What makes someone gay?

It is probably soy: Soy is making kids ‘gay’


;-)

But seriously...nobody knows

 

my opinion and belief is that God made me Gay.

i indentify as BI but you get the idea.

 

I believe that we are born this way. Maybe it has something to do with DNA or how we are "wired" - just like how a person may be wired to be outgoing or something along those lines- but regardless this is how we were born!

 

I'm very interested in finding that out. I presume it's something we're born with. At any rate, it's not a choice, like some people think. Like headie2infinity said, I think it's just 'how we're wired'. It's something that is naturally part of us. Exactly where it comes from is hard to say without further study.

A year or so ago, a classmate asked me 'why' I'm gay. I told him it's because girls are cute, which is how I usually think of it. But I do often wonder why I'm gay, because even if girls are cute, not everyone is attracted to them. We just naturally have different likes.

 

Does it really matter what makes someone gay? Just the same, why are someone's eyes brown, or blue or green? Why is someone tall or short? Not sure knowing why really defines whom a person is.

 

It is simple! Sexual attraction to the same sex makes you gay! Just like that.

Really, I have no frigging other clue than that. Homosexuality appears in animals too(lion, elephant, dolphins, giraffe, etc), and I have nothing concrete as to why they do that either other than it is something that creatures do, and we are not an exception. Whether it is hormone, gene, or some sort of development process along the way, it is something we have no need to care about anyway.

 

Because it is interesting from a scientific point of view, and I personally find why people have different skin, hair, eyes colors and other facial differences academically intriguing

Some articles claimed that there are gay genes, or more precisely "male-loving genes" which make people gay. I think it will be hilarious to tell my mum that because you love men too much, now I do too :roflmao:

 

Looking at my mom, I had the biggest urge to tell her the same exact thing. Since she loves men soo much, she made me go crazy over guys too. Lol I still don't want to think she's as promiscuous as me or her sex life for that matter cause that's just blehhhh lol :icon_redf

 

It is probably more relevant to ask what makes people attract to other people. If you could answer that one, then "gay" might be as simple as something missing in the genes that inhibits same-sex attractions, which most men have; in other words something missing instead of something extra.

Whatever it is, no one has figured it out yet, but there are studies which suggest that the answer will be found in DNA, but not necessarily exclusively in DNA; there might be environmental factors within the womb during gestation also.

The only thing which is pretty certain, is that, while the individual can choose their behavioral response to being gay in orientation, they cannot change the fact that they are gay; it is just as out of their control as skin color, height, nose size, hair color, etc.

 

If you're interested in this topic you should watch a documentary called Brainwash: Gay/Straight (It's on youtube). They talk about genetics vs. things that happen in the womb. There is no bulletproof answer, but there is an interesting look at gay male brains and how they have a certain cluster of cells similar to that found in women that straight men don't have (I think they're called NAH1 or something along those lines).

 

I believe it's developed in the womb. Also I think it has to do with chromosomes. I think I act like my mom quite a lot.

 

Meredith Chivers does some interesting talks on female sexuality. You can find her on U-Tube. Also, there is a channel called "Whom You Love 2012" where others talk about the biology of sexual orientation. It's really interesting...

 

Thank you so much for linking me to WND, because you know, I really want to be on the NSA's watchlist. :bang:

 

In my case, it's a combination of nature and nurture, whether my "loved ones" would admit to it or not.

 

I am not sure I even agree with the question, because I disagree with the notion of heterosexuality as being 'the norm'.

Surely it is the social norm, but it isn't any more or less 'natural' than homosexuality.

For me both are an expression of natural human bonding-behaviours, and natural human need for love and acceptance. Both are necessary for the cohesion and proliferation of humans as a species, and are behaviours which can be found in other species as well. They are both behaviours which are natural to the species.

If humanity was 100 straight without capacity for homosexuality we would have probably not been as successful as a species in days before contraception was invented. why?

Because the need an necessity for bonding is GREATER than the ability to sustain the offspring which would result from all the necessary bonding were it all exclusively heterosexual.

Secondly heterosexuality is by no means compatible with 'romantic love', or generally a form of love which is purely beneficial to both lovers, without any disadvantages.

Heterosexual love has the consequence and danger of pregnancy: it is always looming above individuals.
Pregnancy and childrearing are biological necessity, and are in the interest of both parties, but only for a *limited* amount of time, once that task is fulfilled, the relationship carries the disadvantage of the danger of unwanted pregnancies, but the human need for love and bonding is still there.

Homosexual love does not carry such danger and as such it is more suited to the role of companionate/romantic love without the burden of life-altering consequences, and fulfilling the *limitless* human need for love and affection.

Being pregnant can be a traumatic experience both for the woman, and the man, because his love to her altered her physically in a way that could endanger her life.

I've read somewhere that traumatic experiences are transmitted through genes to the next generation (there was some research done on mice I believe), and it would be not a surprise if the trauma associated with pregnancy did also produce a permanent and innate preference for same-sex attraction and behaviours in the next generation,
rather than just a general capacity to engage in same-sex behaviours which less 'fixed' in an individual.

 

So god made us gay, then wrote in his journal that everyone was to hate us?

 

I like a lot of what you are saying. I am not sure on whether the data supports all of it. (I am an evolutionary biologist but I study plants.) But I think you have a lot of good ideas.
A key point you note is that romantic love and pregnancy/raising children are NOT the same thing.

Natural selection most often favors organisms that can spread as many of their genes into the next generation. However, evolution of bonding is also likely very important and homosexuality might be more tied to that. It is not as if homosexuality is some evolutionary abnormality--especially if has been selected for due to bonding. This is very interesting.

 

no He didn't. that is a mis interpertation of the word. in fact the only time a same sex partnership is mentioned in the Bible, Jesus said not a word against it.

but this debate is apart from the premis of the OP. and is truely my belief and opinion, the biology of the process aside.

 

Humans are "social" creatures. They survive and prosper better in groups than as individuals in the wilderness due to a lot of factors, not the least of which is that when some members specialize in supporting others, it frees the others to use their brains in creative and productive manners, instead of foraging for food. We seem to have acquired this ability to form bonds because of the successful results from bonding or "banding" together for mutual support, whether it is for breeding purposes, or to improve our lives for emotional or financial reasons; same sex partners often do much better than individuals by sharing living expenses and burdens, and can help each other if medical problems occur.

Sexual pleasure is also part of the bonding phenomena, whether it is between same-sex or opposite-sex partners, even if it doesn't lead to reproduction with children. It meets the need for sexual satisfaction just as well in homosexual relationships as it does in heterosexual relationships, even though it MAY have been built-in primarily to encourage intercourse and reproduction. It also strengthens the bonds which result in greater success for the two individuals who are bonded and work together for their common good.

There is also the possibility that, since at earlier times in human evolution, there may have been times when there were not enough women to pair-up and mate with the number of available men present. It may have been a mechanism to keep the "tribe" together, by providing for intimate and satisfying relationships between single men who were unable to breed, or in settings where the "strongest male" did most of the breeding with women, and the weaker males were left to find intimacy with each other. Who really knows, until science may hopefully some day discover the exact PHYSICAL mechanism for propagating homosexuality forward continuously from generation to generation, even though it might seem like it should "die out" as a trait by the failure of homosexuals to reproduce (to the extent that they actually DO fail to reproduce; quite a few of us have reproduced through marriage in spite of having later discovered homosexual orientations).