Gay Genetics
You can look up studies on the genetics of homosexuality using the OMIM website. What jumps out of this collection of studies is that, for males, the genetic link appears to come through the mother (X chromosome) and that boys with older siblings are more likely to be gay. Interesting.
I learned about this through the NY Times Tierney lab. As seems to be the case every time I bother to look (is it sampling bias?), reader comments on newspaper blogs degenerate into the tangential, irrelevant, and specious. Sigh.
December 26th, 2007 at 6:34 am
Whether homosexuality is genetic or not is an interesting scientific issue, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an interesting political issue. That’s just because the facts can be understood positively or negatively no matter what they are. On “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” this past weekend there was a tidbit on a drug that, when sprayed on fruit flies, made them gay (i.e., it made the male flies get all cozy with other male flies). When the antidote was sprayed on them, they went back to cozying up to the female flies. So if being gay is genetic, then one could imagine horrible gene therapies to “cure” it. Or just the idea that “you’re cursed from the get-go”. Likewise, if being gay is a choice, then people can be excoriated for making that choice. So while the science is interesting, I’m just not sure that this will resolve anything politically. (sigh)