Homosexuality

[Joe Republic]

Here's a section taken from one of my old Psych textbooks from my college days.  Enjoy.

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[Joe Republic]

Anyone who claims homosexuality a choice doesn't have a brain. You can't control to what/whom you're attracted to.

Did I ever "choose" to be straight? I don't recall.

Someone who is straight can choose not to engage in heterosexual activity, however.  That person's heterosexual preference does not to be acted upon.

Choosing not to act on your innate sexual preference doesn't remove the sexual desire.

Why do so many people seem to think that heterosexuality/homosexuality/whatever is determined by who you actually have sex with, rather than who you want to have sex with?

[Joe Republic]

Harking back to the excerpt from a Psych textbook I posted back on Page 4, one of the emerging causation theories concerns hormonal disruption in the womb.  As we know, fetal development is an incredibly delicate process, dependent on perfectly coordinated timing.  If just one tiny thing happens differently, or not at all, it could very well have massive psychological and/or physiological repercussions throughout the person's eventual life.

The fetal disruption theory therefore posits that the delicate process of hormonal masculinization of male fetuses (since every fetus starts out as female) can sometimes take a different course, therefore leading to a differently sized medial anterior hypothalamus.  (Hetero men usually have more tissue here than homosexual men, who have roughly the same amount as females.)

So the jury is still out on whether fetal hormonal disruption is genetic in origin, or if there's a 'gay gene' at all.  Rather, it seems likely that male homosexuality is more of a biological 'accident' that took place in the womb.  A lot like cleft palates, if you'll pardon the comparison.

[Joe Republic]

Funny, Polnut and I posted much the same thing within three hours of each other.