Box Turtle Bulletin

Randy Thomasson: “no such thing as gay”

Timothy Kincaid

March 9th, 2010

I love anti-gay activist Randy Thomasson. He makes our work so much easier and he is always worth a chuckle. Remember when the campaign for Proposition 8 called him “extreme” and sued him to make him go away?

Thomasson, currently of SaveCalifornia.com, always has opinions. So, of course, he has some thoughts about newly-out-but-still-anti-gay drunk-driver Roy Ashburn. Not surprisingly, Ashburn is now a bad bad man. But that’s not all, he’s also mistaken.

Now he’s completely “out.” Monday morning on the radio, Republican State Senator Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield said “I’m gay.”

But Roy Ashburn is mistaken. No one is “gay” because the so-called “gay gene” does not exist.

Oh, Thomasson, you funny fellow. Without a gay folk to battle (for donations, of course) you’d starve to death.

I’m guessing that the “amusingly irrational gene” exists in your family in abundance.

“Super Uncle” theory gets support from study

Timothy Kincaid

February 4th, 2010

Those who study the etiology of sexual orientation know that genetics is not fully responsible for whether or not a man is gay. Other factors which are hypothesized to play a roll including either biological conditions (e.g. in utero hormone levels), natural environmental influences (early childhood infections), psychological influences, and many others.

But the results of twin studies have long since indicated that for at least some gay men, part of the causation of their orientation is due to genetics.

However, evolutionary biologists have been uncertain as to why this would be. Knowing that men who are primarily same-sex attracted and not opposite-sex attracted are less likely to reproduce, what evolutionary advantage would these genes have and how would they have carried for millions of generations without dying out?

One theory is that the advantages of having a small number of men without children of their own would be adequate to advantage the shared genes of their siblings, “super uncles” as it were. Now it appears that at least one study provides some credibility to that idea. (Montreal Gazette)

Interestingly, the study was conducted by someone who set out to prove it wrong. Paul Vasey, associate professor in the University of Lethbridge’s department of psychology, went to Samoa to study the fa’afafine [men who were raised female] to provide the conclusive evidence that the “super uncle” theory could be discarded. He found the opposite.

Researchers conducting similar studies in the U.S. and England did not find any supporting evidence for the theory, said Vasey. “So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll do it in a non-Western culture and chances are I’m going to find exactly the same results and it’ll be the nail in the coffin for this hypothesis,’” he said.
…
Vasey found that the fa’afafine said they were significantly more willing to help kin, yet much less interested in helping children who aren’t family — providing the first evidence to support the “kin selection hypothesis.”

It would be ill advised to draw too many conclusions based on this one study. And directly equating of fa’afafine to gay men in the West is a rather large leap.

However, this does provide additional data to inform the ongoing question as to why some people find themselves attracted to the same sex and others do not.

National Geographic discusses possible bases for orientation

Timothy Kincaid

November 24th, 2009

Sexual orientation is genetic… but not fully genetic.

Each person has about a 4-6% chance of being same-sex attracted. If, however, one has a twin brother that’s gay, the odds increase to about 12%. Make it an identical twin and you have a 50/50 chance that you too will be gay.

Anti-gay activists irrationally declare that this proves that “there is no gay gene.” In a sense they are correct, if orientation were entirely determined by purely genetic composition, then identical twins (who have the same genes) would always have the same orientation.

But the increase in odd with the increase in genetic similarity does show that genes play a part, and a big part. Which leaves the question, how does one twin end up gay and the other straight? The answer may be in how epigenetics triggers genes and can cause identical genes to respond differently.

In the following National Geographic video, the narrator discusses what might cause identical twins to have non-identical orientation.

(hat tip Queerty)

The Guardian Revisits Hair Whorls

Timothy Kincaid

September 15th, 2009

The Guardian has an article today revisiting the somewhat unorthodox study of Dr. Amar J S Klar and his observations about hair whirls.

Dr. Klar is a geneticist working at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland. One day on vacation he ended up on a gay beach. And there he noticed a peculiarity: gay men seemed to have counter-clockwise hair-whorls more frequently than could be expected. Far more frequently.

So the next year he went back and checked again. And, yep, gay men have gay hair.

He reports that “altogether in a combined sample of 272 mostly gay men observed, 29.8% exhibited counterclockwise hair-whorl orientation”. This, he says, is “vastly different from the value of 8.4% counterclockwise rotation found in the public at large, which included both males and females”.

Although Klar’s paper, Excess of Counterclockwise Scalp Hair-Whorl Rotation in Homosexual Men (pdf), was published in 2004, it didn’t seem to catch much attention in the gay community or among mainstream media. In fact, I don’t know whether psychologist Richard Lippa was entirely aware of Klar’s paper when he conducted similar research at Long Beach Pride in 2007 (his results – 23% counterclockwise).

Although none of this is new, it is important. One of the primary arguments against gay equality is that it is not biological in origin and thus is mutable. There is no gay gene! You can change! (So you don’t deserve civil rights!)

And as part of their argument, many anti-gays will create interesting hypotheses as to how physical distinctions are created without biology. Recently some NARTH affiliates sought to discredit measured brain variances by arguing that the brain is plastic and therefore such differences were the result of conditioning based on behavior.

But hair whorls, well there’s just no way to learn ‘em. They’re pure biology. And there’s just no credible way to explain them away.

Evolutionary Speculation

This commentary is the opinion of the author and may not necessarily reflect that of other authors at Box Turtle Bulletin.

Timothy Kincaid

June 23rd, 2009

Homosexuality has long perplexed evolutionary biologists. If natural selection is nothing more than the replication of genes, what benefit is there to a trait that is less likely to result in progeny?

A new report by Nathan W. Bailey and Marlene Zuk at University of California, Riverside, and printed in this issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution, suggests that in addition to being a product of evolution, same-sex behaviors may have driven selection as well.

This led Time’s John Cloud to speculate about five possible reasons why evolution may have selected for homosexuality. His possibilities include:

1. The boys-in-the-locker-room theory.

2. The emasculation theory.

3. The “oops” theory.

4. The let’s-see-how-this-thing-works theory.

5. The two-plus-one theory.

I’ll let you read them at Time and decide which, if any, of these appeals to you. But all of them, like much of the speculation from laypersons, seems to me to make a fundamental error: they seek to look to today’s environment and relational dynamics and look for explanations as to what happened before time began.

But natural selection doesn’t tell us what works today, it is a product of millions of years of factors warring against each other and most of them we will never know. There were climate variations, survival skills, predator avoidances, and millions of variables which have all disappeared from the planet. And we cannot ever truly know which was responsible for many of nature’s choices.

We do know this: twin studies tell us that sexual orientation is likely partly but not completely genetic, at least in humans. And studies suggest that this trait exists in all races across the globe in what appears to be a relatively consistent rate and has existed for as long as there has been recorded history. Additionally, same-sex behavior – often including pairing – exists in all branches of life, from insects to mammals.

This suggests that at some point in the past there was an advantage to species that adopted some measure of same-sex sexual expression. Further, the development of human emotion and intellect did not disallow for the continuance of same-sex expression and pairing. Thus, whatever the advantage, it was relevant over a long enough period of time to incorporate the development of dolphins, penquins, rams, and humans. Further, the advantages that led to the association of emotional connection to sexual behaviors in humans also led to same-sex emotional connections.

Beyond that, I suspect that those of us who do not study this field are best served by limiting our speculations about exact “causes”. We only end up looking foolish when the next round of studies proves our guesswork to be flawed.

Nicolosi Makes Cameo At APA Taskforce

Daniel Gonzales

August 21st, 2008

My former therapist Joseph Nicolosi made a somewhat odd appearance on Aug 14th at the APA’s Taskforce report on Gender Identity, Gender Variance, and Intersex Conditions according to BTB reader Matthew Calamia who was also attending. Calamia, a graduate student in clinical psychology, wrote in an email to BTB:

Nicolosi showed up (late) to the APA Task Force on Gender Identity, Gender Variance, and Intersex Conditions session. He asked the panel what they would tell parents who were concerned about their gender variant children, a “70% predictor of homosexuality.” Randall Ehrbar, a member of the task force, acknowledged it was a controversial topic and that the members didn’t all agree. Then Nicolosi said he was able to cure those children and plugged A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Following the audible groans from the audience, someone mentioned another book that people might find helpful, The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals.Nicolosi left soon afterwards. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen him at any of the other LGBT sessions, but there are two days of the convention left…

A Possible Hereditary Model Explaining Homosexuality in Men

Timothy Kincaid

June 18th, 2008

“I say it’s a choice ‘cuz if homoseeeexshality was heriditary then why din’t they all die out? They ain’t got no kids.”

Some people believe that if homosexuality had some genetic contributor then the reduction in average number of children born to gay males would over time cause this gene to become extinct. However a new model challenges this assumption.

From Fox News

In 2004 the researchers studied about 200 Italian families and found that the mothers, maternal aunts and maternal grandmothers of gay men are more fecund, or fruitful, than average.

Recently, they tried to explain their findings with a number of genetic models, and found one that fit the bill.

“This is the first time that a model fits all our empirical data,” said Andrea Camperio-Ciani, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Padova in Italy who led the study. “These genes work in a sexually antagonistic way — that means that when they’re represented in a female, they increase fecundity, and when they’re represented in a male, they decrease fecundity. It’s a trait that benefits one sex at the cost of the other.”

If the same genes create both homosexuality in men and increased fertility in women, then any losses in offspring that come about from the males would be made up for by the females of the family.

The research results can be found on PLoS ONE

We show that only the two-locus genetic model with at least one locus on the X chromosome, and in which gene expression is sexually antagonistic (increasing female fitness but decreasing male fitness), accounts for all known empirical data. Our results help clarify the basic evolutionary dynamics of male homosexuality, establishing this as a clearly ascertained sexually antagonistic human trait.

Gay Brains

Timothy Kincaid

June 16th, 2008

There have been plenty of studies that identified differences between the ways in which males and females process information. And there have been several that found that gay men are similar to straight women and that lesbians are similar to straight men. New Scientist is reporting another one.

Brain scans have provided the most compelling evidence yet that being gay or straight is a biologically fixed trait.

The scans reveal that in gay people, key structures of the brain governing emotion, mood, anxiety and aggressiveness resemble those in straight people of the opposite sex.

But until now, the question has remained as to what came first, the orientation or the brain development.

To get round this, Savic and her colleague, Per Lindström, chose to measure brain parameters likely to have been fixed at birth.

“That was the whole point of the study, to show parameters that differ, but which couldn’t be altered by learning or cognitive processes,” says Savic.

First they used MRI scans to find out the overall volume and shapes of brains in a group of 90 volunteers consisting of 25 heterosexuals and 20 homosexuals of each gender.

The results showed that straight men had asymmetric brains, with the right hemisphere slightly larger – and the gay women also had this asymmetry. Gay men, meanwhile, had symmetrical brains like those of straight women.

Almost Getting It

This commentary is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the opinion of other authors at this site.

Timothy Kincaid

April 17th, 2008

I can’t report every homophobic rant that comes out of Jamaica. We’d hardly have time and space for anything else.

However, one letter to the editor illustrates not only the mindset of this island nation but also the thinking process of a great many anti-gay Christians in the United States as well.

I am replying to a letter by one Patrick Harding in which it was stated that one did not choose to be gay. I cannot conceive how a loving God would create someone with a gay gene and then have it stated in the Bible that it is an abomination.

I once came to the same question as Elaine McDonald wrote to the Jamaica Gleaner. But my questioning came to a different conclusion.

Elaine, like so very many Christians, believes that her religious beliefs define the world around her. If “God said it”, or more realistically, if her prejudices are confirmed by her interpretation of Scripture, then it really doesn’t much matter what is factual; she’s already knows what is “true”.

But this statement of hers has three assumptions: 1) God is loving, 2) homosexuality is stated in the Bible to be an abomination, and 3) a loving God would not create someone only to declare them abominable. From this she concludes that God didn’t create someone gay.

McDonald, in her unwillingness to look at all of the variables of her logic, comes to the wrong conclusion. But at least she sees the inconsistency.

I agree with her point 3 as a matter of definition. Although some religious folk believe that God predestines some to eternal torture, I cannot fathom that such a deity could be described as “loving”. Such a god, though an object to fear, would not be worthy of adoration or praise.

Thus either God is not loving, gay people become so of their own volition, or the condition of being homosexual is not an abomination.*

I knew, unquestionably, that neither I nor other gay people made a conscious decision to be same-sex attracted. God had, whether by means of genetics, environment, or some other method, created us irrevocably gay.

So I then had to determine whether or not He condemned me for the way he created me, thus earning my eternal derision and scorn. As I began to study, it became clear to me that being homosexual is not in any place condemned in scripture.

This is where I think much anti-gay and ex-gay theology falls apart. There is an insistence that recognizing or accepting one’s attractions is sinful. But the rather simple-thinking Elaine McDonald has put her finger on the logical inconsistencies of their argument. In order for a “homosexual identity” (which is, of course, nothing more than a recognition of the direction of ones own attractions) to be “a sinful lifestyle”, then one must believe that God is capricious and cruel.

And sadly, reorientation is not the answer. In almost no instances do same-sex attractions change, leaving those who continue to struggle with little hope of redemption. All that the anti-gays and ex-gays can do is to play semantics games about “identity” and “change”.

As for whether specific sexual acts are universally condemned, that is a matter of great debate between various theologies. And I do respect those who, for religious reasons, live celebately and yet dismiss both the games and the condemnation as contrary to gospel.

Personally, I believe that it’s rather unlikely that the correct interpretation of Scripture is one that condemns a specific subset of the population to a life without love. This seems rather odd from a God that places little importance in the distinctions of race, sex, personal situation or political power.

But, as McDonald clearly illustrates, there is no practical distinction in society or the church between those who are same-sex attracted and those who express such an attraction with a partner of the same sex. Rampant anti-gay discrimination and homophobia do not distinguish between the two.

So the next time you hear someone insisting that “there is no gay gene”, just realize that they are acting out of their understanding of the nature of God. And as the preponderance of evidence as to the biological basis of orientation becomes more evident, their internal dissonance will become stronger.

And although some may then argue their newfound distinction between orientation and behavior, they all know that this is a losing argument so most will either become ever more shrill or will quietly go away.

So although the ‘no gay gene’ers may seem the most hateful, it’s probably because they really almost get it. And it’s tearing them apart.

* The atheists among us could argue that another alternative is that God does not exist. I concede that logic but this does not add much to the point of my commentary and is not a subject of this thread.

Born What Way?

Jim Burroway

April 16th, 2008

Social conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage often point to personality differences between men and women — the complementarity of the sexes, they call it — and consider these differences to be innate in men and women. Men are more aggressive and women are nurturing; it’s “in their genes.” But when we see evidence that the personalities of gay men and women have more in common with their heterosexual opposite-sex counterparts, then somehow the environment is blamed. Now a series of studies calls those assumptions into question.

Researcher Richard A. Lippa wrote an article for American Sexuality magazine in which he describes the studies he’s been performing over the past ten years. In these studies, he measured five human personality traits: extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism (negative emotionality) and openness to new experiences. To that, he added two more measures: instrumentality (independence, assertiveness, and leadership ability) and expressiveness (warmth, nurturance, and tenderness). And then he just asked two more questions point blank: Are you more interested in masculine things or feminine things? And do you consider yourself masculine or feminine?

Over the past decade, he asked all this of 2,724 heterosexual men, 799 gay men, 5,053 heterosexual women, and 697 lesbian women. This way he could make direct heterosexual male-female comparison, and compare those with differences between heterosexual men and gay men, and heterosexual women and lesbians. The results are shown in the table below. Personality Differences are given in terms of “effect sizes,” a common statistical measurement for experiments. In psychology, effect sizes 0.2, 0.5, and 0.8 are considered to be “small,” “medium,” and “large,” respectively. A positive number simply means the first group is higher than the second; a negative number means the second group is higher than the first.

Personality Trait	Hetero Male -Female Differences	Hetero Male -Gay Male Differences	Hetero Female -Lesbian Differences
Extroversion	-.19	-.08	.04
Agreeableness	-.21	-.22	-.01
Conscientiousness	-.17	-.30	.05
Neuroticism	-.48	-.20	.30
Openness	.20	-.42	-.47
Instrumentality	.22	.04	-.27
Expressiveness	-.49	-.37	.04
Masculinity-Femininity of Interests	2.65	1.28	-1.46
Self-Ascribed Masculinity-Femininity	2.83	.60	-1.28

Dr. Lippa noted:

Gay men were somewhat higher than straight men on agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, and expressiveness. Except for openness to experience, gay-straight male differences mirrored male-female differences—that is, traits that gay men scored higher on than straight men were also traits that women scored higher on than men, and vice versa. The really big gay-straight male difference was for M-F of interests. Gay men had much more feminine occupational and hobby preferences than heterosexual men did. To give you a sense of the magnitude of this difference, the effect size listed in Table 1 implies that 90% of gay men have interests that are more feminine than the average straight man’s. Interestingly, the gay-straight male difference in self-ascribed M-F was more modest, and I suspect this is due to the fact that many gay men (like many straight men) don’t like to openly rate themselves as being “feminine.”

What were the corresponding results for women? Lesbian women were somewhat higher on openness and instrumentality than straight women were, and they were somewhat lower on neuroticism. As was true for the corresponding results for men, lesbian-straight female differences mirrored male-female differences—that is, traits that lesbians scored higher on than straight women were also traits that men scored higher on than women, and vice versa. The really big lesbian-straight female differences were for M-F of interests and self-ascribed M-F. Lesbian women had much more masculine occupational and hobby preferences than heterosexual women did. The effect size for this difference implies that 93% of lesbian women had interests that were more masculine than the average straight woman’s. Furthermore, lesbians rated themselves to be considerably more masculine and less feminine than straight women did. Thus, lesbians seemed to openly acknowledge and embrace their masculinity more than gay men acknowledged and embraced their femininity.

Does this mean that gays and lesbians are “born that way”? Dr. Lippa thinks this may lend credence to that position, although this study doesn’t prove it one way or another. But this does raise an interesting point. If straight men are more open to new experiences and straight women are more expressive because “they’re born that way,” then why do social conservatives blame opposite-gender traits in gay men and women on bad parenting?

Same-sex marriage opponents and ex-gay advocates have a pretty fundamental contradiction in their logic. Somehow I doubt we’ll see them addressing this anytime soon.

Hat tip: BTB reader Steve M.

Can Figure-Skating Make You Gay?

Jim Burroway

April 8th, 2008

That question was posed by a letter writer to Canada’s National Post blog, “Full Comment.” The writer concluded that the answer was yes. My favorite response in the comments was this one:

To paraphrase, some are born gay, some achieve gayness and some have gayness thrust upon them.

I’ll have to remember that one. It’s like I’ve said before, I don’t think there will ever be a one-size-fits-all explanation.

CitizenLink’s Needle In The Haystack

Jim Burroway

March 19th, 2008

The so-called “Professional journalists” at CitizenLink are at it again. They’re claiming vindication over a new pamphlet (PDF: 132KB/6 pages) by the American Psychological Association. That pamphlet repeats what we’ve been saying for quite some time: Nobody knows what “causes” homosexuality. According to the APA:

There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both place complex roles…

The mere mention of developmental roles is tiny sliver of a silver lining that has Exodus vice president Randy Thomas and Focus On the Family’s Glenn Stanton very excited:

“They are starting to have the integrity of reporting accurately about the condition of homosexuality,” said Randy Thomas, executive vice president of Exodus International. “We find this to be a very exciting move and hope that it indicates future movement toward recognizing that people can and do overcome homosexuality.”

Glenn Stanton, director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family, said the brochure has an activist bent, but he sees a ray of hope.

“This doesn’t mean that we’ve completely succeeded in all the things that we’ve wanted to,” he said, “but it’s a move in the direction that we’ve wanted them to move in, and I think that’s very positive news.”

CitizenLink, Stanton and Thomas chose to focus on one lone paragraph and ignore the rest of the six-page document, including topics like the role of prejudice in LGBT’s lives and well-being, the importance of “coming out,” the nature of same-sex relationships, gay parenting — and, oh yes, this:

All major national mental health organizations have officially expressed concerns about therapies promoted to modify sexual orientation. To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation (sometimes called reparative or conversion therapy) is safe or effective. Furthermore, it seems likely that the promotion of change therapies reinforces stereotypes and contributes to a negative climate for lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons.

Nope. Instead, CitizenLink advises readers to go to Love Won Out to learn more. What they might learn is, in fact, more stereotypes which contribute to that negative climate the APA is talking about.

‘Family Guy’ to Explore Gay Gene and Ex-Gay Therapy

Timothy Kincaid

January 30th, 2008

In an interview with the Advocate, Seth MacFarlane, creator of The Family Guy discusses an upcoming episode:

What can we expect from the as yet unscheduled episode titled “Family Gay”?

That has to do with Peter being injected with the gay gene as part of a scientific experiment to determine whether or not it’s a learned trait or something that you’re born with. The good news is that at the end of the episode we establish that it’s the latter. Basically, Peter’s in a gay relationship for an episode and winds up in one of those straight camps.

Undoubtedly this will be presented with their usual tact and unerring good taste.

Read the full interview here.

It’s in the Blood

Timothy Kincaid

January 13th, 2008

A reader drew my attention to a study released last month that did not get much press (if any). Using a sample of over 7,000 participants, sociologists at Minot State University in North Dakota identified a correlation between sexual orientation and both blood type and Rh factor.

Heterosexual males and females exhibited statistically identical frequencies of the A blood type, while gay men exhibited a relatively low incidence and lesbians had a relatively high incidence (p < .05). In the case of the Rh factor, unusually high proportions of homosexuals of both sexes were Rh- when compared to heterosexuals (p < .06). The findings suggest that a connection may exist between sexual orientation and genes both on chromosome 9 (where blood type is determined) and on chromosome 1 (where the Rh factor is regulated).

This study adds to the now convincing argument that the bases of orientation lie at least in part in biology. Someone needs to tell Dr. Dobson that regardless of the amount of time a father spends doting on his son, it isn’t going to affect his blood type or his Rh factor.

You Drive Like a Woman

Timothy Kincaid

January 3rd, 2008

Dr Qazi Rahman is a leader in the study of sexual orientation and one of the authors of Born Gay?: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation.

Dr. Rahman has released the results of a new study that lends further support to the assertion that the brains of gay men operate differently than those of straight men.

Gay men are as bad as women at navigating research has shown.

Both share the same poor sense of direction and rely on local landmarks to get around, a study suggests.

They are also slower to take in spatial information than heterosexual men.

These tests did not find unequivocal mirroring of female spacial processing in gay men. In some tests they performed similarly to heterosexual men and not like women. Lesbians tended to perform without observable difference from heterosexual women. However, the responses in some parts of the test showed that gay men and straight men unquestionably process spacial information differently.

“Not only did straight men get started on the MWM test more quickly than gay men and the two female groups, they also maintained that advantage throughout the test,” said Dr Rahman.

“This might mean that sexual orientation affects the speed at which you acquire spatial information, but not necessarily your eventual memory for that spatial information.”

So we can toss another study on the growing pile of evidence that sexual orientation has some connection to biology. It’s hard to fathom how spatial information processing can be an acquired trait through any psychosocial conditioning or how anyone could make the claim, “Fathers, hug your son or he will drive using landmarks rather than an innate sense of which way is North”.

P.S. It should be noted that while women may not reach an unknown destination as quickly as men, they are in far fewer automobile accidents.

The Playful Gay

Timothy Kincaid

December 8th, 2007

In 1967, Desmond Morris published The Naked Ape, a best selling book that discussed humanity from a zoologist’s perspective. Now Morris has a new book, The Naked Man.

In it, Morris proposes a new notion about the causes of homosexuality. He claims neoteny, the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood, makes some people gay. Oh, and he thinks this is a good thing.

From the London Times

According to this theory, gay men also tend to be more inventive and creative than heterosexuals because they are more likely to retain the mental agility and playfulness of childhood.

“Gays have in general made a disproportionately greater contribution to life than nongays,” said Morris, who is also a noted artist. “The creative gay has very much advanced Planet Earth.”

New Bogaert Study: Increased Non-Typical Handedness In Gay Men

Timothy Kincaid

November 27th, 2007

Previous studies have shown that gay men and gay women were 39% more likely to be left-handed. Now a new study from Anthony Bogaert released in Neuropsychology shows higher rates of extreme right-handedness in gay men.

Unlike previous studies, which have only observed an increased rate of non-right-handedness in gay or bisexual men relative to heterosexual men, an elevated rate of extreme right-handedness was found in gay or bisexual men relative to heterosexual men.

Bogaert is also the researcher who identified a correlation between the number of older brothers and gay men. In his new study he also looks for this correlate and finds that it holds true only for those who do not have atypical handedness.

Specifically, older brothers increase the odds of being gay or bisexual in moderate right-handers only; in both non-right-handers and extreme right-handers, older brothers do not affect (or decrease) the odds of being gay or bisexual.

Bogaert’s observations are interesting when viewed with those recently released by Sandra Witelson. She noted that “right-handed homosexual men have less marked functional asymmetry compared to right-handed heterosexual men” in the isthmus of the corpus callosum.

Edge Magazine quotes Robert-Jay Green, Executive Director of the Rockway Institute:

“The results of this research suggest there is a biological predisposition to homosexuality among a significant number of gay/bisexual men,” said Green.

“What we don’t know yet is how strong or widespread such biological predisposition is or whether it is a result of genes, maternal hormones during pregnancy, or maternal immune system functioning during conception,” Green added.

A Predictive Formula for Orientation?

Timothy Kincaid

November 8th, 2007

As of yet there is no convincing study that can definitely prove that sexual orientation can be fully attributed to biology (genes, hormones, inuterine circumstances) or societal factors (parents, peers, self imaging). Twin studies suggest some genetic impact, but also seem to suggest that gene may not work alone. Studies on other mammals (rams in particular) suggest that brain structure is relevant, but we are humans not sheep and there is some argument that the brain structural differences may be a result rather than cause of sexual attraction/behavior.

However, in recent years there has been a regular stream of studies, all of which seem to support the notion that sexual orientation is heavily influenced by non-voluntary determinants, most of which appear biological in nature. Yet another has appeared in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Previous studies have established that left-handedness appears to a greater degree in the male homosexual population than in the male heterosexual population (it also appears among Presidents). Studies have also linked handedness with increased size of an area of the brain, the corpus callosum, particularly the isthmus.

We hypothesized that isthmal area would be greater in homosexual men, even among right handers. Twelve homosexual and ten heterosexual healthy young men, all consistently right-handed, underwent a research-designed magnetic resonance imaging scan. We found that the isthmal area was larger in the homosexual group, adding to the body of findings of structural brain differences between homosexual and heterosexual men.

This led researcher to think that right-handed gay men were less right-handed (”less marked functional asymmetry”) than their straight counterparts.

A logistic regression analysis to predict sexual orientation category correctly classified 21 of the 22 men (96% correct classification) based on area of the callosal isthmus, a left-hand performance measure, water level test score, and a measure of abstraction ability. Our findings indicate that neuroanatomical structure and cognition are associated with sexual orientation in men and support the hypothesis of a neurobiological basis in the origin of sexual orientation.

Past studies have suffered from the problems of exceptions. While “on average” an attribute might be observed to be different between the orientations, the variances were small and many individuals were observed to be on both sides of the observation window. If I am reading this correctly, however, Sandra Witelson and her team may have found a predictive test, a formula, for determining sexual orientation, using MRI and dexterity testing.

However, in Science Daily, Witelson appears to be hesitant to make such a claim:

The size of the corpus callosum is largely inherited suggesting a genetic factor in sexual orientation, said Witelson “Our results do not mean that heredity is destiny but they do indicate that environment is not the only player in the field,” she said.

While this is not a litmus test for sexual orientation, Witelson said this finding could prove to be one additional valuable piece of information for physicians and individuals who are trying to determine their sexual orientation. “Sometimes people aren’t sure of their sexual orientation.”

It will be interesting to see if her 96% correct prediction rate can be replicated in a larger population. Further, it will be interesting to see longitudinal testing to determine if sexual orientation can be predicted early in life.

In any case, this is yet one more study that supports a biological etiology for sexual orientation.

[Hat tip: GoodAsYou.org]

Gay Worms

Timothy Kincaid

October 25th, 2007

Yet another study has come out which supports the notion that at least some factors playing into the determination of sexual orientation may be genetic. From the Salt Lake Tribune

The researchers isolated the nerve cells responsible for sexual attraction in nematode worms, then “flipped” a genetic switch in the brains of female worms so they became attracted to other females.

Naturally, we aren’t worms (well, most of us) so this does not say too much about the etiology of human sexuality. Nonetheless, it does add the ever-growing pile of evidence that genes play a part.

The research does not provide solid answers about human sexuality – “that’s going to be more complicated than what’s happening with worms,” said White.

But it does lend support to the notion that people are born with a sexual orientation.

“It seems possible that if sexual orientation is genetically wired in worms, it would be in people, too,” biology professor Erik Jorgensen said in a news release.

CNN Poll on Homosexuality

Timothy Kincaid

June 27th, 2007

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll released today revealed the following attitudes Americans have about homosexuality:

Can gay people reorient: 56% say no; 45% say yes

What “causes” homosexuality: 42% say upbringing; 39% birth; 10% both; 3% neither

Let gay people serve openly in the military: 79% say yes; 18% say no

Recognize gay couples: 24% marriage; 27% civil unions; 43% neither

Allow gay couples to adopt: 57% say yes; 40% say no