Johns Hopkins Research: No Evidence People Are Born Gay or Transgender

PJ Media ^ | August 23, 2016 | Tyler O'Neil August 23, 2016

[Candor7]

Scholars at Johns Hopkins University released a new report on Monday which argues that there is not sufficient evidence to suggest that lesbian, gay, or transgender people are born with this sexual orientation or gender identity.

"The idea there that sexual orientation is fluid, that people change as people grow," Lawrence Mayer, a co-author of the report and a scholar-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University's psychiatry department, as well as a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University, told The Christian Post. "There are probably some people that identify as hetrosexual [sic] that then later on identified as homosexual, so it goes both ways. The importance there is the fluidity and flexibility that these things change in time."

The three-part, 143-page report, which appeared in the Fall 2016 edition of The New Atlantis, also investigated other commonly accepted ideas about homosexuality and transgenderism. Mayer and his co-author Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins, challenged the claim that discrimination and social stigma are the only reasons why homosexual and transgender people suffer higher rates of mental health problems and are more likely to commit suicide.

The study breaks down in three parts: First, Mayer and McHugh examined whether homosexuality is an inherited trait, and concluded that people are not simply "born that way." Second, they looked at the causes of the poor mental health associated with gay and transgender people, concluding that social stress does not explain all of it. Finally, they studied transgenderism, concluding that it is not innate and that transgender "treatments" are associated with negative outcomes.

The report found insufficient evidence to back up the idea that people are born with innate sexual attractions. Mayer and McHugh examined past studies which show a modest association between genetic factors and sexual orientation, but these studies have not been able to pinpoint particular genes responsible. Other hypothesized biological causes, such as prenatal development and hormones, have also been linked to sexual orientation, but that evidence is also limited.

"Studies of the brains of homosexuals and heterosexuals have found some differences, but have not demonstrated that these differences are inborn rather than the result of environmental factors that influenced both psychological and neurobiological traits," the report explained. "One environmental factor that appears to be correlated with non-heterosexuality is child sexual abuse victimization, which may also contribute to the higher rates."

The report cited the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which tracked the sexual orientation of children aged 7 to 12 in 1994-1995 and again in 2007-2008. Eighty percent of male respondents who had reported same-sex attraction and both-sex attraction in childhood later identified as exclusively heterosexual, while more than half of the females who reported both-sex attraction as children reported exclusive attraction to men as adults.

Mayer and McHugh also analyzed twins. They pointed to a 2010 study by psychiatric epidemiologist Niklas Långström which analyzed 3,826 identical and fraternal same-sex twin pairs. Both twins had at least one same-sex partner in only 18 percent of male identical twins, and 11 percent of male fraternal twins. For women, both twins had at least one homosexual partner in 22 percent of identical twins and 17 percent of fraternal twins.

"Summarizing the studies of twins, we can say that there is no reliable scientific evidence that sexual orientation is determined by a person's genes," the researchers wrote. "But there is evidence that genes play a role in influencing sexual orientation."

"So the question 'Are gay people born that way?' requires clarification. There is virtually no evidence that anyone, gay or straight, is 'born that way' if it means that their sexual orientation was genetically determined," the report explained (emphasis added). "But there is some evidence from the twin studies that certain genetic profiles probably increase the likelihood the person later identifies as gay or engages in same-sex sexual behavior."

[Gay State Conservative]

Having spent decades at a very well known medical research complex I can guarantee that these researchers will be shunned...blackballed...by the medical community.

[DoughtyOne]

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...this is a general all-purpose message, and should not be seen as targeting any individual I am responding to...

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[rxsid]

"What is your source for that assertion? I’d like to go read it."

Look at my post again. It's noted with references, just a couple of the countless that are out there.

"My point, and you know this, is that DNA cannot be willfully changed by another human."

Technically, DNA can be changed by another person. Certainly not suggestions anyone in their right mind would want to do this, but a person could expose another person to radiation (ex. a terrorist attack, some malicious lab tech not giving an unsuspecting patient a lead apron and then severely overexposing them to Xrays, etc). Radiation is just one example of an "acquired" mutation (mentioned in my previous post)[1]

Now, I get the "gist" of what you were trying to say in your post...but to state "Fortunately, your DNA is your DNA. It cannot be changed, ever." that's just simply not correct. DNA can, and does change.

[Brown Deer]

Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change

[riverdawg]

“XXX and XXY? People may not be born ‘gay,’ but what of the developmental changes during puberty? Are they possibly born to become ‘gay’?”

There is no evidence that such sex-chromosome abnormalities are correlated with homosexuality.

[gundog]

No, but upchuck’s binary view of human sexuality is somewhat limiting. Sexual reproduction precedes humanity by a billion or more years. It is not a perfect process. It need only successfully produce enough reproducing pairs to continue the species. If it produces aberations that do not impact that success, they are tolerated, biologically.

Humanity is more than just biology, though. Culture is a huge part of our existence. Homosexuals can influence that realm greatly, for good or ill.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/480117/

[Sergio]

bkmk

[riverdawg]

“XXX and XXY? People may not be born ‘gay,’ but what of the developmental changes during puberty? Are they possibly born to become ‘gay’?”

I read, perhaps inaccurately, your statement to suggest that sex-chromosome abnormalities (like XXX and XXY) increase the probability of “becoming gay” at and/or beyond puberty. There is no evidence of such an effect. That doesn’t mean there is no genetic component to homosexuality, perhaps in combination with cultural and environmental factors. But homosexuality appears to have nothing to do with known sex-chromosome abnormalities.

[Hot Tabasco]

[Wuli]

Typical of Left/Progressive/Liberal political agendas - the publicly demanded “causes” change with research that demands one “cause” be scrapped in favor of another.

Back the whole agenda into the 60s and 70s and “being gay” was claimed to be a choice a “gay” person can be allowed to make.

Then as the arguments pro and con on civil partnerships and “gay marriage” crossed political paths and diverged, “being gay” was claimed to be “scientifically shown” as something someone was “born” with.

No whith the addition of the whole “transgender” and “fluid sexuality” political agenda, the “specialists” are helping the activists move the “cause” back to “a choice” a person makes; only now it’s not merely a choice of sexual attraction but the entire sexual identity.

And yet if we take the new found “evidence” at face value, it is nothing less than an admission that nurture - what happens in someone’s life, plays a bigger role than “genetics” in someone “being gay”. And yet, they would at the same time DENY that parents and other adult institutions (like churches and schools) have any rights or obligations in the nurturing children recieve in terms of supporting or not supporting certain choices. And worse, the advocates are now seen as the biggest hypocrites in the world on the matter of nurture. THEY must be allowed dominant roles in nurture in favor of “secual fluidity” and even promoting it, while any suggestion at all from nurturing sources that does not promote “sexual fluidity” is to be opposed, professionally and by law. The whole thing is now like an emperor with no clothes - exposed as naked politics and nothing less.

[NorthMountain]

You said “giggling little donut-puncher” twice.

[fwdude]

I do personally believe that the loads of hormones and other drugs in the environment (city water treatment plants CAN’T get it all out) play a role in the current confusion. Look at people today and photos of men decades ago. They have been wussified over the past generation.

[gundog]

No. No more than in those with “normal” chromosomes. I’m just saying that the process of sexual reproduction need only replace population in numbers necessary to perpetuate a species, or extinction results, eventually. Different cultures deal with the outliers in different ways....acceptance, rejection, to the point of throwing them off of buildings, simple tolerance , to bending over backwards to accomodate them. Morality, a cultural construct, dictates which. America, cut loose from traditional moral moorings, seems to reward those that go out and grab as much as they can, be it money, rights, real or imagined, or what have you.

[laweeks]

You said “giggling little donut-puncher” twice.

I lost count . . .

[Candor7]

Agreed. The post surgical suicide rates confirm that.

[Candor7]

They have been wussified over the past generation.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

You can thank our education system for that....our schools turn out mostly beta males , fit to be lead by the first totalitarian leader that comes along. Alpha males are put on Ritalin, defined as special needs , or are simply expelled from school, as outsiders.

The cannon fodder beta males for the 4th Reich of liberal fascism are now being created.

And this great article describes how it all began many years ago by how fascism’s history was twisted by the left:

“Barack Obama: The Quintessential Liberal Fascist”

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html

[mumblypeg]

We are genetically predisposed to procreate.
We are NOT genetically predisposed to engage in butt sex.
That requires recruitment.
IOW, “Try it! You’ll like it!”

Fact is, many people who try it DON’T like it.

[Candor7]

Spanky and our gang would make a better administration that Butterkeg, LOL.

[Candor7]

Exactly right. Can you imagine an administration dominated by alpha male homosexuals running the country. Obama “nearly” did it, but not quite.

HORRIBLE!

[maxwellsmart_agent]

Homosexual tendancies and transgender tendancies are choices, not something that people are born with. Nobody is born a homosexual. It is something that people choose. There are environmental factors in their development, but that does not mean that they have to go that way. They choose to.