Note: esiste un gene gay? dorner: i gay nascono da madri con una gravidanza stressata... ma le ricerche erano basate su interviste indirette... ma soprattutto nn sono state ripetute il fratello di un gay è gay nel 20% dri casi. il fratello di un etero è gay nell 1% dei casi gemelli monozigoti separati alla nascita c'è una chiara correlazione tra studi prodotti sui gay e orientamento sessuale del ricercatore e ideologia la prima ricerca estesa ha rilevato la concordanza tra gemelli fratelli e fratelli adottati. la concordanza gay è degradante. l effetto genetico è sostanziale ma incompleto l ambiente in parte conta ma nn dobbiamo necessariamente pensare all ambiente sociale c è anche quello biologico. l ipotesi più attendibile ci parla dell ambiente del grembo: nei gemelli diversi conta l ordine: il minore è gay. forse la cosa è legata al sistema immunitario ipotesi dello sdoganamento: i gay pullulano in un ambiente favorevole. Ma quanti sono i gay? associazioni: 10% stime più credibili 1-3%. le stime più credibili confutano l ipotesi ipotesi dell iniziazione: se il tuo primo rapporto sarà omo tu sarai omo. alcuni studi confermano. ma i soggetti studiati erano in età con una propria coscienza sessuale xchè è difficile avere fondi? paura di fare scoperte anti sociali: se scopriamo il gene gay i gay saranno abortiti. e forse i cattolici resteranno i loro unici difensori strategie x condannare l aborto dei gay senza condannare l aborto in sè: discriminare è odioso. replica: sarà anche odioso x qualcuno ma se nn fa male a nessuno. poi ci sono anche motivi legittimi x discriminare: voglio dei nipoti voglio bimbi come me voglok che la vita dei miei figli sia più facile. educare sl cristianesimo è legittimo o discrimina gli ebrei? l omo come il paradosso irrisolto dell evoluzione... oggi i gay hanno il 20% dei figli... dovrebbero essere out da un pezzo. una soluzione alla sovrapopolazione? no. anche se una specie sta meglio sul lungo nel breve gli sterili si estiguono. e poi i geni sono egoisti kin selection? no. 1 bisognerebbe avere una montagna di nipoti x raggiungre l efficienza di un etero. 2 i gay nn sembrano molto attratyi dai nipoto. nn più degli etero la teoria del semgene: i fratelli dei gay forse ereditano combinazioni genetiche tipicamente gay anche se nn l orientamento sessuale... si tratta di tratti apprezzabili (stile gusto...). problemi: nn sembra che i fratelli di gay siano particolarmente fertili... nn sembra nemmeno che ereditino questi tratti dov'è differente il cervello dei gay? levay ha individuato una zona. problema: come ripetere qs studi ora che l aids in calo ha tagliato i cadaveri gay disponibilu? recentemente xrò c è stata una ripetizione e INA3 sembra essere il luogo elettoEdit
Leslie was even more convinced that there was a real connection between her brother's and her son's behaviors.Read more at location 1882
She doubted it had to do with experience. Danny and Mark had not spent much time together.Read more at location 1883
The only similarity that immediately came to mind was that Mark and Danny had both been shamed by their fathers for behaving in feminine ways,Read more at location 1884
When she talked to Mark about it, he said he believed that homosexuality was inborn. So did most of the other gay men she knew. She had read about a study purporting to find a “gay gene.”Read more at location 1888
I was taking a graduate course in sexuality and came across an interesting theory about male homosexuality. This theory was stimulated by findings from studies on rats in which pregnant females are stressed,Read more at location 1899
the males who were prenatally stressed often failed to mount, and under some conditions they lordosed.Read more at location 1903
Research by a German scientist, Gunter Dörner, claimed to show just that. In his study, the mothers of gay men born during (or right after) World War II had had very stressful pregnancies, much more so than the mothers of heterosexual men born at the same time.Read more at location 1905
For example, one mother had been forcibly raped, and several had lost their husbands in the war. One weakness of Dörner's study was that instead of interviewing mothers directly, he interviewed the gay and heterosexual men about their mothers' pregnancies. He says that the men were supposed to ask their mothers and then report back to him,Read more at location 1906
I decided to do a methodologically stronger version of Dörner's study for my dissertation.Read more at location 1911
Both the men and their mothers were terrifically cooperative, and I eventually got a larger sample than Dörner did.Read more at location 1915
quickly learned to emphasize my genuine pro-gay feelings, although it was difficult to make a strong case why my particular study would advance gay rights.Read more at location 1920
I know most of the scientists who do substantial research on homosexuality, and there is certainly a correlation between this research preoccupation and sexual orientation.Read more at location 1924
However, I had asked subjects about their relatives' orientations, and here I did find something. Gay men said that about 20 percent of their brothers were also gay, and straight men said that about 1 percent were. These numbers were similar to those that had recently been obtained by Richard Pillard, a Boston University psychiatrist.Read more at location 1928
Just because homosexuality runs in families doesn't mean we can conclude that there are “gay genes.” Catholicism runs in families, but there is no Catholic gene.Read more at location 1934
we have to do more sophisticated kinds of studies, including studies of twins. Identical (also called “monozygotic,” meaning “one egg”) twins are genetically identical,Read more at location 1935
unrelated people would be. What about sexual orientation? Two pairs of separated male identical twins have been written about in which at least one of the twins was gay.Read more at location 1940
So both pairs of twins were similar, or as geneticists say “concordant” for homosexual orientation, which suggests that there are gay genes. Although identical twins reared apart provide the ideal genetic experiment, they are quite rare, and gay identical twins reared apart are rarer still.Read more at location 1946
Although identical twins reared apart provide the ideal genetic experiment, they are quite rare,Read more at location 1948
The logic of the classical twin study is this: If gay genes exist, then identical twins should be more similar than fraternal twinsRead more at location 1953
“Adoptive brothers” are genetically unrelated males raised together as brothers.Read more at location 1962
Adoptive brothers are an interesting comparison group, because they share no genes,Read more at location 1964
If something genetic is going on, then identical twins should have the highest rate of also being gay, followed by fraternal twins, with adoptive brothers bringing up the rear.Read more at location 1978
These results are consistent with a substantial, but incomplete, genetic effect.Read more at location 1980
I wondered whether feminine gay men might be the products of “nature” and masculine gay men the results of “nurture.” If this were true, and if “nature” is equated with “genetic,” then feminine gay men would have more gay genes than masculine gay men.Read more at location 1983
If sexual orientation were completely genetic, then genetically identical twins should always have the same sexual orientation, but clearly they don't.Read more at location 2002
But to a geneticist “environment” means anything not encoded in DNA, and this includes biological factors as well as social factors: diet, germs, and random biological eventsRead more at location 2006
When identical twins differed in their sexual orientation, the gay one tended to recall being much more feminine than the straight one. This means that the environmental factors that cause the twin differences are there early on, by childhood. Based on other things we know, such as studies of children with cloacal exstrophy (like Jason/Amanda from Chapter 3), I suspect that these factors operate in the womb.Read more at location 2012
So far, only one environmental factor has been related to male homosexuality: birth order. Psychologist Ray Blanchard has found that gay men tend to be later bornRead more at location 2016
He theorizes that the “older brother effect” is a biological one, caused by the mother's immune system, which reacts increasingly to a succession of male fetuses. This immune response affects brain development and, in particular, the sexual differentiation of the brain.Read more at location 2019
there are numerous firstborn gay men, so obviously birth order can't be the whole story.Read more at location 2021
gay activists frequently asserted that ten percent of the population was gay. These surveys suggest that the true figure is more like one to three percent.)Read more at location 2027
Another environmental hypothesis that has received some enthusiasm on the political right is the idea that gay people seduce and recruit. I have never understood how this is plausible.Read more at location 2030
They found that gay men were more likely than straight men to have had homosexual experiences in childhoodRead more at location 2034
I find this reasoning to be astounding. Boys in late childhood and early adolescence are often capable of sexual feelings.Read more at location 2035
To contemplate environmental influences on sexual orientation, consider this thought experiment. Suppose your task was to find a gay man, with the constraint that you can't ask anyone directly about his sexual preference. You can ask about their families or attitudes or childhoods, though. The question “Were your parents especially tolerant toward gay people?” would be an ineffective one. The question “Were you a very feminine boy?” would be much better.Read more at location 2038
In 1993 biologist Dean Hamer intrigued both scientists and the general public with his scientific report that male homosexuality may be caused by a gene on the X chromosome.Read more at location 2044
in interviews a sample of gay men reported more gay male cousins and uncles on their mothers' than on their fathers' sides.Read more at location 2046
Hamer's results remain intriguing but doubtful. They have not yet been independently confirmed,Read more at location 2051
Because the results are so important scientifically if they are true, it is important to do a definitive study. This requires money. However, even people who agree with the scientific value of this research are ambivalent about funding it if it might lead to socially undesired results.Read more at location 2053
Hamer's findings provoked special concern. It seemed possible that we could soon discover a gene for homosexuality. If so, then we could develop a genetic test.Read more at location 2057
some of the people raising the specter of “murdering gay babies” were the same people who insisted that abortion is no one's business but the woman'sRead more at location 2065
the real question is whether parental selection in favor of heterosexuality is acceptable.Read more at location 2070
assume that pregnant women can guarantee a heterosexual child by, say, taking a pill,Read more at location 2072
What would make avoiding gay children wrong? One possible answer is that it would be wrong if it were done due to the parents' irrational dislike of homosexuality.Read more at location 2073
But there are other reasons besides disliking homosexuality that parents might have for preferring heterosexual children: the desire to spare their children the difficulties of societal intolerance of homosexuality, the desire to maximize their chances of having grandchildren, or the desire to have children like themselves in an important area of life:Read more at location 2076
No one thinks that Christian parents' desire to raise their child as a Christian is evidence of their hatred of Jews or anyone else.Read more at location 2079
A white racist may prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate because vanilla is white, but this doesn't make ordering vanilla wrong,Read more at location 2081
Certainly being straight rather than gay doesn't harm the child itself. Would there be some less direct harm caused by parental selection for heterosexuality that would make that selection wrong?Read more at location 2084
encourage social intolerance of homosexuality. But letting Christian parents raise Christian children doesn't validate or encourage anti-Semitism.Read more at location 2086
Every time I lecture about gay genes, the smart kid in the class-room asks the evolution question: How do gay genes persist if gay men reproduce less often than straight men?Read more at location 2096
unanswered question. Homosexuality might be the most striking unresolved paradox of human evolution.Read more at location 2098
Lots of traits and behaviors that are evolutionarily adaptive are less than admirable: jealousy, selfishness, dishonesty, infidelity, greed, and nepotism are all easy to explain evolutionarily. In contrast, extreme altruism is evolutionarily puzzling.Read more at location 2107
If people like Mother Teresa were much more common than they are, evolutionary theorists would be faced with the evolutionary paradox of saintly self-sacrifice.Read more at location 2109
Today gay men have children at about 20 percent of the rate that straight men do.Read more at location 2113
The proposed solutions of evolutionary science's best and brightest have been rather lame.Read more at location 2119
homosexuality is the human species' solution to overpopulation. Scientists are unanimous that this cannot be correct. Even if in the long run we would be better off as a species with more non-reproducing individuals, genes that make people non-reproductive cannot stay around long.Read more at location 2121
The idea that gay men reproduce indirectly, through relatives, has received favorable attention by the famous evolutionary scientist E. O. Wilson and others, but it is almost certainly incorrect. To begin with, the numbers are implausible. Children share half our genes, but nieces and nephews share only a quarter. For each foregone child, a gay man would have to have two extra nieces or nephews. He would have to be a super uncle. But when we surveyed gay men and their attitudes toward family members, there was no hint that they were any more interested than straight menRead more at location 2127
if the conditions that kept gay genes in the gene pool are no longer true, then those genes should vanish.Read more at location 2132
Suppose that to be gay, a man needs to inherit five gay genes. If he inherits only four, he is heterosexual with some gay-typical traits. Perhaps he is artistic or has a keen sense of style. If so, then gay genes might persist, because most of the time genes that can cause homosexuality are in straight rather than gayRead more at location 2136
If this hypothesis were true, then the heterosexual siblings of gay men would have more children than most people,Read more at location 2138
Second, although male homosexuality is associated with other traits, such as femininity, the association is restricted to the gay men themselves. That is, the straight siblings of gay men don't appear to be more feminine, artistic, or style-conscious than other heterosexual people.Read more at location 2141
If gay genes exist, how do they work? No matter what causes homosexual orientation, these causes must work ultimately by impinging on the brain.Read more at location 2147
So if gay genes exist, they affect brain development. In fact, environmental influences also work through the brain.Read more at location 2152
So one way to proceed would be to find areas of the brain that differ between straight men and womenRead more at location 2156
The paper claimed to find two cell groups (nuclei) that were larger in men than in women: INAH-1 and INAH-3. This is just the kind of finding that a neuroscientist interested in sexual orientation hopes for. The hypothalamus has been well established to be involved in sexual behaviorRead more at location 2163
hormonal effects on the hypothalamus, in particular an area of the brain called the Sexually Dimorphic Nucleus (SDN). The SDN is much larger in normal male rats than in normal females.Read more at location 2166
LeVay thought that perhaps either INAH-1 or INAH-3 might play the same role in humans that the SDN does in rats.Read more at location 2168
LeVay found no difference between straight men and women (or gay men) in the size of INAH-1. However, in INAH-3 he struck gold. Like Allen, he found that INAH-3 was larger in straight men than in straight women.Read more at location 2172
One big concern was whether AIDS had caused the difference—remember that all his gay men had acquired AIDS, but some of his heterosexual subjects had not. But LeVay showed that this was not the explanation.Read more at location 2177
A second objection that was often raised was that being gay might have somehow caused the difference in INAH-3, and not vice-versa. If this were true, then LeVay's finding would have no relevance for the causeRead more at location 2180
A second objection that was often raised was that being gay might have somehow caused the differenceRead more at location 2180
The problem with this idea is that the hypothalamus appears to develop early. Not a single expert I have ever asked about LeVay's study thought it was plausible that sexual behavior caused the INAH-3 differences.Read more at location 2182
The main thing that LeVay's study has had against it is that it has been difficult to repeat.Read more at location 2185
LeVay was in a good position to try to repeat his own study, but he elected to stop being a laboratory scientist and to focus on writing science books for the general public.Read more at location 2186
LeVay's study soon got much more difficult to repeat. It was possible only because of the terrible casualties of the AIDS epidemic, which thankfully, have recently slowed considerably.Read more at location 2189
Byne was extremely skeptical of LeVay's results—in fact he believed they were probably incorrect. At the time,Read more at location 2192
First, he repeated the finding, yet again, that INAH-3 is larger in straight men than in straight women. Even Byne thinks that the INAH-3 sex difference is no longer open to question. Second, he examined the biochemical composition of INAH-3 and showed that it was similar to the SDN in rats.Read more at location 2198
Third, he looked at the brain of a female rhesus monkey that had been given prenatal androgens and found that this monkey had a larger INAH-3Read more at location 2200
His results were similar to those of LeVay, although the difference between straight and gay men was not quite as large.Read more at location 2203
It sometimes seems that there is a news story every other week linking some kind of biological trait to sexual orientation. I have seen reports that gay people have different fingerprints, more left-handedness, different inner ear waves, height, and even penis size.Read more at location 2206
It sometimes seems that there is a news story every other week linking some kind of biological trait to sexual orientation.Read more at location 2206
more left-handedness, different inner ear waves, height, and even penis size.Read more at location 2208
In 2000 a report appeared in the journal Nature that lesbians had masculine 2D:4D ratios.Read more at location 2220
Recently, Richard Lippa collected finger length data from even more subjects at gay pride parades, and his findings disagree with Breedlove's.Read more at location 2224
Note: LIPPA NN REPLICA
