So the “gay gene” was imaginary?

Wasn't there a good study that showed most that 'turned' gay changed back away..... some people struggle with personal choices... some with less moral guidance don't.... seems to explain it right there Trumper

Homosexuality may not be predicted by genes but it may still be a epigenetic phenomenon triggered by child abuse at an early age. FourFaces

They should investigate if homosexuality is related to materialism. A psychological test which scores points on objectifying emotions as being material, and free will denial. mohammadnursyamsu

How we develop is affected by our genetic makeup and the environment we develop in.

Too vague and utterly useless. And no one has ever demonstrated an environment that turns someone into liking the same sex.

Two turtles with the exact same genome can develop such that one is male and one is female.

They were going to be turtles regardless. ET

> If homosexuality is a choice, as many here believe, do you believe that you can decide to be sexually attracted to your own gender? If someone was having a hard time finding heterosexual relationships but did find a band of same-sex friends that made them feel welcome and desired, and these same-sex friends knew ways to encourage the person to go the homosexual route, and if homosexual sex acts were accompanied by rushes of dopamine/oxytocin/etc--which they are--then, yes, it would be very possible for someone to essentially (but not in a single day) choose to become homosexual. But even if a tendency to same-sex attraction were entirely genetic, it would not clinch the case. There are characteristics/desires/tendencies of people that are most likely innate, yet which are still wrong. Hypothetically, say I had an attraction to stealing (kleptomania maybe) that turned out to be innate. It would still be wrong to act on the urge. Yes, as finite and imperfect beings, we are sometimes shackled with wanting things that are wrong for us to want/obtain. EDTA

EDTA

>Being born gay and there being a gene for gay are not the same thing. Along with ET, I’m really curious about this one.

How we develop is affected by our genetic makeup and the environment we develop in. In most cases it is not as simple as there being a “gene for A.” Two turtles with the exact same genome can develop such that one is male and one is female. I assume that you are heterosexual. If homosexuality is a choice, as many here believe, do you believe that you can decide to be sexually attracted to your own gender? I know I couldn’t. Why do people think that homosexuals are capable of doing what heterosexuals can’t (ie, decide do change their sexual attraction)? Brother Brian

BB, >Why is it morally imperative for humans to kill homosexuals one day,... Not all, just the Hebrews and only prior to Christ's coming, as BA77 has well explained. >Did God change his mind? If God is going to work with temporal beings, then at least some things will have to change over time, as a plan unfolds in our realm. God's underlying nature is what remains constant. >Being born gay and there being a gene for gay are not the same thing. Along with ET, I'm really curious about this one. EDTA

BB, surely, you understand the difference between a civil penalty at law (which in key part depends on ability of a given society to withstand chaotic acts) and the moral nature of an underlying act; and again, the further matter of the attitude of the heart. At no point is arsenokoitai or malakoi or the like ever approved of, and indeed is viewed as against nature and inherently chaotic -- something it seems we are determined to learn the hard way at cost yet again as a civilisation -- but something that can be repented of and transformed from. One of those things the modern myths refuse to acknowledge but of which there are a great many examples. The recently announced study results are consistent with this, and we all know the difference between proneness, habituation in and breaking out of; where the 12 step type approach shows that while spiritually motivated existential struggle can succeed in breaking out of destructive habituation, it is patently far better not to get caught on a hook in the first place. A point now well known and accepted in regards to drugs and alcohol. Hence too, the responses to adultery as seen, duly noting the intent of entrapment by dilemma in a noted case. KF kairosfocus

God is perfectly consistent. He required the penalty of death all along for sin. Since Jesus Himself paid the penalty of death in full on our behalf, (since we were, and are, unable to pay the penalty ourselves), then He is and was free to forgive the adulterous woman. Moreover, Jesus made the overriding point that all of her accusers were also guilty of sinning under the Mosaic law and therefore they were also under the penalty of death for their own sins. i.e. "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her”. The point being that ALL have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God, and we ALL therefore need Jesus so that we may receive forgiveness and stand righteous before God almighty, the creator of heaven and earth and all that is therein. Of supplemental note: Since you are so concerned that God might be inconsistent in His morality, it might first behoove you, as an atheistic materialist, to not be inconsistent in your own morality. Simply put, without God you have no objective moral basis to judge whether anything else may be evil or good. As Dawkins said, atheism entails the morality of no good or evil just 'blind, pitiless, indifference". That is to say that all morality within atheistic materialism is subjective and even illusory. Yet, in your argument that God is being inconsistent in His morality, you yourself, although you have no basis for doing so, are presupposing that there is some objective moral basis that you can judge by. Yet, only if God exist can good and evil objectively exist and can you have a objective moral basis to judge by. i.e. You are making a self refuting argument! So you tell me how anything can possibly be objectively good or evil in your atheistic materialism in the first place, and then we will start to mull over whether it is morally inconsistent or not for God to forgive our sins through Jesus Christ..

If morality exists objectively, then so does God. - Peter Kreeft https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xliyujhwhNM The Moral Argument - Dr Craig video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxiAikEk2vU What is the Moral Argument for the Existence of God? https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/interviews-panels/what-is-the-moral-argument-for-the-existence-of-god-bobby-conway/

bornagain77

Why is it morally imperative for humans to kill homosexuals one day, and morally imperative that they don’t do so on the next?

Reference, please.

Obviously, at one time, he thought that it was good for people to kill others who sinned.

All sinners?

Was he wrong?

Unlike you, who isn't even wrong. Jesus saw that if they were to stone all the sinners then all would be stoned. That is when the word changed to mean "to get drunk or high". Then they all obliged. ET

BA77

Sin separated man from God. Yet God is the source of all life. Therefore the penalty for all sin is death, not just the sins of adultery and homosexuality.

Again, you are not addressing the issue. Why is it morally imperative for humans to kill homosexuals one day, and morally imperative that they don’t do so on the next? Did God change his mind? And, if he is inerrant, why would he find it necessary to do so? Obviously, at one time, he thought that it was good for people to kill others who sinned. Was he wrong? Brother Brian

Is Brian really conflating adultery with homosexuality? ET

A little theology 101 Sin separated man from God. Yet God is the source of all life. Therefore the penalty for all sin is death, not just the sins of adultery and homosexuality. God bridged that infinite chasm between us and Him, i.e. between death and life, by having his Son die for our sins so that we may be reunited with Him and inherit eternal life. It is called propitiation.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 2 Corinthians 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Hologram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-TL4QOCiis

bornagain77

BA77

You forget, Jesus himself died for the sins of the world.

That doesn’t explain why God said it was morally imperative to kill homosexuals one day and then morally imperative that we don’t the next day. Was he wrong in giving his first command, or wrong in giving his second? Brother Brian

You forget, Jesus himself died for the sins of the world. i.e. He is perfectly consistent in the grace He, the Son of God, extended to the woman caught red handed in adultery since He died for her sins too.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Turin Shroud Hologram Reveals The Words "The Lamb" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tmka1l8GAQ

bornagain77

BA77@22, so at one time God says that it is morally imperative to kill homosexuals, and the next moment he says that it is morally imperative not to kill them. Doesn’t sound like the actions of a inerrant God. Brother Brian

John 8: 4-11 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

bornagain77

This is what the Lord your God asks of you: to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God.- Micah 6:8

But don’t forget this gem:

"If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them." Leviticus Chapter 20 verse 13

Brother Brian

Nor should the demonic component be understimated in sexual deviancies, as in so much else in our ordinary day-to-day lives. We have to make make choices all the time. Little wonder that growth in our spiritual lives should so closely mirror our observance of what J_P de Caussade designated, 'the Sacrament of the Present Moment', e.g. putting a piece of scrap-paper in the waste-paper basket, if that is what God wants of us at a partiular moment - rather than giving our lives to be burnt at the stake, if is not what God wants of us at that particular moment. Axel

Like every other perversion, homosexuality (even through a failure of identification and bonding) is often simply a matter of incontinent lust - in principle (!), like the affection some of our family's dogs had for our shins. It sure makes sense of G K Chesterton's saw to the effect that tolerance is the last virtue of the man without principles, yet in the homosexual's lexicon, 'tolerance' is the all-purpose virtue, than which there can be no greater. We can all appreciate that some members of our own sex are better-looking than others (although 'looks' are understandably considered an insane criterion of a person's worth), but where the morality dimension arises is in the choice to ignore the ugliness of homosexual relations. I'm not so much talking about women here, as I think with them, it's more sad than anything else. Christian scripture states that God's thoughts are as high above ours as the heavens are above the earth, and this is an area, where one doesn't have to scale the heights of God's divinity to understand that moral beauty is as high above sensual beauty, as the heavens are above the earth. Nevertheless, Yahweh did feel it necessary to command through Moses that the Israelites should not 'seethe a kid in its mother's milk', its being a clear example of an offence against moral beauty. When a people's leaders totally lose that sense (in short supply at that level, at the best of times), only trouble can ensue. We speak, for instance, of 'the milk of human kindness', but in its association with the tenderness of motherhood, its symbolism runs far deeper than that, doesn' it? 'This is what the Lord your God asks of you: to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God.- Micah 6:8 Axel

Brother Brian:

Being born gay

Do tell how that can happen without a genetic component ET

On top of the fact that experimental evidence from both neurology and Quantum Mechanics have now established the reality of free will, Dr. Jeffery Schwartz has gone even further. Dr. Jeffery Schwartz has had much success in treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCDs) by changing the 'chemistry of the brain' through the 'focused attention' of the mind of the patient. This ability to modify our brain, i.e. 'neuroplasticity', would not be possible if our thoughts were determined solely by our material brains as Darwinists hold.

Brains On Purpose Excerpt: Jeffrey Schwartz – Decades ago, he began to study the philosophy of conscious awareness, the idea that the actions of the mind have an effect on the workings of the brain. Jeff’s breakthrough work in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) provided the hard evidence that the mind can control the brain’s chemistry. http://westallen.typepad.com/brains_on_purpose/about_jeffrey_m_schwartz_.html The Case for the Soul – InspiringPhilosophy – (4:03 minute mark, Brain Plasticity including Schwartz’s work) – Oct. 2014 – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsI_ay8K70 Jeffrey Schwartz: You Are More than Your Brain - Science Uprising Extra Content - (2019) video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFIOSQNuXuY&list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1OmYcqv_yQSpje4p7rAE7-&index=9

In fact there is now even tentative evidence, besides changing the 'chemistry of our brain' via neuroplasticity, that our minds can also reach all the way down to the genetic level of our brains and bodies and have a pronounced 'epigenetic' effect on the gene expression of both our brains and our bodies,

New Complexity in DNA Regulation - Jon Lieff M.D. - June 26, 2017 Excerpt: Perhaps the most unusual aspect of all of this are the findings of how mental events trigger vast genetic changes. Human thought instantly alters large circuits of neurons (see post of neuroplasticity). This occurs through a wide variety of different neuroplasticity mechanisms by triggering specific gene networks and the creation of different complex machinery protein in each different brain region. Perceptions of loneliness are very significant triggers of gene networks in immune cells causing more inflammation—130 anti inflammatory genes have been shown to lack function and 80 pro inflammatory genes were very active.,,, http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/new-complexity-in-dna-regulation Upgrade Your Brain Excerpt: The Research; In his book The Genie in Your Genes (Elite Books, 2009), researcher Dawson Church, PhD, explains the relationship between thought and belief patterns and the expression of healing- or disease-related genes. “Your body reads your mind,” Church says. “Science is discovering that while we may have a fixed set of genes in our chromosomes, which of those genes is active has a great deal to do with our subjective experiences, and how we process them.” One recent study conducted at Ohio University demonstrates vividly the effect of mental stress on healing. Researchers gave married couples small suction blisters on their skin, after which they were instructed to discuss either a neutral topic or a topic of dispute for half an hour. Researchers then monitored the production of three wound-repair proteins in the subjects’ bodies for the next several weeks, and found that the blisters healed 40 percent slower in those who’d had especially sarcastic, argumentative conversations than those who’d had neutral ones. http://experiencelife.com/article/upgrade-your-brain/

Thus the fact that we have free will and that we are not completely helpless victims of whatever predispositions we may have is now established by experimental science. Perhaps the most direct evidence against the materialistic claim that people are 'born gay' and that they therefore cannot change, comes from the fact that many deeply homosexual men have now found freedom from their homosexual behavior through Christ. In fact, many former deeply homosexual men are now in, of all things, devoted and loving heterosexual marriages. Here is a documentary that interviews many former deeply homosexual men who are now Christians:

Such Were Some Of You - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKSFPdyH8x4 “Such Were Some of You” (A Documentary) was inspired by the passage in 1st Corinthians 6:11 that declares that in Jesus’ day there was a population who had been so transformed by their relationship with Him that they were no longer “same-sex attracted” or at the very least, actively homosexual. They had found such a measure of healing from the brokenness and strongholds associated with what we now call homosexuality that they no longer considered themselves homosexual, nor did they act in that way. “Such Were Some of You” features interviews with a “cloud of present-day witnesses” who testify to the same life-transforming power of Jesus Christ. They describe the development of their same-sex attractions, what the gay lifestyle was like, what their conversion process was like, and the various ways that Jesus has brought healing to their broken places. “Such Were Some of You” lays out the facts about healing homosexual confusion and rejoices in the reality that Jesus Christ can heal anyone from anything while providing grace for the journey.

And here are extended Interviews with 29 former homosexuals who are now Christians

GUESTS – THE EXTENDED INTERVIEWS - videos - Extended Interviews with 29 former homosexuals who are now Christians http://suchweresomeofyou.org/

Verses:

1 Corinthians 6:11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

bornagain77

The main lie from Atheistic Materialists is not their claim that people are 'born gay',,,

Journalists trumpet every biological study that even hints that gayness and straightness might be hard-wired, but they show little interest in the abundant social-science research showing that sexual orientation cannot be innate. The scholars I interviewed for this essay were variously dismayed or appalled by this trend. Benkof cites two academics who share his views: historian Dr. Martin Duberman, founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, who writes that “no good scientific work establishes that people are born gay or straight,” and cultural anthropologist Dr. Esther Newton (of the University of Michigan) who described one study linking sexual orientation to biological traits as ludicrous: “Any anthropologist who has looked cross-culturally (knows) it’s impossible that that’s true, because sexuality is structured in such different ways in different cultures.” http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/19/nobody-is-born-that-way-gay-historians-say/ Born gay or transgender: Little evidence to support innate trait, Wednesday, August 24, 2016 Excerpt: "a report finds scarce scientific evidence to conclude that gay and transgender people are “born that way. The 143-page paper, published this week in The New Atlantis journal, combs through hundreds of studies in search of a causal, biological explanation for sexual orientation and gender identity, but comes up empty. “The belief that sexual orientation is an innate, biologically fixed human property — that people are ‘born that way’ — is not supported by scientific evidence,” says the report, written by a psychiatrist and a biostatistician at Johns Hopkins University. “Likewise, the belief that gender identity is an innate, fixed human property independent of biological sex — so that a person might be a ‘man trapped in a woman’s body’ or a ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence,”" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/24/born-gay-transgender-lacks-science-evidence/

No, the main lie from Atheistic Materialists is not that you are born gay. The main lie from atheistic materialists is that you are a deterministic 'meat robot' with no free will of your own and that there is therefore nothing you can personally do to change any particular behavior that you may be predisposed to do, but is a behavior that you, none-the-less, would like to change if you could. As evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne stated, “You are robots made out of meat. Which is what I am going to try to convince you of today”.

“You are robots made out of meat. Which is what I am going to try to convince you of today” Jerry Coyne – No, You’re Not a Robot Made Out of Meat (Science Uprising 02) – video https://youtu.be/rQo6SWjwQIk?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1OmYcqv_yQSpje4p7rAE7-&t=20

Jerry Coyne is not alone. Many other leading Darwinists also make the insane claim that we are nothing but 'meat robots',

Darwin's Robots: When Evolutionary Materialists Admit that Their Own Worldview Fails - Nancy Pearcey - April 23, 2015 Excerpt: In What Science Offers the Humanities, Edward Slingerland, identifies himself as an unabashed materialist and reductionist. Slingerland argues that Darwinian materialism leads logically to the conclusion that humans are robots -- that our sense of having a will or self or consciousness is an illusion. Yet, he admits, it is an illusion we find impossible to shake. No one "can help acting like and at some level really feeling that he or she is free." We are "constitutionally incapable of experiencing ourselves and other conspecifics [humans] as robots." One section in his book is even titled "We Are Robots Designed Not to Believe That We Are Robots.",,, When I teach these concepts in the classroom, an example my students find especially poignant is Flesh and Machines by Rodney Brooks, professor emeritus at MIT. Brooks writes that a human being is nothing but a machine -- a "big bag of skin full of biomolecules" interacting by the laws of physics and chemistry. In ordinary life, of course, it is difficult to actually see people that way. But, he says, "When I look at my children, I can, when I force myself, ... see that they are machines." Is that how he treats them, though? Of course not: "That is not how I treat them.... I interact with them on an entirely different level. They have my unconditional love, the furthest one might be able to get from rational analysis." Certainly if what counts as "rational" is a materialist worldview in which humans are machines, then loving your children is irrational. It has no basis within Brooks's worldview. It sticks out of his box. How does he reconcile such a heart-wrenching cognitive dissonance? He doesn't. Brooks ends by saying, "I maintain two sets of inconsistent beliefs." He has given up on any attempt to reconcile his theory with his experience. He has abandoned all hope for a unified, logically consistent worldview. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/04/when_evolutiona095451.html

Simply put, the main lie from Atheistic Materialists is that you have no free will to choose to do otherwise than what you may be predisposed to do.

The Heretic - Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? - March 25, 2013 Excerpt:,,,Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it’s lived. As colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters, materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/heretic_707692.html?page=3

But the fact that we can choose to do otherwise than what we may be predisposed to do, i.e. the fact that we do indeed have free will, regardless of what Atheistic Materialists may claim. is now established by experimental science. Specifically, it is established by experimental evidence from both neurology and Quantum Mechanics. In neurology we find, from the work of Benjamin Libet and others, that we have the ability to veto a "unconscious decision”, i.e. to veto a predisposition to a certain behavior that we might have. As Dr. Egnor notes, "Libet even observed that his experimental confirmation of free will accorded with the traditional religious understanding of free will":

Do Benjamin Libet’s Experiments Show that Free Will Is an Illusion? – Michael Egnor – January 15, 2014 Excerpt: Materialists often invoke the experiments of Benjamin Libet when they deny free will.,,, (Yet) Libet himself was a strong defender of free will, and he interpreted his own experiments as validating free will. He noted that his subjects often vetoed the unconscious “decision” after the readiness potential appeared. ,,,”The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to initiate a voluntary act, but rather to control whether the act takes place. We may view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as ‘bubbling up’ in the brain. The conscious-will then selects which of these initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto and abort, with no act appearing.” – Libet Libet even observed that his experimental confirmation of free will accorded with the traditional religious understanding of free will:,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/01/do_benjamin_lib081171.html

Libet's work verifying the reality of free will and/or 'free won't' was further replicated, and refined, here

Do we have free will? Researchers test mechanisms involved in decision-making - January 4, 2016 Excerpt: "The aim of our research was to find out whether the presence of early brain waves means that further decision-making is automatic and not under conscious control, or whether the person can still cancel the decision, i.e. use a 'veto'," explains Prof. Haynes. ,,, "A person's decisions are not at the mercy of unconscious and early brain waves. They are able to actively intervene in the decision-making process and interrupt a movement," says Prof. Haynes. "Previously people have used the preparatory brain signals to argue against free will. Our study now shows that the freedom is much less limited than previously thought. http://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2016-01-free-mechanisms-involved-decision-making.html

Free will is also further experimentally established by advances in Quantum Mechanics. Specifically, Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.

Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018 Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time measurements of the wavelength of photons from high-redshift quasars, whose light was emitted billions of years ago; the experiment simultaneously ensures locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons and that the wavelength of the quasar photons had not been selectively altered or previewed between emission and detection, we observe statistically significant violation of Bell’s inequality by 9.3 standard deviations, corresponding to an estimated p value of ? 7.4 × 10^21. This experiment pushes back to at least ? 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403

bornagain77

Homosexuality and bisexuality is not genetic. They are psychological. 100% of homosexuals and bisexuals have been seriously abused. They need psychological help, not a pat on the back to encourage a delusion. BobRyan

A useful read (which this result further confirms): http://www.mygenes.co.nz/mgmmdi_pdfs/2018FullBook.pdf (see esp Ch 1) --> Note the lack of accountability over massive manipulation of public, professional, legal and legislators' opinions. kairosfocus

Being born gay sand there being a gene for gay are not the same thing. Brother Brian

mimus- you asked if someone thought the gay gene existed.

Did anyone claim such a gene existed?

The article is evidence that they did. And I bet some people still do ET

The 'gay gene' was used for years to justify the claim that orientation was a genetically-determined thing--not necessarily among the medical/psychological community, but among ordinary folk. It was a common talking point in arguments over the subject back in the 90's in particular. Google lists 73M search results for the term (in the singular). Of course today, the top results are about the overturning of that concept. EDTA

Xq28 is where the term got into journalistic cliche, but even that study did not claim to show a single-gene for homosexuality . Mimus

My understanding is that the number of males who are born attracted to other males instead of females is in the neighborhood of 3%. The number of females born attracted to other females instead of males is less than half that. The reason we have public discussions of the topic is that increasing numbers of heterosexual men find it naughty, and therefore more fun, to do it with other guys. For Catholic priests, the advantage of raping altar boys is that the boys won't get pregnant. And arguing "it was all just a misunderstanding" is a whole lot easier if the accuser isn't holding a baby. In Classical Greece and Rome, ALL males were expected to have male lovers. It was a social custom, and fathers looked for nice young men to introduce their sons to. A man still took a wife with whom to breed heirs, but you were never supposed to LOVE her. See also the "Theban Band" (the Sacred Band of Thebes): 150 pairs of male lovers who formed one of the most elite military units in Ancient Greece, until Philip of Macedonia wiped out the entire Band in 338 BC. Also, life for wives and female slaves in harems (Solomon's "1,000 wives", etc.) might involve intercourse with the man who owned them once a year or less, perhaps only once in their life. So lovemaking between the women was allegedly common, since it was the only sexual gratification the women could get. vmahuna

mimus @ 7 see medical definition of gay gene ET

EDTA,

All of which would appear to vindicate those of us who never did accept the existence of a single gay gene…

Did anyone claim such a gene existed? Mimus

ET @ 5, Yes, the jury is still out on the whole picture of sexual preference. But I think it's relatively safe now to predict that one-gene-one-characteristic is on the way out for lots of traits: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/do-all-genes-affect-every-complex-trait/ EDTA

You should never say never when it comes any alleged genetic component of human behavior, including sexual preference. Our brains are ruled by chemicals. So any chemical imbalance caused by genetic entropy would have an effect. The same goes for the way any specific brain develops- genes control and influence that. The science is still young and it is way too early to call it a day. Who knows what else will be uncovered along the way? ET

The write-up at ars technica was a little more explicit, for whatever that's worth: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/the-genetics-of-sexual-orientation-are-about-as-complex-as-sexual-orientation/ "Studies of twins have suggested that genetics can influence homosexual behavior, accounting for roughly 20% to 30% of its frequency. But attempts to find specific genes that mediate this influence have come up empty. Now, an absolutely enormous study has found a number of genetic sites linked to homosexual behavior. But collectively, they account for a tiny amount of the total genetic effect, and their influence is complicated: different in men and women, and different even across the spectrum of sexual attraction. By comparing this relatedness to who had same-sex partners, the researchers were able to estimate the total genetic contribution to this behavior: 32%. That suggests the rest is some combination of environmental and social influences. And collectively, the authors suggest that the genetic influences they could track via GWAS correlated with a maximum of 25% of homosexual behavior—that's lower than the 32% figure calculated by relatedness. So, it's possible that there are also some more complicated genetics yet to be sorted out. Not only is there no "gay gene," but males and females have genetic influences that only partly overlap." All of which would appear to vindicate those of us who never did accept the existence of a single gay gene... EDTA

It empowered a movement ...

When did this happen? Perhaps some people have claimed this existence of a simple Mendelian gene for homosexuality was an important for gay rihts. But i've never heard this.

Some simply deny the obvious conclusion:

What do you think the obvious conclusion is? The quoted text is very straightforward and true. If you think there is not genetic contribution to homosexuality (or same-sex sexual behaviour in the case of this study) then you should maybe read the paper. Mimus

Brother Brian:

Nobody is uncomfortable about that.

Except for those millions of determinists, of course.

It is about the interaction of our genes and our environment.

Too vague and wishy-washy to be part of science. But that is the extent of evolutionary biology.

We have known this for longer than I have been alive.

So there should be plenty of peer-review on it- nature vs nurture? The environment made me do it? Whatever excuse works, I guess... ET

Why are people so uncomfortable with the idea that they are not ruled by their genes?

Nobody is uncomfortable about that. But nice strawman. The claim has largely been that sexual attraction develops very early. Their is obviously a genetic component, as sex implies, but what we are is not all about our genes. It is about the interaction of our genes and our environment. We have known this for longer than I have been alive. Brother Brian