 3 million cases. More severe cases – where doctors can’t inform parents whether they had a boy or girl – occur in one in 3,000 births.

“If physicians could predict the gender of newborns with ambiguous genitalia at birth, we would make less mistakes in gender assignment,” Vilain said. Using two genetic testing methods, the researchers compared the production of genes in male and female brains in embryonic mice – long before the animals developed sex organs. They found 54 genes produced in different amounts in male and female mouse brains, prior to hormonal influence. Eighteen of the genes were produced at higher levels in the male brains; 36 were produced at higher levels in the female brains. “We discovered that the male and female brains differed in many measurable ways, including anatomy and function.” Vilain said.

For example, the two hemispheres of the brain appeared more symmetrical in females than in males. According to Vilain, the symmetry may improve communication between both sides of the brain, leading to enhanced verbal expressiveness in females. “This anatomical difference may explain why women can sometimes articulate their feelings more easily than men,” he said. The scientists plan to conduct further studies to determine the specific role for each of the 54 genes they identified. “Our findings may explain why we feel male or female, regardless of our actual anatomy,” said Vilain. “These discoveries lend credence to the idea that being transgender — feeling that one has been born into the body of the wrong sex — is a state of mind.

Since that research was published, further articles have appeared espousing different theories. The key facts regarding being born gay are generally held to be:

We usually feel that we were always this way.

We are usually aware of it quite young, but take some years to accept ourselves.

A range of methods have been tried over the decades to turn homosexuals back into heterosexuals. They range from counselling programmes to aversion programmes and medical operations.

None of them work at all.
Our sexuality may be fixed or fluid. Whichever, it is a given, not a choice. So it is normal and natural, and not of concern to anyone else.

Being gay is definitely genetic, say researchers

Being gay is nothing to do with your relationship with your mother, your father, or your best friend at boarding school; it is all in the genes, according to the scientific authors of a book on the subject. Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sexual Orientation, by Qazi Rahman, a psychobiologist at the University of East London, and Glenn Wilson, a personality specialist from the University of London, reviews research from 15 years into why people are gay. The evidence, they conclude, is that people are born with their sexuality defined, and it is not the result of their relationships with other people in their early life, as had been previously thought. The researchers examined evidence from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, genetics, endocrinology and evolutionary biology, and concluded that sexual orientation is determined by a combination of genetics and hormonal activity in the womb – and that upbringing, childhood experience and personal choice have little or no influence. They argue that the 2% to 4% of people in the population who are gay are born that way, and this proportion does not seem to vary across societies. While men tend to be either heterosexual or homosexual, with little evidence for true bisexuality, women show more mixed preferences.

Got brothers? If you grew up as a younger brother in a houseful of brothers, then if you are also gay, they may have had something to do with it, suggests research outlined in this Time article

Actor John Barrowman has made a television programme for the BBC trying to find out why he is gay. ‘Participating in this programme was exciting and provocative, but in the end, taking the personal risk to discover what makes me gay was worth it because on a daily basis I get letters from young men and women who are feeling the brunt of our culture’s homophobia. If exploring this issue can bring comfort to some of these young people then I think the programme will have done a really wonderful thing.’ writes Mr Barrowman.