To imply that
homosexuality is
genetic is to be in some degree of
ignorance of what should be a rather obvious fact:
Gay folks aren't exactly
multiplying like
bunnies. In fact, they don't seem to be able to
reproduce with one another at all.
Admittedly, some gay people do have
kids (obviously with those of the
opposite sex), and some people have kids before realizing they're gay. The fact of the matter, though, is that if there were a "
gay gene" floating around,
homosexuality would probably not be so common as it is today, as being unlikely or psychologically unable to mate with the
opposite sex does not exactly predispose an
organism toward
evolutionary success.
What I think
is incredibly likely to be the cause of
some homosexuality is a tendency, genetically, (in
males, in this case) toward
psychological and
physical features inclined more towards
femininity, psychological
introversion, and/or perhaps
sexual submissiveness. This may explain why you often see large concentrations of
homosexuality in one
family or another, while you may see very few in a different
family tree.
However, I think it highly unlikely that all or even most cases of homosexuality are entirely the result of
predisposition at birth. As is the case with virtually every aspect of the
human mind, a
combination of
genetic and
environmental factors mold the
sexual psyche, and so lead one person to be adamantly
heterosexual and another to be entirely unable to bring themselves to
copulate with someone of another sex (an extreme, but a not-so-uncommon one).
Many
gender psychologists have gone so far as to speculate that humans, as primarily cerebrally controlled animals, are "born"
bisexual (though
Freudians and others say that up until five or six they are entirely
asexual, psychologically), and that
sexual disposition is later determined by socioenvironmental factors and the
biological and psychological habits that have been developed over the individual's life span to-date.
I might be led to wonder whether the fact that 2/3 of
WolfDaddy's birth siblings are
gay or
lesbian has something to do with the probable damage to a sense of personal
identity and sense of
belonging that probably occurs during the childhood of
adopted children. I would be incredibly curious to find statistics pertaining to the tendency toward
homosexuality in
adopted children.
Post script: I am
bisexual, if anyone is curious or thinks that my statements were too frank or were in some way offensive to the
gay community. I am not a huge advocate of
gay pride, or "anything pride" for that matter--what you
are or
choose to be is what you
are or
choose to be, and
value judgements concerning the same are
unnecessary and
superficial.
Update, 7/13/02:
Tlogmer says
re I'm gay, but I'm not sure it's genetic. : There's a possibility you seemed to be unaware of -- there could be several genes that in isolation all do positive things but when present together greatly increase the chance of homosexuality -- this is how disorders like sickle-cell anemia occur (not so say homosexuality is a disorder)
From a conversational, evolutionary standpoint, it is quite a disorder, I think, and that's an interesting point to make. I hadn't thought of it, but it's entirely sound.