Gay Science #4: Why are you gay? [Factors in Determining Sexuality]
My older brother made me gay.
I apologize to the bisexual, pansexual, and asexual communities. I realize I never referenced you all and spoke of sexuality fairly binary, which it isn’t. I’ll make sure to add you all into this discussion in a follow up post.
“Who said I am?”
“Why are you gay?” It was the first question asked of Pepe Julian Onziema, a transgender man from Uganda who has been pursuing human rights, especially for LGBTQ+ people, in the country for over 20 years.
It seems like an odd question. In interviews in the US, people may be coyly asked if they are gay, but we don’t hear people asking why someone is gay. A clip of this interview went viral as a meme after it was posted in 2012, though the context of the video turns what appears to many to be a sketch comedy segment, something that could be dropped seamlessly into an Eric Andre Show episode, into a stark reminder of how disparate acceptance of queer people is around the world. Just take a look at this 2019 analysis of global acceptance rates of queer people put together by Pew Research:
While there are many countries that overwhelmingly support queer people, it ranges wildly by country. Uganda is one country where acceptance of queer people is low, and in 2014 passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which included the possibility of life imprisonment as a punishment. Onziema was a leader in the coalition to strike down the act, which succeeded in their efforts through a legal technicality. While the act has been removed, there is still a long road ahead for Ugandans to reach a place where queer people can live in peace.
Things are a bit different here in the US, instead of seeing growth in acceptance and forward progress, we are currently seeing a regression.1 This graph below, detailing opinions on gay marriage, illustrates this shift:
After peaking around 70%, less people believe that gay marriages should not be recognized by law. But why is there a sudden shift? One major reason is that there is a lot of misinformation about the queer community being spread through social media and a huge upswell of fundamentalist views. Some of the misinformation being spread has revitalized the “social contagion” theory, falsely claiming that people can be turned gay or trans. A Gallup poll from this year puts the numbers into perspective:
Less than 50% of Americans believe that being gay, asexual, non-binary, or transgender is a fundamental characteristic. Granted, less than 50% believe that it is something that we can choose, but the number of people who hold this opinion is growing. With all of the misinformation coming out of the current administration and fervor over transgender issues, this trend is likely to continue if not accelerate.
Nature v Nurture
With the divergent and evolving opinions of Americans, what does science have to say to settle the debate on what determines out sexuality? Well, the determinant of sexuality really mirrors a larger discourse on the origin of personalities, characteristics, and behaviors altogether, so we should start by talking about the Nature v. Nurture debate. Nature, “that’s just how they are,” is the idea that our attributes are fixed and determined by our genetics. Nurture, “Well look at how they were raised,” is the belief that our attributes are developed after birth by our experiences and our environment.
Debates on this subject outside of science tend to serve as proxies for other topics, such as eugenics and justification for extreme inequality. However, fields like biology and psychology, have studied to what effect our genetics and our environment determine who we are and what we do.
The general consensus of people who have studied this debate is that we are greatly affected by both nature and nurture.2 It isn’t an ‘either or’, but a ‘yes and’. For example, our genetics can dispose some of us to developing heart disease while giving others a comparable resistance. However, a person’s level of cardio activity and diet also largely impact heart health (this is considered environment). Some things are one or the other, strictly genetic or environmental. Your blood type is entirely dependent on your genetics while what language you speak is determined by your environment.
Further complicating things are epigenetics. Our genetics are much more complicated than we are generally taught and they can react to our environment and the environment of our parents’. Besides what is written in our DNA we have mechanisms that can alter how our genes are expressed, mechanisms that can be transferred to subsequent generations during pregnancy. One example of this is the multigenerational affect of famine. Experiencing famine causes the body to engage a catabolic process that helps the body cope with the depravation of energy and nutrients. This catabolic process can be found in the children of people who have experienced famine, passing on the harmful effects of this process despite them never experiencing famine themselves.3 The environment of our parents can alter aspects of our genetics, so not only can our environment shape us, so can our parents’ environments. Life is messy, interwoven like spaghetti.
The Gay Gene
While it is best to think of this debate as, “What determines a person’s sexuality,” researchers have repeatedly attempted to find the “gay gene,” a supposed genetic cause of homosexuality. The first researchers to look into this during the early 1900s sought to find the cause in order to eradicate homosexuality. Thankfully, all evidence points towards the determinant for sexuality to be much more complicated than one, or even a handful of genes. One large study completed a large scale genetic analysis of participants entire genome, the entirety of their DNA, and found that their genetics “… do not allow meaningful prediction of an individual's sexual behavior.”4 Currently, with the best of our knowledge and technology, we cannot say that it is possible to predict if a person will be gay or not from their genetics.
Are the Chemicals in the Water Making the Fricken Kids Gay?
No. And they aren’t making the frogs gay either.
So if it isn’t nature, is it nurture that determines our sexuality? Can we just conclude that how you raise your kids determines if they will be straight or gay? Well, no, because nurture is not limited to parenting, schooling, or social interactions, it is better thought of as one’s environment, anything outside of the body that can affect a person.
How we raise kids does not seem to affect their sexuality. There can be slightly high rates of homosexuality in families that are more accepting of homosexuality, but even the kids of lesbian couples are overwhelmingly straight.5
One theory about how nurture affects sexuality looks at our exposure to variable levels of hormones during gestation. One such theory proposes that having older brothers increases the chances of a person being gay, and the more older brothers, the greater the increase. One large study of 9 million people found this effect to be measurable, finding that a person with one older brother has a 33% increased chance of being homosexual. This 33% increase takes the chance from 2% to 2.6%, so still a very small probability of same-sex attraction. Having 8 older brothers increases this to an 8% chance of being homosexual, still a miniscule percentage.6
While the study did provide additional evidence to support the theory, it found evidence that put the mechanism through which older brothers can increase the chance of a person being homosexual in doubt. It is important to remember that an increase in the chance of being homosexual does not mean that this is the one and only mechanism for determining sexuality. There are queer people without any older siblings, without brothers at all. All we can conclude is that the number of older brothers influences a person’s sexuality.
Why Does It Matter?
I don’t know why people are gay. The more articles I read researching this post the less confident I felt. There are lots and lots of theories about what determines and influences a person’s sexuality, and we just don’t know for certain right now. It isn’t simply a genetic determination and even our best theories for environmental causes offer no concrete answers.
To be honest, I hope that there never is a determination, that we never have an answer. We can just enjoy the diversity of life without needing to fully understand it, the same way we can enjoy a big sloppy mess of spaghetti without needing to know everything about it.
Similarly, being able to present data that definitively states that queer people are queer because of forces outside of our control won’t put an end to people thinking that being gay is a choice. What it might do is allow for testing to determine if someone will become gay, furthering the mission of people who want to eradicate our existance.7
Literally Just Ask Yourself and Listen to Us
No matter what determines sexuality, people should just listen when everyone says that they did not choose their sexuality. Over half of Americans think that people choose to be queer despite the chorus of voices saying that we do not choose to be queer any more than people choose to be straight. As long as there are people who think being gay is a choice, there will be attempts to force people to be straight. Conversion therapy has never gone away, it has only changed names. In fact, it is still legal in most states in the US.
In the recent Trump administration report, published anonymously and filled with anti-transgender slop based on no evidence or research, the “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices” suggests that instead of gender-affirming care, healthcare professionals should utilize “exploratory therapy.”8 Exploratory therapy is conversion therapy, it is forcing transgender people to live their life as another gender. Cisgender people, please imagine being forced to live as the other gender. It would suck right?
You can’t force people to be straight, you can’t force people to be gay, you can’t force someone to be cis, you can’t force someone to be trans, and you definitely shouldn’t try.
We don’t know why people are the way they are, and that’s all the more reason to listen to them when they tell us who they are.
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https://prri.org/research/views-on-lgbtq-rights-in-all-50-states/
https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2022/12/16/nature-vs-nurture-its-both/
González-Rodríguez, P., Füllgrabe, J. & Joseph, B. The hunger strikes back: an epigenetic memory for autophagy. Cell Death Differ 30, 1404–1415 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41418-023-01159-4
Ganna A, Verweij KJH, Nivard MG, Maier R, Wedow R, Busch AS, Abdellaoui A, Guo S, Sathirapongsasuti JF; 23andMe Research Team; Lichtenstein P, Lundström S, Långström N, Auton A, Harris KM, Beecham GW, Martin ER, Sanders AR, Perry JRB, Neale BM, Zietsch BP. Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex sexual behavior. Science. 2019 Aug 30;365(6456):eaat7693. doi: 10.1126/science.aat7693. PMID: 31467194; PMCID: PMC7082777.
Golombok, Susan & Tasker, Fiona. (1996). Do Parents Influence the Sexual Orientation of Their Children? Findings From a Longitudinal Study of Lesbian Families. Developmental Psychology. 32. 3-11. 10.1037/0012-1649.32.1.3.
Ablaza C, Kabátek J, Perales F. Are Sibship Characteristics Predictive of Same Sex Marriage? An Examination of Fraternal Birth Order and Female Fecundity Effects in Population-level Administrative Data from the Netherlands. J Sex Res. 2022 Jul;59(6):671-683. doi: 10.1080/00224499.2021.1974330. Epub 2022 Jan 18. PMID: 35040387.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/04/15/1243861703/sexuality-birth-order-gay-siblings
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/exploratory-therapy-new-name-for-conversion-therapy
Informative, funny, and personal! Love it