Many People Are Born Gays and Lesbians - They're Not That Way by Choice

Should two people of the same sex be allowed to marry? Should a gay couple be covered by the health insurance of the employed spouse's benefits package? Should a gay person be allowed to serve openly in the military? Should a homosexual be allowed to serve in the ministry? Is homosexuality a sin?

Issues like these are being hotly debated these days.

Conservative religions cite scripture to affirm that homosexuality is an abomination before God. People who "choose" to practice a gay or lesbian lifestyle are ostracized.

It's true that some people with normal sexual desires choose a bisexual or homosexual lifestyle - for a variety of reasons. But for many gays and lesbians, choice has nothing to do with it. Some men are born with female brains and some women are born with male brains. It's a fact of biology, not choice, and no amount of discipline or indoctrination or will power can change it.

Recently I reread Brain Sex: The Real Difference between Men and Women, by Anne Moir and David Jemmel (Delta, 1992) as I pondered these issues. I first read the book over 10 years ago. It explains the difference between male brains and female brains and how this affects behavior. It also explains the issues related to developing sexual orientation. The politics surrounding this issue has made it difficult to sponsor research, and it's hard to do this kind of research on human subjects. The book is helpful in the way that it points to the research that has been done.

One major difference is that the female brain has a much larger corpus callosum, the bundle of neurons that connects the left brain with the right brain. This means that there is far greater "cross-talk" between the hemispheres and explains why women are better able to express feelings and consider the feelings of others.

From the standpoint of sexual orientation, a more important difference is that the male brain produces far more testosterone than does the female brain. Testosterone stimulates competitiveness, aggression and sexual drive. The male brain produces 20 times as much testosterone as progesterone. In the female brain, the two hormones are relatively balanced.

So men feel a stronger drive towards sex. Women feel a stronger drive towards relationships. With men, sex sometimes results in intimacy. With women, intimacy sometimes results in sex.

The sexual differences between men and women, whether sexual drive or the physical body, are decided in the womb. A male fetus has the XY sex chromosome, while the female has the XX sex chromosome. If development within the womb proceeds naturally without interference, in the sixth week hormones will stimulate the XY fetus to develop male sexual organs and the XX fetus to develop female sexual organs.

Some men have an extra female chromosome - XXY. They look male, are raised as males, but very little masculine hormone is sent to the developing brain to make it match its male body. So the XXY adult males have low testosterone levels and low libido. They typically report sexual confusion and a hesitancy to assume masculine behaviors, which often expresses itself in transvestism, transsexualism, homosexuality, bisexuality and non-sexuality.

This is important, because it means that not all homosexuals choose their sexual orientation. A person can have a male body and a female brain. A person can feel like a woman trapped in the body of a man.

Five to ten times as many men as women become homosexuals. Brain development suggests why. All fetuses begin with female brains and bodies. When the chromosomes instruct the fetus to develop sex organs, the organs then produce female or male hormones. Male hormones turn the initial female brain into a male brain. If this chemical process is thrown out of balance, sexuality in the brain can easily fail to develop normally. An unnaturally low level of male hormone in a male fetus or an unnaturally high level of male hormone in a female fetus can result in homosexuality.

Furthermore, the normal development of sexual differences in the brain can be derailed if abnormal concentrations of female hormone are present at a key time of fetus development. Children whose mothers took high doses of therapeutic female hormone were more likely to remain unmarried as adults. Female fetuses who experienced abnormally high concentrations of male hormone more frequently exhibited bisexual or homosexual behavior as adults.

It's easy to upset the hormonal balance at the wrong time in fetal development because the small amounts of hormone involved are easy to affect. What causes the unnatural concentrations? Very little is known about this. High stress levels are known to lower the level of male hormone in the womb. Barbiturates are thought to have been prescribed to 25% of pregnant women from 1950-1980. In animal experiments, the drug altered physiological and behavioral sex differences in offspring.

Many gay people don't support this kind of research because they think it will suggest they're challenged, disabled or abnormal human beings.

The problem is, they're being labeled this way anyway by people who don't understand brain development. Without this kind of research, it's hard to pin down the exact substances that perturb normal sexual development in the brain. People can become homosexuals, not by choice but by unnaturally interrupted biology.

When people call homosexuality a "sin," they aren't being righteous. They're revealing their ignorance of what science has already told us. The writers and translators of holy texts who did their jobs thousands of years ago can be excused for their conclusions. People today don't have this excuse.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .