A really interesting speculation about the cause of homosexuality I've read is that it is caused by an infectious agent, one that the mother would contract while the (future) homosexual is developing in the womb. This was proposed by Gregory Cochran, a maverick physicist-turned-geneticist. He argues that homosexuality cannot be genetic because if it were, it would have been selected out of the population because gay men have only 20% as many children as straight men. He also argues that it is known that there are viruses that have odd and very specific effects on the brain. He claims that homosexuality is
not uniformly distributed in the population, it is much more common in big cities and almost unheard-of in rural, traditional societies -- this is consistent with an infectious agent. He further points out that there are only two species where
exclusive male homosexuality is found. (Homosexual behavior is observed in many species, but in almost all cases, if the male individual has the opportunity to mate with a female, the male will take that opportunity.) The only other species with exclusive male homosexuality is (I'm not making this up) sheep. It happens that 8% of all rams are homo. Cochran suggests there is an as-yet-unidentified infectious agent that causes this in sheep (again, it cannot be genetic because it would be selected out quickly) -- and he suggests humans acquired this agent from sheep, just as we acquired such diseases as syphilis from sheep.
But other theories are also interesting. Focus on the Family seems to favor the older, Freudian or psychological explanations -- these have as good predictive power as anything does, even though mainstream psychiatry seems to have abandoned them. This is reinforced by research that indicates that 75% of boys identified as sissy grow up to be gay. (However: boys who are sissies may be sissies because of a preexisting condition that predisposes them to homosexuality as well as being sissies.)
Yeah, good theories. And they make some sense. Now find out what it is and vaccinate. Thanks for sharing.
He claims that homosexuality is not uniformly distributed in the population, it is much more common in big cities and almost unheard-of in rural, traditional societies -- this is consistent with an infectious agent. This is also consistent with mentally damaged individuals flocking to the big cities where their disease is more tolerated and thus more damaged individuals are preying upon the innocent youth of those cities (causing yet more damaged individuals). In a small rural area the active SAD is likely to be shunned as damaged (as they should be) and the children are more protected from contact with the sexually perverse.
While the behavior may follow infectious disease patterns (one 'infected' passes it one to his victim) there does not need to be a biological agent involved for this pattern to be followed. A similar pattern is seen in cults such as scientology. One infected person can pass the same mental damage on to his victims (recruits)