Landmark Study: Genes Influence Same-Sex Orientation

A new landmark study has found that genes - rather than a single gay gene - influence one's sexual orientation and further undermine the claims of Christofascists and right wing Catholics that being gay is a "choice" and/or that it is changeable. These findings, combined with past studies that have looked at embryo exposure to hormone levels that impact sexual orientation ought to stamp out the "choice " myth entirely, although some researchers fear that since genes do not explain 100% of sexual orientation, charlatans and snake oil merchants who peddle "conversion therapy" will misrepresent the findings to justify their lucrative and dangerous scams.  Indeed, many of these same quacks deny that climate change is real despite the consensus of the scientific community, so it is almost a given that their hatred towards gays (and that of politicians who prostitute themselves to such people) will not be influenced by the reality that it is a natural condition.  Here are highlights from the New York Times about the study:

An ambitious new study — the largest ever to analyze the genetics of same-sex sexual behavior — found that genetics does play a role, responsible for perhaps a third of the influence on whether someone has same-sex sex. The influence comes not from one gene but many, each with a tiny effect — and the rest of the explanation includes social or environmental factors — making it impossible to use genes to predict someone’s sexuality.

“I hope that the science can be used to educate people a little bit more about how natural and normal same-sex behavior is,” said Benjamin Neale, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard and one of the lead researchers on the international team. “It’s written into our genes and it’s part of our environment. This is part of our species and it’s part of who we are.”

The study of nearly half a million people, funded by the National Institutes of Health and other agencies, found differences in the genetic details of same-sex behavior in men and women. The research also suggests the genetics of same-sex sexual behavior shares some correlation with genes involved in some mental health issues and personality traits — although the authors said that overlap could simply reflect the stress of enduring societal prejudice.

Even before its publication Thursday in the journal Science, the study has generated debate and concern, including within the renowned Broad Institute itself. Several scientists who are part of the L.G.B.T.Q. community there said they were worried the findings could give ammunition to people who seek to use science to bolster biases and discrimination against gay people.

One concern is that evidence that genes influence same-sex behavior could cause anti-gay activists to call for gene editing or embryo selection, even if that would be technically impossible. Another fear is that evidence that genes play only a partial role could embolden people who insist being gay is a choice and who advocate tactics like conversion therapy.

I’m still concerned that it’s going to be deliberately misused to advance agendas of hate, but I do believe that the sort of proactive way we’ve approached this and a lot of the community engagement aspects that we’ve tried were important.”

The moment the study was published online Thursday afternoon, the Broad Institute took the unusual step of posting essays by Dr. Reilly and others who raised questions about the ethics, science and social implications of the project.

The study analyzed the genetic data of 408,000 men and women from a large British database, the U.K. Biobank, who answered extensive health and behavior questions between 2006 and 2010, when they were between the ages of 40 and 69. The researchers also used data from nearly 70,000 customers of the genetic testing service 23andMe, who were 51 years old on average, mostly American, and had answered survey questions about sexual orientation. All were of white European descent, one of several factors that the authors note limit their study’s generalizability. Trans people were not included. [T]he research was much larger and more varied than previous studies, which generally focused on gay men, often those who were twins or were otherwise related. Researchers specifically identified five genetic variants present in people’s full genomes that appear to be involved. Those five comprise less than 1 percent of the genetic influences, they said.

Dr. Neale said younger study participants were much more likely than older ones to report same-sex sexual experiences, possibly reflecting increased social acceptance. He and others noted that older participants came of age when homosexual behavior was criminalized in Britain and that for much of their life homosexuality was classified as a psychiatric disorder.

Dr. Reilly and others said such stark differences between older and younger participants show the trickiness of trying to draw representative biological information from a study population so strongly influenced by society’s changing attitudes. People steeped in a culture that demonized same-sex intimacy might only have the gumption to reveal it in a study if they were risk-takers to begin with.

Experts widely agree that the research was conducted by first-rate scientists. . . . Dr. Neale, who also consults for several pharmaceutical companies, said one reason his team did the study was to ensure less careful researchers would not tackle it first, “given how sensitive and hot-button this topic really is and how personal it is.”

Zeke Stokes, chief programs officer at GLAAD, who was shown the findings several months ago, said, “Anyone who’s L.G.B.T.Q. knows that their identity is complicated and to have science sort of bear that out is a positive thing.”

Over all, Dr. Neale said he believes the study shows that “diversity is a natural part of our experience and it’s a natural part of what we see in the genetics. I find that to actually just be beautiful.”

Sadly, diversity is the last thing that white evangelicals and Christofascists want. Ditto for the Trump/Pence regime that is pushing for the full legalization of anti-LGBT discrimination. 

Sadly, diversity 

Pope Francis Opts to Choose Ignorance With Respect to Sexuality

The Catholic Church has a centuries, if not millennium, long history of rejecting science and modern knowledge rather than admit that its antiquated dogma is flat out wrong. In the past, the Church's leadership refused to concede that the Earth revolved around the Sun instead of vice versa, it insisted that the Earth was flat, previous Popes supported slavery, and now, fast forwarding time-wise, Pope Francis is rejected modern medical and mental health science on sexual orientation and gender identity.  

Other than quacks funded by right wing groups or religiously affiliated institutions, the consensus among the medical and mental health professional community is that both sexual orientation and gender identity are set in utero BEFORE children are born as a result of hormonal influences that impact on both physical development as well as brain development that sets once sexual orientation and ones gender identity - the latter being the cause of individuals being transgender.  Like it or not, some people ARE born with mismatched physical attributes and gender identity.  Others are born gay.  Now, Pope Francis in true knuckle dragger form has dismissed the fact that a person’s gender can differ from the assigned sex at birth.  Anything rather than admit that the Church's ignorance based 12th century dogma on sex and sexuality is simply wrong.  No one "chooses" to be gay or to be transgender.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Francis' decision to place the Church once again on the wrong side of science and, down the road history.  One can only hope that Francis' wrongheaded decision will only serve to accelerate the flight from the Church.  Here are article excerpts:

ROME — Warning of a society “without sexual differences,” the Vatican on Monday dismissed the idea that a person’s gender can differ from the assigned sex at birth and said a fluid idea of identity was not “based on the truths of existence.”

The right to “choose one’s gender,” the Vatican said in an official document, is in “direct contradiction of the model of marriage as being between one man and one woman.”

The document, released as a guide for Catholic educators, held firm to the religion’s traditional teaching on gender and sexuality. But ­LGBT members of the faith said it put an official and updated stamp on viewpoints they had hoped were changing.

“This casts everything back to the Dark Ages,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of ­DignityUSA, a group that advocates for ­LGBT equality and inclusion in the church. “I think it is incredibly insensitive, to be talking still about gender and sexuality as a choice and a momentary whim rather than a fundamental God-given identity.”

The document, released by the Vatican office that deals with education, coincided with a month of Pride festivities in many countries around the world. It was not signed by Francis, but rather by two high-level officials — Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi and Archbishop Angelo Vincenzo Zani — in the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s bureaucracy.

The church’s retrenchment hints at one of the challenges it faces at a time of growing secularization — when many of its teachings on sexuality are being ignored as out of date. Francis has expressed an interest in outreach to ­LGBT followers, but he has also taken a clear stance on gender identity, decrying that children are taught in schools that “everyone can choose his or her sex.”

The church made a case that children had the right to grow up in a family “with a father and a mother,” and the document quoted an earlier Francis speech about how children benefit from seeing masculinity represented by the father and femininity represented by the mother. Traditionalist groups lauded the 31-page Vatican document, titled “Male and Female He Created Them.”

The Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit who has advocated for the church to more openly welcome ­LGBT members, said on Twitter that the document calls for dialogue and listening “but sets aside the real-life experiences of ­LGBT people.”

“Sadly,” Martin wrote, “it will be used as a cudgel against transgender people, and an excuse to argue that they shouldn’t even exist.”

The good news is that the Church is hemorrhaging members.  In my youth, all of my family was made up of church-going Catholics.  Now, none of us remain in the Church and the newest generation has not been baptized at all.  This experience is not unique to my family.  Francis seems hell bent to cling to ignorance and, if it continues, the Catholic Church will one day be a church centered in the most ignorant and uneducated parts of the world, namely Africa and limited parts of South America. Given the evils the Church has done in the past, the collapse of the Church in the developed world will be a positive development.

Researchers Discover Genes Linked to Male Homosexuality

While no completely definitive biological cause for homosexuality has been conclusively proven, researchers continue to inch closer to categorically debunking the Christofascist myth that one's sexual orientation is a "choice."  Of course, these scientific strides will mean nothing to those who actively celebrate ignorance and embrace a book written by uneducated, ignorant Bronze Age authors such as Colorado baker Jack Phillips. But for sane individuals who live in a fact based reality, the new discoveries provide further proof that one is (i) justified in looking down on Christofascists as the vicious individuals that they are in fact and (ii) supporting legislation to ban fraudulent "ex-gay" reparative therapy.  The Daily Telegraph looks at the development.  Here are excerpts:

Genes linked to homosexuality have been discovered by scientists in the biggest ever study into the genetic basis for sexual orientation.  For the first time, researchers looked at the complete genome - a person’s entire DNA code - for more than 1,000 gay men and compared it to genetic data from a similar number of heterosexual males.

They discovered that DNA was different for gay and straight men around the genes SLITRK5 and SLITRK6.  SLITRK6 is an important gene for brain development, and is particularly active in a region of the brain which includes the hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus is crucial for producing the hormones which control sex drive, and previous studies have shown parts of it are up to 34 per cent larger in gay men.

The researchers, from North Shore University Health System’s Research Institute, in Illinois, US, also discovered differences in the TSHR gene, which is linked to the thyroid, another area which has previously been associated with sexual orientation.

“Because sexuality is an essential part of human life – for individuals and society – it is important to understand the development and expression of human sexual orientation,” said lead author Dr Alan Sanders.

“The goal of this study was to search for genetic underpinnings of male sexual orientation, and thus ultimately increase our knowledge of biological mechanisms underlying sexual orientation.

“What we have accomplished is a first step for genome wide study on the trait, and we hope that subsequent larger studies will further illuminate its genetic contributions.”

-- Participants in the study were rated for sexual orientation based on their self-reported sexual identity and sexual feelings.

Men were asked to provide DNA by blood or saliva samples that were then genotyped and analysed.  Although previous studies have pointed to a genetic predisposition for homosexuality, it is the first time researchers have studied the entire genome of individuals and so is the most comprehensive assessment of the genetic basis of sexuality ever undertaken.

However British experts said more work was needed before it was possible to identify ‘gay genes’ because the genetic differences could point to other traits shared by the homosexual respondents. 

Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, Group Leader at The Francis Crick Institute,said: “The topic of this paper is important if we are to learn more about the influence of genes on aspects of our behaviour, but this is one that is notoriously difficult to study.

“Even if a gene variant does show some correlation with sexual orientation, this does not mean that the gene is in any way responsible for being gay – it just means it has some association with a trait that is more likely to found in the relatively few people involved as subjects in the study.

The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Ask any LGBT individual and they will assure that no "choice" is involved.  They are who they were born to be.

14 Year Old Killed by Father for Being Gay

As a parent, I cannot comprehend disowning one of my children much less killing them, yet reports coming out of Las Vegas indicate that 14 year old Giovanni Melton  was murdered by his father because his father, Wendell Melton would not tolerate the fact that his son was gay.  Reportedly, the father said he would rather have a dead son that one who was gay.  Where does such ugliness come from?  In my view, three elements are involved.  The first, of course, is fundamentalist/evangelical religion that continues to denigrate and malign LGBT individuals while spreading the lie that sexual orientation is a "choice." Some of the most homophobic pastors are in black churches who allow themselves to be cynically manipulated by those who in my opinion are anti-gay white supremacists such as those at The Family Foundation here in Virginia.  

A second factor is the anti-gay agenda of the Republican Party.  Indeed, at this moment the U.S. Justice Department is arguing before the Supreme Court that anti-gay discrimination is perfectly fine and legal as long as it is wrapped in the smoke screen of "religious belief."  This bigotry provides yet another layer of legitimacy to anti-gay hatred.   The third factor, in my view, is self-centered parents who care more about "what will people think" about them rather than the happiness and well-being of their children. Some accuse me of being anti-religion and, frankly, when I see this kind of ugliness, yes, I am. A young life ended for no reason other than bigotry and apparent self-absorption.  Here are highlights from Channel 3 News in Las Vegas:

Friends and family are remembering a 14-year-old son who Henderson police say was shot and killed by his own father. People close to the murder victim say part of the argument leading to the shooting was about the teen's sexual orientation.

Friends of Giovanni Melton remember an energetic teenager bringing smiles to everyone he met.

On Thursday afternoon, Henderson police say 53-year-old Wendell Melton shot his teenage son in the apartment where family members say Giovanni stayed by himself.

"Giovanni was abused physically and mentally and spiritually for many, many years," said Sonja Jones, Giovanni's former foster mom.

Over the phone, Jones spoke of the teen she loved as one of her own.  Jones says she was told by another family member that part of the argument that led to the deadly shooting was over Giovanni's sexual orientation. Jones says Wendell Melton had problems with it.

"He hated the fact that his son was gay," said Jones. "I'm sure that inside of his mind, he would rather have a dead son than a gay son."  Jones says Wendell threatened his son before.

"I'm hearing his dad had caught him with his boyfriend before and pulled out a gun on him," said Jones.  Giovanni was a student at Coronado High School. Jones says a beautiful life was taken away because of ignorance. "I hope they throw the book at him.

The A.I. “Gaydar” Study and the Real Dangers of Big Data

Photograph by Jochen Tack / Alamy

As if LGBT individuals did not already have enough to worry about when it comes to facing discrimination and bigotry, a new study claiming that it can use facial recognition computer programs to identify whether or not one is LGBT would seemingly add to the arsenal of bigoted employers who seek to make the lives of closeted employees even more of a living hell.  Other frightening uses: anti-gay religious affiliated colleges might decide to screen applicants; Christofascists parents seeking to determine whether they have a gay child; right wing churches screening members.  The list goes on and on. The other danger of the software is that it still has a significant margin of error so a goodly number of straights could find themselves incorrectly identified as gay.  The New Yorker looks at this dubious and possible dangerous study and its technology.  Here are excerpts:

In the twenty-first century, the face is a database, a dynamic bank of information points—muscle configurations, childhood scars, barely perceptible flares of the nostril—that together speak to what you feel and who you are. Facial-recognition technology is being tested in airports around the world, matching camera footage against visa photos. Churches use it to document worshipper attendance. China has gone all in on the technology, employing it to identify jaywalkers, offer menu suggestions at KFC, and prevent the theft of toilet paper from public restrooms. Michal Kosinski, an organizational psychologist at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, told the Guardian earlier this week. The photo of Kosinski accompanying the interview showed the face of a man beleaguered. Several days earlier, Kosinski and a colleague, Yilun Wang, had reported the results of a study, to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggesting that facial-recognition software could correctly identify an individual’s sexuality with uncanny accuracy. The researchers culled tens of thousands of photos from an online-dating site, then used an off-the-shelf computer model to extract users’ facial characteristics—both transient ones, like eye makeup and hair color, and more fixed ones, like jaw shape. Then they fed the data into their own model, which classified users by their apparent sexuality. When shown two photos, one of a gay man and one of a straight man, Kosinski and Wang’s model could distinguish between them eighty-one per cent of the time; for women, its accuracy dropped slightly, to seventy-one per cent. Human viewers fared substantially worse. They correctly picked the gay man sixty-one per cent of the time and the gay woman fifty-four per cent of the time. “Gaydar,” it appeared, was little better than a random guess. The study immediately drew fire from two leading L.G.B.T.Q. groups, the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, for “wrongfully suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to detect sexual orientation.” They offered a list of complaints, which the researchers rebutted point by point. Yes, the study was in fact peer-reviewed. No, contrary to criticism, the study did not assume that there was no difference between a person’s sexual orientation and his or her sexual identity; some people might indeed identify as straight but act on same-sex attraction. “We assumed that there was a correlation . . . in that people who said they were looking for partners of the same gender were homosexual,” Kosinski and Wang wrote.
 True, the study consisted entirely of white faces, but only because the dating site had served up too few faces of color to provide for meaningful analysis. And that didn’t diminish the point they were making—that existing, easily obtainable technology could effectively out a sizable portion of society. To the extent that Kosinski and Wang had an agenda, it appeared to be on the side of their critics. As they wrote in the paper’s abstract, “Given that companies and governments are increasingly using computer vision algorithms to detect people’s intimate traits, our findings expose a threat to the privacy and safety of gay men and women.” The objections didn’t end there. Some scientists criticized the study on methodological grounds. To begin with, they argued, Kosinski and Wang had used a flawed data set. Besides all being white, the users of the dating site may have been telegraphing their sexual proclivities in ways that their peers in the general population did not. . . . . Was the computer model picking up on facial characteristics that all gay people everywhere shared, or merely ones that a subset of American adults, groomed and dressed a particular way, shared?

Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, a pair of professors at the University of Washington, in Seattle, who run the blog Calling Bullshit, also took issue with Kosinski and Wang’s most ambitious conclusion—that their study provides “strong support” for the prenatal-hormone theory of sexuality, which predicts that exposure to testosterone in the womb shapes a person’s gender identity and sexual orientation in later life. In response to Kosinki and Wang’s claim that, in their study, “the faces of gay men were more feminine and the faces of lesbians were more masculine,” Bergstrom and West wrote, “we see little reason to suppose this is due to physiognomy rather than various aspects of self-presentation.” Regardless of the accuracy of the method, past schemes to identify gay people have typically ended in cruel fashion—pogroms, imprisonment, conversion therapy. The fact is, though, that nowadays a computer model can probably already do a decent job of ascertaining your sexual orientation, even better than facial-recognition technology can, simply by scraping and analyzing the reams of data that marketing firms are continuously compiling about you. Do gay men buy more broccoli than straight men, or do they buy less of it? Do they rent bigger cars or smaller ones? Who knows? Somewhere, though, a bot is poring over your data points, grasping for ways to connect any two of them. Therein lies the real worry. Last week, Equifax, the giant credit-reporting agency, disclosed that a security breach had exposed the personal data of more than a hundred and forty-three million Americans; company executives had been aware of the security flaw since late July but had failed to disclose it. (Three of them, however, had off-loaded some of their Equifax stock.) Earlier this week, ProPublica revealed that Facebook’s ad-buying system had enabled advertisers to target their messages at people with such interests as “How to burn jews” and “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’ ” The categories were created not by Facebook employees but by an algorithm—yet another way in which automated thinking can turn offensive. “The growing digitalization of our lives and rapid progress in AI continues to erode the privacy of sexual orientation and other intimate traits,” Kosinski and Wang wrote at the end of their paper. They continue, perhaps Pollyannaishly, “The postprivacy world will be a much safer and hospitable place if inhabited by well-educated, tolerant people who are dedicated to equal rights.” A piece of data itself has no positive or negative moral value, but the way we manipulate it does. It’s hard to imagine a more contentious project than programing ethics into our algorithms; to do otherwise, however, and allow algorithms to monitor themselves, is to invite the quicksand of moral equivalence.

I am not paranoid.  I am "out" socially and at work.  My most important client base knows I am gay and simply could care less.  Many gays, however are not so fortunate and many have good reason to want to stay in the closet at work given the utter lack of employment protections at the federal level and in 29 states, including Virginia.  

Prenatal Hormone Levels and Sexual Orientation - Another Blow to the "Ex-Gay" Myth

New Mexico has joined the small but growing number of states to ban ex-gay torture that has paraded under the disingenuous banner of "conversion therapy" and been a linchpin in the Christofascists' campaign to depict sexual orientation as a choice. I can personally attest after 37 years of trying to "pray away the gay" that it simply does not work and that anyone who claims otherwise is (i) a liar, (ii) possibly looking to line their pockets with money from the religiously brainwashed, and/or (iii) desperately trying to avoid admitting that their own religious tradition has fed them lies.  Science is increasingly exposing the lie of the "ex-gay" myth and even New Mexico's Republican governor (yes, it is shocking) seemly put science and truth ahead of the Christofascist agenda.  Joe Jervis reports in part as follows:

Gov. Susana Martinez has signed legislation that would ban the use on minors of conversion therapy that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The measure was among dozens signed by the Republican governor as the Friday deadline approached for her to act on legislation passed during the session that ended March 18.

Six other states have banned ex-gay torture: California, Illinois, Oregon, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. Bans have also been adopted in dozens of local municipalities across the country, including in Cincinnati, Seattle, Miami, Pittsburgh, and Washington DC.

I can already hear the shrieks and howls coming from the usual suspects at "family values" organizations, including the mistress of hate, Victoria Cobb at The Family Foundation based in Richmond.  Science and medical knowledge moves onward even as the Christofascist seek to slink back in time.  A new study finds yet more evidence that prenatal hormone exposure plays a role in one's ultimate un-chosen sexual orientation.  Indeed, it suggests that common treatments to prevent miscarriage (such as what my own mother underwent) significantly increases the odds that a child will be same sex attracted later in life.  Here are some of the study findings:

Index cases were exposed to lutocyclin (bioidentical progesterone = C₂₁H₃₀O₂; M_W: 314.46) and no other hormonal preparation. Controls were matched on 14 physical, medical, and socioeconomic variables. A structured interview conducted by a psychologist and self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data on sexual orientation, self-identification, attraction to the same and other sex, and history of sexual behavior with each sex. Compared to the unexposed, fewer exposed males and females identified as heterosexual and more of them reported histories of same-sex sexual behavior, attraction to the same or both sexes, and scored higher on attraction to males.

. . . . regardless of sex, exposure appeared to be associated with higher rates of bisexuality. Prenatal progesterone may be an underappreciated epigenetic factor in human sexual and psychosexual development and, in light of the current prevalence of progesterone treatment during pregnancy for a variety of pregnancy complications, warrants further investigation. These data on the effects of prenatal exposure to exogenous progesterone also suggest a potential role for natural early perturbations in progesterone levels in the development of sexual orientation.

The February special with Katie Couric on the National Geographic Channel  that looked at the transgender Americans addressed the medical findings on what causes one to be transdgender.  The same, of course, applies to the rest of those under the LGBT umbrella.  Nature, not choice or nurture, is what is determinative.  Pretending otherwise only leads to pain, self-hate, and too often, suicide. On this issue, the Bible is simply flat out wrong. 

Religious Views on Gender Laws Are at Odds With Science

A few weeks ago Katie Couric did an excellent documentary on the National Geographic Channel called "Gender Revolution" that looked at the science on transgender individuals.   The show should be mandatory viewing for every Republican member of Congress, every Republican in state legislatures, and every right wing hate spewing "Christian" pastor (Christian is in quotation marks since these pastors are the antithesis of Christian behavior).  Among other things, the show looked at medical science's knowledge of in vitro development of fetuses and how hormones influence not only outward physical gender, but also how one perceives their gender internally.  It is this hormonal influence and interplay that causes some to be born outwardly one gender when internally they deem themsevlse the opposite gender of their bodies.  Something similar happens to gays and lesbians that causes what the "godly folk" deem to be sinful attraction to those of the same sex. Science and medicine tell us that there is nothing "wrong" about these attractions and internal feelings of gender.  They are natural phenomenon and no "choice" is involved in such individuals love or view themselves.  Only religion - specifically Abrahamic religions that trace their origins to myths propounded by uneducated Bronze Age herders - says that same sex attraction and/or gender identity are wrong.  Sadly, rather than admit these truths and the reality of the source of their beliefs, the  "godly folk" who are in my view desperate to maintain their make believe fantasy world, reject science and medical knowledge and cling to ignorance.  In the process, they condemn gays, lesbians, and the transgender.  A column in Time bu a judge and former Justice Department official looks at the fallacy of applying religious belief to the issue of gender.  Here are highlights:

A person’s biological sex seems simple but is deceptively complex. It appears to be binary: An XX chromosomal pair is female, and an XY chromosomal pair is male. Doctors look at a newborn’s genitalia, pronounce the baby a boy or a girl, and the birth certificate reflects that sex assignment.

Deep-seated religious beliefs, cultural constructs, the regulation of sports (such as the rules confronted by Texas high-school wrestler Mack Beggs) and recent laws are premised on the bedrock belief that each of us is either a man or a woman. Yet the reality is that today in the United States alone there are approximately one million people who — from the moment of birth — cannot clearly be defined as either male or female.

This physiological truth is unrelated to whether someone is straight, gay or transgender. Many individuals are born with sex chromosome, endocrine or hormonal irregularities, and their birth certificates are inaccurate because in the United States birth records are not designed to allow doctors to designate an ambiguous sex. Countless people likely have no idea that they fall into this group. The more we learn about our DNA, the more that biological sex — from the moment of conception — looks like an intricate continuum and less like two tidy boxes. This understanding makes it virtually impossible for judges to consistently apply a law that permits or prohibits conduct based on whether someone is a man or a woman.

On February 22, the Trump Administration reversed the Obama policy [on transgender students]. Since President Trump was elected, Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming lawmakers have introduced legislation that would determine access to public restrooms and changing rooms based on one’s assigned sex at birth.

The most prominent case that has been in the crosshairs of this debate is G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board (“Grimm”), which challenges a Virginia school board’s policy that requires students to use bathrooms according to biological sex.

Many people share the ubiquitous notion that biological sex falls into two, mutually exclusive categories. In 2009 my perspective changed when I read an article written by a woman who learned shortly after marriage that she and her husband couldn’t have biological children because she had an XY chromosomal pairing. While she looked like a woman, and she and her parents had always believed she was female, from a genetic standpoint she was a man. The article was published the year after California passed Prop 8, a version of DOMA.

I was curious whether her situation was an obscure medical anomaly that was statistically and legally irrelevant. It wasn’t. A regularly cited 1991 study of nearly 35,000 newborn children found that 1 in 426 did not have strictly XX or XY chromosomes. In addition, the World Health Organization reports that 1 in every 2,000 births worldwide are visibly intersex, because the child’s genitals are either incomplete or ambiguous, which equates to five newborn Americans a day. This represents a sizable U.S. population that cannot be ignored by the law.

If such individuals have the right to equal protection, to privacy and to use a public restroom, what clear and science-based legal principle can our judiciary employ to determine whether they lawfully used the correct bathroom? Reliance on a birth certificate might appear to be a legitimate method to establish sex. But birth certificates are surprisingly fluid documents. They are amended regularly to add or remove parents due to adoption or because DNA results reveal paternity that is inconsistent with the original record. They are also amended to address biology.

In 2016, I received a request from parents seeking to change the name and sex of their baby’s birth certificate. The parents were initially informed they gave birth to a daughter. Genital irregularities and months of additional tests revealed that from a chromosomal and hormonal standpoint their child was, while not strictly genetically male, more “properly" categorized as a son. I granted their request to modify the birth certificate to designate the child as male. The new birth certificate replaced the original, yet neither was precisely accurate from a biological perspective.

The United States’ stringent adherence to a two-sex paradigm is inconsistent with science and incongruous with the historic and modern understanding of sex throughout many regions of the world. Dating back to 2000 B.C., three or more sexes can be found in classical Greek, Sanskrit and Hindu texts. Currently, numerous countries recognize a third or indeterminate sex including Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Nepal and New Zealand. If the bill introduced into the California state legislature in January 2017 passes, California will be the first state in the U.S. to recognize a third, non-binary gender, for birth certificates and driver’s licenses.

Neither DOMA nor HB2 reference gay or transgender individuals, but there is little doubt that both laws were designed with those populations in mind. When the Obama Administration announced its opposition to HB2, several states swiftly voiced disapproval. Then Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (now the Administrator of the EPA) sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education stating, “Your determination thus elevates the status of transgender students over those who would define their sex based on biology and who would seek to have their definition honored in the most private of places.” The Trump Administration guidance letter reversing the Obama Administration’s policy referenced the ruling of a federal district court in Texas that “held that the term ‘sex’ unambiguously refers to biological sex.”

Ironically, Trump's and Pruitt’s arguments are perhaps the most compelling ones against HB2 and similar sex- and gender-based legislation. Our biological variability means that a two-bathroom, based on two-sex approach is inadequate — and that’s before judges ever get to the issue of gender identity.

In the United States, judges are obligated to see the world through a secular lens. They must apply the law without the influence of any religious construct or political agenda. If modern science recognizes that sex has countless natural permutations, and if birth certificates, physical observation and even chromosomal testing cannot reliably categorize every individual as either male or female, then our judiciary cannot be required to make gender findings antithetical to that reality.

When legislators blur the lines of church and state and enact laws that permit or prohibit conduct based on biologic gender as only male or female — whether it is for the purpose of authorizing marriage or designating the use of public bathrooms — they place an impossible burden on our judiciary, and ultimately on our country and all of its people.

Norfolk Bans LGBT Hiring Discrimination

While Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly continue to push a Christofascist backed anti-LGBT agenda, Virginia's cities lead the way in creating a business friendly economy and society welcoming to all.  The latest example id Norfolk amendment of its City Code to ban hiring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  No doubt there is gnashing of teeth going on among the hate merchants at The Family Foundation and Regent and Liberty universities.  The Virginian Pilot looks at the development which will hopefully pressure other Hampton Roads cities to follow suit.  Here are story highlights:

Discrimination in city hiring or contracting based on sexual orientation or gender identity is now illegal.

In two 8-0 votes, the City Council voted Tuesday night to add protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people – among others – to the law. They took effect immediately.

Councilman Martin Thomas Jr. said he was “very proud” to vote for the new measures.
“It was something that needed to be done,” he said. “Norfolk is an inclusive and diverse city.”

Michael Berlucchi, president of the LGBT rights group Hampton Roads Pride, called the changes “a big deal.”

“It changes policy, but it also changes culture,” Berlucchi said. “It sends a message about the posture our government takes toward a minority community like LGBT, and that’s really significant.”

Virginia Beach also has a policy prohibiting discrimination in city hiring based on sexual orientation or gender identity, a city spokeswoman said. Chesapeake lists sexual orientation as a protected class, but not gender identity, according to a city regulation. The anti-discrimination laws in Suffolk and Portsmouth do not include either category.

In Norfolk, city contractors were already barred from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, disability or national origin.

The law passed Tuesday requires any city contract above $1,000 to include protections for sexual orientation, gender identity, age, genetic information, marital status, political affiliation, whistleblower activity, parental status and military service. Another new law provides all the same protections in city hiring.

Councilwoman Andria McClellan said Norfolk’s government has already been respectful of LGBT rights for years and has guidelines for how to treat an employee undergoing a gender identity transition.

But she and Thomas said they wanted to make sure the protections were codified in law.  “I prefer to be on the cutting edge of equality,” Thomas said.

Meanwhile, in rural Republican voting regions in Southwest Virginia most residents cling to their bibles and bigotry and wonder why few, if any, businesses want to relocate to their areas.  Bigotry carries an economic price - something lost on Christofascists and their self-prostituting Republican representatives.   Kudos to Norfolk. 

Study Pinpoits Genome Markers that Predicts Male Sexual Orientation

A study at the School of Medicine of the University of California, Los Angeles, provides more bad news for the Christofascists and the bitter, closet old men at the Vatican.  These knuckle draggers - and in the case of the Vatican, proponents of 13th century knowledge - continue to whine and state that sexual orientation is a choice and make spittle flecked rants that there is "no gay gene."  Thus, being gay and having gay relationships is a "sin" in their ignorance embracing views.  The new study found that just  nine regions of the human genome predict the sexual orientation of males with up to 70 percent accuracy.  Obviously, none of us "chose" to change are DNA.  A press release outlines the findings that underscore that sexual orientation is NOT a choice.  Here are highlights:

An algorithm using epigenetic information from just nine regions of the human genome can predict the sexual orientation of males with up to 70 percent accuracy, according to research presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2015 Annual Meeting in Baltimore.

"To our knowledge, this is the first example of a predictive model for sexual orientation based on molecular markers," said Tuck C. Ngun, PhD, first author on the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Beyond the genetic information contained in DNA, the researchers examined patterns of DNA methylation - a molecular modification to DNA that affects when and how strongly a gene is expressed - across the genome in pairs of identical male twins.

They found that methylation patterns in nine small regions, scattered across the genome, could be used to predict study participants' sexual orientation with 70 percent accuracy.

"Previous studies had identified broader regions of chromosomes that were involved in sexual orientation, but we were able to define these areas down to the base pair level with our approach," Dr. Ngun said. He noted that it will take additional research to explain how DNA methylation in those regions may be related to sexual orientation. The researchers are currently testing the algorithm's accuracy in a more general population of men.

"Sexual attraction is such a fundamental part of life, but it's not something we know a lot about at the genetic and molecular level. I hope that this research helps us understand ourselves better and why we are the way we are," Dr. Ngun said.

Ask any gay - or at least those not afflicted by religious brainwashing and associated guilt - and they will tell you that they never chose their sexual orientation.  To the extent there is any choice involved, it is merely the choice of how long one is willing to lie to themselves and others. 

1 in 3 American Young Adults Identify as Bisexual

Brace yourself for spittle flecked rants that "the gay agenda" is turning America's youth gay or at least bisexual.  A study (which can be found here) that followed on the heels of one in the UK looked surveyed Americans an just shy of a third of young Americans said that they aren’t “100% heterosexual."  Bryan Fischer, Maggie Gallagher and Victoria Cobb will be no doubt apoplectic.  Older Americans claim to be much less bisexual, although the older generations are much more experienced in denial - both to themselves and the rest of society.  The Advocate looks at the study findings.  Here are story excerpts: 

[H]alf of the U.K.’s young adults aren’t “100% heterosexual,” new research indicates one-third of American young adults feel the same way.  [R]esearchers for YouGov used a modified Kinsey scale to measure sexuality by asking participants to place themselves on a range between "exclusively heterosexual" and "exclusively homosexual."

According to the study, “Overall 78% of Americans say that they are completely heterosexual while 4% say that they are completely homosexual. 16% of American adults say that they fall somewhere in between. In this group, the bulk of the respondents (10%) said that they are more heterosexual than homosexual, while 3% put themselves in the middle, and another 3% say that they are predominantly homosexual.”

Yet a percentage of those who classified themselves as heterosexual admitted to having same-sex experiences. “A large number of Americans who classify themselves as heterosexual still admit to having had same sex experiences. 12% of heterosexual American adults say that they have had a sexual experience with someone of the same sex. “

Notably, the study found that the older someone is, the less likely they are to say their sexuality is on the bisexual spectrum. According to the researchers, “24% of people aged 30 to 44 say that they're somewhere on the scale of bisexuality, compared to 8% or less of over-45s.”

Click image to enlarge

BRITAIN: Half Of 18-24 Year-Olds Say They’re Not 100% Heterosexual

Click image to enlarge

A new survey in Great Britain has yielded results that will no doubt have the Christofascists foaming at the mouth and hysterically claiming that the "gay agenda" is turning youth gay.  The study found that 49% among 18-24 year olds classified them selves as not 100% heterosexual.  Interestingly, only 72% of the adults surveyed said they were 100% heterosexuals.  Tony Perkins, Victoria Cobb, Albert Mohler and Maggie Gallagher will be having the vapors!  Here are some of the findings from the YouGov survey:

Invented by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s, the Kinsey scale plots individuals on a range of sexual dispositions from exclusively heterosexual at 0 through to exclusively homosexual at 6. Where the original study had a large number of methods for placing people, YouGov simply asked people to place themselves on the sexuality scale.

Taken as a whole, 72% of the British public place themselves at the completely heterosexual end of the scale, while 4% put themselves at the completely homosexual end and 19% say they are somewhere in between . . .

With each generation, people see their sexuality as less fixed in stone. The results for 18-24 year-olds are particularly striking, as 43% place themselves in the non-binary area between 1 and 5 and 52% place themselves at one end or the other. Of these, only 46% say they are completely heterosexual and 6% as completely homosexual.

More than anything, it indicates an increasingly open minded approach to sexuality. In a further set of questions asking if respondents could conceivably be attracted to, have sex with or have a relationship with someone of the same sex (if the right person came along at the right time), level 1s were at least 35% more likely to say they could than level 0s.

Given the Millennials seeming growing indifference toward religion and more open acceptance of gays, one has to wonder if similar findings would occur in America. 

EEOC: Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation Barred Under Existing Law

In what may proved to be a huge ruling, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that existing law and regulations bar employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.  In states like Virginia which remain anti-gay in many ways (e.g., no express state law employment protections, special privileges for anti-gay adoption agencies, and no fair housing protections), this could have a huge impact on members of the LGBT community who find themselves fired from jobs because their very existence offends the foul sensibilities of the "godly folk."  Personally, I have long argued that since anti-gay discrimination is based on religion, existing laws should protect LGBT individuals.  The Virginia Supreme Court, consistent with its track record of trying to stay a century behind the rest of the country would hear nothing of that argument when I represent Michael Moore who was fired by the Virginia Museum of Natural History by a bigoted executive director.  BuzzFeed looks at this important ruling.  Here are highlights:

WASHINGTON — The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that existing civil rights law bars sexual orientation-based employment discrimination — a groundbreaking decision to advance legal protections for gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers.

“[A]llegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation necessarily state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex,” the commission concluded in a decision dated July 15.

The independent commission addressed the question of whether the ban on sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars anti-LGB discrimination in a complaint brought by a Florida-based air traffic control specialist against Transportation Sec. Anthony Foxx.

The ruling — approved by a 3-2 vote of the five-person commission — applies to federal employees’ claims directly, but it also applies to the entire EEOC, which includes its offices across the nation that take and investigate claims of discrimination in private employment.

While only the Supreme Court could issue a definitive ruling on the interpretation, EEOC decisions are given significant deference by federal courts.

In December 2014, the Justice Department announced a similar view of the law — stating that it would apply that interpretation in its cases.

While the EEOC had been pushing toward today’s decision with cases and even field guidance addressing coverage under Title VII of specific types of discrimination faced by gay people, the July 15 decision states that “sexual orientation is inherently a ‘sex-based consideration.’”

“[T]he question is not whether sexual orientation is explicitly listed in Title VII as a prohibited basis for employment actions. It is not,” the commission found. Instead, the commission stated that the question is the same as in any other Title VII sex discrimination case: “whether the agency has ‘relied on sex-based considerations’ or ‘take[n] gender into account’ when taking the challenged employment action.”

The commission found that sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination for several reasons. Among the reasons, the commission stated, is because sexual orientation discrimination “necessarily entails treating an employee less favorably because of the employee’s sex” and “because it is associational discrimination on the basis of sex.”

“We therefore conclude that Complainant’s allegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex. We further conclude that allegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation necessarily state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex.”

Expect more wailing and spittle flecked rants from the Christofascists as their power to abuse those who reject their hate and fear based beliefs shrinks yet again.   Kudos to the EEOC.

Religious Belief, Not Sexual Orientation is a Choice

A group of anti-gay extremists who have made a career out of spreading anti-gay lies and hatred Peter LaBarbera, a/k/a Porno Pete, Scott Lively, who is on trial for international human rights violations, and utter whack job Janet Porter, etc, are at work in Michigan spreading more poison.  (Their insanity is on display here.) After having delivered boxes and boxes of insane "restraining orders" to the US Supreme Court prior to oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, this hate merchants have erected billboards claiming that homosexuality is a "behavior" and, therefore, a choice.  Needless to say, these folks are vociferous supporters of discredited "ex-gay" therapy and choose to disregard the findings of every legitimate medical and mental health association in America about the immutability of sexual orientation.

The images rotate between these identities:

The irony - and lie of it all - is that the billboards leave out the only identity that is 100% a choice: religious belief.   With 33% of Millennials and 20% of the general population now haven chosen to walk away from religion entirely, the proof positive that religious belief is not immutable is there for all to see.  I would argue, that if only attributes that are not a choice are to be protected, then religion needs to be the first category stripped from civil rights protections.  Ban all "religious freedom laws" as unnecessary.

Religion has caused so many horrors throughout the centuries and sadly continues to receive totally undeserved deference and, even worse, respect.  It is disturbing that something that has caused so many deaths and untold suffering and abuse continues to receive any respect whatsoever.  Religious belief needs to be a private affair barred from the public square and most definitely banned from influencing public policy.

Sexual Orientation Obsession Disorder - Is it Different than Homophobia?

Just last night I noted how the Christofascists hysteria over gays and gay rights strikes me as a form of mental illness.  Then this morning I came across an article that would seem to explain the behavior of folks like Rick Santorum, Ken Cuccinelli, Tony Perkins, and much of the Catholic Church hierarchy: Sexual Orientation Obsession Disorder.   In short, we may be seeing something more than plain old homophobia at work.  What is Sexual Orientation Obsession Disorder?  It is an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that revolves around the fear of being—or being perceived as—gay.  How does one convince himself/herself that they are not really gay?  By being as stridently anti-gay as possible, although in the cases of Rick Santorum and Ken Cuccinelli,my personal bet is that they ARE gay and struggle because they cannot let go of the psychological damage they suffered being raised Catholic, something I know about first hand.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at a new study (subscription required) that looks at Sexual Orientation Obsession Disorder.   Here are highlights:

“Simon” is not gay but he used to spend several hours a day worrying that he might be.  His fear of being gay led him to avoid physical contact with other men at work, where he dodged one-on-one meetings with men, and at home, where he avoided attending his children’s sporting events so that he wouldn’t have to interact with coaches and dads.

Simon suffered from a sexual orientation obsession, a fairly common but under-examined manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that revolves around the fear of being—or being perceived as—gay.

Simon’s case study is the focus of a 2011 article co-authored by Dr. Monnica T. Williams, a clinical psychologist and the leading expert on sexual orientation-themed OCD (SO-OCD). In a new study published in the April issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, Dr. Williams sheds even more light on this confusing and often debilitating mental disorder.

For Dr. Williams, SO-OCD presents a unique clinical challenge because it can easily be mistaken for internalized homophobia, in which someone who is actually lesbian, gay, or bisexual suffers personal and social anxiety over his or her sexual orientation. Those who suffer from SO-OCD, by contrast, do not take pleasure in homosexual thoughts but nonetheless have an obsessive need to reassure themselves that they do not find them pleasurable.

These reassurances can take the form of time-consuming “checking” rituals that SO-OCD sufferers use to verify their true sexual orientation. In Dr. Williams’s clinical experience, these rituals include mentally picturing homosexual acts and checking for sexual stimulation, asking a loved one to verbally verify one’s heterosexuality, or looking at homosexual imagery to ensure that it does not induce arousal.
Some male sufferers of SO-OCD may even be so hounded by obsessive thoughts that they become “desperate to find out if they would enjoy a homosexual experience,” causing them to seek out unwanted—and ultimately upsetting—same-sex encounters.

Those who experience internalized homophobia or other forms of anxiety over being lesbian, gay, or bisexual, on the other hand, would not experience the activities in these rituals as inherently distressing. In her practice, for instance, Dr. Williams once encountered a middle-aged man who was concerned he might have SO-OCD due to “ongoing doubts about whether he should leave his wife and move to Miami to start a new life as an openly gay man.”

[A]s Dr. Williams and her co-authors point out, an individual with SO-OCD “may or may not have negative feelings toward LGBT individuals” on a sociopolitical or interpersonal level.

SO-OCD is a mental disorder, not a pathological form of bigotry. SO-OCD sufferers have a lot more in common with Jack Nicholson avoiding cracks in the sidewalk in As Good as It Gets than they do with the Westboro Baptist Church. SO-OCD also occurs with surprising frequency given how scant the research is on the subject.

For those who receive treatment, however, this distress can be alleviated using proven therapeutic techniques. As Dr. Williams notes in her team’s 2011 study of Simon, treatment for SO-OCD “follows the same structure as any other form of OCD”: expose the patient to his or her fears and interrupt the rituals that accompany them.

[F]or Simon, it alleviated his symptoms by allowing him to unmask and dismiss his fears. His depression cleared away and his quality of life score rose dramatically post-treatment.  But Simon’s success story aside, Dr. Williams and her co-authors remain concerned that the larger population of SO-OCD sufferers do not have access to this knowledge or these treatments.

For a potentially debilitating form of mental illness that can so easily be confused with internalized homophobia or outright bigotry, some clarity does seem to be in order.

It is nice to know that I was perhaps correct when I call out some of the GOP politicians and "family values" group leaders as crazy - they are mentally ill.