Homosexuality Debate Nature 1

Homosexuality – Nature or Nurture?

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First of all, I would like to dismiss a couple of claims made by the negative side: that a person’s family can influence the adjustment of children and adolescents. For many years now, psychology has bandied around assumptions that homosexuality is caused by parental personality types – for instance, the dominant, overpowering female, the weak, submissive male – or by the absence of a same-gendered parental role model. Those theories, however, are no longer accepted within psychology.

The ‘absent father/overprotective mother’ theory of homosexuality was initially influenced by a research project conducted by psychoanalyst Irving Bieber. His conclusion was that ‘male homosexuality is caused by paternal hostility and engulfing maternalism’. However, this was hardly a representative sample of homosexual males – the questionnaires were filled out by the psychiatrists, not their patients. No homosexual male was allowed to speak for themselves about their own lifestyle. It turns out then, that this ‘research’, was nothing more than an elaborate opinion poll of psychoanalysts in the ‘60s, who had already been trained to believe that homosexual people were suffering from ‘perversion’.

Erik Holland explained in his book The Nature of Homosexuality that “the sex-atypical childhood behaviour of male homosexuals need not follow from parental behaviour; rather, negative parental behaviour can be a response to the sex-atypical behaviour of children. This suggests that parental behaviour is not behind male homosexuality”.

The debate surrounding homosexuality and its causations is, as we all know, a greatly faceted psychological argument. We all know that homosexuality is not simply a matter of an individual being confused about their sexual orientation, but rather something that is genetically and biologically determined; something an individual has no control over. Although all people in all societies are socialised to be heterosexual, one universal appearance of homosexual persons suggests that homosexual orientation is biologically based, and sexual orientation itself is biologically derived. There is overwhelming evidence to support that there is a genetic – not psychological – link to homosexual behaviour, as opposed to the argument from the negative side that homosexuality is all based around environmental factors. Some biological factors which help explain some causes of homosexuality include hormonal differences, DNA traits, as well as the size of the hypothalamus in comparison between a homosexual man and a heterosexual man.

Research conducted by a UK fertility clinic which offers fertility treatment to lesbian women, presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference, found that doctors at the clinic noticed an overwhelming number of lesbian women who, on investigation, were found to be suffering from either polycystic ovary syndrome or a less serious but related condition in which their ovaries showed many of the same features. The researchers in this study discovered that prevalence of this condition was 80% in the lesbian women they saw, in comparison to the 32% of heterosexual patients. The lead researcher, DR Rina Agrawal, also believed that the results suggested ‘significantly greater’ rates of hormone imbalance in the lesbian women. She also stated that hyperandrogenism, which is associated with polycystic ovary syndrome, may be one of the factors contributing to the sexual orientation of women.

According to Vernon L. Quinsey people “discover rather than choose their sexual interests”. This progression of discovery naturally begins before the onset of puberty, is associated with an increase in the secretion of sex hormones from the adrenal glands. However, according to Quinsey, the determination of the direction of sexual interest, in the sense of preferences for the same or opposite sex, is earlier. These preferences, although not apparent until much later in development, appear to be caused by the neural organisational effects of intrauterine hormonal events (Quinsey, V.L., 2003. Etiology of Anomalous Sexual Preference in Men).

D.F Swaab conducted the next noteworthy experiment in 1900, which became the first experiment to document a physiological difference in the anatomical structure of a homosexual person’s brain. While conducting post-mortem examinations, Swaab discovered that a portion of the hypothalamus was structurally different in a homosexual person’s brain than in a heterosexual person’s brain; finding that the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a small portion of the hypothalamus was generally twice as large as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in heterosexual males.

At the same time Swaab conducted his experiment, another scientist, Laura Allen, made a quite similar discovery in the hypothalamus also; finding that the anterior commissure (AC) of the hypothalamus was also significantly larger in the homosexual subjects than that of the heterosexuals.

Another experiment conducted regarding the hypothalamus was conducted by Simon LeVay in 1991, and, similarly to Swaab and Allen, it was a post-mortem examination. He examined 19 declared homosexual men, 16 heterosexual men, and 6 heterosexual women. LeVay discovered that within the hypothalamus, the third interstitial notch of the anterior hypothalamus (INAH3) was two to three times smaller in homosexual men than in heterosexual men; women also exhibited this phenomenon. Of his study, LeVay concluded that “homosexual and heterosexual men differ in the central neuronal mechanisms that control sexual behaviour”. He also agreed with Swaab and Allen, that the difference in anatomy was no product of upbringing or environment, but rather prenatal cerebral development and structural differentiation.

As is quite obviously proven, homosexuality is caused by a person’s biological and genetic foundation, and sexual orientation is not due to a persons’ environment. Homosexuality has to do with brain anatomy and genetics. Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Tutu wrote “if sexual orientation were indeed a matter of personal choice, the homosexual persons must be the craziest coots around to choose a way of life that exposes them to so much hostility, discrimination, loss and suffering.” Homosexuality is not a choice; it’s a way of life.

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