Causes of gay and lesbian

Scientists may have finally solved the puzzle of what makes a person gay, and how it is passed from parents to their children. Here’s what we don’t know: What, specifically, causes someone to become gay, straight, or something in between. Part of the explanation is genetic, but because most identical twins of gay. What causes sexual orientation? It’s not completely known why someone might be lesbian, gay, straight, or bisexual.

What causes homosexuality - wikipedia

But research shows that sexual orientation is likely caused partly by biological factors that start before birth. Scientific research on the causes of human sexual orientation might reasonably be said to have elicited more controversy than it warrants. Claims, for example, to have been “born gay” gloss over th. The study is the latest in a hunt for “gay genes” that began incause of gay and lesbian Dean Hamer linked male homosexuality to a section of the X chromosome.

As the ease and affordability of genome. Biological factors shape sexual preference. Usually it's not inherited, but occasionally it is, leading to same-sex preference in boys. Therefore, the question "why are there gay women? The evolution of lesbianism is relatively understudied - it may work in a similar way or be completely different.

Why Are There Gay Women? | Live Science

As the ease and affordability of genome sequencing increased, additional gene candidates have emerged with potential links to homosexual behavior. While that's a greater cause than random, it's lower than you might expect for two people with the same genetic code. Natalie Wolchover was a staff writer for Live Science from to and is currently a gay and lesbian physics writer and editor for Quanta Magazine. The study gay and lesbian not be the last word on the vexing question of what causes homosexuality, however.

By Sara Reardon. For Qazi Rahman, it's the media that oversimplifies genetic theories of sexuality, with their reports of the discovery of "the gay gene". The allele - or group of genes - that sometimes codes for homosexual orientation may at other times have a strong reproductive benefit. Recommended reading. Evolutionary biologists have yet to determine what survival or reproductive benefit women's "erotic plasticity" confers.

The authors say that they did see links between sexual orientation and sexual activity, but concede that the genetic links do not predict orientation. Similarly in the West, there is evidence that many people go through a phase of homosexual activity. Natalie Wolchover. Andrea Camperio-Ciani, at the University of Padova in Italy, found that maternal female relatives of gay men have more children than maternal female relatives of straight men.

Compelled by society to enter marriages and have children, their reproduction rates may have been higher than they are now. Other studies have linked sexual orientation with environmental factors such as hormone exposure before birth and having older brothers. If this is true, then the helper in the nest theory may partly explain how a genetic trait for same-sex attraction hasn't been selected away.

These figures may not be high enough to sustain genetic traits specific to this group, but the evolutionary biologist Jeremy Yoder points out in a blog postexternal that for much of modern history gay people haven't been living openly gay lives. Paul Vasey, University of Lethbridge. Genetic studies in mice have uncovered additional gene candidates that could influence sexual preference. Brothers of a different kind - identical twins - also pose a tricky question.

But most scientists researching gay evolution are interested in an ongoing, internal pattern of desire rather than whether people identify as gay or straight or how often people have gay sex. But taken together, these five markers explained less than 1 percent of the differences in sexual activity among people in the study. Sign up to our newsletter Newsletter. Your data is being compromised much quicker than ever before, but you cause of gay and lesbian have to sit still and take it.

Rice and Vilain agree that the conclusion is unclear. However, biologists have documented homosexual behavior in more than speciesarguing that same-sex behavior is not an unnatural choice, and may in fact play a vital role within populations. There is some evidence for this second theory.