The Never-ending Story: Sexual Orientation and Genetics

The Never-ending Story: Sexual Orientation and Genetics

It is my observation that the average person gains insight into the nature vs. nurture debate when some particular human trait that is politically or socially volatile at the time is announced as having a specific genetic origin. This observation was confirmed when, in surfing the web, I came across an article entitled, "Female Inner Ear Comes Out of the Closet (1)." While reporting on a study published by a UT psychology professor who found that homosexual women exhibit tones in the inner ear similar to those of male test subjects, the Daily Texan journalist, with no explanation or sources, effortlessly mixes and confuses the social construction with the "science" of sexual orientation—even in her or his title. Attempting to get to the root of how an individual's sexual preference is determined, and the subsequent attempt to designate these individual tendencies into definitive statements regarding large groups in society has become a seductive topic for numerous media sources within the past decade or so. A closer look at this debate reveals the relative error of exploring one side without an equal exploration of the other.

Dean Hamer et al at the National Cancer Institute published the initial paper that is accountable for the explosion of interest and argument regarding genetic determination of sexual preference in 1993 (2). Hamer's study found that, of thirty-two pairs of brothers who were "exclusively or mostly" homosexual, twenty-two pairs of brothers shared the same type of genetic material. This introduced the idea that there is a gene for homosexuality. Hamer went on to identify a specific genetic sequence that exists on the maternally passed-on X chromosome...

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... our society than whether or not sexual preference is a choice: that humans today are too focused on the why and the how of society and not the what and for what good.

References

1)University of Texas Psychology Page, a short article from a local newspaper citing new and strange study

http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/ARTICLES/news-mcfadden.html

2)Bryn Mawr College Student Biology Page, good overview of major genetics of sexual orientation studies in last decade

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/projects97/Newman.html

3)Hampshire University Website, thoughtful and comprehensive discussion of genetics of sexual orientation

http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~kebF92/genetics.html

4)Frank Aqueno Website, an interesting but biased conversation between a famous professor/author and an gay rights activist

http://eserver.org/gender/exploding-the-gene-myth.html