Gays aren't "born that way" -- a lesbian says so

In an astonishing column published in the winger-left publication, "The Atlantic," openly "queer woman" (her words) Lindsay Miller says flatly, "In direct opposition to both the mainstream gay movement and Lady Gaga, I would like to state for the record that I was not born this way."

Tellingly, she argues that saying people are "born this way" is a form of condescension, and she resents it mightily. "I get frustrated with the veiled condescension of straight people who believe that queers 'can't help it,' and thus should be treated with tolerance and pity."

I've got news for Ms. Miller — it's not straights saying that you can't help it, it is your co-belligerents in the homosexual movement. In the pro-family movement, we entirely agree with you that sexual behavior in the end is always a matter of choice. We have no condescension towards you in the least — we regard you as men and women made in the image of God who are perfectly capable of making responsible and mature decisions regarding your sexuality.

Ms. Miller concludes her piece by saying, "The life I have now is not something I ended up with because I had no other options. Make no mistake — it's a life I chose."

Homosexual activists must be seething at this point, since Ms. Miller has blown their entire civil rights argument — we're just like blacks — to smithereens. Blacks did not choose to be black. Race is immutable, assigned at birth. But homosexuality is not immutable and it is not fixed at birth. Ms. Miller has chosen lesbianism, which means she is perfectly capable of choosing sexual normalcy if she becomes so inclined.

Ms. Miller confirms what Colin Powell said long ago, that the comparison between race and sexual preference is "convenient but invalid."

It's time to send the "born that way" myth to the graveyard of misbegotten ideas, buried in the plot next to the myth that the sun revolves around the earth.

And we don't just need to take Lindsay Miller's word for it. Psychiatrists William Byne and Bruce Parsons wrote in Archives of General Psychiatry (March 1993) that, "Critical review shows the evidence favoring a biologic theory to be lacking ... In fact, the current trend may be to underrate the explanatory power of extant psychosocial models." In other words, nurture plays a greater role in sexual preference than homosexual activists want you to believe.

As Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council points out, rigorous studies of identical twins have now made it impossible to argue seriously for the theory of genetic determination. If homosexuality were fixed at birth, as the misguided thinking of homosexual activists goes, then if one twin is homosexual, the other should be as well. The "concordance rate" should be 100%.

But it's not. One early proponent of the "born that way" thesis, Michael Bailey, conducted a study on a large sample of Australian twins and discovered to his chagrin that the concordance rate was just 11%.

Peter Bearman and Hannah Bruckner, researchers from Columbia and Yale, looked at data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and found concordance rates of just 6.7% for male and 5.3% for female identical twins.

They determined that social environment was of far greater significance, and their research led them to reject "genetic influence independent of social context" as an explanation for homosexuality. They concluded, "..[O]ur results support the hypothesis that less gendered socialization in early childhood and preadolescence shapes subsequent same-sex romantic preferences."

As Sprigg observes, "If it was not clear in the 1990's, it certainly is now — no one is 'born gay.'"

The implications, of course, of this simple truth are far-reaching. If homosexual behavior is a choice, then our public policy can freely be shaped by an honest look at whether this behavioral choice is healthy and should be encouraged or unhealthy and dangerous and consequently discouraged.

The elevated health risks associated with homosexuality are by now so well established that not even homosexuals pretend otherwise. The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association warns that active homosexuals are at elevated risks of HIV/AIDS, substance and alcohol abuse, depression and anxiety, hepatitis, a whole range of STDs such as syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, pubic lice, Human Papilloma Virus, and anal papilloma, and prostate, testicular and colon cancer.

Bottom line: this is not behavior that any rational society should condone, endorse, subsidize, reward, promote or sanction in domestic policy or in the marketplace. It's a choice, and a bad one at that. It's long past time for our culture to say a simple and direct "No" to homosexuality and the homosexual agenda.

I don't know enough of the science. Do identical twins have exactly the same DNA? If so, then just using logic if you had any cases where one twin was homosexual and one was not, then you'd have to argue that none of those cases were genetic in order to preserve the notion that it's genetic. So I guess even identical twins where one is homosexual and one is not still does not prove that homosexuality is not genetic. The funny thing is that if there is a homosexual gene then natural selection seems to have failed. Unless the homosexual gene was passed down because the behavior was so frowned upon in the past, that they still participated in normal procreation to conform to normal standards. So actually, if the gene does exist, we should see homosexuality dying out since it it is now an approved behavior. That is homosexuals are no longer under societal pressure to procreate normally. Therefore, the prevalence of the gene should begin to fade. Hmm. Maybe I should be for gay marriage. The more they marry each other, the sooner they're gone. I guess the flaw in that argument is that many of them use their own genetic material to produce designer babies. So we'll probably see more homosexuals since the DNA is spreading using current reproductive technology.

I don't know that much science, either. I like reading about science and nature, but I'm no scientist.

Do identical twins have exactly the same DNA? If so, then just using logic if you had any cases where one twin was homosexual and one was not, then you'd have to argue that none of those cases were genetic in order to preserve the notion that it's genetic.

I don't think you could argue that. Nobody is saying it's 100% genetic. There are genetic factors that influence behavior, but they interplay with environmental ones.

One of the researcher teams quoted in the article was Peter S. Bearman and Hannah Brückner, to show that there wasn't a significantly greater concordance for identical twins than fraternal ones. But the team found an interesting wrinkle to this: Fraternal twins can be of the opposite sex. Boys who have a twin sister, it turns out, are twice as likely to be sexually attracted to boys, than one would expect. But only if they didn't have any older brothers! This argues that environmental factors are very important in developing sexual preferences.

Anyhow, the article is a bit underdeveloped, and the headline is wrong. Gays aren't "born that way" -- a lesbian says so: not quite. She was speaking for herself. Maybe she's bi; who cares?

But people are saying and it is an often repeated argument in favor of the homosexual agenda that they are born that way. If that is the case, then you can easily make the next argument that, therefore, sexual preference is intrinsic like skin color. So biases against homosexuality are like biases against skin color. I don't care whether environment plays a role, or people just make a choice. I believe both are true. Those “causes” of homosexuality don't support the case for reversing 4000 years of traditional heterosexual marriage. When people claim that there is at least some component of the community that was “born that way”, it sounds reasonable that their lifestyle should get the full support of the government because like skin color they can't change what they are. Of course even if the tendency is genetic, that still doesn't mean that it is a “good” inherited trait, but the fact that it was inherited (if it could be proven) absolves the recipient of the trait from having responsibility for conforming to what is “natural” for them. It fits in the model of alcoholism is a disease. Strangely, though, we still expect people to resist that genetic predisposition if it is one. The point is, is that if you could prove homosexuality is not genetic (in any cases), then engagement in the behavior does not have the excuse that “nature or G_d made me that way”. Anyway, sound like you know more about biology than I do. I'm just trying to apply logic.

But people are saying and it is an often repeated argument in favor of the homosexual agenda that they are born that way.

A lot of them probably feel that way. I wouldn't know. Of course, that doesn't make it genetic. I read somewhere that babies born in 1944 and 1945 in Germany were more likely to be homosexual, and in general prenatal stress is a factor, as are other early environment factors.

Nobody remembers being born, or the first couple of years of their life, for that matter. But I've heard enough of them say they never felt like they could choose to be heterosexual, they were always homosexual.

Ultimately the way homosexuals are treated and what they are allowed to do, doesn't really have much to do with science. Let's say next week they found one "gay gene" that correlates very strongly, almost 100%, with homosexuality, but only 20% of gay men have it. Do we test for that gene, and allow those 20% to marry each other, but ban the rest? And if no gene is found for lesbians, do we then treat them differently?

Ultimately these are political and moral questions, not science.

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