lifeonq.com

Your Momma Made You Gay (or Bisexual)

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, science has given us a new “You might be….” clue of queerness. A new study by researchers at the University of Padua in Italy uncovered the evidence, leading to genetic markers for bisexuality among men, according to a report published in The New Scientist.

• If your momma was a bit of a ho, you might be a bisexual man.
• If you have lots of brothers and sisters, you might be a bisexual man.
• If your mom’s sisters created enough cousins for you to fill a fundamentalist Mormon compound, you might be a bisexual (or gay) man.

That’s because bisexual men may be motivated by the same gene that makes their mothers really, really into guys. It’s what scientists have dubbed, “hyper-heterosexuality.”

Earlier studies by the same Italian team, led by Dr. Camperio Ciani, suggested that genes influencing sexual orientation in men also make women more likely to reproduce. The previous research showed that female relatives of homosexual men tend to have more children. That implies that the genes on the X chromosome are responsible for male homosexuality. Now the Italian team has shown that the same holds true for bisexuality in a paper published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.  Their findings showed that the mothers, grandmothers and maternal aunts of bisexual and gay men had more children than those same relatives of heterosexual men.  The presence of the unidentified genetic factor on the X chromosome affects a woman’s attitudes toward men.  While it would not impact her fertility, it would make it more likely for her to have more children. And it would make it more likely that her sons and nephews would be really, really into guys too.

California neuroscientist Simon LeVay (a somewhat controversial figure) weighed in on the research.  The “hyper-heterosexuality” label was his addition to the discussion.  In The New Scientist, LeVay suggested that the research from Italy could explain how homosexual behavior is passed on through the generations.  Apparently, some scientists assume that homosexuals don’t naturally procreate.  Apparently they aren’t familiar with closet cases, late bloomers, Sen. Larry Craig and turkey basters.

Gay on the Brain

Scientists have proven that gay men are like straight women, and lesbians are like hetero men. It’s not that my preference for pants gave it away, or my friend David’s girlish screams upon encountering a spider. No, apparently researchers in Sweden got inside our heads and saw similarities between the brains of homo sapiens who are oriented toward their same sex and their opposite sexes in the hetero world. A study by researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm subjected 90 healthy people to the noisy confines of an MRI machine and PET scans, and discovered that lesbians and straight men had larger right hemispheres than gay men and straight women. The study was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Further tests found additional evidence in the nerve connections of the amygdala, that part of the brain responsible for our “fight or flight” reactions and “orientation.” In an article by BBC News, Dr. Qazi Rahman, a lecturer in cognitive biology at the University of London, explained that the similarities in nerve connections among the oppositely-oriented sexes were significant because of the amygdala’s role in “orientating” (that’s British for “orienting”) the rest of the brain in response to an emotional stimulus, whether directing the brain during a “fight or flight” response, or when a potential mate comes to our brain’s attention. I find this interesting, because my response to a potential mate often seems to come from a completely different anatomical area.

Dr. Rahman further asserted that these differences could not be attributed to nurture, but more likely occurred naturally in the womb. “As far as I’m concerned there is no argument anymore - if you are gay, you are born gay,” he told the BBC.

Well then, that settles it. Swedish and British scientists agree: it’s all in our heads.