im confused wiv this cos 1. ive always liked boys n messed around n did things when i was like 5 and stuff happened dat changed me and i no longer felt comfortable around boys so i had Alot of girls as friends" so i dunno

There was another similar thread to this one on which I posted some stuff on the proposed cause of homosexuality. Alot of peeps here have been mentioning genetics and 'gay genes,' which was the original line of thought in the scientific community, save that if there was a gay gene, it would be soon be removed from the population, bred out by the mechanism of natural selection, unless it was found on the X chromosome and could be passed on down through a maternal line, hence the hype about the gene Xq28.

Currently it is thought that homosexuality in men is in concordance with how many previous male foetuses have occupied a womb, with the addition of each male older sibling increasing the probability of homosexuality by 33%. It is thought to be with regard to a set of 3 H-Y antigens on the Y chromosome, which effect the masculinisation of a foetus. To cut a long story short, due to the mother's increased immune response with each child, the proteins produced by these H-Y antigens would provoke an increasing immune reaction in the mother, enough to maybe prevent a masculinisation of the brain, but not enough to affect the masculinisation of the genitalia of the foetus. (Females do not possess H-Y antigens, hence why the pattern is only noted in male subjects).

However, this is probably not the only determining factor in sexuality, with other contributing factors post-birth to do with upbringing and society etc, probably playing a critical role, but the research paper if anyone wants it is:
'H-Y Antigen and homosexuality in men' Published in Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1997, Blanchard R., Klassen P.

Human sexuality is impossibly complex. It is unlikely that any one thing causes homosexuality.

Gayness (and queerness generally) is often portrayed as only acceptable if it is innate and not a choice. I do not understand however, why this is a dichotomy. Human sexuality is not necessarily "innate" in the sense of being hardcoded into the genes, but "innate" in the sense of arising from some dynamically-interacting combination of genotypic expression, prenatal hormonal environment, environment during early development, and individual experiences and cognitive/psychological processes.

The point is that it is both biological and a choice, just like all sexuality: we could choose to deny our human drives for sex, heterosexual just as much as homosexual or bisexual, but why should we? Our true potential emerges when we stop fighting what we already are, when we work with our evolutionarily- and culturally-given human nature to shape the kind of life that is worth living.

No, we can't just 'turn gayness off an on'. People have tried, it's never really been proven to work. I could unhappily have sex with women for the rest of my life, but that wouldn't mean squat to my sexual attractions. I could say to myself, 'I am not gay, I am not gay'... and I'd just feel guilty about it when I get the hots for a boy.

you're born gay, it can't be a choice!

when you're young, say in primary school you don't like boys nor girls, but as you start puberty your hormones are raging and you discover which sex you fall for, whether it's a boy, a girl or both.

Recent studies have shown that the mother passes down the gene that allows the child to respond the pheromones produced by the opposite sex, however it is believed that the mother passes down the wrong gene in some cases so the child responds to the pheromones of members of the some sex.
However this, at best makes the person more prone to being gay and like most people how are a fan of psychology, I think being gay is a mix of the classic "Nature and Nurture". (As a little fact of th day, it was only in the early 1980's that homosexuality was changed as not being a psychological disorder.)

this may sound silly but i thought that perhaps nature makes people gay to balance things out so that the population doesnt grow out of control if you get me like erm nature created small flies but to control their population they creacted spiders erm or mankinda made tha car but we also made brakes on the car to control its speed so if the human population was on a speeding car we are the breaks designed to stop itgoing out of control or am i just being silly??

xxx

No, nature created Hitler for that job, and he's to date the only one that's done a really good job in that respect. As far as homosexuality being a curb for overpopulation, homosexuality has been recorded since times where overpopulation was not even begun to be an issue.

Nature is not as perfect as you make out. True, there are flies, and there are spiders to 'combat' them, but if we kept killing all the spiders then (in the basic framework of this idea), the flies would run rampant, until we kill them.

Yes, you're just being silly

nature didnt create hitler...
other than him being a mad genius
he was just a man that took an idea
to a great extent...might not have been the
best idea tho...

oh and to go back on topic...sexuality isnt a choice
no matter what anyone tells u, u cant change ur mind

BravoLima wrote:

QUOTE:
No, we can't just 'turn gayness off an on'. People have tried, it's never really been proven to work. I could unhappily have sex with women for the rest of my life, but that wouldn't mean squat to my sexual attractions. I could say to myself, 'I am not gay, I am not gay'... and I'd just feel guilty about it when I get the hots for a boy.

Agreed.