LGBT News Genetics Homosexuality Study

I think it's great that they found that, and I'm pretty interested to see what evidence other studies produce. The only hesitation I have is that I think this will make more parents try to blame people/things for their kids being gay and might be a little bit more strict with gender roles (e.g. you can't wear a pink shirt, it'll turn you gay) as silly as that is.

 

100% agreed. I wonder if the same theory applies to trans people as well?

 

Wow, what the fuck was I thinking heading to the comments of that article? Stay away if you want to retain some hope in humanity (and your neurons).

Anyway, yeah this should be interesting. Once the paper is published and we can actually dissect it that it. As is, this is hearsay.

 

Exactly >.<

 

This is horrifying if they can predict sexual orientation with 70% accuracy, at least for gay men. It is horrifying because once this information is published, there are some countries which will use this information to start identifying gay men, marking them in some way, or perhaps even just imprisoning or killing them.

There are already some countries which have ridiculous laws about what they think marks someone as gay. (I.E. Wearing certain types of clothing.) This will give those countries the ability to have a somewhat reliable test.

 

Trans people have already been shown to have neurological differences, like mtfs have the same size hypothalamus as non-trans women, and the amount of white matter in their brains correlates to that of their preferred gender. Other than that, it's not very well proven.

---------- Post added 9th Oct 2015 at 05:24 AM ----------

I didn't even consider that, that's so scary.

 

Keep in mind that this study was conducting using 37 sets of twins. That's 74 people. That's not a good sample size to draw any conclusions from.

 

I see so many articles on sexuality, that whenever I see a new thread on one I have to admit that I am naturally (and understandably) instantly sceptical of it.

There's just so many, it's hard to know what to believe these days. I particularly hate it when an article ends on a conclusion that contradicts its findings or I know isn't true based on experiences and/or common sense.

Haven't read the article yet, but it's usually best to take these things with a pinch of salt these days, particularly on the internet.

 

Honestly as a biology major, this article doesn't surprise me at all. I've alright hear of epigenetics before. It already been discovered that epigenetics plays a role in several disease like polydactyly and psoriasis to name a few.

 

Yeah, I've heard epigenetics being mentioned before when if comes to sexuality,but mainly in the context of what happens in the womb. Although I'm hoping that it's not going to start being considered a disease.

Personally, I'm interested in the finger-digit ratio theory when it comes to sexuality.

 

The Telegraph is almost as bad as the dailymail. In fact BBC isn't far away, nor the mirror.
Are all British media that biased and dumb? Maybe only the "independent" are OK.

 

I really hope that my statement didn't come off as saying that non- heterosexuality is consider a disease.

---------- Post added 10th Oct 2015 at 02:26 PM ----------

Sorry to post twice in a row, but I was thinking that if more people know about epigenetics and how factors can influence the express of genes than less people will not discount the identical twin genetics studies. For example, I had read an article where the author didn't believe that sexuality is linked to genes because there was a study with identical twins and some sets of twins had one twin may be gay and another straight. The author discounted it based on the fact that identical twins have the same DNA and therefore can't be genetics that cause homosexuality. The author must not know that just because the twins have genes doesn't mean that the twins' genes are going to be express in the same way.

 

I got to see this talk presented in Baltimore at a genetics conference. As already mentioned in this thread, the sample size was really small, so we can't really make any solid conclusions from what they currently have. It's a start for sure, but they would definitely need follow up studies with more participants. Also this study was done with men only. I wonder if the results would have been the same had the participants been female.

And honestly I'm kind of torn on research like this. On one hand, if it's proven 100% that homosexuality is predetermined before birth (by genetics or epigenetics) that would really destroy the whole "homosexuality is a choice" camp. On the other hand we have to worry about the potential abuse of this data.

 

i'm interested in the science. I don't care for the politics and activists and their twisting words and their dogmatic rhetoric.

 

The article was poorly written. In one place the article states that 37 pairs of identical twins took part in the study. Then, later in the article, there is a graphic showing 37 pairs of identical twins with opposite sexualities and 10 pairs of identical twins that are both homosexual. This implies that 47 pairs of identical twins were studied and 10 of those twin pairs (or roughly 20%) were both homosexual. However, the article also states "Only 20 percent of identical twins are both gay", and that's not true at all.

 

Personally, I believe people who are gay are biologically wired that way.
The classmates in school who I thought were gay (guys) way back in the 1960's
got married, had kids and then... guess what? Came out as gay 30 yrs later.

I know not all gays fit the stereotype by any means, but if a man as a teenager is
decorating cakes, crocheting tablecloths in the park while others are playing football,
designing and sewing clothes, has girls as friends but never dates them and likes to do fingernails, I am not surprised if he's gay. I've known straight men to do some of the above, but not all of the above.

Were these boys I knew raised in a macho family in a macho type environment? Definitely. It didn't affect who they really were; it just delayed them coming out.
More power to them.

My gay Catholic gay friend said It's like being born with a club foot... a defect.
No, no, no! It's how God created you. He loves variety and creates variety. Embrace who
you are... gay, straight, trans or bi.

That's just my opinion.

 

Belief has nothing to do with it, it must be scientifically proven. I refuse to believe in anything that isn't scientifically proven as fact or plausible. Belief has nothing to do with anything. Belief is meaningless, believing something doesn't make it true.

 

There was a comment on the article that basically sums up my position:

"37 identical twins is a ridiculously small number for such a test. Similar tests were done in the 90s which showed approximately a 40% genetic basis for homosexual activity.

It's complicated by "homosexuality" being a complex human behavior. If they were measuring something easy (curly vs straight hair, well defined genetic disease X vs lack of same) 37 might be enough to make progress. Or not. There are billions of base pairs in the genome. The math on whether something is valid is tricky and mistakes are often made.

What are they measuring? Who they claim/admit to having sex with? Going to gay bars? Claiming some preference on a form? Having "YMCA" on their playlist? It's complicated even further by the tendency of people to lie about sex right left and sideways, and to have sex in private. You can't build on a foundation of mud.

In general, when people talk about human behaviors and genetics, leave the room, they are wasting their breath. Maybe in 50 years human behaviors will start to be understood on a molecular level. Not that that will necessarily be a good thing."