The Born Gay Theory
The ‘born gay’ theory really began to be embraced during the early 1990s as a result of the findings by three scientists alleging genetic and biological influences of sexual orientation. Each of the studies gained great headlines by suggesting homosexuality was possibly inborn. It is interesting to note that each of these three scientists were also homosexual. Although we do not discount their findings just because they are homosexual, it may reveal a bias.
At about the same time, in 1990, an international, collaborative research project set out to map and understand human genes. All our genes together are known as our “genome”. The research program was named the Human Genome Project and was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.
In 1999, after nearly ten years of systematic learning by the Human Genome Project, Canadian scientists at the Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences of the University of Western Ontario attempted to confirm if earlier theories of a genetic basis for sexual orientation were correct. Up until that point there had not been a duplication of any major study’s finding on this area of study, including the 1993 report by Dr. Hamer of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Hamer had hypothesized that since there are a great number of homosexual uncles and cousins on the mother’s side that the mother was the one who carried the genetic markers of homosexuality on the X chromosome that she passed down to her children. He analyzed the DNA of forty families that produced two gay sons and concluded that 80% of the time the gay brothers shared certain genetic markers on the q28 region on the arm of the X chromosome. Dr. Hamer was hopeful that the Human Genome Project was going to discover many genetic links to human sexual behavior. [i] One significant problem with Dr. Hamer’s study, though, was his failure to check whether the heterosexual brothers from those families shared the markers in question.[ii]
The Canadian scientists came to a different conclusion than Dr. Hamer. The Ontario Team concluded, "...our study was larger than that of Hamer et al" and "...found no evidence of linkage of sexual orientation to Xq28."[iii] They disproved the validity of this earlier theory about a “gay gene.”
In 2003, the Human Genome Project finished. Since then a genetic predisposition to homosexuality has not been found despite the fact that we know so much about the genome. So in other words, if a scientist pulled ten random people out of a crowd and examined their DNA, scientists would not be able to classify who was homosexual. The only way that one would know who was gay or not was if they shared their sexual history. The use of scientific inquiry is inadequate at identifying homosexual people.
In fact, pro-gay organizations are well aware of these findings. Recently, I was perusing the web sites of pro-gay organizations to determine their spin on these conclusions. I did not find even one reference by these advocacy groups to a single scientific study or scientist that substantiates gay people are ‘born gay.’ What I found on their sites was a variety of answers to the question, why people are gay, which include: “No one really knows…”, “Experts suggest there are biological, environmental and societal contributors” or “Why ask why?”
The reason this question cannot be answered by scientists is that scientific inquiry is inadequate at identifying homosexual people. God is not in the business of making homosexuals.
[i] Dean H. Hamer et al., “A Linkage Between DNA Markers on the X Chromosome and Male Sexual Orientation,” Science 16 July 1993: 321-326.
[iii] George Rice et al., “Male Homosexuality: Absence of Linkage to Microsatellite Markers at Xq28,”
Science 23 April 1999: 665-667.
