Posted on 03/28/2013 8:33:24 AM PDT by Maelstorm
Why are some people gay? Most researchers who study sexual orientation think that both genetic and environmental factors play a role, but the relative contributions of each remain unclear. A new study of Swedish twins reinforces earlier findings that environmental influences--including the environment in the womb--may play a greater role than genes.
Scientists studying complex human behaviors often turn to twin studies. Researchers look at both identical and fraternal twins to see how often they share a trait--a parameter called concordance. The greater the concordance among genetically identical twins compared with fraternal twins--who share only half of their genes--the more likely that genetic factors are involved.
Earlier twin studies of sexual orientation have suggested varying degrees of genetic and environmental influences. But they have suffered from the limitations typical of all twin studies. These include small sample sizes and assumptions that identical and fraternal twins both have the same family environments; if identical twins are treated more similarly by their parents than fraternal twins, for example, this could be mistaken for a genetic influence. Recruitment biases are also an issue: Some studies have enlisted participants who openly identify themselves as gay, who may not be typical of the entire homosexual population.
To try to get around these problems, a team led by Niklas Langström, a psychiatrist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, recruited subjects from the Swedish Twin Registry, the world's largest. All 43,808 twins born in Sweden between 1959 and 1985 were invited to participate in a Web-based survey that comprised a wide range of questions about personal behaviors and experiences. The team ended up with a sample of 3826 twin pairs, of which 2320 were identical and 1506 fraternal. Of that sample, roughly 5% of men and 8% of women reported sexual activity with a member of the same sex at least once during their lifetimes. Then they plugged the survey responses into a standard mathematical model for comparing identical and fraternal twins.
The results, published online this month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, confirm earlier findings that identical twins are more concordant for same-sex behaviors than fraternal twins are but only modestly so: In men, genetic effects appeared to explain 34% to 39% of the differences between the two twin groups, whereas in women, genetics accounted for only about 18% to 19% of the difference--a finding consistent with other research showing that sexual orientation in women is not as rigidly determined as it is in men.
As for what environmental factors might be at play, the authors point out that these might not be entirely social but could also be biological. For example, some studies have suggested that exposure to prenatal hormones or even the mother's immune system could influence the sexual development of a fetus.
J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who led earlier twin studies of sexual orientation, calls the new study "good, important, and one unlikely to be bettered in the near future." But Jonathan Beckwith, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, says that the new work fails to overcome a number of problems faced by previous twin studies. He notes that the final sample included only 12% of the males in the Swedish registry, leaving open the possibility of recruitment bias. And Beckwith says that the failure to control for family environment could inflate estimates of genetic influence.
Yes, God may have made them, but they succumbed to their own prurient interests. Don’t pawn their dysfunction off on God.
We all have temptation. It is the Civil Society that prevents us from anarchy. A society that blithely accepts every dysfunction as if it is not only normal, but acceptable, quickly declines.
How many people will fight for a morally bankrupt society?
Ouch! Good one!
Repost-
I read a theory on Freep that has been stuck in my mind for about a week or so. I have tried to locate the post so I can quote the person who wrote it but I simply can”t find it. (If you are reading this, I apologize. I really tried.)
The theory basically said that homosexuals are stuck at a level of sexual immaturity beyond which most people move and become heterosexual. (Little kids aren’t yet sexual so they don’t qualify as homo or hetero for this argument.)
The point is - those of us who are hetero, do you remember when you were very small? Way back before puberty? When sex was something you didn’t even know about? What did you think of the opposite sex? If you were a boy you probably thought girls were icky. If you were a girl you probably thought boys were stupid. Then as puberty hit something began to change. You began to have feelings that weren’t there before. You began to feel attracted to the opposite sex. It was confusing and exciting at the same time.
The theory says that for whatever reason (Something different about their brains? Some psychological trauma?) people who are homosexual did not make this jump. They became sexual without losing their distaste for the opposite sex and maturing to the next level. They are adults with the sexual attitudes of children.
I found the idea interesting. It had never occurred to me before that homosexual attitudes towards the opposite sex were very similar to the attitudes held by prepubescent children.
I also suffer from this ailment. One from which I hope to never recover.
He also gives them free will. He does not make us behave this way or that way -- that's up to us. If my family tree is any example, I was born an alcoholic. I made a decision in young adulthood never to drink. My last alcoholic drink was 47 years ago, even though my brain still struggles with the tendency. It was -- and is -- a choice. If I have to choose it every day, so be it.
Thank you, God for being more attractive to me than what my brain thinks it wants.
made them do what?
did not “make eve” do anything.
did not “make” moses smash tablets
did not “make” bill clinton sign doma.
did not “make” people vote for reagan.
how about some evil...
john wayne gaycee?
jane fonda sit on a gunemplacement?
washington state vote for pot?
that crazy woman say obama is gonna’ pay her mortgage?
give obama phones as a campaign tactic?
behavior vs immutable status.
Just a thought - maybe I’m way off base. But since the breakdown of the family over the past 50 years or so, many woman increasingly live their 9 months of pregnancy as single women, in stressful or even violent environments. Life begins at conception which would lead me to conclude that a fetus can sense and can be negatively affected by stress or trauma of the mother even before birth. Many homosexuals I know will tell you that the have had significant issues with a parent, often same sex parent. I’ve often wondered why more and more kids at a young age are “coming out” as homosexuals. I suspect it is the natural consequence of the breakdown of the family.
About a decade ago, I read that we spent over $40 billion on LBJ's "War on Poverty" -- and statistically, nothing has been accomplished. We still have crime-ridden ghettoes full of drugs, low employment, poor childhood conditions, and so on.
And then, as if money is the answer to moral poverty, our country elected a president who vowed to throw them all the rest of whatever we have left, and even more. It's just another lie of the devil, with the poor being used as a smokescreen to line the pockets of those at the levers of power. LBJ even said so -- that the "Great Society" program would "have the [n-words] voting Democrat for the next 200 years."
It's the same with this issue -- they don't really care what will happen, as long as pontificating about it and siphoning money from the decadent wealthy keeps them on the gravy train.
I can say this though. My inclination is that I have a weakness for pretty redheaded women. I also currently have a steady girlfriend. Whether I go and accept that phone number from that redhead at the bar is a choice I make....which would cause bad consequences. Sleeping with that redhead would cause worse consequences and expose me as a untrustworthy snake - so I don't do that.
Someone once did a study of a spike in homosexuals in Europe after World War in their homeland that supports your theory. Wish I could find it.
I married an identical twin. His brother was eventually revealed to be homosexual - which came as no surprise to me, even though he had had a live in girlfriend when I first met both twins.
Their parents’s marriage hade broken up when they were infants, and their father had not been in their lives much. Their mother treated them completely different from early childhood. One had been cosseted and spoiled and treated like a genius and encouraged to excel in school, the other had been treated as the ”man of the house” and encouraged to be strong and self-reliant. One became homosexual, the other a womanizer. Guess which was which.
These genes studies are a waste of time and money.
Claiming atheism is exactly what my daughter’s “wife” has done.
It was something I realized long ago. In childhood, there was mostly revulsion between the boys and girls. You have to get over it - it can be a challenge. To really live up to being a dull fledged man or woman can be scary, especially for those with traumatic childhoods, etc. It is a choice one makes, to get on with it and face it.
I know a woman who had 4 sons and 3 of them are homosexual. I knew them from the time the oldest one was 3 and he already acted gay. What bothered me was that she encouraged them to act like sissies. They used to pin towels around their heads to pretend they had long hair and pranced around like little girls and she thought it was cute. Their dad was brutal and mean and punished them for acting like girls. It was a mess.
Snake in the Grass or Billie Jean?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc8gdFdhP7k
I think there is a good case for homosexuality being an overexpression of Liberalism, itself merely an r-selected Reproductive Strategy, designed to best compete in an environment with a glut of resources (as opposed to Conservatism which is itself a K-selected Reproductive Strategy designed to successfully navigate a resource shortage). Check the two pages below I wrote on this.
Neurological commonalities between Liberals and Gays
Genetic commonalities between Liberals and Gays
All of that is based on earlier research I have amassed asserting Liberalism is a psychological adaptation to free resource availability, and Conservatism is an outgrowth of a psychology designed to confront resource shortage. Both have a genetic predisposition, and an element which is produced in response to the environment.
If this is correct, it will point to social factors which will increase homosexuality, since they will be the same factors which will increase the expression of an r-strategy (stressed single mothers (maternal stress in rodents during pregnancy and early rearing triggers a shift towards r, probably through epigenetic effects), no father, free resource availability at adulthood, cultural hypersexuality, lack of amygdala stimulation in life (such as by having to compete, work for reward, endure discipline, conform to group norms or be castigated, etc.) It will also explain why you suddenly have manly females who tend to desire feminine men, and effete men, who desire manly qualities in their mates. In animals it is called a reversal in sexual dimorphism which accomanies the r-strategy. Here, the gay r-man's desire for a manly r-female is just occaisionally, accidently overexpressed, as is the manly r-female's desire for an effminate male.
Today we have a hypersexualized environment where single moms are encouraged to work to raise their children alone, no one can be judged or castigated for anything, and Liberals try to see to it that no child ever sees their amygdala stimulated, be it through games of tag or dodgeball, or having to fit in with their peers, or simply seeing something deviant and acknowledging it. Combined with our national success removing any form of K-selection stress, all of this will increase homosexuality.
In short, the coming economic cleanse will probably clean a lot of this up, even without us working at it, by reintroducing the stimuli associated with K-selection and resource shortage, which will cause the population to adapt psychologically by becomming more K.
But once it does, we will need to work to maintain it. Letting a guy like George W. Bush get in as our representative, and just coddle Liberals for eight years is precisely the type of national amygdala-atrophying stimulus which will put us on the path we are on now. There was no castigation or amygdala stimulation of the left-leaners to drive them right, and as a result, today our moderates are leftists, our Leftists are fully detached from reality, and Homosexual couples adopting children is completely normal and fun.
Rome was very "open" as it began its collapse (due to an r-shift in the populace, in response to success). So these things swing back on their own. But when they do it involves a pain which could be avoided if we just prevented things from going this far in the first place, by being less tolerant of all r's to begin with.
nonsense.
there is nothing genetic about the behavior.
the only tenuous argument is that for a birth DEFECT and that is questionable.
homosexual conduct is an abnormal behavior. it is no different that any criminal fetish or sex with animals.
I agree.
To AC, I refer you to my question in #33.
Do you have an answer to that?
Interesting. I have a friend now who is homosexual and he was at the end of a family of 8, his brothers were all the oldest in the family and he was surrounded by girls but he had a best friend and they did everything together and then the friend died when they were about 13. I have often wondered about that because I know the trauma caused in our family when my brother died as a teenager.
My husband’s cousin was 12 when he found out that the man he thought was his father wasn’t and that sure could have been the truama that affected him. I don’t know.
I think my mother was always a little biplolar but my brother’s death put her over the edge. I have a niece who also went over the edge after a trauma. I just observe and I would say that this homosexual is bipolar and narcissistic but I’m not a psychiatrist and this is the first homosexual I have known well and spent a lot of time with so I’m no expert.
He is very immature at 50 and still acts like a kind of mature Junior High kid. He was also unnaturally, IMO, close to his mother and when his mother was dying of cancer got on drugs and went totally out of control. He’s off them now but his family abandoned him when he got on the drugs and those bridges haven’t been rebuilt and probably won’t be.
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