On homosexuality.
Is being gay a choice?
Is it unnatural?
Is it a sin?
Why are such questions important? Many members of our society are caused emotional pain to the point of suicide, physical damage to the point of death and denied the basic rights accorded to the heterosexual members of society, simply because they are sexually attracted to people who are the same sex as they are. This is, to me, a question of human rights. No person, unless they are a threat to themselves or others, should be discriminated against, simply because they are who they are. Every member of society should be treated equally before the law. The last question on the list is important in a society like America which, contrary to the Constitution, bases law upon the Christian religion.
I shall argue that from both a purely theoretical and an empirical, scientific view point, being gay is not a choice. That therefore leads on, for the Christian, to consideration of homosexuality being a sin.
Is being gay a choice?
Who would be willing to consciously be that which many in society, including family and friends, abhor? Who would willingly expose themselves to ridicule, physical injury, the denial of basic rights and potential limitations of opportunity? But, it may be argued, many young people rebel and follow paths that lead to rejection by the majority of their community. People may adhere to other religions, or no religion for example. However, that does not seem reasonable to me when it relates to sexuality. I don't know about anyone else but I do not choose to start the day as a heterosexual. I simply am, and always have been, attracted to women. I may be jealous of a better male physique or looks but there is no attraction and I would imagine that is the case for most other men. To me, it is simply impossible for someone to choose to be gay. They may choose to experiment, I suppose, but the basis of their sexuality is innate and beyond their control.
So what does the science say? There is a great deal of evidence that sexual preference is not a conscious choice but a biological one. That evidence also more strongly supports the idea that it is a physical rather than a social choice. So, let's look at that evidence.
The incidence of homosexuality is comparable at about 10% in all cultures across the world. If it was choice based then we would not expect this to be the case.
One of the biggest predictors of whether or not a boy will be gay is birth order with regard to other boys. (e.g. Separate studies by R Blanchard, Anthony F. Bogaert, EM Miller, JM Cantor, SJ Robinson and many others). Many studies show that the likelihood of a boy being gay is directly influenced by the prior number of boys his mother has carried. At face value, this still leaves the possibility that there is a social influence: the simple presence of older brothers influences the sexual preference choice of a boy. However, the study by Anthony Bogaert deliberately addressed this issue. That study, consisting of 905 men, found the birth order effect even when a child whose mother had had three or more previous male babies, was raised by another family. This was true whether or not there were older non related brothers in that adopted family. This strongly indicates that there is a major genetic factor involved. However, this only applies to right handed gay men! For left handed men, birth order was the opposite. The majority of left handed gay men were more likely to be first born sons with older sisters. So, it's complicated. But whatever the case, it isn't a choice as these effects are purely biological and appear whether or not an individual is raised in the family that shares their genes, whether the adopted family has a similar make up as the birth mother's family or not. So, if the family raising a child seems to be largely irrelevant with regard to that child's likelihood of being gay, what is it that can affect a child, no matter where they are raised? Answer: Their genes.
Some genetics
A common complaint from people who believe that homosexuality is unnatural and not genetically based is that if one half of a set of identical twins is homosexual then its partner must also be, because they have identical genes. However, this ignores one very important fact: although we inherit our genes from our parents, not all the genes we receive are active in all off-spring, even if they are genetically identical. For example, consider the human X chromosome. We men only have one and we survive perfectly well, In fact all humans, male and female, can only have one X chromosome and develop normally. Men have only one X chromosome in each cell but girls two. To avoid having too many products of the genes on those two X chromosomes, a girl's cells largely (but not totally) deactivate one of their X chromosomes at RANDOM! No one knows what all the genes on the X chromosome do. A girl gets one X from each of her parents but very early in her development, each of her constituent cells 'decides' at random that one will be silenced. All the descendants of those cells within the developing girl inherit that decision. It can be seen then that from their earliest beginnings 'identical' girl twins are not genetically identical at all. While this obviously does not apply to boys with their single X chromosome, it illustrates the point. More telling is the finding that the gene expression responsible for the development of disorders such as Arthritis is also different within identical twins.
Even though all our cells contain the same genetic code (except for red blood cells and gametes) they experience different life histories. If they did not then we would remain single celled, undifferentiated organisms. In other words we would not have different cell types such as blood, nerve, muscle etc, if the genetic code was the whole story. So, something else happens to the genes in our cells. They are expressed (have an effect) or they are silenced (they have no effect). This is achieved by a process called methylation. Technically, a methyl group is attached to a cytosine or adenine base in a DNA strand. In other words a blocking chemical is added to one, or more, of the letters that make up part of the genetic code. This prevents the expression of the gene that the code spells out. It can be seen then that contrary to what many believe, the simple shared possession of a genetic code (genotype), does not mean that twins will be in all ways identical (have a shared phenotype). Such influences are called epigenetic factors.
Even though all our cells contain the same genetic code (except for red blood cells and gametes) they experience different life histories. If they did not then we would remain single celled, undifferentiated organisms. In other words we would not have different cell types such as blood, nerve, muscle etc, if the genetic code was the whole story. So, something else happens to the genes in our cells. They are expressed (have an effect) or they are silenced (they have no effect). This is achieved by a process called methylation. Technically, a methyl group is attached to a cytosine or adenine base in a DNA strand. In other words a blocking chemical is added to one, or more, of the letters that make up part of the genetic code. This prevents the expression of the gene that the code spells out. It can be seen then that contrary to what many believe, the simple shared possession of a genetic code (genotype), does not mean that twins will be in all ways identical (have a shared phenotype). Such influences are called epigenetic factors.
That there is a genetic influence is borne out by twin studies. Twins are exposed to a similar family and environment, whether they share an identical code or not. However, studies such as that carried out by J. Michael Bailey, an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, 1991, found that identical twins were more likely than other brother possibilities to be homosexual: 52 percent of identical twin brothers of gay men also were gay, compared with 22 percent of fraternal twins, compared with 11 percent of genetically unrelated brothers (adoptive). This strongly suggests that in many cases, there are sequences of genes that do lead to a greater likelihood of homosexuality. These sequences are then acted upon by epigenetic factors and birth order effect.
What might be the mechanism of the birth order effect? There are two main possibilities:
1. Training of the mother's immune system.
2. Age of mother during gestation.
The first proposal considers that the mother's immune system may attack male baby's because they are seen as more alien than her own female cells. With each male pregnancy this effect is said to increase. One problem with this is that no immune factor has been identified that attacks only a woman's male children.
The second proposal is that the age of a mother quite naturally increases with each pregnancy. It is a commonly known fact that the age of a mother has a direct effect on many genetically controlled aspects of her baby. The incidence of genetic changes classified as abnormalities has been shown conclusively to increase with maternal age. Older mothers are more likely to have babies who have Down's syndrome or Autism, for example. Homosexuality is considered by this proposal to therefore be a genetic fault, the likelihood of which increases with age in the same way as other genetic conditions.
It is interesting to consider that the birth order effect (which is real and applies even to children reared apart) only affects right handed boys. Do the conditions in the prebirth environment affect both sexuality and hand predominance? Studies (McCormick, Whitlston, Kingston - 1990; A large meta study analysis by Martin L. Lalumiere, Ray Blanchard, and Kenneth J. Zucker Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and University of Toronto 2000, etc) have shown a direct link between left handedness and homosexuality. Homosexual men are a third more likely to be left handed than the average man in the street. Lesbians were nearly twice as likely to be left handed as the average woman. There is a strong inheritance of left-handedness and in 2007 A massive study co-ordinated by Oxford university identified a gene linked to left handedness LRRTM1. This gene is involved in brain organization and, if inherited from the father leads to an increased chance of left-handedness. However, it also increases the chances of schizophrenia - also when inherited from the father.
From these studies it can be seen that brain organization (handedness), genetic code and prebirth environment all play a part in the development of sexuality. A complex interaction between genes, maternal age/immune system and epigenetics all play a part in the likelihood of a child being born gay.
There is simply no evidence that homosexuality is a choice. Michael Bailey is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, working with genetically male infants born with malformed or ambiguous genitals. As he says, in many such cases, surgeons construct a vagina, and instruct parents to raise the child as a girl, with no knowledge of his medical history. As adults, those prenatally male/postnatally female people were virtually all attracted to women. "If you can't make a male attracted to other males by cutting off his penis, castrating him and rearing him as a girl, then how likely is any social explanation of male homosexuality?"
"Gays don't have children so why doesn't a genetic preference for homosexuality die out? It goes against Darwinian evolution!"
This is another common complaint of those who believe that homosexuality is a conscious, unnatural choice. However, they are wrong. For one thing, even before the days of assisted reproduction, gays had children. Gay women were raped and impregnated for example (it is disgusting to learn that lesbians have been raped to try to convert them to 'normal'!), and gays of both genders conformed to expectations, married and had children - Oscar Wilde was definitely gay but fathered two children.
But leaving aside societal pressure and force, there is nothing about Darwinian evolution that says that genes for homosexuality can not survive in a population. The gene for sickle cell anaemia is recessive. Each gene has an allele, that is at each point in our double helix of DNA, we have a version of a gene from each parent. If a person has a single sickle allele from either parent then they are a carrier. If they receive a sickle cell allele from BOTH parents then they develop the potentially fatal sickle cell anaemia in which red blood cells are deformed and malfunction due to their sickle shape. If sickle cell anaemia kills those who have it (without medical intervention) why does the Sickle Cell gene continue to exist? Answer: because those people who inherit just one sickle allele, from one parent only, are afforded protection against malaria! We therefore see that a genetic variety that also prevents its bearers from breeding (by killing them!) continues in a population just as homosexuality - which theoretically results in fewer offspring - does.
How would a homosexuality gene continue in a population? There are two possible reasons:
1. Directly: As in the case of sickle cell anaemia, a genetic sequence might improve the breeding chances of a none homosexual carrier.
2. Indirectly. Human beings are social creatures and have been for all of our known history. As our brains have increased in size, so the nutritional demands of the newborn have increased. It takes a lot of resources to raise human children to maturity and they are dependent upon those around them far longer than other species. Those women who belong to a family group that includes homosexuals programmed to be so by genetics or epigenetic factors will have siblings who are less likely to breed. They will therefore have more adults in the group available to provide resources for their nieces and nephews and not provide competing off-spring of their own.
It seems that both of these possibilities are true. According to studies such as that carried out by A. Camperio-Ciani, F. Corna and C. Capiluppi Proceedings of the Royal Society 2004. There is a strong connection between the maternal line of an individual and their homosexuality. Homosexuals are far more likely to have homosexual relatives in their mother's family than their father's. In the reported study of a thousand individuals the rate of homosexuality in the maternal line was twice that in the paternal line. But what has that to do with a gene providing a direct advantage to breeding success? While the mechanism was not known, statistically the female relatives (on the female pedigree line) of homosexuals were found to produce more children. Males did not. There was no difference in fecundity for female relatives on the paternal side so this indicates that it is unlikely to be a simple case of birth order effect - i.e. that the female relatives of homosexuals simply have more children and are therefore consequently more likely to have a homosexual child.
Another indication that there is something intrinsically different about the genes, epigenetic factors or the prebirth environment within the mother in these families is the loss of uncles. Again, this only affects the maternal side. In a study of 500 hundred individuals by Richard Greene and EB Keverne, published in 2000 in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, a significant reduction in the number of male relatives was noted in the maternal line of homosexuals and transsexuals.
The same group led by Camperio-Ciani, who published the 2004 study noted above, published further research in 2012. This showed a number of possible reasons for the increased fecundity of the mothers of homosexuals. The mothers appeared to be more attractive to men - they were more feminine and outgoing - and they also had fewer gynaecological and obstetric problems. However, on the negative side, they were significantly more likely to experience a divorce. (Perhaps precisely because they are more attractive to men and more out-going!?)
What conclusions can be drawn? At least with regard to a large percentage of gay men, it appears that a genetic situation exists which leads to feminization of the unborn child. If that goes too far then a male child is lost (hence lower numbers of male relatives). Birth order effects might lead us to conclude that rather than being an effect innate to the child, it is something which affects the prebirth environment within the mother, most likely her immune system. Each exposure to a male child seems to lead an increased immune response to a male baby. Bear in mind that this explanation is largely applicable to right handed boys and not left handers. But it does show that for a significant proportion of gay males all the evidence supports a genetic influence. That this influence is X Chromosome linked is indicated by the effects upon the female line. A boy always inherits his X chromosome from his mother who does not have a Y chromosome to pass on, of course, and hence a boy MUST receive his Y chromosome from the father. X and Y make a boy. The, as yet unidentified X located genes, also have the effect of increasing the breeding success of mothers by making them more attractive (feminine) to men.
There is, as yet, no similar evidence based explanation for lesbianism. However, there is evidence that there is a strong genetic factor (at least 25 - 30% of the influence is genetic). A study in the UK, published 2011, Andrea Burri and Qazi Rahman Queen Mary University, London, followed a large sample (4000 individuals and therefore likely to be significant) Identical female twins reared in the same environment were more likely to be lesbian than non-identical female twins were. Additionally, it is interesting to note that lesbians are twice as likely to be left handed as the average woman. Hand preference is not under conscious control it is innate and probably genetic. This is supported by the fact that hand preference can be predicted by the study of a person's hair. Right handers are far more likely to have hair that swirls clockwise at the crown. 95% of Right handers have clockwise hair swirls where left handers and the ambidextrous show no preference. ( Amar Klar of the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland). It is also known that left handers are more likely than right handers to experience negative medical conditions. They are twice as likely to suffer Crones Disease (2001, 17,000 sample size, University college, London). Also left handed women are twice as likely to suffer breast cancer (British Medical Journal, 2005, University Medical Center Utrecht 12,000 sample size).
So, homosexuality seems to have a very strong genetic component, either within the mother - in the case of male, right-handed homosexuals, or within the child with regard to lesbians (identical twins and fraternal twins all share the same prebirth environment, including the mother's immune system. The influences are complex and more than one applies in different situations but one thing is clear: Homosexuality is most definitely not a choice.
Is homosexuality a genetic disorder then? No. Many genotypes provide positive and negative impacts. Take height as an example. The incidence of cancer increases 16% for every four inches of extra height (Cancer Research UK 2011, 1 million sample size). Men over 6 ft tall are twice as likely to develop life threatening blood clots in their legs ( Aaron Sweeney, a consultant vascular surgeon at Lewisham Hospital.) However, studies (Pierce, C.A. 1996; Cunningham, M.R. 1990; Pawlowski B, Dunbar RI, Lipowicz A 2000.) have shown that women find tall men more attractive and that they have more children. This is theorized to be due to mate selection based on apparent fitness. A man has to have resources, and the skill to obtain them, in order to actually reach his genetic height potential. That is attractive to potential mates. We can see therefore both homosexuality and increased height can improve breeding success at the cost of some health problems. In the case outlined most clearly above, homosexuality can lead to increase loss of male babies but the possession of a homosexual influence leads to an actual increase in the direct fecundity of 'carrier' mothers plus a theoretical benefit in terms of non reproducing uncles providing resources in less organized societies. Additionally some studies, but not all, have shown an increase in intelligence and creativity among homosexuals (SATOSHI KANAZAWA, Journal of Biosocial Science 2012). Anecdotally, this seems reasonable to me. When HIV/AIDS first occurred in the 1980's it was the entertainment industry that was initially devastated.
If we are to argue that being gay is a genetic disorder that causes ill health then we would also have to argue that tall people are suffering from a genetic disorder. Being gay is a result of biological processes that have positive and negative consequences, just as many other phenotypes do. It is, therefore, perfectly natural and certainly not the result of choice.
Since it is the result of developmental processes, homosexuality is also not a condition subject to treatment any more than being tall is. The brains of homosexuals are simply wired differently to those of heterosexuals.
Conclusion
Homosexuals are just one version of humanity and, as such deserve all the human rights that the majority of society enjoy.
For we Christians:
Is homosexuality a sin?
Is it reasonable to accept that a loving, reasoning God would allow individuals to be physically created homosexual, following the biological processes that God created, and then condemn them for it? I do not believe so. Would God create a fish and then condemn it for being a fish? Sin is the deliberate disobedience to the will of God.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that an unreasonable God would allow the creation of gay people but then tell them not to actually have gay sex. In other words, being gay is not itself a sin, the sin is in gay sex. That seems illogical to me but, Ok, what are the consequences. Those who believe this way condemn themselves. If we are to take the Bible literally, Jesus said that adultery is not just the physical act but the very thought of viewing a woman with lust. Most of us can not control our thoughts anywhere near to that extent and are attracted to other people. It is what we do about that attraction that is important. I think the statement attributed to Jesus is unreasonable and largely impossible. It is responsible for so much angst through out the ages. So the same applies to gays. A gay person cannot help being attracted to people of the same physical gender that they are. If the statement attributed to Jesus were correct then a gay person would be created by the processes instituted by God and immediately condemned not just for gay acts but for the gay thoughts that their very nature can not help but create. And that is completely unreasonable. No sane, loving God could allow that situation.
