Posted on 05/17/2005 3:06:04 AM PDT by Pharmboy
IT sounds like something out of the satirical journal Annals of Improbable Research: a team of Swedish neuroscientists scanned people's brains as they smelled a testosterone derivative found in men's sweat and an estrogen-like compound found in women's urine.
In heterosexual men, a part of the hypothalamus (the seat of physical drives) responded to the female compound but not the male one; in heterosexual women and homosexual men, it was the other way around.
But the discovery is more than just a shoo-in for that journal's annual Ig Nobel Prize - it raises provocative questions about the science and ethics of human sexuality.
Scientists and perfume marketers who believe that humans, like other mammals, respond sexually to chemical signals called pheromones were cheered by the news. But we are a long way from dogs in heat. The role of pheromones in our sexuality must be small at best. When people want to be titillated or to check out a prospective partner, most seek words or pictures, not dirty laundry. The difference in the brain responses of gay and straight men does not, by itself, prove that homosexuality is innate; after all, learned inclinations, like innate ones, must reside somewhere in the brain.
But in this case nature probably does trump nurture. Gay men generally report that their homosexual attractions began as soon as they felt sexual stirrings before adolescence. And homosexuality is more concordant in identical than in fraternal twins, suggesting that their shared genes play a role. Homosexuality is a puzzle for biology, not because homosexuality itself is evolutionarily maladaptive (though no more so than any other sexual act that does not result in conception), but because any genetic tendency to avoid heterosexual opportunities should have been selected out long ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I bet about the time they spent alone with Mr. Happy. Pavlovian bells start ringing early.
Jesus said: "And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." -from THE BIBLE: Matthew 19:4-6
I have a very dear friend who is a lesbian. To look at her, you couldn't think she would or could be anything else.
How do they explain the high correlation between homosexuality and abusive fathers, then? Do fathers have a genetic tendency to beat the crap out of fairy sons?
Or maybe that's how the father deals with his own genetic 'tendencies'. Just a thought...
After they "sniff out" the gay gene, they should "snuff out" the gay gene.
Absolutely!
IF there is a gay gene, we should eliminate it just like we try to do with other birth defects.
I know...we can start a ribbon campaign and collect money for research! Lets see...yeah....brown ribbons..
I love articles like this because the authors,in an effort to placate the homosexual lobby, invariably twist themselves into an intellectual knot.
A few comments:
"People often confuse their own revulsion with objective sinfulness, as when they dehumanize people living in squalor or, in the other direction, engage in religious rituals of cleanliness and purification."
Umm, no not really. People of faith view homosexuality as sinful because the tenets of their faith instruct them to do so. Memo to the NYT:see the Holy Bible,Book of Leviticus, chapter 18,verse 22.
"Some gay groups condemn such research because it could stigmatize gay people as defective and lead to a day in which parents could selectively abort children with "gay genes."
Actually what the gay groups have to "worry" about if a "gay gene" is found is not the abortion of unborn gay babies, especially from people of faith, but of genetic therapies that eliminate the tendancy all together
Others welcome the research because it shows that people don't "choose" to be gay and hence can't be criticized for it, nor could homosexuals convert the children in their classrooms or Scout troops even if they wanted to"
While a few parents may indeed worry that a gay scoutmaster might "convert" their child, the far larger percentage worry that the gay scoutmaster would molest their young son as happened here some years back before good background checks were done.
For years, social conservatives fought the idea that homosexuality could be biologically or genetically based. Actually, that's the better of the two outcomes because if it is a physical defect, it is eventually curable as we know more and more about genetic therapy.
I dont doubt that there may be a gay gene, I just doubt that all gay people have it. Many of them have been recruited by other gays and many have become gay due to some overt act pulled on them by an older fruit.I have never spoken to a lesbian about her being gay without discovering something back in their experience that got them haitng men. Mostly its a father who abused the mother.
The "gay gene" (if it exists) is probably very very useful to the human race or evolution should have snuffed it out a long time ago.
Women and men are remarkably similar until sex differentiation takes place. Homo men are likely to be men where the differentiention process went biochemically (and not genetically) awry.
I agree that it may be biochemical.
I don't know if there has been enough time to weed out a gene that occurs only 10% or less in a population. That would seem to make a case for its demise: were it genetic and advantageous, it would occur with more frequency. OTH, we are still born with an apendix...evolution hasn't weeded that out.
Here is an example where I would approve of aborting the gay gene .
I don't suppose it's possible that they are merely reacting to the smells that they have found their pleasure in???
Yep-and studies several years ago found feral cats had brains that were different than domestic cats. The suggestion was that this proved homosexuals were not like
the rest of us -but couldn't help making those destructive
behavioral choices. PRoblem is --just like this smell test
junk science has NOT proven that homosexuals smell different from conception to the grave. But this so called
scientific evidence does smell and it no more passes the smell test than some old and foul smelling wind in a small
chapel.
I thing gay men just bathe more.
I have been posting for years the theory that the identification of a gay gene will end Roe v. Wade and the democrats. Gay-gene abortions will be a given. Gay demands to protect gay unborn will follow. The fems will say no unborn have rights. The Dems will implode.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.