New Study - Gays Are Born This Way

This past week the Texas Republican Party endorsed reparative therapy even though every legitimate (i.e., not funded by anti-gay organizations) medical and mental health association in America condemns such therapy and deems it dangerous.  Never let it be said that the Christofascists don't still call the shots in the GOP.  Meanwhile, a new study adds more evidence that gays are "born this way" to quote from Lady Gaga's song.  Will this new knowledge change any minds in the GOP?  Probably not.  The Christofascists cannot abide the fact that their mythical Bible may be wrong and few elected Republicans will cease prostituting themselves to those who embrace ignorance and bigotry.  An article in the Washington Post written by Jenny Graves, Distinguished Professor of Genetics at La Trobe University, looks at the new study and its implications.  Here are some highlights:

The claim that homosexual men share a “gay gene” created a furor in the 1990s. But new research two decades on supports this claim – and adds another candidate gene.

To an evolutionary geneticist, the idea that a person’s genetic makeup affects their mating preference is unsurprising. We see it in the animal world all the time. There are probably many genes that affect human sexual orientation.

But rather than thinking of them as “gay genes,” perhaps we should consider them “male-loving genes.” They may be common because these variant genes, in a female, predispose her to mate earlier and more often and to have more children.

Likewise, it would be surprising if there were not “female-loving genes” in lesbian women that, in a male, predispose him to mate earlier and have more children.

In 1993, American geneticist Dean Hamer found families with several gay males on the mother’s side, suggesting a gene on the X chromosome. He showed that pairs of brothers who were openly gay shared a small region at the tip of the X, and proposed that it contained a gene that predisposes a male to homosexuality.

Hamer’s conclusions were extremely controversial. He was challenged at every turn by people unwilling to accept that homosexuality is at least partly genetic, rather than a “lifestyle choice.”

This year, a larger study of gay brothers, using the many genetic markers now available through the Human Genome Project, confirmed the original finding and also detected another “gay gene” on chromosome 8. This has unleashed a new flurry of comment.

But why such a furor when we know of gay gene variants in species from flies to mammals? Homosexuality is quite common throughout the animal kingdom.
The puzzle is not whether “gay genes” exist in humans, but why they are so common (estimates from five percent to 15 percent). We know that gay men have fewer children on average, so shouldn’t these gene variants disappear?

There are several theories that account for the high frequency of homosexuality. A decade ago I wondered if gay gene variants have another effect that boosts the chances of leaving offspring (“evolutionary fitness”), and passing the gay allele on. This is a well-known situation (called “balanced polymorphism”) in which an allele is advantageous in one situation and not in another.

Perhaps “male-loving” alleles in a female predispose her to mate earlier and have more children. If their sisters, mother and aunts have more kids who share some of their genes, it would make up for the fewer children of gay males.

And they do. Lots more children. An Italian group showed that the female relatives of gay men have 1.3 times as many children as the female relatives of straight men. This is a huge selective advantage that a male-loving allele confers on women, and offsets the selective disadvantage that it confers on men.

Why the furor over such study findings?  It's very simple.  To the Christianists - and fundamentalist Muslims would be in the same category - if the Bible [or Koran] is wrong about homosexuality, then the question becomes what else is it wrong about.  Those who through ignorance or mental disorders cannot deal with a lack of absolute certainty in their lives simply cannot tolerate anything that might upset their simplistic, childish belief systems.  Since the very existence of gays suggests that the Bible/Koran is wrong, we are treated as enemies of the first magnitude.