Posted on 05/17/2005 3:06:04 AM PDT by Pharmboy
IT sounds like something out of the satirical journal Annals of Improbable Research: a team of Swedish neuroscientists scanned people's brains as they smelled a testosterone derivative found in men's sweat and an estrogen-like compound found in women's urine.
In heterosexual men, a part of the hypothalamus (the seat of physical drives) responded to the female compound but not the male one; in heterosexual women and homosexual men, it was the other way around.
But the discovery is more than just a shoo-in for that journal's annual Ig Nobel Prize - it raises provocative questions about the science and ethics of human sexuality.
Scientists and perfume marketers who believe that humans, like other mammals, respond sexually to chemical signals called pheromones were cheered by the news. But we are a long way from dogs in heat. The role of pheromones in our sexuality must be small at best. When people want to be titillated or to check out a prospective partner, most seek words or pictures, not dirty laundry. The difference in the brain responses of gay and straight men does not, by itself, prove that homosexuality is innate; after all, learned inclinations, like innate ones, must reside somewhere in the brain.
But in this case nature probably does trump nurture. Gay men generally report that their homosexual attractions began as soon as they felt sexual stirrings before adolescence. And homosexuality is more concordant in identical than in fraternal twins, suggesting that their shared genes play a role. Homosexuality is a puzzle for biology, not because homosexuality itself is evolutionarily maladaptive (though no more so than any other sexual act that does not result in conception), but because any genetic tendency to avoid heterosexual opportunities should have been selected out long ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I bet about the time they spent alone with Mr. Happy. Pavlovian bells start ringing early.
Jesus said: "And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." -from THE BIBLE: Matthew 19:4-6
I have a very dear friend who is a lesbian. To look at her, you couldn't think she would or could be anything else.
How do they explain the high correlation between homosexuality and abusive fathers, then? Do fathers have a genetic tendency to beat the crap out of fairy sons?
Or maybe that's how the father deals with his own genetic 'tendencies'. Just a thought...
After they "sniff out" the gay gene, they should "snuff out" the gay gene.
Absolutely!
IF there is a gay gene, we should eliminate it just like we try to do with other birth defects.
I know...we can start a ribbon campaign and collect money for research! Lets see...yeah....brown ribbons..
I love articles like this because the authors,in an effort to placate the homosexual lobby, invariably twist themselves into an intellectual knot.
A few comments:
"People often confuse their own revulsion with objective sinfulness, as when they dehumanize people living in squalor or, in the other direction, engage in religious rituals of cleanliness and purification."
Umm, no not really. People of faith view homosexuality as sinful because the tenets of their faith instruct them to do so. Memo to the NYT:see the Holy Bible,Book of Leviticus, chapter 18,verse 22.
"Some gay groups condemn such research because it could stigmatize gay people as defective and lead to a day in which parents could selectively abort children with "gay genes."
Actually what the gay groups have to "worry" about if a "gay gene" is found is not the abortion of unborn gay babies, especially from people of faith, but of genetic therapies that eliminate the tendancy all together
Others welcome the research because it shows that people don't "choose" to be gay and hence can't be criticized for it, nor could homosexuals convert the children in their classrooms or Scout troops even if they wanted to"
While a few parents may indeed worry that a gay scoutmaster might "convert" their child, the far larger percentage worry that the gay scoutmaster would molest their young son as happened here some years back before good background checks were done.
For years, social conservatives fought the idea that homosexuality could be biologically or genetically based. Actually, that's the better of the two outcomes because if it is a physical defect, it is eventually curable as we know more and more about genetic therapy.
I dont doubt that there may be a gay gene, I just doubt that all gay people have it. Many of them have been recruited by other gays and many have become gay due to some overt act pulled on them by an older fruit.I have never spoken to a lesbian about her being gay without discovering something back in their experience that got them haitng men. Mostly its a father who abused the mother.
The "gay gene" (if it exists) is probably very very useful to the human race or evolution should have snuffed it out a long time ago.
Women and men are remarkably similar until sex differentiation takes place. Homo men are likely to be men where the differentiention process went biochemically (and not genetically) awry.
I agree that it may be biochemical.
I don't know if there has been enough time to weed out a gene that occurs only 10% or less in a population. That would seem to make a case for its demise: were it genetic and advantageous, it would occur with more frequency. OTH, we are still born with an apendix...evolution hasn't weeded that out.
Here is an example where I would approve of aborting the gay gene .
I don't suppose it's possible that they are merely reacting to the smells that they have found their pleasure in???
Yep-and studies several years ago found feral cats had brains that were different than domestic cats. The suggestion was that this proved homosexuals were not like
the rest of us -but couldn't help making those destructive
behavioral choices. PRoblem is --just like this smell test
junk science has NOT proven that homosexuals smell different from conception to the grave. But this so called
scientific evidence does smell and it no more passes the smell test than some old and foul smelling wind in a small
chapel.
I thing gay men just bathe more.
I have been posting for years the theory that the identification of a gay gene will end Roe v. Wade and the democrats. Gay-gene abortions will be a given. Gay demands to protect gay unborn will follow. The fems will say no unborn have rights. The Dems will implode.
yeah, yeah, yeah, but uh, i think I'll be sniffin' somewhere else.
I saw the report. It said the homosexual men... only about 20 of them, and they're extrapolating that to the entire population which is ridiculous...preferred the smell of HETEROSEXUAL women and their gay buddies.
Any preference for STRAIGHT women by gay men decimates the notion of a difference between gay & straight men and HEIGHTENS the likelihood that the gay buddy preference is LEARNED.
gene that occurs only 10% or less in a population.
The 10% was a lie from the beginning!!!!!!
but because any genetic tendency to avoid heterosexual opportunities should have been selected out long ago.
Yep is is a LEARNED behavior
"He raises a lot of interesting points."
He said "raises." Heh, heh.
"How do they explain the high correlation between homosexuality and abusive fathers, then? Do fathers have a genetic tendency to beat the crap out of fairy sons?"
Maybe, the abuse is coming from an attempt to beat it out of the child.
My cousin is a flamer. He is my age (42)...and I remember all through childhood even at a VERY early age, he was very ummmmmmm..."femm". We could all see it clearly. We never hammered him for it. His father did not beat him or abuse him in any way. He was raised in a VERY strict Christian family.
It's my contention that some people come out of the gate and hit the ground running "gay". My cousin is one of those people. It is not my place to judge him, like all of us, he will be judged in the end by his maker. When I see all the good he has done in his life helping others less fortunate than himself I wonder just how he will be judged. Can his indescrestions and "sins" outweigh all the good he has done?
Food for thought.
I agree...but it is the oft quoted stat which still proves my point: if it only occurs EVEN 10% of the time, its not a very prominent gene to have. I think, tho I could be wrong, that the gene for sickle cell anemia occurs more often.
That line's a keeper. Hope you don't mind if I start repeating incessantly.
There's a third possibility, in between inherited genetics and learned behavior, and that's biochemical imprinting in utero or some other biochemical yet non-genetic cause. Still biologically based but not heritable, which would explain why it hasn't been weeded out through non-reproduction over the centuries.
My bet is that it's a mix of biology (biochem) and behavior, with some gays very close to the "born that way" end of the spectrum (I know a few like this who were "different" since they were little kids, and who had normal families and normal siblings), and other gays nearly fully at the choice/learned behaviour end of things.
LQ
It smells like a$$.
Clint made some excellent points here.
...reading.
There's an excellent book on the subject called A Parents Guide to Preventing Homosexuality and it's well worth the read.
(Thanks dead)
LOL! That particular photo could not have found a better home than this thread!
That's a common statement made by former homosexuals - they also thought they were born that way, they felt the sexual stirrings as far back as they can remember. I've posted links to stories from former homosexuals here.
Welcome to free republic...a newbee just 5 days old! Watch out for the viking kitties...don't get munched as a troll now!
"There's a third possibility, in between inherited genetics and learned behavior, and that's biochemical imprinting in utero or some other biochemical yet non-genetic cause. Still biologically based but not heritable, which would explain why it hasn't been weeded out through non-reproduction over the centuries.
My bet is that it's a mix of biology (biochem) and behavior, with some gays very close to the "born that way" end of the spectrum (I know a few like this who were "different" since they were little kids, and who had normal families and normal siblings), and other gays nearly fully at the choice/learned behaviour end of things."
Sounds as reasonable as any theory I've heard.
There is no gay gene. People have been engaging in this snipe hunt for years for no reason other than justifying their abnormal, immoral sexual behavior.
Exactly. The world would be much better informed if they read the following links on the subject.
Latest 'Gay' Brain Study Scrutinized
New Genetics Study Undermines Gay Gene Theory
Homosexuality: The Essentialist Argument Continues to Erode
Homosexuality is not biologically determined - latest research
Born or Bred? Science Does Not Support the Claim That Homosexuality is Genetic
Homosexuality: Innate and Immutable?
The Gay Gene?
And many others...
LOL--I'll be good, I promise. A lot of good gets done here, I want to stick around.
Very interesting theory.
I don't think your cousin has anything to worry about considering the fact that homosexuality didn't even make the top ten list of sins a/k/a the Ten Commandments. On the other hand, many of the God fearing, Bible thumping, holier-than-thou, anti-homo zealots here at FR and elsewhere might want to re-examine their own lives for sin before advocating the extermination of another person soley on account of that persons' sexual preference.
good point!!
And the day that religious fundies in this country become pro-choice.
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