Is homosexuality a choice or is it genetic?

[DrWho]

Actually, research conducted by Dean Hamer, Bailey, McKnight, and Malcolm revealed the presence of distinctive alleles and autosomal markers on the Xq28, 7q36, 8p12, and 10q26 genes of homosexual men. It's possible that one of those genes is the "gay gene". Further research will tell the tale.

Here is an abstract from another article:

Male Homosexuality: Absence of Linkage to Microsatellite Markers at Xq28

George Rice, 1* Carol Anderson, 1 Neil Risch, 2 George Ebers 1

Several lines of evidence have implicated genetic factors in homosexuality. The most compelling observation has been the report of genetic linkage of male homosexuality to microsatellite markers on the X chromosome. This observation warranted further study and confirmation. Sharing of alleles at position Xq28 was studied in 52 gay male sibling pairs from Canadian families. Four markers at Xq28 were analyzed (DXS1113, BGN, Factor 8, and DXS1108). Allele and haplotype sharing for these markers was not increased over expectation. These results do not support an X-linked gene underlying male homosexuality.

 

[DrWho]

Here is a little article about the xq28 study:

"He was not alone in his belief. Following the 1993 publication of an alleged link between homosexuality and Xq28, droves of gay men leapt upon this connection as proof that their proclivities were due to their possession of the right DNA."

"Forget childhood, free will, early sexual experiences, parents, and the rest. All a man has to do is inherit one version of this piece of DNA and he is destined to love Judy Garland, cropped hair, clone moustaches, leather trousers - and other men. Without it, a male cannot hope to dance, express emotion, or abide the thought of another male touching him."

"Put this way, the idea sounds offensive. And indeed it is, though the offence lies not so much with this stereotypical view of homosexuality, but with the notion that all varieties and subtleties of this complex human condition can be ascribed to a single scrap of DNA. Yet this is precisely what has been claimed, first by Xq28's discoverer, Dean Hamer, of the National Cancer Institute; then by thousands of gays; and now by Chandler Burr."

"Journalist Burr - or 'the gay gene guy', as he likes to call himself - believes not only in the overriding power of the Xq28 region, but that homosexuality is a 'genetic/bacterial condition' that might be 'cured' with antibiotics, and that a silicon chip made of human DNA might be used to discern a foetus's sexual orientation."

"Forgetting the contention, however, we should ask : what is the validity of his claims? After all, a fairly respectible defence can be mounted for Burr's assertion about Xq28. Hamer's original study was methodical, properly reviewed and carefully implemented, and revealed that men who inherit one Xq28 variant are invariably homosexual. Males, including brothers of gays, who inherit a different variety tend to be heterosexual. The findings are statistically significant, and scientifically striking - but have yet to be repeated by other scientists."

"But, crucially, we should note Hamer's definition of homosexuality, a demarcation that included only males who were exclusively gay - that is, not bisexual. Such a view excludes a great many gays who have frequent heterosexual encounters - and strongly undermines claims that the Xq28 link tells us much about homosexuality in general."

"Burr will have none of these criticisms, however. There is only 'either/or' when it comes to sexuality, he says. You are either homo- or heterosexual. Bisexuality is virtually a myth, and the study's conclusions therefore remain valid, he says. On this, Burr is out on a limb, as he is with many of his other assertions - for example that there is some kind of parallel between the sexuality of humans and wasps. In the latter case, the administration of antibiotics is known to turn females into males, hence Burr's strange belief that it is possible to 'cure' homosexuality with a good dose of penicillin. Such a correlation between insect and human behaviour is offensive, not least because it implies homosexuality a disease, and also ignores the experiences of thousands of Aids-infected gays whose treatments, over the past decade, with quantities of powerful antibiotics, affected their sexuality not one jot."

I personally think that gay men should not be so eager to find a genetic determinant for homosexualiy. The result will be that the world will view it as a genetic disease to be cured. The world will conclude that if being gay is genetic then being straight and even that being repulsed by gayness must be genetic as well. The homophobes of the world will have the strongest case they could want to warrant their hatred of gays.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

When scientists attempt to draw philosophical conclusions from their work, I always disagree with them on the grounds that they are overstepping their field of expertise. This, from looking him up, is what I gather he has done. However, that doesn't negate his research.

I was referring to the methodology of some of his research that has been called into question thus invalidating any conclusions that might be drawn from it. His sampling methods especially have been seen as skewed by his choosing subjects that he admitted he found interesting or attractive rather than choosing at random.

Some of what he has written about transsexuals is nonsense, I am a transsexual and I know the stuff is idiotic.

But I agree with you that the whole discussion of "choice" is pointless and that homosexual and transsexual people should be given full legal rights.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

Again, your projections are irrelevant.

And I will simply not lead a horse to water who is obviously obstinately not ready to drink ... as I have much better things to do with my valuable time than to waste it.

When you are ready to learn ... the truthful answers will pretty much find you.

Your wild claims are not proof and all the proof you have supplied does nothing to support your position, because you haven't provided any. If the subject was so all-fired obvious then it would have been settled many years ago.

Do you know the difference between "subjective" and "objective" evidence? Let me give you an analogy: There are more than 2500 Christian sects operating in the world today. If we put one preacher from each of those 2500 sects in a field to preach, they would all be preaching different stuff and claiming to have God's Truth (their verbal arguments would be subjective evidence of their claims of God's Truth). On the other hand, all 2500 of those preachers would be obeying the Law of Gravity (and that would be objective evidence for the truth of the Law of Gravity).

Everything you have posted has been the thinnest kind of "subjective" evidence, i.e., YOUR word, and how do we know you aren't just a coke-head writing to amuse himself between snorts? You haven't provided any support for your claims yet.

I suppose I could use your technique: There is an angry Unicorn on the backside of the Moon and he hates you. If you do the research you will discover that this is obviously true, but you aren't doing the research because you don't want to know the truth.

Oh, and by the way, you can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back, you've really got something!

 

[Force-of-the-Truth]

.

I was referring to the methodology of some of his research that has been called into question thus invalidating any conclusions that might be drawn from it. His sampling methods especially have been seen as skewed by his choosing subjects that he admitted he found interesting or attractive rather than choosing at random.

Hold the presses, though. I finally found the New York Times article. For whatever it's worth, here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/h...d=1&ei=5070&en=c104a9eaf44fdde7&ex=1183867200

 

[invest07]

Napoleon

If there were a mythical "gay" gene, it would almost certainly be spread by heterosexual parents. I don't have statistics here but every gay I personally know has straight parents.

It doesn't matter whether or not the gene comes from heterosexuals or homosexuals. So long as there is a lower birth rate for homosexuals, the gene frequency would diminish over time.

Certainly there should be no argument that among gays, the reporduction rate is lower than the general population. Then any gay that carries the gene would pass it on at a lower rate. The heterosexual parents may continue to spread the gene at nomral rates but their homosexual offspring would spread the gene at a lower rate. The overall rate, insluding spread by hetero and homo would still be lower than the overall population. And even a small reduction in frequency from generation to generation reduces the gene to a very low maintenance level in 40-50 generations.

Since the frequency of homosexual behavior seems to be holding at a constant level, affecting 3-10% of the propulation, over many generations, it is not behaving as a "gay" gene would predict.

Honmosexual behavioor is a choice.

 

[invest07]

Mare T
I hate to seem like a hick from the sticks but I don't know exactly what a "transexual" is.
What is a transexual?
I am asking this not to ridicule you but to inform me.

 

[invest07]

Napoleon

If there were a mythical "gay" gene, it would almost certainly be spread by heterosexual parents. I don't have statistics here but every gay I personally know has straight parents.

It doesn't matter whether or not the gene comes from heterosexuals or homosexuals. So long as there is a lower birth rate for homosexuals, the gene frequency would diminish over time.

Certainly there should be no argument that among gays, the reporduction rate is lower than the general population. Then any gay that carries the gene would pass it on at a lower rate. The heterosexual parents may continue to spread the gene at nomral rates but their homosexual offspring would spread the gene at a lower rate. The overall rate, insluding spread by hetero and homo would still be lower than the overall population. And even a small reduction in frequency from generation to generation reduces the gene to a very low maintenance level in 40-50 generations.

Since the frequency of homosexual behavior seems to be holding at a constant level, affecting 3-10% of the propulation, over many generations, it is not behaving as a "gay" gene would predict.

Honmosexual behavioor is a choice.

 

[Force-of-the-Truth]

.

It doesn't matter whether or not the gene comes from heterosexuals or homosexuals. So long as there is a lower birth rate for homosexuals, the gene frequency would diminish over time.

That isn't necessarily true:

So that leaves the possibility that being gay is a byproduct of a gene that persists because it enhances fertility in other family members. Some studies have found that gay men have more relatives than straight men, particularly on their mother’s side.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/h...d=2&ei=5070&en=c104a9eaf44fdde7&ex=1183867200

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

Napoleon

If there were a mythical "gay" gene, it would almost certainly be spread by heterosexual parents. I don't have statistics here but every gay I personally know has straight parents.

It doesn't matter whether or not the gene comes from heterosexuals or homosexuals. So long as there is a lower birth rate for homosexuals, the gene frequency would diminish over time.

Certainly there should be no argument that among gays, the reporduction rate is lower than the general population. Then any gay that carries the gene would pass it on at a lower rate. The heterosexual parents may continue to spread the gene at nomral rates but their homosexual offspring would spread the gene at a lower rate. The overall rate, insluding spread by hetero and homo would still be lower than the overall population. And even a small reduction in frequency from generation to generation reduces the gene to a very low maintenance level in 40-50 generations.

Since the frequency of homosexual behavior seems to be holding at a constant level, affecting 3-10% of the propulation, over many generations, it is not behaving as a "gay" gene would predict.

Honmosexual behavioor is a choice.

The bolded statement is a common fallacy that presumes a "gay gene" in and of itself. Considering how long-lived and widespread homosexual activity is (even found in more than 1500 animal species), what is more likely is that it is a side-effect of some other trait or complex of traits that have such high survival value that the 2-3% of homosexuals produced as a by-product are an acceptable trade-off.

If homosexual behavior was just a choice one would expect it to vary in incidence far more than it appears to. And why would animals do it? Kinky buggers!

 

[Chip]

Originally Posted by Chip
Again, your projections are irrelevant.

And I will simply not lead a horse to water who is obviously obstinately not ready to drink ... as I have much better things to do with my valuable time than to waste it.

When you are ready to learn ... the truthful answers will pretty much find you.

Your wild claims are not proof and all the proof you have supplied does nothing to support your position, because you haven't provided any. If the subject was so all-fired obvious then it would have been settled many years ago.

Do you know the difference between "subjective" and "objective" evidence? Let me give you an analogy: There are more than 2500 Christian sects operating in the world today. If we put one preacher from each of those 2500 sects in a field to preach, they would all be preaching different stuff and claiming to have God's Truth (their verbal arguments would be subjective evidence of their claims of God's Truth). On the other hand, all 2500 of those preachers would be obeying the Law of Gravity (and that would be objective evidence for the truth of the Law of Gravity).

Everything you have posted has been the thinnest kind of "subjective" evidence, i.e., YOUR word, and how do we know you aren't just a coke-head writing to amuse himself between snorts? You haven't provided any support for your claims yet.

I suppose I could use your technique: There is an angry Unicorn on the backside of the Moon and he hates you. If you do the research you will discover that this is obviously true, but you aren't doing the research because you don't want to know the truth.

Oh, and by the way, you can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back, you've really got something!

:Yawn:

More character assassination from MT.

Your "kill the messenger" tactic is typically employed by those to whom the messenger presented the truth that the recipient just can't handle.

I've presented the obvious reality on this matter.

For someone so inclined to hollar "Proof! Proof!", I've yet to see you post yours.

Projectionists.

Please cease with the ad hominems and stay on topic.

Thank you.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

:Yawn:
More character assassination from MT.
Your "kill the messenger" tactic is typically employed by those to whom the messenger presented the truth that the recipient just can't handle.
I've presented the obvious reality on this matter.
For someone so inclined to hollar "Proof! Proof!", I've yet to see you post yours.
Projectionists.Please cease with the ad hominems and stay on topic.
Thank you.

The topic is wild claims without basis. I don't think I killed the messenger, it's just that he showed up with no message so I sent him on his way. Ad hominem? Perhaps you should look that up when you look us "hollar" to see how it's really spelled.

I'd love to see something that supports what you claim, but apparently you just made it all up and thus cannot supply any thing to support it. Thanks for playing, but I think you've played your last Chip.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

Mare T
I hate to seem like a hick from the sticks but I don't know exactly what a "transexual" is.
What is a transexual?
I am asking this not to ridicule you but to inform me.

Transsexuals/transgendered people are people born with a discontinuity between the gender of their body and their own internal sense of gender that arises in a small area the brain called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalus. Bodies and brains are both very different between males and females, they also develop on different time schedules during gestation. All babies basically start out as female, but about the 8th week or so a rush of hormones begins to change the body of a potential male from the female development track to the male track. A few weeks later another rush of hormones begins to change the brain of a potential male from the female development track to the male track. If either of these hormone rushes--which are controlled by the fetus' genetic pattern--are delayed, absent, or not intense enough, then it is possible to have a baby develop that is of mixed gender. The mixing can be anywhere from something so slight as to go unnoticed during the person's life, all the way up to a person (like a friend of mine) who was born with both a penis and a vagina, one undescended testicle and one under developed ovary. Her parents wanted a boy, so at birth they had the surgeons sew up her vagina and they raised her as a boy and never told her anything about it. In Junior High School she started developing breasts and confided in her parents that she had always felt like a girl--so, being strict fundamentalist Christians, they began beating her, boys at school beat her too. In fact, by the time I met her she had a permanently injured back, only one functioning kidney, and no teeth in the front of her mouth from all the beatings she had received at the hands of the good people of Texas.

Being transgendered is a birth defect I think, I was born with a fairly normal male body and a fairly normal female brain--and you think puberty was confusing for YOU. The American Medical Association has been treating transgendered people for more than 30 years now using the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care. This entails counseling, hormone therapy, and finally (if necessary) surgery to bring the body in line with the brain's perception of what the body's gender should be. It's done this way because we have the technology to change the body to match the brain, but we don't have the technology to change the brain to match the body. And therein lies the problem: When one changes the body to match the brain it requires that everyone who interacts with the transgendered person know about it and begin treating the person as the opposite gender from what they are used to. This makes people uncomfortable, my little brother (also a fundamentalist Christian) has condemned me in God's name and hasn't spoken a civil word to me in more than 4 years. Many trans-people are thrown out of their homes and families forever.

Please feel free to ask any questions you'd like, I speak to Unversity classes on this subject and you can't ask a question that I haven't already answered standing in front of 50 people.

 

[numinus]

A statement by a philosopher is not proof, it's a statement that 20 other philosophers will argue with, it's a glorified opinion. Philosophers used to say that the Earth was flat too--didn't make it true. If you get into realm of religious philosophers you can find proof of absolutely ANYTHING.

LOL.

Kantian ethics is as SECULAR as it gets.

And you'd probably freak out if I told you that the closest ethical theory to christian morality is js mill's utilitarianism.

He said it himself, fyi.

Your son's math aside, are you really saying that mathematical axioms do not have to be proved true? I remember when I took that kind of math that we spent a lot of time on the proofs, we didn't intuit those proofs, we logically proved them on paper. The idea that some mathematical axiom is automatically true and does not require rigorous empirical proofs just because someone postulates it, is nonsense.

YES.

What requires proof are called THEOREMS. Their proof involves axioms.

Axioms have NO proof other than they are INTUITIVELY TRUE.

I have come to despise the swollen human ego allows a person not only to claim to know what life is about and what God wants, but gives them the unbelievable temerity to condemn others to misery and death if they do not agree. The Roman Catholic Church has caused more suffering on this tiny planet than most, yet never hesitates to condemn others, burn them on stakes, form Inquistions, hold kangaroo courts, and pretend to righteousness while wallowing in deceit and corruption.

What other moral purpose is there for human sexuality other than for unitive and pro-creative purposes, eh?

Perhaps it addresses the love of two spirits created by God, two spirits who have a bond that you in your overweening pretension to omniscience have decided to condemn. Who are YOU to say their love has no value?

UNITIVE - as in the union of two human beings - hence human LOVE.

For the sexual act to conform with morality, it must both be UNITIVE AND PRO-CREATIVE.

Would you take anyone seriously if the only way he can prove his love is by ****ing?

So he apologized for some of the most ghastly and disgusting behavior in human history, behavior that made a mockery of everything that Jesus stood for, everything that He taught? If the Catholic Church had learned the lesson then his apology might have had some meaning, but history shows us that it has been "business as usual" since then, right up to today when the Church is still protecting its pedophile priests and its vast financial holdings. The Catholic Church stands as a monument to hypocrisy and as one of the worst examples of human debauchery in history.

LOL.

You're talking about debauchery and defend homo-eroticism in the same breath?

Eroticism, homo or hetero, HAVE NO MORAL WORTH IN THEMSELVES.

They only pretend to borrow the moral worth of human love and dignity, both of which can EXIST independently from human sexuality.

I have a sneaking suspicion that church encyclicals will spin the truth to make the church look good. What I hear are the words of the Pope preaching hate against homosexual people, what I read are the calls for justice from the thousands of victims of pedophile priests sheltered and succored by the Church, moved from parish to parish and allowed to continue raping children while condemning homosexual people who never harmed a child in their lives.

Is that an admission that you have read NO catholic encyclical regarding the matter?

Your religion and your church have no credibilty, your bloody history speaks to loudly, the cries of your victims drown out your bleating of dogmatic sophistries. You do not speak for God. Your church does not speak for God. And your hates speak more loudly than your words. And I mean this in the nicest possible way.

That's all well and good. But in the meantime, you have given no rational argument for homo-eroticism other than it feels good.

 

[Chip]

Originally Posted by Chip
:Yawn:
More character assassination from MT.
Your "kill the messenger" tactic is typically employed by those to whom the messenger presented the truth that the recipient just can't handle.
I've presented the obvious reality on this matter.
For someone so inclined to hollar "Proof! Proof!", I've yet to see you post yours.
Projectionists.Please cease with the ad hominems and stay on topic.
Thank you.

The topic is wild claims without basis. I don't think I killed the messenger, it's just that he showed up with no message so I sent him on his way. Ad hominem? Perhaps you should look that up when you look us "hollar" to see how it's really spelled.

I'd love to see something that supports what you claim, but apparently you just made it all up and thus cannot supply any thing to support it. Thanks for playing, but I think you've played your last Chip.

Again, nothing but fear-based off-topic ad hominem attacks from MT in an attempt to divert attention away from the truth he just can't handle.

I realize from reading your conversation with others that such is your standard M.O., but really, don't you think staying on topic shows more personal integrity?!

Now I've presented the truth in the matter, that homosexuality originates in unconscious reaction to family-of-origin relationships idiosyncratically during the first five years of post-natal life while the brain is still forming.

Now one does not rationally need to post a "proof" of an obvious reality, any more than one needs to post a proof of yours and my existence. That would be a topic-diverting truly foolish waste of time.

So if proof is supposedly what you cry for, post some real proof that proves my obvious reality statement false, because when presented with an obvious reality, as I have presented you, the onus of posting proof of the contrary is rationally upon you.

And, as for playing, if you don't stop playing the thread-derailing ad hominem game, I'm going to report you to the moderators.

Now please, stay on topic!