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Posted on 03/13/2006 10:27:46 AM PST by DBeers
(CBS) There are few issues as hotly contested — and as poorly understood — as the question of what makes a person gay or straight. It's not only a political, social, and religious question but also a scientific question, one that might someday have an actual, provable answer.
The handful of scientists who work in this under-funded and politically charged field will tell you: That answer is a long way off. But as Lesley Stahl reports, their efforts are already yielding tantalizing clues. One focus of their research is twins.
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The bedrooms of 9-year-old twins Adam and Jared couldn't be more different. Jared's room is decked out with camouflage, airplanes, and military toys, while Adam's room sports a pastel canopy, stuffed animals, and white horses.
When Stahl came for a visit, Jared was eager to show her his G.I. Joe collection. "I have ones that say like Marine and SWAT. And then that's where I keep all the guns for 'em," he explained.
Adam was also proud to show off his toys. "This is one of my dolls. Bratz baby," he said.
Adam wears pinkish-purple nail polish, adorned with stars and diamonds.
Asked if he went to school like that, Adam says, "Uh-huh. I just showed them my nails, and they were like, 'Why did you do that?'"
Adam's behavior is called childhood gender nonconformity, meaning a child whose interests and behaviors are more typical of the opposite sex. Research shows that kids with extreme gender nonconformity usually grow up to be gay.
Danielle, Adam and Jared's mom, says she began to notice this difference in Adam when he was about 18 months old and began asking for a Barbie doll. Jared, meanwhile, was asking for fire trucks.
Not that much has changed. Jared’s favorite game now is Battlefield 2, Special Forces. As for Adam, he says, "It's called Neopets: The Darkest Faerie."
Asked how he would describe himself to a stranger, Jared says, "I'm a kid who likes G.I. Joes and games and TV."
"I would say like a girl," Adam replied to the same question. When asked why he thinks that is, Adam shrugged.
"To me, cases like that really scream out, 'Hey, it's not out there. It's in here.' There's no indication that this mother is prone to raise very feminine boys because his twin is not that way," says Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern University and a leading researcher in the field of sexual orientation.
Bailey says he doesn't think nurture is a plausible explanation.
Psychologists used to believe homosexuality was caused by nurture — namely overbearing mothers and distant fathers — but that theory has been disproved. Today, scientists are looking at genes, environment, brain structure and hormones. There is one area of consensus: that homosexuality involves more than just sexual behavior; it’s physiological.
Bailey and his colleagues set up a series of experiments in his lab at Northwestern University. In one study, researcher Gerulf Rieger videotaped gay and straight people sitting in a chair, talking. He then reduced them visually to silent black and white outlined figures and asked volunteers to see if they could tell gay from straight. The idea was to find out if certain stereotypes were real and observable.
Based on physical movement and gestures of the figures, more often than not, the volunteers in the study could tell a difference.
"So, is the conclusion that gay people do in fact move differently?" Stahl asked Rieger.
"Yeah, absolutely," he replied.
It's not true 100 percent of the time; it is true on average. The researchers also studied the way gay and straight people talk, and they found differences on average there too.
This research is controversial. Some say it is reinforcing stereotypes. But to Bailey, the stereotypes suggest there's a feminizing of the brain in gay men, and masculinizing in lesbians. Ironically though, when it comes to their sex lives, he says gay and straight men actually have a lot in common.
"Straight men tend to be shallow in terms of focusing on looks. Gay men are shallow, too. Straight men are more interested than straight women in having casual, uncommitted sex. Gay men are like that, too," says Bailey.
"One has the impression that gay men are much more inclined toward casual sex than straight men," Stahl said.
"They're just more successful at it, because the people they're trying to have sex with are also interested in it," Bailey explained.
"But don't you find this interesting that the one big area where gay men are more like straight men is in sex? I mean, that is…both amusing and odd," Stahl said.
"It suggests that whatever causes a man to be gay doesn't make him feminine in every respect. There must be different parts of the brain that can be feminized independently from each other," Bailey replied.
But how and when does this feminizing occur? If the differences were already apparent in childhood, that would point to an early, perhaps even genetic origin — and that's what Bailey and Rieger are testing in a new study using childhood home movies.
In the study, volunteers were asked to rate each child's femininity or masculinity. Stahl took the test and rated two girls highly feminine.
When shown video of a toddler girl running a truck off of a table, Stahl observed, "She's really not girly. Isn't that interesting? She’s not girly."
She also observed differences in two boys, one of whom would grow up to be straight, while the other is now gay.
If you can spot a child's future sexual orientation before the child even knows he or she has one, doesn't that prove it's genetic? Studies have shown that homosexuality runs in families. So genes must be the answer. But then the researchers tell you identical twins can have different sexual orientations.
60 Minutes found identical twins Steve and Greg Lofts in New York. They had the same upbringing, have the same DNA — and yet Greg is gay and Steve is straight.
When people meet the twins and find out one of them is gay, Greg says people have asked if he's sure, and how it can be. "Everyone is curious about that," he says.
There were signs, even when they were little kids. Their mother told Stahl that Steve loved sports and the outdoors while Greg liked helping out in the kitchen. But it wasn't until high school that Steve became convinced Greg was gay.
Asked if he said anything to his brother, Steve says, "I did actually. And I think the way I worded it was something like, 'You know, Greg, if you're gay, it's OK with me. And I'll still love you the same.' And he gave a very philosophical answer. He said something like, 'Well, I love the soul of a person and not the physical being.' And in my mind, I was like, 'Yep, he's gay.'"
"I wasn't ready just yet," Greg added.
Does this prove that it's not genetic?
"What it proves is it's not completely genetic. They have the same genes," says Bailey.
Asked if that brings us back to the mother and the father, Bailey says no.
"But that's environment," Stahl said.
"That's environment. But that's not the only environment. There's also the environment that happens to us while we’re in the womb. And scientists are realizing that environment is much more important than we ever thought it was," Bailey explained.
A newborn rat pup in the lab of Dr. Marc Breedlove at Michigan State University, may, oddly enough, hold important clues to what happens in the womb.
Dr. Breedlove says he can take a male rat and make it behave like a female for the rest of its life, and vice versa for a female, just by altering the hormones it's exposed to at birth. Because rats are born underdeveloped, that's roughly the same as altering a third-trimester human fetus in the womb. But first, he said, Stahl would need a crash course in rat sex.
Dr. Breedlove explained that male rats, including one he showed Stahl called "Romeo," will mount any rat that comes their way. In the mating process, the female performs something called lordosis, where she lifts her head and rump.
If Romeo goes after a male, Dr. Breedlove says the male will seem profoundly indifferent.
But Breedlove says he can change all that. He gave a female rat a single shot of the male sex hormone testosterone at birth. Now grown up, she will never perform lordosis.
But a male rat did. He was castrated at birth, depriving him of testosterone.
"So you created a gay rat?" Stahl asked.
"I wouldn't say that these are gay rats. But I will say that these are genetic male rats who are showing much more feminine behavior," he explained.
So the answer may be that it's not genes but hormones.
"That's exactly the question that we're all wondering. This business of testosterone having such a profound influence. Does that have some relevance to humans?" Breedlove said.
While biologists look at hormones for answers about human sexuality, other scientists are looking for patterns in statistics. And hard as this is to believe, they have found something they call "the older brother effect."
"The more older brothers a man has, the greater that man's chance of being gay," says Bailey.
Asked if that's true, Bailey says, "That is absolutely true."
If this comes as a shock to you, you’re not alone. But it turns out, it’s one of the most solid findings in this field, demonstrated in study after study.
And the numbers are significant: for every older brother a man has, his chances of being gay increase by one third. Older sisters make no difference, and there's no corresponding effect for lesbians. A first-born son has about a 2 percent chance of being gay, and the numbers rise from there. The theory is it happens in the womb.
"Somehow, the mother's body is remembering how many boys she's carried before," says Breedlove. "The favorite hypothesis is that the mother may be making antibodies when she sees a boy the first time, and then affect subsequent boys when she carries them in utero."
"You mean, like she's carrying a foreign substance?" Stahl asked.
"And if you think about it, a woman who's carrying a son for the first time, she is carrying a foreign substance," Breedlove replied. "There are some proteins encoded on his Y chromosome that her body has never seen before and that her immune system would be expected to regard as 'invaders,'" he added.
It’s still not a proven theory and it gets even stranger.
"One of the things we've only found out lately is that older brothers affect a boy only if the boy is right-handed," Breedlove said. "If the boy is left-handed, if his brain is organized in a left-handed fashion, it doesn't matter how many older brothers he has, his probability of being gay is just like the rest of the population."
You can give yourself a headache trying to apply all the theories to real people. Greg and Steve Lofts both are right-handed, and they do have an older brother, so maybe that's why Greg is gay. But they also have several gay relatives, which suggests it could be in the genes, except where does that leave Steve?
Adam and Jared, fraternal twins, have older brothers, but they're ambidextrous.
Then there's the question of how something in the womb could affect one twin but not the other. There are many more questions at this point than answers, but the scientists 60 Minutes spoke to are increasingly convinced that genes, hormones, or both — that something is happening to determine sexual orientation before birth. Adam has come up with his own theory.
"I was supposed to be a girl in my mom's stomach. But my mom wished for all boys. So, I turned into a boy," Adam explained.
Asked if he wished he was a girl, Adam nodded.
"Do you think there was anything that you could have done that would have changed Adam?" Stahl asked Adam and Jared's mom Danielle.
"I could have changed Adam on the outside to where he would have showed me the macho boy that I would want as a boy. But that would not change who he is inside. And I think that would have damaged him a lot more," she said.
Stahl asked both boys if they are proud of the way they are, and both boys gave her big nods.
"Yup," Adam replied.
hey, hey, hey....there will be none of that 'logical reasoning' here. Especially on something as cut-and-dried as the inherent evils of homosexuality. After all, they're all out to get our kids and recruit us as well. :-) /sarcasm
Unfortunately, there are all too many people here on FR that are just as close-minded as the (for lack of a better term) 'gay lobby' that they belittle. It is this diametrical opposition that will delay the real answers about homosexuality from coming out for at least the span of my generation, IMHO.
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He has a bright future ahead of him. |
Yes -the scientists are waiting for our okay.
Then again -what about Kinsey???
/end sarcasm
/kick tin foil hat to curb
http://www.narth.com/docs/pieces.html
How Might Homosexuality Develop?
Putting the Pieces Together
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1420619/posts
Root Causes, Homosexual Consequences
Check the links I just posted above. Most homosexuals have had poor bonding with their fathers, or the fathers were absent.
"Nature herself has homosexuality activity in many animals..."
Actually not true. Most activity that people call homosexual in animals is merely dominance displays, or faux mating. Very seldom do animals actually practice same sex gratification. And usually if it happens, it's in zoos, not exactly the natural environment. Or when the sexes are segrated.
No, animals do not as a rule practice homosexuality. But, just to make a point, even if they did - they also regularly do things like eat excrement, devour their or others' young, practice incest, and so on.
Whenever I see NARTH as a reference citation, Jeremiah, I have to lock down my immediate response. While these people feed the necessary belief system of those who continually use their "research" as valid, I cannot go there and will not belittle what you prefer to believe.
I also disagree nature does not effect homosexuality in the animal kingdom.
I would offer references of study being done in major universities on the topic of homosexuality and its causes, whether in utero or post natal, but it is certainly not choice. Why would anyone choose to go through life scarred and abused and accused as are many of these people.
My own personal belief is that all who have been given life are precious and how they follow their personal pathways, it not up to any of us to condemn, but to seek knowledge and enlightenment.
How will you feel say in two hundred years Jeremiah, when it is found that homosexuality is yet another blip in the formation of the human - and we have so many aberrations awaiting development in our minds, our bodies and our choices in life as we develop. How will you feel knowing we have damned innocents? Their choice? Can you deny your own heterosexual choices?
I don't have any answers and am not saying you are wrong Jeremiah, only that I tend to disbelieve what you do.
You of course are on the "side of the angels" yes? Some of us must seek answers by travelling other roads to knowledge. I believe none of us should be born into censure.
I agree - this issue has been caste into darkness and suspicion. It will be a long time before all of our
variations on the theme of sexual drive and behavior will be understood.
Even within the heterosexual group - the majority - there are huge differences in sexual practices and drives and preferences among males and females and we acknowledge these diverse needs as "normal" within the group - but what if homosexuality is actually yet one more variation into a practice which is presently being denied by a group of people who claim love and belief as their primary motivation. The religious.
If anything, religion should lead the way into research of this variant behavior in humans, to better understand and even include the knowledge into their "forgiveness" which they seem to deny these people. Only if homosexuality is "given up" or "cured" or "not practiced actively"...can religious people accept it. That is dark ages thought and prevention of understanding.
Physical variations were long unaccepted (dwarfism for example), but knowledge has led to enlightenment. Mental illness was a damnation and treated as such. Research into this doctrine and understanding of the diseases or disorders of the mind have led to understanding. Why not this particular group? Because it has to do with sexuality?
Please let's not go down that dusty road of sexuality being a sin again.
I am way over the line now WBill - thanks for your response.
I'd say the parents are a HUGE part of the problem, A.
Probably where their next bag of weed would come from...
Marijuana is a perfect chemical warfare agent for the feminization of men...
Needless to say, I got a haircut.
I got a Mohawk!
Once, I was recruited by a single mother friend who wanted me to take her teenage son shopping for clothes.
He started to pick out these huge, oversized t-shirts (and baggy pants that he could wear to expose his rear).
I asked him if he was wanting a t-shirt or a dress. Then I asked him if he wanted to show his rear to attract the queer boys.
He now wears properly fitting pro-rodeo Wranglers with a belt, proper t-shirts and tucks in his button down shirts just like me! (And he does not have any desire to see Brokeback Mountain either...)
Procreant, human reproductive biology... mystery solved...
You lost me on that one, SFD...
So....I asked him if he had a girlfriend. He said 'No'. At 15 (16?) I imagine that's about all that he thinks of. I said that it was no wonder, dressed like that and not bothering to clean up. *That* comment made him think.
I saw him a couple of weeks ago. He got a haircut. T-Shirt was tucked in, his jeans fit and were clean. He still needed to shave, but at least he didn't look like a homeless person anymore.
Moses wrote Genesis. This is why such people will jump up and down screaming when the Ten Commandments are displayed or the Creationist idea of monogamy from the Book of Genesis is introduced.
The latter (Genesis) also ruins the illogical and non-biological arguments of homosexual monogamy. In a secular sense, homosexuality is an idolatry of perversion. It is in no way an anatomical function of the human organism, but a phantasmagoric creation from within the mentally disturbed human mind, a social psychosis, naked and on full exhibitionist display.
This is the whole crux of their attack on creationism - - they are really frustrated by Genesis, but cannot destroy the axiomatic state of procreant human biology, it does not fit their religious agenda.
Homosexual monogamy advocates seek ceremonious sanctification of their anatomical perversions and esoteric absolution for their guilt-ridden, impoverished egos.
Neither of those will satisfy their universal dissatisfaction with mortality or connect them to something eternal. With pantheons of fantasies as their medium of infinitization, they still have nothing in them of reality, any more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream.
Homosexual deviancy is really a pagan practice (and a self-induced social psychosis) at war with the Judaic culture over what is written in the book of Genesis (1:27, 2:18).
This is exactly what the National Socialists were at war with... so, when someone uses the term "Gaystapo," they might not realize how close to the truth they really are.
Many will seek ceremonious sanctification and esoteric absolution in some type of marriage rite, but that still fails to give them a connection to the eternal in both a religious and temporal, procreant sense - - the union does not produce offspring.
Dissatisfaction with inevitable mortality only feeds the impoverishment of the ego further. Homosexuals really hate human life; their whole desire is rooted in the destruction of it...
It is no coincidence Islamic pagans hate Israel, Jews, Christians and Western Civilization. The entire basis of Western Civilization is Mosaic Law, something both the Neo-Pagan Left and the pagan Islamic thugs cannot abide and wish to destroy.
The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of a monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses.
Historically, this is proven over and over again with the successive conflicts between the forces of paganism and the Judaic culture. (This includes the idolatry of Marxist paganism.)
Today, "morals" are defined by a quasi-religious pagan philosophy based on esoteric hobgoblins. A greater number of "atheists" and "pagans" adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a false Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of "sin," but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy. They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of "avoiding sin" with "morals."
Morality and all of its associated concepts are from the belief some higher power defines what is correct in human behavior. Today, "morals" are a religious pagan philosophy of esoteric hobgoblins. Transfiguration is a pantheon of fantasies as the medium of infinitization. Others get derision for having an unwavering Judaic belief in Yahweh or Yeshua, although their critics and enemies will evangelize insertion of phantasmagoric fetishisms into secular law.
After my last go around on this issue, I wondered how long it would take you to find your way into the conversation with all of your rehearsed word salad.
What are you afraid of Sir Francis?
It couldn't be that you want to save "humankind" because you speak down to all of us - therefore indicating you could care less about the rabble at your feet.
Perhaps the pontifications give your life meaning, status and a reason to be.
If procreation was the only mission of sexual activity, we would only have that activity when we were guaranteed of starting a new life. You know that is not true at all.
People have sexual activity for many reasons - and very few of them have anything to do with procreation.
But we creatures - we humans - are so imperfect. Especially me.
Wow, thanks for the enlightenment, SFD. Now, I understand.
With all due respect, your drivel is mindless, baseless, puerile fact free opinion.
Here's what you said translated into commonsense English:
"In the future all morals will have been overthrown and hopefully made illegal. Then, in the glorious future of pure hedonism (and likely religion will be outlawed too) we will all be free! Free! To screw anything and everything we want! Ha ha! Hee hee!"
(I would wager that you are under 20 years old, maybe considerably under.)
Check out imintrouble now's comment to me if you haven't yet.
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