Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Breaking News: More Evidence On Biological Causes Of Homosexuality Found.


As all the ex-gay ministries parade their scientifically discredited causation theories on homosexuality, more scientific evidence on the innateness of homosexuality have been discovered. So with more truth on homosexuality coming out, perhaps it is high time ex-gay ministries admit the obvious before more people realise about the ex-gay myth: It is all lies.

Source: NewScientist
Brain scans have provided the most compelling evidence yet that being gay or straight is a biologically fixed trait. (emphasis added)

The scans reveal that in gay people, key structures of the brain governing emotion, mood, anxiety and aggressiveness resemble those in straight people of the opposite sex.

The differences are likely to have been forged in the womb or in early infancy, says Ivanka Savic, who conducted the study at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

"This is the most robust measure so far of cerebral differences between homosexual and heterosexual subjects," she says.

Previous studies have also shown differences in brain architecture and activity between gay and straight people, but most relied on people's responses to sexuality driven cues that could have been learned, such as rating the attractiveness of male or female faces.

Brain symmetry
To get round this, Savic and her colleague, Per Lindström, chose to measure brain parameters likely to have been fixed at birth.

"That was the whole point of the study, to show parameters that differ, but which couldn't be altered by learning or cognitive processes," says Savic.

First they used MRI scans to find out the overall volume and shapes of brains in a group of 90 volunteers consisting of 25 heterosexuals and 20 homosexuals of each gender.

The results showed that straight men had asymmetric brains, with the right
hemisphere slightly larger – and the gay women also had this asymmetry. Gay men,
meanwhile, had symmetrical brains like those of straight women.

The team next used PET scans to measure blood flow to the amygdala, part of the brain that governs fear and aggression. The images revealed how the amygdala connected to other parts of the brain, giving clues to how this might influence behaviour.

Depression link
They found that the patterns of connectivity in gay men matched those of straight women, and vice versa (see image, above right). In straight women and gay men, the connections were mainly into regions of the brain that manifest fear as intense anxiety.

"The regions involved in phobia, anxiety and depression overlap with the pattern we see from the amygdala," says Savic.

This is significant, she says, and fits with data showing that women are three times as likely as men to suffer from mood disorders or depression. Gay men have higher rates of depression too, she says, but it's difficult to know whether this is down to biology, homophobia or simply feelings of being "different".

In straight men and lesbians, the amygdala fed its signals mainly into the sensorimotor cortex and the striatum, regions of the brain that trigger the "fight or flight" response. "It's a more action-related response than in women," says Savic.

'Striking differences'
"This study demonstrates that homosexuals of both sexes show strong cross-sex shifts in brain symmetry," says Qazi Rahman, a leading researcher on sexual orientation at Queen Mary college, University of London, UK.

"The connectivity differences reported in the amygdala are striking."

"Paradoxically, it's more informative to look at things that have no direct connection with sexual orientation, and that's where this study scores," says Simon LeVay, a prominent US author who in 1991 reported finding differences (pdf) in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus between straight and gay men.

But as Savic herself acknowledges, the study can't say whether the brain differences are inherited, or result from abnormally high or low exposure in the womb to sex hormones such as testosterone.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI:
10.1073/pnas.0801566105)
Yuki's Thoughts:
I guess even when the dusk is settled, with more and more truths about homosexuality coming up, we would still hear more wacky ideas from ex-gays. But instead of simply admitting the ridiculous theories of distant fathers and overbearing mothers (and crossdressed by mother ala Edmund Smith); we would instead face up to more imposement of personal evaluation of values upon us, as stupid as their 'traditional values' sound. They would probably ask questions such as - can this be prevented during pregnancy? Ignorance AND Intolerance is bliss.


Yuki's Choice Reading:

Coverage and comments on this groundbreaking story also available on:
America's Box Turtle Bulletin and Asia's Fridae

4 comments:

Anthony Venn-Brown said...

Hi Yuki

I think the best research anyone can do is to go out to any gay bar and begin asking the patrons....."When did you choose to be gay".....then duck for cover....hehe.....as we know more than anyone else...this is something we are born with and not of our own choosing and certainly not caused by our parents.

http://alifeofunlearning.blogspot.com/2007/08/five-of-australias-ex-gay-leaders.html

h0cmun said...

hrm.. the same question asked:
Is homosexual permitted by God?

Vivienne Yuki Choe said...

An honest study on homosexuality and the Bible will find there are totally no direct meaning of the word itself in comparison the other words mentioned by the Bible before 1949 (effeminate men, men in bed, male prostitutes etc). But since then such words were added and interpretated as homosexuality. I will ask for your honesty: does "a man doing the sleep of a women" really mean a homosexual?

Now, let us just play into the Christian fundamentalists game now and pretend for a momement that homosexuality was something of an abomination. So is eating shrimps, prawns, even pigs. Ok let us not go into the Old Testament. A careful research would point out that as Christ did not say anything about homosexuality, he did asks us not to be divorced, and we can only remarry once one party dies. So why is this rule not followed today?

And with mounting evidence of the innateness of homosexuality, there comes a time when we all must ask ourselves. Are we to believe that God would create a human beings that is do diversed in attractions: bisexuals, heterosexuals, homosexuals (and do not forget asexuals) but suddenly decide he wish to discriminate and condemn against his own creation? I am sorry. My Father is not such. Only human beings do that.

Anthony Venn-Brown said...

yes yuki is right. when you look deeper than just reading an english version of the bible and look at the original language, historical and cultural contexts you'll find that same sex orientation is not only not condemned its not even mentioned. Except possibly Matthew 19:12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

Same sex behavoiur such as rape, sexual practices linked with idolatry, temple prostitution and pedastry are condemned as they are for heterosexuals as well.