The long-standing argument of if homosexuality is something you’re born with or a personality trait that you acquire throughout your life has been around for a long time. With so many people in the world fighting for gay rights, this is something that we should look into if anyone hopes to gain any understanding of homosexuality. The subject matter is touchy but it needs to be asked. Is it possible to be born gay?
This argument started all the way back in 1991 with Simon LeVay, a scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. He had a science partner who unfortunately died from the contraction of AIDS and it fueled him to look deeper into homosexuality and its origins. He conducted an observational study that looked into the hypothalamus in the human brain of 41 dead human corpses. 6 were women (sexual orientation unknown), 16 were men presumed to be heterosexual, and 19 were men presumed to be homosexual. He noticed a correlation between the size of the INAH 3 neurons in the hypothalamus and the subject’s assumed sexual orientation. He noticed that the women and the homosexual men had a similar amount of INAH 3 in their hypothalamus but the heterosexual men had a much larger amount of INAH 3 in their hypothalamus. This led LeVay to conclude that there are psychological differences between gay and straight people. But there are a few problems with his study:
1.) There is no way to accurately determine the amount of INAH 3 in the human brain so the amount of INAH 3 in the test subjects that he found are not concrete to begin with.
2.) He only had reports from 2 out of the 16 heterosexual men saying that they had never engaged in sexual acts with other men. This means that 14 of the assumed heterosexual test subjects could’ve been gay but were not reported as such.
The graph created by Simon LeVay during his observational study.
3.) There were only slight size differences between the amount of INAH 3 in both homosexual and heterosexual men.
4.) Different demographics were not reported for in this study so the differences in size in the INAH 3 neurons could have something to do with different ethnic or health backgrounds.
Although LeVay had a correlation going, his study was a perfect example of the fact that correlation need not equal causation. A more influential study was then published by Dean Hamer who conducted an observational study with 40 pairs of homosexual brothers. He found that 33 out of 40 of the fraternal pairs shared a similar stretch on the same spot of their X chromosome. The problem with this study was that the stretch in the X chromosome was not found in homosexual pairs of sisters.
Illustration of the X chromosome difference in pairs of gay brothers.
Both of these studies tried to prove that homosexuality is something you can be born with. But there are other studies that argue that children being gay could have been a direct result of having homosexual parents. This is a huge third variable that was not accounted for in the two studies previously mentioned. Socialization is a huge part of child development. Kids use their parents as an example of how to act in society when they get older. It is only natural for kids to absorb the things their parents do and internalize them. So what if some of the test subjects in Hamer’s study had gay parents and that is why they are gay? This article says that homosexuality has a strong heritable component which suggests that homosexuality could come from an individual’s parents after all. I think that homosexuality, if it can be explained at all, can only be explained through the evaluation of social sciences. Maybe there was something about our population that changed in the past and it required a variation in sexual orientation. Or maybe this variation has always been around it was just kept quiet due to past conventional social norms. Homosexuality could simply be due to the fact that it has always been this way and it is going to be this way. We just need to accept it.
A chart depicting how many Americans believe people were born gay or that being gay is a choice.
The take-home message here is that homosexuality can not be explained by modern science today. Although there are strong correlations and substantial evidence that it could be something you’re born with, it is something that we can’t prove at this point in time. Maybe later on down the line, along with the inevitable advancements in technology, we will finally be able to tell if homosexuality is something you’re born with or something you learn how to be. But in the mean time we simply don’t know.
IMAGES:
http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/behavior/apbg.htm
http://www.bio.davidson.edu/courses/genomics/2002/pierce/gaygene.htm
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/06/americans-are-still-divided-on-why-people-are-gay/
It can’t be proven that it is something a person is born with at this time, but it does seem likely. What also seems likely is that it is something that cannot be changed, whether it is from the horrible conversion therapy or in some other form. There is likely a scientific explanation for this (it seems like there is for everything), but as the process with this moves forward, there will be more answers.
You analyzed these studies and their possible flaws very well in this post. It is important for scientists to be critical about the work of other scientists and look at the details regarding how strong their claims actually are. One problem I foresee with homosexuality being a heritable trait is that homosexual people do not have their own natural children, unless it is done through a surrogate or with a sperm donation. Unless this surrogate or sperm donor is also homosexual, it may be hard to find people who are truly children of homosexual parents and therefore study any possible trait which they inherited. If there is a strong correlation where adopted children of homosexual parents are also homosexual, this may give credit to the claim that socialization is the key factor.
Greta blog post! You did a great job analyzing the studies you used and found that just because there may be sincere behind the fact the study isn’t valid enough to believe the science. This is a huge social issue throughout the pass couple years. When new science develops maybe we can see a stronger correlation but as of now studies are pulling on string to grasp the concept. Science isn’t ready yet.