Posted on 06/24/2007 1:48:50 AM PDT by tuesday afternoon
With the pendulum swinging back and forth between nature and nurture as explanations for sexual preference, critics argue that science is asking a simplistic – and dangerous – question
Gay men believe their sexual orientation is inextricably bound up with their very being. It is not a choice – let alone the "wrong choice," as religious and political critics have counter-claimed for years.
Many believe they simply were "born that way," and long for proof that their sexual proclivity is biological or genetic, a variation, not a deviation, of human nature. And how can an innate instinct be the subject of discrimination?
But just as many gay men don't want to know. It's a predisposition, they say, what does it matter what kind? If science delves into the cause, then bet on it, someone will set about finding a "cure." More to the point, they argue, determining the why of homosexuality won't end prejudice.
"The emphasis on finding a biological cause is much more widespread among activists in the U.S. than in Canada," says political scientist David Rayside, director of the University of Toronto's Sexual Diversity Centre.
"Most people here don't care or think the fight for gay rights shouldn't hinge on finding a cause."
Theories have been floated for more than a century on what triggers homosexuality. Nurture – a psychologically troubled relationship between parents and child – held top billing until the start of the 1990s, when the tide shifted toward nature.
Two American scientists set the research and the debate in motion.
In 1991, Simon LeVay, a neurobiologist at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies in California, examined the brains of 41 individuals; 19 gay men who died of AIDS, 16 heterosexuals of drugs-related AIDS and six women, of whom one had died of the disease.
Already aware that certain areas of the brain are bigger in men than in women, LeVay checked to see if there was a size variation with the gay men.
To his surprise, he found that one grouping of cells associated with sexual activity was twice as large in straight men as it was in both gays and women.
LeVay emphasized that his work didn't show "how or when sexual orientation is determined, only that it is an aspect of human nature that can be studied by biologists." But the media ran with it, playing down widespread criticism that he hadn't factored in the effect of AIDS on the brain.
Princeton University psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover's reaction was typical:
"The discovery of brain difference per se is on a par with the discovery that athletes have bigger muscles than non-athletes. Though a genetic tendency toward larger muscles may make it easier to become an athlete, becoming an athlete will certainly give one bigger muscles."
LeVay still maintains, however, that exposure to one or more hormones at an early stage in male fetal development can permanently alter the brain and the pattern of later sexual behaviour. Gay himself, he has written that he wonders if "the positions taken by researchers are merely the expression of their own personal attitudes and prejudices, whether pro or anti-gay, that have been dressed up in academic language."
In 1993, a study of 76 gay men by geneticist Dean Hamer at the U.S. National Cancer Institute found that uncles and male cousins on the mother's side were more likely to be gay than those on the father's side. This suggested a "gay gene" might be located on the X chromosome, which boys get only from their mothers.
Hamer then studied 40 pairs of gay brothers, sampling their DNA and scouring their X chromosomes for any regions they had in common, and duly announced that such a site, shared by two-thirds of the brothers, had been found. The research would have to be replicated before the results could be confirmed, Hamer stressed. To no avail.
Because of the social, political, and cultural implications, his results – inevitably headlined "Gay gene found" – were hailed globally as a major breakthrough. Wrongly so, said the genetics community. The coverage was inflated, simplistic and misleading. No "gay gene" had been found, nor ever would be. Why? Because behavioural genetics is much more complex than "Mendelian" genetics. In other words, traits such as eye colour are 100 per cent inheritable but the genetic contribution to various behaviours, aggression, shyness, extroversion and so on, is considerably less, below 50 per cent.
Ruth Hubbard, Harvard emeritus professor of biology and biochemistry and author of Exploding the Gene Myth, has said that searching for a gay gene "is not even a worthwhile pursuit.
"I don't think there is any single gene that governs any complex human behaviour. There are genetic components in everything we do, and it is foolish to say genes are not involved, but I don't think they are decisive."
Together, LeVay and Hamer had made an intriguing case, certainly for the media, but far from a persuasive one.
By the end of the '90s, interest in the hunt for a gay gene had waned. Why, skeptics asked, would there be one when it plays no role in the evolutionary scheme of things?
Why, gay activists wondered, expend energy on finding a reason for their orientation when the fight for equal rights was still on the front burner?
Since then, the scientific consensus is that sexual proclivity is influenced, but not hardwired, by DNA. Geneticist Francis Collins, head of the international Human Genome Project, has written that "whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations."
But the debate hasn't entirely gone away, or, indeed, all of the research. Next year at Northwestern University, 1,000 pairs of gay brothers will be studied to see if Hamer's X-chromosome findings finally can be reproduced. (Driven by AIDS, as well, critics would argue, by cultural bias, science has focused overwhelmingly on men, not gay women.) U of T's Rayside is leery about yet another study, concerned at society's increasing temptation to interpret all kinds of human behaviours in biological, particularly genetic, terms.
"These scientists think they're doing good, but they don't realize there's a political component to their work. It contributes to the trend toward genetic selection."
Rayside is not being overly fearful. Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the U.S. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently inveighed that a prenatal test for homosexuality would morally be no different from curing fetal blindness or any other "medical problem."
And Dean Hamer, likely to be forever linked to the search for a gay gene? He's now researching the genetic component to hard-core cigarette addiction.
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Lynda Hurst is a feature writer at the Star. She can be reached at lhurst@thestar.ca.
Only if I didn't believe the sourse of my statements. There is so much proof but you must desire the truth. Not "YOUR" truth. THE Truth. I do. If you don't, so be it.
“Conservatives hate the act of Homosexuality. Would you bring in a baby who is gay into the world? I am unsure if I would.”
Moot point, since there is no such thing as a gay baby. Nor will there ever be.
I asked you a question that you deflected with your accusations. You made vile assertions about conservatives in general, and about me in particular, that you cannot possibly back up with facts. I asked you where are your facts that conservatives would be inclined to abort "gay" fetuses. I think you are the one who is dishonest and does not belong on a conservative website.
I think you are the one who is dishonest and does not belong on a conservative website.
F-u.
LOL :)
Spot on.
I think it’s something in the psychosocial environment. The imprinting happens early on. OR some sexual trauma later in life
Hey some of are named Gene ya know.
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