Gay Gene Essay, Research Paper
Homosexuality
Is it Really a Choice?
Since the 1800’s, psychiatrists and psychologists have
concluded that homosexuality is a mental disorder. They have
believed it is brought about by misguided upbringing and their
social environments. For instance, it was believed that if the child
was lacking a male – figure in the home, he would most likely be
gay. Or that child abuse can lead to lesbianism when the special
needs of a little girl are denied, ignored, or exploited and the
future womanhood of the child is in jeopardy. However,
inconsistencies in the research subjects’ abuse records ruled these
theories out. And if this were the case, then why is homosexuality
present in different cultures?
Some believed homosexuality was caused by a difference in
brain structure. In 1991, Simon LeVay published research stating
that sexual orientation may be the result of differing brain
structures. The hypothalamus, a region in the brain that governs
sexual behavior, was the structure that LeVay was pinpointing as
the structure at fault. In his studies of the hypothalamus, he found
that in homosexual men, the hypothalamus was smaller than that
of heterosexual men. Instead it was the size of the female
hypothalamus, thus explaining their sexual tendencies. ” It would
begin to suggest why male homosexuality is present in most
human populations, despite cultural constraints, ” says Dennis
Landis, a neurologist who studied brain structure at Case Western
Reserve University. ( Williams, 1993)
A woman by the name of Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
criticized LeVay’s theories and found several flaws in his
experimental studies. First off, she looked at LeVay’s sample
population. It turned out that LeVay had autopsied 19
homosexual men, 16 men presumed to be heterosexual, and 6
women presumed to be heterosexual. So already we have one
flaw, too small a sample size. Flaw number two was that LeVay
simply presumed that the 16 males and 6 females were
heterosexual. Perhaps they hadn’t come out of the closet yet. Or
perhaps they were bisexual! Flaw number three being that all of
the 19 homosexual men died of AIDS, which infiltrates the central
nervous system. How could he be sure that there wasn’t some
relationship between the disease and the size of the
hypothalamus? So you see, differences in brain structure couldn’t
be proven according to LeVay’s studies.
More recently, however, scientists have begun to view sexual
preferences as hereditary. It is no longer a question of nature vs.
nurture. Most homosexual men and women have always had the
same sexual orientation. Among gay men, 96% had their ” first
crush ” on another male. Whereas 100% of heterosexual males
were first attracted to females. One thing that didn’t differ
between heterosexuals and homosexuals was the age at which
they had their first attractions. Most males had their first
attractions around the age of 10. Also, 86% of gay men had their
first sexual activity with another male. With heterosexual males,
on the other hand, only 73% had their first sexual activity with a
female! The age median age for puberty among males, regardless
of sexual orientation, is approximately 12 years of age. Although
gay men who reached puberty later tended to have fewer sexual
partners than men who reached puberty at an early age. Most
gay men self – acknowledge that they are gay anywhere between
the ages of 4 through 30, with the median being at age 16.
Coming ” out of the closet ” and revealing their identity to the
public generally took longer. Most gay men revealed their secret
at the median age of 21.
Some individuals go through a gay phase as a result of
emotional or mental rejection. This helps explain why some
individuals carry the gay gene, but don’t express it. And
adversely, why other individuals don’t possess the gay gene, but
do express gay tendencies.
There was one man in particular that took great interest in
this debatable topic. A graduate from Harvard University with his
Ph.D. in Genetics, Dr. Dean Hamer now works in a division of the
National Cancer Institute ( NCI ) as chief of Gene Structure and
Regulation Section of the Laboratory of Biochemistry. In 1992 the
NCI became especially interested in Kaposi’s sarcoma ( KS ), a
cancer of the skin cells that appears most frequently in Greeks,
Italians and in gay men with AIDS. Hamer began thinking about
the role of genes in ” complex traits” and began to question the
possible role of genes in sexual orientation. He began his
research by drawing out family pedigrees of gay men to prove its
heredity. In the pedigree shown in Figure A , the gay form of the
sexual orientation gene is present in the maternal grandfather.
The gene seems to disappear in his offspring, but he has passed
the ” gay gene ” onto his daughters. The daughters, however, don’t
express the trait because they received a ” straight gene ” from
their mother. The trait then reappears in the male grandchildren
in the next generation. The mother was a heterozygous carrier
and passed the trait on to her sons. In Part B of Figure A, the gay
gene is passed down from the maternal grandmother to the gay
subject’s uncles and male cousins.
Another way they tested their ” guinea pigs ” was by asking
them a set of select questions based on their sexual preferences.
Figure E shows an outline of the topics covered to determine their
sexual orientation.
Another technique used was the Kinsey Scale which was
developed by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940’s for sexual research. The
Kinsey scale ranks sexual orientation on a six level scale ranging
from exclusive heterosexual to exclusive homosexual. 0 being
exclusively heterosexual and 6 being exclusively homosexual. A
series of questions is again asked based on these four aspects:
Self-identification, attraction, fantasy and behavior. See Figure D
for the distribution of these four aspects in homosexuals and
heterosexuals. For the individual to classify as Definitely Gay,
they had to have a Kinsey score of 5 or 6, meaning that they had
openly acknowledged their attraction to the same sex to
themselves of to other family members. They were classified as
Definitely Bisexual if they received a 2 – 4 on the Kinsey Scale and
as an adult, they openly acknowledged that they were bisexual.
The individual was possibly gay or bisexual if they had some
reason to suspect something other than heterosexuality, but not
openly acknowledged. A person was considered heterosexual if
they had a Kinsey Score of 0 or 1 and they indicated an
acknowledged attraction to the opposite sex.
Once their sexual orientation was determined, 76 gay
individuals were asked how many of their relatives were gay, if
any. And if they were, which ones, so they could determine the
possible genetic linkage. After drawing out 76 family pedigrees
they found that there were far more gays on the mother’s side of
the family than on the father’s side. Because of these findings they
concluded that it must be a sex – lined trait. They found a small
region of the X chromosome, Xq28, appeared to be the same in a
high proportion of gay brothers. Out of 56 pairs of identical twins,
where one gay twin was interviewed, 52% of the co – twins were
also gay. Also along those lines, a brother of gay twins has a 22%
chance of being gay. Whereas they found that individuals with
twin brothers, one gay and one straight, had only a 4% chance of
being gay ( Hamer and Copeland, 1994). If you look at Figure B,
you will note that there are more gays on the maternal side than
their are on the paternal side. Figure C is a chart of lesbian’s
male relatives. Their values are different of those of the gays
values, but both have relatively the same results. Since they found
that sexual orientation is a recessive X – linked trait, that would
explain why it appears more frequently in males than it does in
females.
The results of this study were published on July 16, 1993
and since then, the topic still remains debatable and
argumentative. Gays and lesbians seemed to appreciate and
make light of the subject, though. Shortly after the report
publications were released, T-shirts were made that read ” Xq28 -
– thanks for the genes, Mom! “