News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
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The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.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…
COMMENT (1) | LINK
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.
COMMENTS (5) | LINK
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 reearch 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.
COMMENTS (6) | LINK
‘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.
COMMENTS (7) | LINK
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 jouvenile 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 detemine 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]
COMMENTS (2) | LINK
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
COMMENT | LINK
Alan Chambers on “Biology”
Jim Burroway
June 19th, 2007
Gay rights advocates have long pushed the argument that homosexuality is inborn, either through genes, prenatal hormones, or other biological mechanisms. There’s the assumption that if homosexuality is inborn, then it is proof that people can’t change. It is also understood that when someone believes that homosexuality is inborn, then that person is more likely to accept gays and lesbians as equal members of society. Conversely, anti-gay activists have almost uniformly denounced the biological evidence, preferring instead to blame parents and other childhood experiences for their children’s outcomes.
When Exodus president Alan Chambers appeared yesterday on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, he talked very briefly about whether homosexuality was inborn. In that segment, we heard him say:
Certainly we are body, soul and spirit. And a part of being body I believe is wrapped up in genetics and biology and things that are inborn.
This echoes what yesterday’s Los Angeles Times reported:
Chambers and other Exodus leaders talk deliberately about a possible biological basis for homosexuality, in part to explain that no one can turn a switch and flip from gay to straight, no matter how hard they pray.
In Alan Chambers’s 2006 book, God’s Grace and the Homosexual Next Door, he discusses the possibility of a biological origin. In it, he answers whether homosexuality is “completely genetic.” At this point in 2006, he didn’t think so, but he asked what if it were true:
Would that mean that genetic predispositions to behavior are the sole determinant of behavior? For instance, there is reportedly a genetic link to alcoholism. Yet people overcome that battle every day. I know many men and women who once were in bondage to alcohol and now live in freedom from that addiction. The same with drugs, lying, stealing, you name it.
The truth is we are all fallen creatures: genetically, physically, emotionally, sexually, and in every other way imaginable. So even though there is currently no proof — despite numerous studies conducted over the past 50 years — that homosexuality is genetic, let’s suppose that one day such proof is found. What then?
… I wrestled with this question during the early days of my healing and determined that if a gay gene was discovered, it would not alter my course — homosexuality is still not an option.
It has always been naive to think that discovering a “gay gene” or other biological explanations would suddenly bring all the debates to an end. Alan Chambers, like Albert Mohler is anticipating the possibility that the day many come when the evidence becomes too hard to ignore. I personally doubt that such a day will come, but if it does, don’t count on them changing their minds and becoming our allies.
Hair Whorls - Another Sexual Orientation Distinction
Timothy Kincaid
June 18th, 2007
New York Magazine has article which discusses many of the physical differences that are observable between straight and gay people. While most of this was familiar territory, there was one thing new:
Richard Lippa, a psychologist from California State University at Fullerton, is one of the leading cataloguers of the many ways in which gay people are different. I caught up with him a few weeks ago at a booth at the Long Beach Pride Festival in Southern California, where he was researching another hypothesis—that the hair-whorl patterns on gay heads are more likely to go counterclockwise. If true, it will be one more clue to our biological uniqueness. …
By the end of the two-day festival, Lippa had gathered survey data from more than 50 short-haired men and photographed their pates (women were excluded because their hairstyles, even at the pride festival, were too long for simple determination; crewcuts are the ideal Rorschach, he explains). About 23 percent had counterclockwise hair whorls. In the general population, that figure is 8 percent.
All of the known distinctions, be they finger length ratio, finger-print density, or left-handedness are averages and do not apply to specific individuals.
My hair grows in a clockwise whorl.
Another Gay Brain Study
Timothy Kincaid
May 23rd, 2007
It has long been known that men and women, collectively, do not perform mental tasks identically. And previous research has suggested that gay men and women perform mental tasks in a manner closer to that of the opposite sex.
An article in the April 2007 Archives of Sexual Behavior discusses a study by University of Warwick researchers of 109,612 men and 88,509 women which confirmed these observations. Although I’ve not yet seen the article, a summary was presented at Physorg.com.
In general, over the range of tasks measured, where a gender performed better in a task heterosexuals of that gender tended to perform better than non-heterosexuals. When a particular gender was poorer at a task homosexual and bisexual people tended to perform better than heterosexual members of that gender.
The results seem to be a tiered effect in which orientation correlated with gender expectations for mental tasks.
For instance in mental rotation (a task where men usually perform better) they found that the table of best performance to worst was:
– Heterosexual men
– Bisexual men
– Homosexual men
– Homosexual women
– Bisexual women
– Heterosexual women
The summary did not report as to the extent of the variation so I don’t know how much significance can be placed on the information. But to me this is further indication that orientation is “hard wired” and pre-natal.
Others may argue the order of causation (ie. that homosexual behaviors or thinking resulted in change in brain functioning). But in either case, this is another study on the large and growing pile that compellingly argues that orientation is not simply selected behavior and that it impacts more in one’s life than the object of one’s attraction.
The study also reported an item of bad news for gay men and good news for gay women.
However age was found to discriminate on gender grounds but not sexual orientation. The study found that men’s mental abilities declined faster than women’s and that sexual orientation made no difference to the rate of that decline either for men or women.
Sorry guys, both straight and gay.
COMMENTS (4) | LINK
The “Cure” for Gay Babies: Take a Chill Pill
Jim Burroway
March 15th, 2007
Rev. R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and one of the nation’s leading evangelical theologians, stirred a hornets nets by calling the bluff of many gay rights advocates who adamantly proclaim that the origins of homosexuality are strictly biological.
Rev. Mohler recently discussed the possible “ram”-ifications of the gay sheep studies taking place at the Oregon Health and Science University and acknowledges that there may indeed be a biological basis for homosexuality. And if this does prove to be a scientific certainty, conservative Christianity would have to respond accordingly — but not in a way that gay rights advocates might have anticipated:
Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God’s judgment.
The biblical condemnation of all homosexual behaviors would not be compromised or mitigated in the least by such a discovery. The discovery of a biological factor would not change the Bible’s moral verdict on homosexual behavior.
…If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.
Well that got him into a lot of hot water around the web. Some raised comparisons to Joseph Mengele and the “Final Solution”. While the comparisons may be extreme, they certainly raise a point. Where are we prepared to go when it comes to the ethical landmines that litter the designer baby debate? Should we eliminate left-handedness, which also may have a prenatal hormone link? Some suggest that lefties have a shorter lifespan. (Others dispute this.) And what about red-heads? They have an increased risk of skin cancer. As do all Caucasians, for that matter. Would we really “do the right thing” and eliminate white skin from the gene pool if we could? From a strictly medical standpoint, all of us really would be better off if we did. Who’s with me here?
These arguments are all well and good, but on a far more practical level, I really don’t think we have a whole lot to worry about. All treatments start out experimentally, and at some point those experiments would have to move toward human experiments. Can you imagine the ethical considerations of performing medical experiments on fetuses which would involve altering the developing brain? After all, that’s what we would be talking about here. Would you subject your child to such an experiment when we don’t know what the consequences might be?
We know that the developing brain is a very delicate thing. From Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, trace amounts of mercury poisoning, and observations of the effects of lead in the atmosphere — these examples and more have shown us that it doesn’t take much to set a baby’s developing brain all akilter. I don’t see how an experimental hormone treatment for pregnant mothers could pass muster with any ethics compliance boards when we have no idea what sort of unintended consequences may come from it. Will the fetus suffer other developmental difficulties? Will the boy grow up to be abnormally aggressive, impulsive or violent? Will the “cure” induce other personality or cognitive problems? We don’t know, And in some cases, we may not know until ten to twenty years after the child is born. Many types of schizophrenia for example don’t become apparent until adolescence.
Rev. Mohler’s comments reveal a troubling trend in how conservative Christianity may incorporate biological theories on the origin of homosexuality. (His controversial views, however, are not surprising. He once called the Roman Catholic Church “a false church” that “teaches a false gospel.”) Nevertheless, the prospect of a medical “cure” is fraught with a lot of very practical difficulties. A “Final Solution” is not on the horizon, and for that we can all take a deep breath and chill a little.
But this episode does go to show how short-sighted it is, for so many reasons, for gay-rights advocates to put all of their eggs into the biological basket. The fact is, we simply don’t know what “causes” homosexuality. And what’s more, except as an exercise of pure intellectual curiosity (a curiosity that I share), we really shouldn’t care. As I said before, our Creater bestowed on us our inalienable rights not because of how we were born, but by the fact that we were born. In our Republic, that must always be the bottom line.
See Also:
Mohler’s “Cure” For Gay Babies: A Follow Up
All We, Like Sheep?
A Commentary on Gay Rams and the Nature/Nurture Debate
Jim Burroway
January 25th, 2007
My friend Richard is one of the gayest people I know. He’s not only gay, but he is one of the happiest, friendliest and most cheerful souls you could ever hope to meet. He fits every definition of the word. One morning he was watching one of those news-chat programs in which a well-meaning guest was intoning with great sympathy that gay people are “that way” because they were born gay. It’s not their fault; they didn’t have a choice. Richard responded to that condescending tone by throwing up his hands and exclaiming, “Well if it’s not a choice it oughta be!”
I thought about that a few weeks ago when the blogging world exploded with news of Dr. Charles Roselli, of the Oregon Health and Science University, and his experiments to “make gay rams ex-gay”, or at least that’s how the research was represented. For some reason, about 8% of rams will only try to mate with other rams, and the actual goal of his research was to try to figure out how to identify those rams which are more likely to breed.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) learned of this (these studies had actually been appearing in professional journals since the mid-nineties 2002), and hyped it into a worldwide outrage. Dr. Roselli was inundated with e-mails, including death threats (”I hope you burn in hell”, “please die”, etc.) and Martina Navrotilova wrote that such treatment “can only be surmised as an attempt to develop a prenatal treatment” for homosexuality.
This morning’s The New York Times followed up with the story behind the story heard ’round the world:
Dr. Roselli, whose research is supported by the National Institutes of Health and is published in leading scientific journals, insists that he is as repulsed as his critics by the thought of sexual eugenics in humans. He said human sexuality was a complex phenomenon that could not be reduced to interactions of brain structure and hormones
But others continue with their criticisms:
Paul Root Wolpe, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the university’s Center for Bioethics, said that although he supported Dr. Roselli’s research, “I’m not sure I would let him off the hook quite as easily as he wants to be let off the hook.”…
If the mechanisms underlying sexual orientation can be discovered and manipulated, Dr. Wolpe continued, then the argument that sexual orientation is based in biology and is immutable “evaporates.”
It evaporates indeed. Biology can be manipulated much more easily than minds and hearts. The argument that says that homosexuality is pre-natal and can’t be changed misses an obvious point. If it’s pre-natal, it can’t be changed because we don’t know how to change it. But just because we don’t know how to change a lot of pre-natal conditions today doesn’t mean we won’t discover how to do it in the future.
But there are those who claim to know how to change sexuality today because, according to their favorite theories, it arises solely from what happened to us after we were born. But that argument is just as flawed. The fact is the mental health professions have not demonstrated a very good track record in “fixing” all sorts of horrible things our mothers or fathers supposedly did to us. And part of the reason is simple: our parents cannot bear the sole blame for who we are or whatever ails us.
Parents (especially mothers) have, at various times throughout history, been blamed for autism, asthma, epilepsy, schizophrenia, alcoholism, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, stuttering, poor peer relationships, low self-esteem, social phobia, sociopathy, bad grades, and homosexuality. And what do many of these patients get after so many years of therapy? Autism, asthma, epilepsy, schizophrenia, alcoholism, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, stuttering, poor peer relationships, low self-esteem, social phobia, sociopathy, bad grades or homosexuality and someone to blame it on.
That’s not to say that bad parenting doesn’t contribute to severe difficulties later in life. It often does. And investigating those past influences can be a benefit to many people by giving them important insights into how they see their world and react to it. But the mental health professions have had, at best, middling success in “correcting” the effects of parental factors.
I have often argued that, first of all, it is silly to suppose that something as complex as human sexuality and romantic attractions can be boiled down to a single cause for all people. But even if such an argument could be made and it were somehow proven that homosexuality were environmental, does that mean we are any closer to “curing” it?
The best evidence says we aren’t, and that assessment seems to be shared by the collective “gut check” taking place in a society where psychoanalysis has fallen out of fashion. Psychoanalysis (that particular branch of psychology based on the methods and theories of Sigmund Freud in which childhood experiences reign supreme) reached its peak some thirty years ago, but it has been losing its influence ever since. (When’s the last time you heard of someone seeing their analyst?) The reason for its loss of influence is obvious: While it may help some people, it hasn’t proven to be terrible effective for many. Woody Allen is just as messed up today as he ever was. And yet, ex-gay groups like Exodus and NARTH continue to cling to those outdated notions because it’s all they have. There is no pill or vaccine to “cure” homosexuality. Not yet, anyway.
But what if someday there is a pill or a vaccine? Will that put an end to all gay people? Probably not. As I said before, there is not likely to be a single cause for all gayness. We are not sheep. Nor are we fruitflies, which can be made to try to mate with other fruitflies of the same gender with the modification of a single gene. We are human beings, and we are a very complex bunch.
So what if new discoveries cover all of our biological bases and we still have gay people? What then? Well, I guess that would prove what we already suspect and shouldn’t be afraid to say, that the environment plays a role for some people. But then that brings us back to the nurture side of the debate and the very dicey “success” we’ve had with dealing with it so far. If the ever-growing number of ex-ex-gays in our midsts tells us anything, it’s that we’re not likely to see many therapeutic breakthroughs here.
And this brings me to my second argument. It is not only silly to argue that human sexuality can be blamed solely on biology or parenting because it is scientifically ludicrous, it is silly to argue it because it merely reinforces the assumption that something must have gone wrong. Laura Schlessinger says we are a “biological error”. Strike the “error” from that statement and you have the prevailing pro-gay argument on what happened. Most gay activists have bought into the same argument; they’ve just chosen a different side. The only difference between these gay activists and the anti-gay lobby is in their arguments about what went wrong.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a call to end all research into the etiology (origins) of sexuality. I’m a big believer in knowledge for knowledge’s sake. I’m very quick to rush off to the University library whenever I hear of a new study being published. I’m as fascinated by all of these studies as anybody can be. I’m also a firm believer that this research should go forward and we should let the chips fall where they may. We should never fear intellectual curiosity, no matter where it leads us.
But I would suggest we step outside of the nature/nurture debate altogether and instead adopt Richard’s attitude. If it’s not a choice, it should be. And while we’re at it, we can also choose to be grateful to our parents for contributing to the good things that are in us. I’m grateful to both of my parents for nurturing in me a love of science, a love of reading, a love of exploration and discussion, a love of antiques, a love of traveling, and so much more. They also nurtured in me a deep faith and a strong sense of justice and fair play. Many of these characteristics may well have been pre-natally ordained, but they nurtured them anyway. And if they nurtured my developing sexuality — and if they influenced how I relate to other people — then who am I to wag my finger at them? And more personally, how dare anyone else speak badly about my mom and dad?
Besides we must never allow this argument to serve as a distraction from the fundamental values that we are really wrestling with. These values go to our very core as men and women and as citizens. And they are also the founding values of our great nation: that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. And we are endowed with these rights not because of how we were born, but because of the fact that we were born.
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