Maybe this should go in to Great Debates but I will keep it here as I am looking for a scientific answer.
There is a claim that homosexuality is caused only by genetic and in utero causes and nothing post partum can affect the expression of homosexual human behaviour.
Has any scientifically valid experiment sought to prove or disprove this.
Note- I am not suggesting that homosexuality is ‘curable’ but I am interested in the facts about whether infant and childhood experience could affect the expression of a genetically affected tendency.
I don’t think anyone is justified in saying that homosexuality has only genetic causes. In fact, we can reject this hypothesis conclusively by identical twin studies. It turns out that if a person is homosexual, and has an identical twin, that twin is only about 50% likely to also be homosexual. If homosexuality had an exclusive genetic cause, then that correlation would be 100%.
It’s also much too strong to say that “nothing post-partum can affect the expression of homosexual human behaviour.” Of course all sorts of things can affect the expression of homosexual behavior. If, for instance, you make homoseuxal behavior a crime, you’ll get a lot less homosexual behavior. People with a homosexual orientation are perfectly capable of refraining from homosexual behavior, just like people with a heterosexual orientation are capable of refraining from heterosexual behavior. I was able to do so for years at a time.
What has never been shown is a way to change homsexual orientation. You can convince gays to stop having gay sex in a variety of ways. It’s a lot harder to stop them from wanting to have gay sex, even if they want to stop wanting to have gay sex. Just like for years I was able to not have heterosexual sex, but I wasn’t able to stop wanting to have heterosexual sex. And it’s too strong to say that nothing can change homosexual orientation, it’s just that there’s no treatment or therapy that we know of, and there may never be. Even most “pray away the gay” organizations like Exodus International won’t claim to be able to change homosexual orientation, just to stop homosexual behavior.
There is no scientific proof that human homosexual behavior only has genetic or in utero causes. Obviously humans have control over their behavior, so I assume you are talking about the vaguely defined concept of homosexuality. It is extremely difficult to attribute any complex human behavior solely to genetic and in utero causes, or rule out later environmental factors.
I am looking for a study that has looked at expression and non-expression of homosexual orientation.
I do not believe that homosexual orientation is a simple on/off switch.
I cannot even think how one would seek to prove that experience did or did not affect the expression of homosexual tendency to the point where a potentially Gay person would actually happily settle in to a straight or bisexual lifestyle.
I am disagreeing with someone who insists that homosexuality is entirely genetic/in utero caused and once born someone is determined to be either GAy or not.
This does not accord with how I see every other complex human behaviour which are universally seen as genetic/experience inter-reaction.
I believe the Gay community is so frightened and angry about the ‘we can cure homosexuality’ therapists, that they are forced into denial of what I see as a basic human trait- plasticity in the face of the environment.
Do you believe there exists a treatment or therapy that could turn you gay? Not just to engage in homosexual behavior, anyone with a gun could do that, but to stop you from being sexually and romantically attracted to women, and cause you to be sexually and romantically attracted to men?
Note that even castration doesn’t stop all sexual or romantic impulses.
I believe that adult humans are firmly fixed in enduring patterns of behaviour and conduct which are extremely difficult to change.
I believe that infants, children and younger adolescents are more open to changing underlying behaviour patterns in response to social pressures.
I just do not see why homosexuality is the only complex human behaviour to fail to be affected by social conditioning in childhood when we believe that such social conditioning affects almost (?all) other human behaviours.
Symmetric in respect of all sexuality being conditioned by some experience. Obviously there is a bias in favour of heterosexuality as shown by expressed behaviour in society.
With the possible exception of wanting to breathe, pretty much nothing we think or do is going to be entirely environmental, but conversely pretty much none of it will be entirely genetic/prenatal either. What’s innate and what’s not will always be a matter of degrees, not absolutes. I don’t see how a man being attracted only to men is any different, biologically and psychologically, from a man who is attracted only to brunettes, or only to blondes, or only to people of a particular race or even with a particular facial feature.
Claiming that sexual orientation is not set in stone from birth is, however, a far cry from claiming that gays can be converted over to heterosexuality or vice versa. For one, the environmental factors that have the most impact might happen long before memory and identity are definably established, or they might be physical or chemical rather than social.
And since from an objective standpoint the only thing homosexuality impacts negatively is the ability to reproduce, classifying it as a “disease” would be iffy even if it were purely preventable, and thus many gays wouldn’t necessarily want to be “cured” or advocate prevention of future homosexual development; a significant chunk of cases of wanting to want to have sex with only the opposite sex would then be purely the result of pressure from the religious right and a desire to make their own lives easier. So if the question you’re asking is for future use regarding the moral aspects, I think most gays and our allies would agree that even if it were purely a matter of upbringing it would still not be wrong.
I do recall reading of a study somewhere that concluded there are certain chemicals in male sweat that straight women and gay men are both physiologically aroused by, and chemicals in female urine (bleh!) and ovulation-juice with the same effect on straight men and lesbian women. I’ll look for a cite tomorrow morning, but I remember also being insulted by the article because it claimed these results were evidence of gays being an as-yet-nameless distinct gender from their hetero counterparts with the same genitalia. That, however, is a whole new can of worms .
I am having a particularly difficult argument with someone who insists that once a baby is popped out it is either gay or not gay. I find this difficult to believe with what I know of other human traits.
I do know of unsuccessful attempts at gender re-orientation with people with indeterminate sexuality being doubtful, but one cite does not make a complex theory.
I believe that Gay people are that way not because of choice but as a natural result of their heritage-genetic, in utero environment and possibly social in early life (not training, but experience).
I cannot see why homosexuality should be the sole exception in human behaviour that has no social conditioning input.
Since heterosexuals and homosexuals display differences in brain anatomy any cure for homosexuality would require a bit more than some psychoanalysis. Any hypothetical environmental trigger that causes homosexuality in humans would have to apply to animals as well. Homosexuality appears to be a core character trait, with people often reporting they knew they were gay as early as 5 or 6. If a kid can be shy or smart or creative I don’t see why they can’t be gay.
It’d be trivially easy to stop homosexual behavior, as mentioned. Good luck stopping homosexual desire.
My opinion only, not backed up by any study but only what I have read and observed over the years:
Human sexual orientation (SO) is a spectrum, like so many other behaviors. There is no on/off, black/white, gay/straight. There are many, many shades of gray from one end of the spectrum to the other. Part of SO is no doubt genetic, part is no doubt social, part is no doubt some other thing we know not. Some gays may have more of a genetic influence, some a more social influence, some more of we know not.
What I do observe in my own heterosexual identity and those of homosexuals I know is that this “shade of grey” becomes a very distinct and unchangeable part of you at an early age. I knew I liked females in the first grade. I just knew. Many of my gay friends knew they liked the same sex very early in their lives, too. They just knew. Some, however, took longer to understand their orientation due to family or other social issues, possibly late genetic expression, or some other factor that we know not.
So how is that for a non-answer? There are too many factors involved, and too little we know about this subject, for anyone to claim it is one thing or another. My experience has taught me that SO is a spectrum of genetic/social/other factors that we will likely never fully calculate or understand, and that it becomes a very integral and unchangeable part of self, usually at an early age. At this time, anyone that claims to know how SO occurs or, ominously, have a “fix” for it is full of shit.
IMHO (wrong forum, but I haven’t stayed at a Holiday Inn Express lately) -
Human sexuality is a broad spectrum - there is also little doubt that ones own expression of it changes over time - thru both external experiences as well as matuation of ones own feelings and desires. (compare the willingness to explore of a youngster, vs a teenager vs a middleaged adult, etc).
There is undoubtedly a component of it that is ‘pre-determined’ in the womb and young development (amount of certain hormones during pregancy I think I read somewhere), while other components of it will change over time due to external factors. To call the “pre-determination” of it ‘genetic’ (as in the idea that you could test DNA for the GAY GENE) is not likely.
Being “born this way” is way to simplified an approach to a complex subject, and I am also sure that many people feel that they are “born this way” use it more as a counter argument against those that are so close minded as to assume that they are “broken” or just “choose” to be gay (not that they aren’t perfectly valid in stating/feeling that they are ‘born this way’, its just without the anti-gay arguments/fights, they wouldn’t have to make such a statement, they would just ‘be’).
As dbx820 says, sexual orientation appears to be a continuum, but people aren’t evenly distributed along the continuum. For men, imagine two peaks, one over heterosexual, and a smaller one over homosexual, with the tails of those curves meeting in the middle. So most men are mostly heterosexual and a smaller number of men are mostly homosexual. Some men are *really *heterosexual, some are really homosexual, and some are in between—from truly bisexual to having definite inclinations towards one or the other, but not completely committed to it. It’s similar for women, but probably with more falling towards the middle than for men. See bimodal distribution for an example of these types of curves. Sorry, no cite today.
Some people are probably born completely one way or another. In that, no environmental influence is going to push them to the other side. By this, I mean their “true” orientation, because as others have stated it’s very possible to not participate in a behavior. But has been noted, there is not a 100% concordance for sexuality with identical twins. That means there must be some environmental factors that play a role.
This study suggests that the environmental factors are so called “non-shared environment.” The way to think about that is that some things in the environment make them more similar, “shared environment” (both growing up in the same house, both eating the same breakfast, etc.) and some environmental things make them different, “non-shared” (having different home room teachers, different private life experiences, etc.)
The conclusion of that article is that whatever the environment is which has an effect on sexual orientation, it is things which work to make the twins less similar to each other.
You keep talking about behavior rather than orientation, i.e. acts rather than desire. Are you really talking about desire?
I can only offer one anecdote, about myself. I believed at an early age (7) that I was not then and never would be interested in females, but only in males. This was a horrifying realization to me, and I did my best to pretend it wasn’t true. But when I reached puberty, all of my sexual fantasies were about males. I still did my best (the rest of the time) to deny this to myself. I thought I would be celibate, but when I reached the age where it was legal to hang out in places where men hooked up, I did so and started having actual sex. I hid this behavior obsessively from friends and family. By the late 70’s, though, as gay lib progressed and society became more accepting, I began to relax my fear and self-loathing. Over time I mostly don’t feel any of that any more.
So yes, social conditioning greatly affected my activities and my feelings. But all of that negativity could not affect my desire.
Where that desire comes from I don’t know. Whether there were any influences in my first 7 years that might have changed that desire, I also don’t know. If someone were to ask me “Why are you gay?” I would just ask them back “Why do you have the desires you have?” Who among us can answer that question?
Roddy
When gays say they are “born this way,” they do NOT mean that there is a “gay gene” that made them like people of the same sex–that’s a huge oversimplification. Children cannot choose their environments, though, and many (if not most) gays KNEW they were gay long before puberty set in. They mayn’t have been allowed to express it at the time, but that doesn’t change the fact that they knew.
Nobody really knows what causes gayness or heterosexuality. It could be being raised by blonde women who don’t have a vehicle, with 2 cats, having exactly one older brother and one older sister. *It doesn’t matter. *Because once established, it’s not something that can or should be changed. That is the whole point of the “born this way” meme (and song). To think that people are talking about a “gay gene” is missing the point entirely.
Note also that twins separated at birth show a significantly higher than chance correlation of sexuality. So there’s certainly at least some component of predisposition to homosexuality that is inborn. And once you grant that, it’s a small step to conclude that in at least some people, those inborn predispositions would be so strong as to be essentially impossible to overcome via environmental pressures. Such people really would, then, have been “born this way”.
I was going to say this. If environmental factors play a role, they would have to be things that occur at preschool age or younger. I have a hard time imagining what sort of experience would have an influence here, especially considering people grow up gay everywhere, from the big cities to the most remote places, in every society, and all throughout history. I don’t think we know enough to completely rule out the possibility that environment and early childhood experience play a role, but I consider it unlikely.