Note: What follows in
this reference is first a summary of his research report by Simon LeVay.‹
At the end of the summary
report are synopses of critique from three different sources.
A Difference in Hypothalmic
Structure Between Heterosexual and Homosexual Men
Simon LeVay The anterior hypothalmus of the
brain participates in the regulation of male-typical sexual behavior. The
volumes of four cell groups in this region [interstitial nuclei of the anterior
hypothalmus (INAH) 1, 2, 3, and 4] were measured in
postmortem tissue from three subject groups: women, men who were presumed to be
heterosexual, and homosexual men. No differences were
found between the groups in the volumes of INAH 1, 2, or 4. As has been
reported previously, INAH 3 was more than twice as large in the heterosexual
men as in the women. It was also, however, more than twice as large in the
heterosexual men as in the homosexual men. This finding indicates that INAH is
dimorphic with sexual orientation, at least in men, and suggests that sexual
orientation has a biological substrate.
Sexual orientation -- specifically, the
direction of sexual feelings or behavior towards members of one's own or the
opposite sex -- has traditionally been studied at the level of psychology, anthropology,
or ethics (1). Although efforts have been made to establish the biological
basis of sexual orientation, for example, by the application of cytogenetic, endocrinological, or
neuroanatomical methods, these efforts have largely
failed to establish differences between homosexual and heterosexual individuals
(2, 3).
A likely biological substrate for sexual
orientation is the brain region involved in the regulation of sexual behavior.
In nonhuman primates, the medial zone pf the anterior hypothalmus
has been implicated in the generation of male-typical sexual behavior (4).
Lesions in this region in male monkeys impair heterosexual behavior without
eliminating sexual drive (5). In a morphometric study
of the comparable region of the human hypothalmus (from
men and women of unknown sexual orientation), two small groups of neurons (INAH
2 and 3) were reported to be significantly larger in men than women (6). Thus,
these two nuclei could be involved in the generation of male-typical sexual
behavior.
I tested the idea that one or both of
these nuclei exhibit a size dimorphism, not with sex, but with sexual
orientation. Specifically, I hypothesized that INAH 2 or INAH 3 is large in
individuals sexually oriented toward women (heterosexual men and homosexual women)
and small in individuals sexually oriented toward men (heterosexual women and
homosexual men). Because tissue from homosexual women could not be obtained,
however, only that part of the hypothesis relating to sexual orientation in men
could be tested.
Brain tissue was obtained from 41 subjects
at routine autopsies of persons who died at seven metropolitan hospitals in
The brains were fixed by immersion for 1
to 2 weeks in 10 or 20% buffered formalin. Tissue blocks containing the
anterior hypothalmus were dissected from these slices
and stored for 1 to 8 weeks in 10% buffered formalin. These blocks were then
given code numbers; all subsequent processing and morphometric
analysis was done without knowledge of the subject group to which each block
belonged. The blocks were infiltrated with 30% sucrose and frozen-sectioned at
a thickness of 52 micrometers in planes parallel to the original slices. The
sections were mounted serially on slides, dried, defatted in xylene, stained with 1% thionin
in acetate buffer (15 to 30 min), and differentiated with 5% rosin in 95%
alcohol (4 to 10 min). With the aid of a compound microscope equipped with a
camera lucida attachment, the outlines of the four
nuclei (INAH 1, 2, 3, and 4) were traced in every section at a linear
magnification of x83. These four nuclei included the two nuclei reported by
Allen et al. (6) to be sexually dimorphic and two other nuclei (INAH 1 and 4)
for which no sex differences were found (6). The criteria described in (6) were
followed in identifying and delineating the nuclei (Fig. 1). The outline of
each nucleus was drawn as the shortest line that included every cell of the
type characteristic for that nucleus, regardless of cell density. In 15 cases
the nuclei in both left and right hypothalmus were
traced. In 12 cases only the left hypothalmus was
studied, and in 14 cases only the right. The areas of the traced outlines were
determined with a digitizing tablet, and the volume of each nucleus was
calculated as the summed area of the serial outlines multiplied by the section
thickness.
In the 15 cases where both left and right
sides were studied, no significant interhemispheric
differences were found for any of the four nuclei. Therefore, in furthur analysis, the mean of the two sides was used, and
the cases where only one side was available were analysed
without regard to the side of origin.
One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was
used to look for significant differences between subject groups (Fig. 2). No
differences were found for INAH 1, 2, or 4. The results from INAH 1 and 4 are
consistent with those of Allen et al. (6, 10). However, INAH 2 was reported to be
about twofold larger in men than women (6). The failure to replicate that
finding may have to do with the relatively young age of the subjects in the
present study; as noted in (6), no sex difference was apparent when women of repropductive age were compared with men of similar ages.
Thus INAH 2 is not dimorphic with either sex or with sexual orientation, at
least within the age range studied.
INAH 3 did exhibit dimorphism. One-way
ANOVA showed that the three sample groups (from women, heterosexual men, and
homosexual men) were unlikely to have come from the same population (P =
0.0014). Consistent with the hypothesis outlined above, the volume of this
nucleus was more than twice as large in the heterosexual men (0.12 +/- 0.01
mm^3, mean +/- SEM) as in the homosexual men (0.051
+/- 0.01 mm^3). Because of uncertainty about the nature of the underlying
distribution, the dignificance of this difference was
evaluated by a
INAH 3 is situated about 1 mm lateral to
the wall of the third ventricle, and about 1 to 2 mm dorsal to the anterior tip
of the paraventricular nucleus. It is spherical or
ellipsoidal and contains relatively large, densely staining, polygonal neurons
(Fig. 1B). The borders of the nucleus are not well demarcated; hence a blind
procedure was used to reduce bias effects. In most of the homosexual men (and
most of the women) the nucleus was represented by only scattered cells (Fig.
1C). Because of the difficulty in precisely defining the neurons belonging to
INAH 3, however, no attempt was made to measure cell number or density.
Brain tissue from individuals known to be
homosexual has only become available as a result of the AIDS epidemic.
Nevertheless, the use of this tissue source raises several problems. First, it
does not provide tissue from homosexual women because this group has not been
affected by the epidemic to any great extent. Thus, the prediction that INAH 3
is larger in homosexual than in heterosexual women remains untested. Second,
there is the possibility that the small size of INAH 3 in the homosexual men is
the result of AIDS or its complications and is not related to the men's sexual
orientation. This does not seem to be the case because (i) the size difference
in INAH 3 was apparent even when comparing the homosexual men with heterosexual
AIDS patients, (ii) there was no effect of AIDS on the volumes of the three
other nuclei examined (INAH 1, 2, and 4), and (iii) in the entire sample of
AIDS patients there was no correlation between the volume of INAH 3 and the
length of survival from the time of diagnosis. Nevertheless, until tissue from
homosexual men dying of other causes becomes available, the possibility that
the small size of INAH 3 in these men reflects a disease effect that is
peculiar to homosexual AIDS patients cannot be rigorously excluded.
A third problem is that possibility that
AIDS patients constitute an unrepresentative subset of gay men, characterized,
for example, by a tendency to engage in sexual relations with large numbers of
different partners or by a strong preference for the receptive role in anal
intercourse [both of which are major risk factors for acquiring human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection (13)]. Sexual activity with large
numbers of partners is (or was until recently) common among gay men, however,
and therefore does not define an unrepresentative minority (14). In addition,
the majority of homosexual men who acquired HIV infection during the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (15) reported that they took
both the insertive and the receptive role in anal
intercourse, and the same is likely to be true of the homosexual subjects in my
study. Nevertheless, the use of postmortem material, with the consequent
impossibility of obtaining detailed information about the sexuality of the
subjects, limits the ability to make correlations between brain structure and the
diversity of sexual behavior that undoubtedly exists within the homosexual and
the heterosexual populations.
The existence of "exceptions" in
the present sample (that is, presumed heterosexual men with small INAH 3
nuclei, and homosexual men with large ones) hints at the possibility that
sexual orientation, although an important variable,
may not be the sole determinant of INAH 3 size. It is also possible,
however, that these exceptions are due to technical shortcomings or to misassignment of subjects to their subject groups.
The discovery that the nucleus differs in
size between heterosexual and homosexual men illustrates that sexual
orientation in humans is amenable to study at the biological level, and this
discovery opens the door to studies of neurotransmitters or receptors that
might be involved in regulating this aspect of personality. Further
interpretation of the results of this study must be considered speculative. In
particular, the results do not allow one to decide if the size of INAH 3 in an
individual is the cause or consequence of that individual's sexual orientation,
or if the size of INAH 3 and sexual orientation covary
under the influence of some third, unidentified variable. In rats, however,
that sexual dimorphism of the apparently comparable hypothalmic
nucleus, the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic
area, (SDN-POA) (16), arises as a consequence of the
dependence of its constituent neurons on circulating androgen during a perinatal sensitive period (17). After this period, even
extreme interventions, such as castration, have little effect on the size of
the nucleus. Furthermore, even among normal male rats there is a variablity in the size of SDN-POA that is strongly correlated with the amount of
male-typical sexual behavior shown by the animals (18). Although the validity
of the comparison between species is uncertain, it seems more likely that in
humans, too, the size of INAH 3 is established early in life and later
influences sexual behavior than that the reverse is true. In this connection it
would be of interest to establish when the neurons composing INAH 3 are
generated and when they differentiate into a dimorphic nucleus.
References and Notes:
1. For examples of the variety of
approaches to the topic, see S. Freud [_Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality_, in _Collected Works of Freud_, J. Strachey, Ed. and Transl. (Hogarth, London, 1959), pp. 125-243], C. S. Ford
and F. A. Beach [_Patterns of Sexual Behavior_ (Ace, New York, 1951)], Vatican
Council II [_Declaration on Certain Problems of Sexual Ethics_, in _Vatican
Collection_, A. Flannery, Ed. and Transl. (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1982), vol. 2, pp. 486-499], M.
Ruse, _J. Homosex._ 6, 5 (1981)], and R. C. Friedman
[_Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective_ (Yale Univ.
Press, New Haven, CT, 1988)].
2. [I'm going to omit detailed references
-- if you're going to go to a science library to get the referenced journal,
you can get Science as well. I'll just include notes. -- Chris]
3. The suprachiasmatic
nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalmus
has been reported to be larger in homosexual than in heterosexual men. [ref omitted]. There is little evidence, however, to suggest
that SCN is involved in regulation of sexual behavior
aside from its circadian rhythmicity [ref omitted].
4, 5, 6 [refs omitted]
7. Two of these subjects (both AIDS
patients) had denied homosexual activity. The records of the remaining 14
patients contained no information about their sexual orientation; they are
assumed to be heterosexual on the basis of the numerical preponderance of
heterosexual men in the population [ref to Kinsey omitted].
8. The causes of death for the ten male
subjects who did not die of AIDS were lung carcinoma (two cases), renal failure
(two cases), coronary thrombosis, acute lymphocyte leukemia, amytropic lateral sclerosis, pancreatic carcinoma,
pulmonary embolism, and aspiration pneumonia. For the five female subjects who
did not die of AIDS, the causes of death were systemic lupus erythematosus, pancreatic carcinoma, liver failure (two
cases), and abdominal sepsis secondary to renal transplantation. All six of the
heterosexual male AIDS patients and three of the homosexual men had history of
intravenous drug abuse. Three of the women, two heterosexual men who did not
have AIDS, and one homosexual man had histories of chronic alcohol abuse.
9. Criteria for inclusion of subjects in
the study were as follows: (i) age 18 to 60, (ii) availability of medical
records, (iii) in AIDS patients, statement in the records of at least one AIDS
risk group to which the patient belonged (homosexual, intravenous drug abuser,
or recipient of blood transfusions), (iv) no evidence of pathalogical
changes in the hypothalmus, and (v) no damage to the
INAH nuclei during removal of the brain or transection
of these nuclei in the initial slicing of the brain. Fourteen specimens (over
and above the 41 used in the study) were rejected for one of these reasons; in
all cases the decision to reject was made before decoding.
10. INAH 1 is the same as the nucleus
named the "sexually dimorphic nucleus" and reported to be larger in
men than women [ref omitted]. My results support the contention by Allen et al.
(6) that this nucleus is not dimorphic.
11. The ratio of the mean INAH 3 volumes
for the heterosexual and homosexual male groups was calculated. The INAH 3
volume values were then randomly reassigned to the subjects, and the ratio of
means was recalculated. The procedure was repeated 1000 times, and the ordinal
position of the actual ratio in the set of shuffled ratios was used as a
measure of the probability that the actual difference between groups arose by
chance. Only one of the shuffled ratios was larger than the actual ratio,
giving a probability of 0.001.
12. Application of ANOVA or correlation
measures failed to identify any confounding effects of age, race, brain weight,
hospital of origin, length of time between death and autopsy, nature of
fixative (10 or 20% formalin), duration of fixation, or, in the AIDS patients,
duration of survival after diagnosis, occurrence of particular complications,
or the nature of the complication or complications that caused death. There
were no significant positive or negative correlations between the volumes of
the four individual nuclei across the entire sample, suggesting that there were
no unidentified common-mode effects such as might be caused by variations in
tissue shrinkage. The mean brain weight for the women (1256 +/- 41 g) was
smaller than for either the heterosexual (1364 +/- 46 g) or the homosexual
(1392 +/- 32 g), but normalizing the data for brain weight had no effect on the
results. There was no correlation between subject age and the volume of any of
the four nuclei, whether for the whole sample or for any subject groups; this
finding does not necessarily conflict with the report in (6) of age effects in
INAH 1, and possibly INAH 2, because in (6) a much wider range of ages was
examined than was used in the present study.
13. [ref omitted]
14. In the largest relevant study [ref
omitted, 1978], nearly half the homosexual male respondents reported having had
over 500 sexual partners.
15, 16, 17, 18 [refs omitted]
19. I thank the pathologists who made this
study possible by providing access to autopsy tissue; [various other
acknowledgements omitted]
29 January 1991;
accepted 24 June 1991.
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Preview
Gay Genes, Revisited; November 1995;
Scientific American Magazine; by Horgan; 1 Page(s) In recent years,
two studies published in Science seemed to provide dramatic evidence that
male homosexuality has biological underpinnings. In 1991 Simon LeVay, then at
the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in Both
announcements made headlines worldwide. LeVay and Hamer appeared on talk
shows and wrote books. They also co-authored an article published in this
magazine in May 1994. But LeVay's finding has yet to be fully replicated by
another researcher. As for Hamer, one study has contradicted his results. More
disturbingly, he has been charged with research improprieties and is now
under investigation by the Federal Office of Research Integrity.
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CRITIQUE NUMBER 2
Responding to Pro-Gay Theology
by
Joe Dallas
This three-part series
will address the pro-gay theology by dividing its arguments--or tenets--into
three categories: social justice arguments, general religious arguments, and
scriptural arguments. A brief description of these arguments will be provided,
followed by a response/rebuttal to each.
We have created a table of contents for
easier navigation through this document. Start at the beginning of the article,
or just click on any issue that interests you.
Social Justice Arguments
Social Justice Argument #1: "Homosexuality Is Inborn."
Argument #1-A: Simon LeVay And the
Hypothalamus
Argument #1-B: Twins
Argument #1-C: Genes
Social Justice Argument #2: "Homosexuality Cannot Be
Changed."
Social Justice Argument #3: "10% of the Population Is Gay. Could
So Many
People Be
Wrong?"
General Religious Arguments
Religious Argument #1: "Jesus Said Nothing About
Homosexuality."
Religious Argument #2: "I'm a Born-Again Believer and I'm Gay.
How Can
That Be,
If Homosexuality Is Wrong?"
Religious Argument #3: "I Attend a Gay Church Where the Gifts of
the
Spirit and
the Presence of God Are Manifest. How Can That Be, If
Homosexuality
Is Wrong?"
Religious Argument #4: "My Lover and I Are in a Monogamous
Relationship,
and We
Truly Love Each Other. That Can't Be Wrong!"
Scriptural Arguments
Creation/Created Intent: Genesis 1:27-28; 2:18, 23-24
The Destruction of Sodom: Genesis 19:4-9
The Levitical Law: (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13)
Paul on "Natural" and "Unnatural": Romans 1:26-27
Paul and 'Arsenokoite': 1 Corinthians
6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:9-10
SOCIAL JUSTICE ARGUMENTS
Social Justice Argument #1: "Homosexuality Is
Inborn."
ARGUMENT #1-A: Simon
LeVay And the Hypothalamus
In
1991 Dr. LeVay, a neuro-scientist at the Salk
Institute of
He
reported this region of the brain to be larger in heterosexual men than in
homosexuals; likewise, he found it to be larger in heterosexual men than in the
women he studied. For that reason, he postulated homosexuality to be inborn,
the result of size variations in the INAH3, and his findings were published in Science
in August of 1991.(1) This is the study most often quoted when people
insist homosexuality has been "proven" to be inborn.
Response: This
argument is exaggerated and misleading for six reasons:
First,
LeVay did not prove homosexuality to be inborn; his results were not uniformly
consistent. On the surface it appears all of LeVay's
homosexual subjects had smaller INAH3's than his heterosexual ones; in fact,
three of the homosexual subjects actually had larger INAH3's than the
heterosexuals. Additionally, three of the heterosexual subjects had smaller
INAH3's than the average homosexual subject. Thus, six of LeVay's 35 male
subjects (17% of his total study group) contradicted his own theory.(2)
Second,
LeVay did not necessarily measure the INAH3 properly. The area LeVay
was measuring is quite small--smaller than snowflakes, according to scientists
interviewed when his study was released. His peers in the neuroscientific
community cannot agree on whether the INAH3 should be measured by its
size/volume or by its number of neurons.(3)
Third,
it's unclear whether brain structure affects behavior or behavior affects brain
structure. Dr. Kenneth Klivington,
also of SALK Institute, points out that neurons can change in response to
experience. "You could postulate," he says,
"that brain change occurs throughout life, as a consequence of
experience."(4) In other words, even if there is a significant difference
between the brain structures of heterosexual and homosexual men, it is unclear
whether the brain structure caused their homosexuality, or if their
homosexuality affected their brain structure.
In
fact, one year after LeVay's study was released, Dr. Lewis Baxter of UCLA
obtained evidence that behavioral therapy can produce changes in brain
circuitry, reinforcing the idea that behavior can and does affect brain
structure.(5) Therefore, even if differences do exist
between the INAH3's of homosexual and heterosexual men, it is possible that the
diminished size of the homosexual's is caused by his behavior, rather than his
behavior being caused by the INAH3's size.
Fourth,
LeVay was not certain which of his subjects were homosexual and which were
heterosexual. Dr. LeVay admits this represents a "distinct
shortcoming" in his study. Having only case histories on his subjects to
go by (which were by no means guaranteed to provide accurate information about
the patient's sexual orientation), he could only assume that, if a patient's
records did not indicate he was gay, he must have been heterosexual.
Yet 6
of the 16 reportedly heterosexual men studied had died of AIDS, increasing the
chances their sexual histories may have been incompletely recorded.(6) If it is
uncertain which of LeVay's subjects were heterosexual and which were
homosexual, how useful can his conclusions about "differences"
between them really be?
Fifth,
LeVay did not approach the subject objectively. Dr. LeVay, who
is openly homosexual, told Newsweek that, after the death of his lover,
he was determined to find a genetic cause for homosexuality or he would abandon
science altogether. Furthermore, he admitted, he hoped to educate society about
homosexuality, affecting legal and religious attitudes towards it.(7) None of which diminishes his credentials as a
neuroscientist. But his research can hardly be said to have been unbiased.
Sixth,
the scientific community did not by any means unanimously accept Dr. LeVay's
study. Comments from other scientists in response to
LeVay's work are noteworthy. Dr. Richard Nakamura of the National Institute of
Mental Health says it will take a "larger effort to be convinced there is
a link between this structure and homosexuality."(8) Dr. Anne-Fausto Sterling of
My freshman biology students know enough to sink this study.(9)
Dr.
Rochelle Klinger, at Psychiatrist at Medical College of Virginia, doubts we
will "ever find a single cause of homosexuality."(10) And Scientific
American sums up the reason many professionals approach the INAH3 theory
with caution:
LeVay's study has yet to be fully replicated by another researcher.(11)
CRITIQUE NUMBER 3
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Developmental Biology Does prenatal (or neonatal) exposure to
particular steroid hormones impose permanent sex-specific changes on the
central nervous system? Such sex-specific neural changes have been shown in
regions of the brain that regulate "involuntary" sexual physiology.
The cyclic secretion of luteinizing hormone by the
adult female rat pituitary, for example, is dependent on the lack of
testosterone during the first week of the animal's life. The luteinizing hormone secretion of female rats can be made noncyclic by giving them testosterone 4 days after birth;
conversely, the luteinizing hormone secretion of
males can be made cyclical by removing their testes within a day of birth (Barraclough and Gorski 1962).
It is thought that sex hormones may act during the fetal or neonatal stage of
a mammal's life to organize the nervous system in a sex-specific manner, and
that during adult life, the same hormones may have
transitory, activational effects. This idea is
called the organization/activation hypothesis. Interestingly, the hormone chiefly
responsible for determining the male brain pattern is estradiol,
a type of estrogen.* Testosterone in fetal or neonatal blood can
be converted into estradiol by the enzyme P450 aromatase, and this conversion occurs in the hypothalamus
and limbic system Attempts to extend the
organization/activation hypothesis to "voluntary" sexual behaviors
are more controversial because there is no truly sex-specific behavior that
distinguishes the two sexes of many mammals, and because hormonal treatment
has multiple effects on the developing mammal. For instance, injecting
testosterone into a week-old female rat will increase pelvic thrusting
behavior and diminish lordosis In addition, the effects of sex steroids
on the brain are very complicated, and the steroids may be metabolized
differently in different regions of the brain. Male mice lacking the
testosterone receptor still retain a male-specific preoptic
morphology in the brain, and male mice lacking the aromatase
enzyme are capable of breeding (Breedlove 1992; Fisher et al. 1998). These studies show that
there is more to sex-specific morphology and behavior than steroid hormones.
Despite best-selling books that pretend to know the answers, we have much
more to learn regarding the relationship between development, steroids, and
behavior. Moreover, extrapolating from rats to humans is a very risky
business, as no sex-specific behavior has yet been identified in humans, and
what is "masculine" in one culture may be considered "feminine"
in another (see Jacklin 1981; Bleier 1984; Fausto-Sterling 1992). As one review (Kandel et al. 1995) concludes: There is ample evidence that the
neural organization of reproductive behaviors, while importantly influenced
by hormonal events during a critical prenatal period, does not exert an
immutable influence over adult sexual behavior or even over an individual's
sexual orientation. Within the life of an individual, religious, social, or
psychological motives can prompt biologically similar persons to diverge
widely in their sexual activities. Certain behaviors are often said to be
part of the "complete" male or female phenotype. The brain of a
mature man is said to be formed such that it causes him to desire mating with
a mature woman, and the brain of a mature woman causes her to desire to mate
with a mature man. However, as important as desires are in our lives, they
cannot be detected by in situ hybridization or isolated by monoclonal
antibodies. We do not yet know if sexual desires are primarily instilled in
us by our social education or are fundamentally "hardwired" into
our brains by genes or hormones during our intrauterine development or by
other means. In 1991, Simon LeVay proposed that part
of the anterior hypothalamus of homosexual men has the anatomical form
typical of women rather than of heterosexual men. The hypothalamus is thought
to be the source of our sexual urges, and rats have a sexually dimorphic area
in their anterior hypothalamus that appears to regulate their sexual
behavior. Thus, this study generated a great deal of publicity and
discussion. The major results are shown in Figure 17.14. The interstitial nuclei (neuron
clusters) of the anterior hypothalamus (INAH) were divided into four regions.
Three of them showed no signs of sexual dimorphism. However, one of them,
INAH3, showed a statistically significant difference in volume between males
and females; it was claimed that the male INAH3 is, on average, more than
twice as large as the female INAH3. Moreover, LeVay's data suggested that the
INAH3 of homosexual men was similar in volume to that of women and less than
half the size of heterosexual men's INAH3. This finding, LeVay claimed,
"suggests that sexual orientation has a biological substrate." There have been several criticisms of
LeVay's interpretation of the data. First, the data are from populations, not
individuals. One can also say that there is a statistical range and that men
and women have the same general range. Indeed, one of the INAH3 from a
homosexual male was larger than all but one of those from the 16
"heterosexual males" in the study. Second, the "heterosexual
men" were not necessarily heterosexual, nor were the "homosexual
men" necessarily homosexual; the brains came from corpses of people
whose sexual preferences were not known. This brings up another issue:
homosexuality has many forms, and is probably not a single phenotype. Third,
the brains of the "homosexual men" were taken from patients who had
died of AIDS. AIDS affects the brain, and its effect on the hypothalamic
neurons is not known. Fourth, because the study was done on
the brains of dead subjects, one cannot infer cause and effect. Such data
show only correlations, not causation. It is as likely that behaviors can
affect regional neuronal density as it is that regional neuronal density can
affect behaviors. If one interprets the data as indicating that the INAH3 of
male homosexuals is smaller than that of male heterosexuals, one still does
not know whether that is a cause of homosexuality or a result of it. Indeed, Breedlove (1997) has shown that the density
and size of certain neurons in rat spinal ganglia depend on the frequency of
sexual intercourse. In this case, the behavior was affecting the neurons.
Fifth, even if a difference in INAH3 does exist, there is no evidence that
the difference has anything to do with sexuality. Sixth, these studies do not
indicate when such differences (if they exist) emerge. The question of
whether differences among the heterosexual male, female, and homosexual male
INAH3 occur during embryonic development, shortly after birth, during the
first few years of life, during adolescence, or at some other time was not
addressed. In 1993, a correlation was made between
a particular DNA sequence on the X chromosome and a particular subgroup of
male homosexuals: homosexual men who had a homosexual brother. Out of 40
pairs of homosexual brothers wherein one brother had inherited a particular
region of the X chromosome from his mother, the other brother had also
inherited this region in 33 cases (Hamer et al. 1993). One would have expected
both brothers to have done so in only 20 cases, on average. Again, this is
only a statistical concordance, and one that could be coincidental. Moreover,
the control (the incidence of the same marker in the "nonhomosexual" males of these families) was not
reported, and the statistical bias of the observations has been called into
question, especially since other laboratories have not been able to repeat
the result (Risch et al. 1993; Marshall 1995). More recent studies (Hu et al. 1995; Rice et al. 1999) found little or no increase
in the incidence of this DNA sequence when homosexual men were compared to
their nonhomosexual brothers. Hu and colleagues
concluded that this sequence is "neither necessary nor sufficient for a
homosexual orientation." Thus, despite the reports of these studies in
the public media, no "gay gene" has been found. Genes encode RNAs and proteins, not behaviors. While genes may bias
behavioral outcomes, we have no evidence for their "controlling"
them. The observance of people with schizophrenia, or people whose
personalities change radically after a religious conversion or a traumatic
experience, indicates that a single genotype can support a wide range of
personalities. This is certainly a problem with any definition of a
"homosexual phenotype," since people can alternate between
homosexual and heterosexual behavior, and the definition of what is
homosexual behavior differs between cultures (see Carroll and Wolpe 1996).
Thus, whether homosexual desires are formed by genes within the nucleus, by
sex hormones during fetal development, or by experiences after birth is still
an open question. *The terms estrogen
and estradiol are often used
interchangeably. However, estrogen refers to a class of steroid hormones
responsible for establishing and maintaining specific female characteristics.
Estradiol is one of these hormones, and in most
mammals (including humans), it is the most potent of the estrogens. |
two
areas of the brain known to regulate hormone secretion and reproductive
behavior (![[blacksquare, square, filled]](ref26e_files/image017.gif){kind=small}
