Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[intro music]
Hi, I'm Justin Lee, Executive Director of the Gay
Christian Network. Welcome to the second installment of Gay Christian Answers.
where you can get answers to your questions about *** orientation, Christianity,
and all sorts of things. So last week we asked the question
"How can you be gay and Christian?" This week
we've got a new question. "What causes people...
"...to be gay?" Good question. See, the thing about
this question is the more people you ask, the more different responses
you're going to get. Everybody has an opinion on this. So how
do you know who's right and who's just, well,
making stuff up? This calls for a little
investigation.
One common explanation is that gay people are gay because
they choose to be. So, what do you think? Is it just a matter
of choice? Well, one thing's for sure...
You can always choose what you do. You can choose
who you have sex with. Or, you can choose to abstain from sex.
You can choose who you date.
You can choose not to date anybody. You can always choose
what you do. But you can't choose what you feel.
And that means that you can't choose who you're attracted to. Gay or straight.
I mean, if you're straight, I'm sure you're attracted to some members
of the opposite sex and not attracted to others. You probably know
as soon as you see them. In fact, you might know some people you think are really awesome
people of the opposite sex, but you're just not attracted to them. And you might
know others, that you don't really like 'em that much as people, but they sure are attractive.
You can't help being attracted to this person and not that one. If you could choose
who you were attracted to, life would be a lot easier. Unfortunately
it just doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way for gay people either.
If you're straight, you can't choose to be attracted to the same sex. And if you're
gay, you can't choose to be attracted to be the opposite sex. So it's definitely
not a choice. Just ask anyone who is gay.
Another popular theory is that people are gay because of
how they were raised. So, what do you think? Is it your parents' fault?
Now, you'll hear a few different versions of this, like, "You're gay
because you had a distant father." Or, "You're gay because your mother was too
over-protective." Or, "You're gay because you didn't relate well to your same-sex
parent." Now, some of this sounds like it could be true.
I mean, why shouldn't your childhood have some impact on your *** orientation?
But to find out if it is true, we have to do
some investigation. And when we do, here's what we find.
They've done studies on this. They have. And they've found
that, in fact, there are a lot of gay people who have
a bad relationship with their parents. And
there are a lot of straight people who have bad relationships with their parents too.
And there are a lot of gay people who have wonderful relationships with their parents, and straight people,
same thing. In fact, there is no correlation
at all. Whether you're gay or straight, you're just
as likely to have a good or bad relationship with your parents. So
on the question of "Is it your parents' fault?", survey says... [buzzer]
So, what about genetics, I mean
is there, like, a gay gene, or something?
Actually, probably not. Now, scientists are still investigating
ways that genetics may be involved in the determination of your *** orientation
But, it's probably not as simple as a single gene that determines
you're gay and you're straight. For one thing,
genetics are usually more complicated than that. For another thing, there's gotta be
something else that's going on. How do we know? Because, identical twins
who share the same genetics, don't always share the same *** orientation.
Now, they are a whole lot more likely to share *** orientation
than, say, other kinds of brothers, even other kinds of
twins. So, genetics might have something to do with it, but when it
comes to a gay gene, you might have heard about it in the newspapers, but
there still isn't one that we know of. So we're going to have to say no for now.
So, if it's not a choice, and it's not
your parents or your genes... well, what is it?
Well, the short answer is, we really don't know what causes
people to be gay, but there's a growing amount of evidence for a
biological link. See, there's a lot more to biology than just
genetics, and in this case, we're talking about the hormones you were exposed to
as a baby in the womb. See, here's what we know.
We know for certain that there are brain differences between gay people
and straight people. We've shown this in multiple studies, so if you're gay
your brain is actually wired differently from straight people's. This is
for sure. We also know that 6-10% of rams
are gay. I know, I didn't know this either, but this has
been documented. And we found the same brain differences in the
rams as we have in humans. Hmm...
So, the theory is that hormones during your mom's
pregnancy may cause differences in your brain and cause
some people to be gay and some people to be straight. We've tested this by injecting
certain hormones into pregnant rats, and guess what, they had
gay kids. Now, there's a big difference between rats and humans, but that's
something that, you know, gives us some evidence, some interesting stuff to go on.
Now if, in fact, the hormones are causing all of this, we would expect them to
affect other things as well. And it seems that they do.
We've found things, like differences in fingerprint whirls
between gay and straight people, differences in finger lengths. Gay people
are 39% more likely to be left-handed. We've found
different inner-ear structures between gay and straight people. Differences in spatial
abilities, even differences in your eye-blink response.
So, there are a lot of differences that suggest that brain pathways are different
and other physical things are different, because of the hormones during your
development. Now, this still leaves us with a lot of questions. There's still a lot
that we don't know about biology and how it affects all this.
But the research is just beginning, and
the more and more evidence we have of a biological link, the more likely
it looks that if you feel like if you were born gay or born straight,
you probably were. So now, what's your question?
Come on, email us! answers@gaychristian.net
And I'll see you next time, on Gay Christian
Answers!
[closing music]