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.

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.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(hat tip Queerty)

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.

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 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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.