Are we born straight or gay?
A few years agone I was giving a seminar on issues around sexuality at New Wine summer conference. During the questions at the end of the seminar, someone nigh the back asked 'Are people born gay?' I was aware that this tin be a loaded question, so I offered a very careful answer, highlighting what I knew of research but as well pointing out that the answer to that question (in either direction) did not offering an immediate respond to questions of sexual ethics, and that for many people (on all sorts of issues) the question of 'Am I built-in this way?' is personal, loaded and sensitive. I thought I had washed a reasonable job—until the cease of the seminar when I adult female pushed through the grouping waiting to talk to me and started shouting, waving her easily. 'I brought a group of gay teenagers hither from my church building—and you lot accept told them God hates them!' I hadn't washed that at all—in fact, quite the opposite—but it confirmed to me that the question of causation is one that is felt strongly and personally within this debate.
So, at 1 level, information technology was non that surprising that there was quite a chip of coverage of a piece of research published in August 2022 in Scientific discipline which showed that there was no unmarried gene that determined sexual orientation, and that cultural, developmental and environmental factors were more significant. You can read the paper for yourself, and this is the abstract that comes with it:
Twin and family studies accept shown that same-sex sexual behavior is partly genetically influenced, simply previous searches for specific genes involved have been underpowered. We performed a genome-broad association study (GWAS) on 477,522 individuals, revealing 5 loci significantly associated with same-sex sexual beliefs. In aggregate, all tested genetic variants deemed for eight to 25% of variation in same-sex sexual behavior, just partially overlapped between males and females, and do not allow meaningful prediction of an individual's sexual behavior. Comparing these GWAS results with those for the proportion of same-sexual practice to total number of sexual partners among nonheterosexuals suggests that there is no unmarried continuum from opposite-sexual activity to same-sex sexual beliefs. Overall, our findings provide insights into the genetics underlying same-sex sexual behavior and underscore the complexity of sexuality.
The authors were enlightened that this subjected is contested, and that it is open up to misuse past entrance hall groups in one direction or another, so they went to the problem of producing a website, which included a helpful video.
(They had time to prepare this, since they first presented their research at a conference in October 2018.)
But at that place is one affair that is surprising in all this: that it is news at all. People on every side of this debate have been saying this for a long time! The fact that it is little known, and that this research could take anyone past surprise, tells us something about the nature of the debate.
My first serious reading on this issue was Thomas Schmidt'sStraight and Narrow: compassion and clarity in the homosexuality debate. Information technology was first published in 1995, which is a long time agone in the history of the debate, but remains a good read (and I remember a new edition might be on its way). In his chapter on the 'Groovy Nature-Nurture Contend', Schmidt offers a 'multi-causal model' in which he notes that a number of unlike factors contribute to the germination of our sexual identity. Non but genetics, only likewise (for men) birth gild makes a deviation. Younger male siblings are exposed to college levels of in-utero testosterone (which affects the length of their ring finger) and makes it more likely that a younger son will not class a good relationship with his father, which will then have an impact on his psycho-sexual development.
Subsequent inquiry on the phenomenon of same-sex relationships has confirmed this. A study in New Zealand in 2003 explored the stability of different kinds of sexual identity among young women and men.
At that place is a continuing debate about the importance of social versus biological factors in the expression of same-sex activity allure. Investigation of prevalence, continuities, and changes over time among young adults growing up in a country with a relatively accepting climate to homosexuality is likely to illuminate this debate. Analyses were therefore undertaken of self-reported aforementioned-sexual activity attraction at age 21 and 26, in a cohort of about grand people born in 1972/3 in one New Zealand city. Participants were also asked about same-sex behaviour and attitudes to same-sexual practice relationships. By age 26, 10.7% of men and 24.v% of women reported existence attracted to their ain sexual activity at some fourth dimension. This dropped to 5.6% of men and sixteen.4% of women who reported some electric current same-sex attraction. Electric current attraction predominantly to their ain sex or every bit to both sexes (major attraction) was reported by ane.6% of men and two.1% of women. Occasional same-sex attraction, just non major attraction, was more common amid the well-nigh educated. Between historic period 21 and 26, slightly more men moved abroad from an exclusive heterosexual attraction (ane.nine% of all men) than moved towards it (1.0%), while for women, many more moved abroad (9.5%) than towards (1.3%) exclusive heterosexual attraction. These findings testify that much aforementioned-sex attraction is not sectional and is unstable in early machismo, specially among women. The proportion of women reporting some same-sex attraction in New Zealand is loftier compared both to men, and to women in the UK and US. These observations, along with the variation with education, are consistent with a large part for the social surroundings in the acknowledgement of aforementioned-sex attraction. The smaller group with major same-sex attraction, which changed less over fourth dimension, and did not differ by educational activity, is consistent with a basic biological dimension to sexual attraction. Overall these findings fence against any single explanation for homosexual attraction.
Notice that this research is based on self-reported descriptions of orientation (rather than actual behaviours) and is inferring from the instability of identification something about causation. Put pictorially, the data on young women looks like this:
Research in Kingdom of denmark in 2006 looked at the correlation between a range of factors, including age difference between parents, absence of the father, and being raised in an urban rather than rural environment with same-sexual practice and other-sex activity wedlock. The enquiry aimed to avoid ideological factors by choosing a country where same-sexual activity wedlock had been accepted for a long time (thus removing any distortions arising from social stigma) and looked at biographical facts (wedlock) rather than asking most self identification.
Children who experience parental divorce are less likely to marry heterosexually than those growing up in intact families; however, little is known about other childhood factors affecting marital choices. We studied childhood correlates of first marriages (heterosexual since 1970, homosexual since 1989) in a national cohort of two 1000000 xviii–49 yr-old Danes. In multivariate analyses, persons born in the majuscule area were significantly less likely to marry heterosexually, merely more probable to marry homosexually, than their rural-born peers. Heterosexual matrimony was significantly linked to having young parents, small age differences between parents, stable parental relationships, large sibships, and tardily nascence order. For men, homosexual marriage was associated with having older mothers, divorced parents, absent fathers, and beingness the youngest child. For women, maternal decease during adolescence and beingness the simply or youngest child or the only girl in the family unit increased the likelihood of homosexual union. Our study provides population-based, prospective prove that childhood family unit experiences are important determinants of heterosexual and homosexual marriage decisions in adulthood.
Given this testify, it is perhaps not surprising that gay campaigners exterior the church accept been very happy to accept the conclusions. Lisa Diamond is a researcher who likewise campaigns for gay rights, and she is quite clear that the notion that gay people 'are born that way' is not supported by the evidence, nor does it provide the ground for advocacy. You can lookout her present her research in 2013 here:
At the terminate of the piece, she talks near the way that her research has been used to campaign against gay rights, which she disagrees with. Merely she as well comments:
We can make claims for civil rights protection that don't rely on the immutability and distinctiveness and uniqueness of these [gay, queer, bi-] groups…I feel similar, as a customs, the queers accept got to stop saying 'Please help us. We were born this way and we can't modify'. (43 minutes)
Diamond's own long inquiry article (written with others) confirms the relatively small contribution fabricated by genetic factors.
In decision, the evidence [from twin studies] supporting a genetic influence on sexual orientation is consistent, although sampling biases remain a business concern fifty-fifty for the best available studies. Our best estimate of the magnitude of genetic effects is moderate—certainly not overwhelming…
Based on the evidence from twin studies, nosotros believe that we can already provide a qualified answer to the question "Is sexual orientation genetic?" That respond is: "Probably somewhat genetic, merely not mostly so." On the i hand, that answer is not surprising, given the evo- lutionary pressure against genes that diminish repro- duction, equally genes for homosexuality likely do, especially in males (Vasey, Parker, & VanderLaan, 2014). On the other hand, nosotros look many people volition find the con- clusion surprising, mainly because they have miscon- strued the meanings of "genetic" and "environmental." At that place tin can be little uncertainty that sexual orientation is environmentally influenced. (p 76)
Within the UK, gay campaigners have long acknowledged this. In 2008, Peter Tatchell set out a multi-causal explanation of the formation of orientation along like lines to Schmidt, though under the controversial title 'Homosexuality: it isn't natural':
In that location is a major problem with gay gene theory, and with all theories that posit the biological programming of sexual orientation. If heterosexuality and homosexuality are, indeed, genetically predetermined (and therefore mutually sectional and unchangeable), how practise nosotros explicate bisexuality or people who, suddenly in mid-life, switch from heterosexuality to homosexuality (or vice versa)? We tin't.
The reality is that queer and straight desires are far more cryptic, blurred and overlapping than whatever theory of genetic causality can allow…
Many studies advise social factors are also important influences in the formation of sexual orientation. These include the relationship between a child and its parents, formative childhood experiences, family expectations, cultural mores and peer pressure level.
By about the age of five or six, a combination of biological and social influences seem to lay the basis of an individual's sexual orientation. Considering our sexuality is fixed at such an early historic period, many lesbians and gay men feel they take been homosexual all their lives and therefore mistakenly conclude that it must exist genetic and that they were born queer.
Tatchell also explains the appeal of 'built-in gay' or 'gay gene' theories within the cultural fence:
They besides see the gay factor explanation as a useful defence against the arguments of the religious right, which dismisses aforementioned-sexual activity relationships every bit a lifestyle choice. But no 1 sits down 1 day and chooses to be gay (or straight). Sexual orientation is not a pick like choosing which biscuits to buy in a supermarket. We don't have free will apropos the decision of our sexual orientation. Our merely free volition is whether we accept or repress our true inner sexual and emotional desires.
More recently, in January 2019, Matthew Parris noted the same matter—with the same dangers:
In what passes for the gay 'customs', in that location'south something of a taboo about admitting, fifty-fifty to ourselves, that quite a few of usa (not me) could, with a little coaxing and self-discipline, be 'straight'. Straight men are as reluctant to admit the converse. There exist strong reasons for this taboo among gays: first, 'we tin can't help it' was absolutely central to our early pitch for equality, and nosotros needed to believe it. Secondly, if sexuality really is modifiable for some, how long before someone suggests cognitive behavioural therapy minus (or fifty-fifty plus) the Hallelujahs?
This consistent, well-founded, and widely agreed understanding will need to inform the Church of England's current debates on sexuality.
It is no surprise that information technology continues to be controversial; if parenting plays a role in sexual development, am I equally a parent 'to blame' for the style my children take turned out? That is the painful question that all parents face on a whole range of issues.
And when thinking most my own sexuality and decisions, believing that something is genetic and that 'God made me this way' is more comforting that facing the complex reality of surround, nurture, culture and decisions that have shaped the way I am.
But above all, equally Schmidt fix out virtually 25 years ago, we need both compassionand clarity in our thinking and discussion on this issue.
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