"Is sexual orientation determined at birth?"
The PRO and CON statements below give a five minute introduction to the debate on the origins of sexual orientation.
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| PRO Born Gay | CON Born Gay |
| 1. Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation | |
PRO: "Although all people in all societies with rare exceptions are socialized to be heterosexual, the predictable, universal appearance of homosexual persons, despite socialization into heterosexual patterns of behavior suggest not only that homosexual orientation is biologically based but that sexual orientation itself is also biologically derived." -- Frederick Whitam, Ph.D. |
CON: "What is clear, however, is that the scientific attempts to demonstrate that homosexual attraction is biologically determined have failed. The major researchers now prominent in the scientific arena-themselves gay activists-have in fact arrived at such conclusions.
There is no support in the scientific research for the conclusion that homosexuality is biologically determined."
-- A. Dean Byrd, Ph.D. |
2. Parenting Styles and Homosexuality |
PRO: "For years, psychology and psychiatry have bandied around theories that homosexuality is caused by parental personality types - the dominant female, the weak male - or by the absence of same-gender role models. Those theories are no longer accepted within psychiatry and psychology." -- Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) |
CON: "A good relationship with the same-sex parent meets a child's psychological needs for love, worth and affirmation as a boy or a girl. Where there is a lack of affirmation or even rejection, these legitimate needs are not met.
If a girl's femininity is unaffirmed, she may come to believe that she is unacceptable to her mother and therefore to women in general. In an attempt to fill the hole in her heart, she may look to other women for acceptance, perhaps even hoping (at a subconscious level) to gain femininity by association. Puberty later eroticizes these emotional needs, adding a sexual dimension." -- New Directions Ministries |
| 3. Genetic Origins of Sexual Orientation | |
PRO: "Our best guess is that multiple genes, potentially interacting with environmental influences, explain differences in sexual orientation.
Our study helps to establish that genes play an important role in determining whether a man is gay or heterosexual."
-- Brian Mustanski, Ph.D. |
CON: "There is not any evidence that shows that homosexuality is 'genetic', and none of the research itself claims there is. Only the press and, sadly, certain researchers do - when speaking in sound bites to the public.
Homosexuality may run in families but you get viruses from your parents, too, and some bad habits. Not everything that is familial is innate or genetic." -- Jeffrey Satinover, M.D. |
| 4. Childhood Sexual Experiences | |
PRO: "While there are different theories about how the sexual orientation develops, experts in the human sexuality field do not believe that premature sexual experiences play a significant role in late adolescent or adult sexual orientation." -- National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization (NOMSV) |
CON: "[M]en who sexually molest boys all too often lead their victims into homosexuality and pedophilia. The evidence indicates that a high percentage of homosexuals and pedophiles were themselves sexually abused as children." -- Timothy Dailey, Ph.D. |
| 5. Hormonal Origins of Sexual Orientation | |
PRO: "People discover rather than choose their sexual interests. The process of discovery typically begins before the onset of puberty and is associated with an increase in the secretion of sex hormones from the adrenal glands. However, the determination of the direction of sexual interest, in the sense of preferences for the same or opposite sex, are earlier. These preferences, although not manifest until much later in development, appear to be caused by the neural organizational effects of intrauterine hormonal events." -- Vernon L. Quinsey, Ph.D. |
CON: "Studies of men and women who experienced prenatal defects in hormone metabolism have not found a concurrent increase in homosexual behavior.
Overall, the data do not support a causal connection between hormones and human sexual orientation." -- Amy Banks, M.D. |
| 6. Homosexuality in Nature | |
PRO: "On every continent, animals of the same sex seek each other out and have probably been doing so for millions of years. They court each other, using intricate and beautiful mating dances that are the result of eons of evolution. Males caress and kiss each other, showing tenderness and affection toward one another rather than just hostility and aggression. Females form long-lasting pair-bonds - or maybe just meet briefly for sex, rolling in passionate embraces or mounting one another. Animals of the same sex build nests and homes together, and many homosexual pairs raise young without members of the opposite sex...Amid this incredible variety of different patterns, one thing is certain: the animal kingdom is most definitely not just heterosexual."
-- Bruce Bagemihl, Ph.D. |
CON: "The animal kingdom is no place for man to seek a blueprint for human morality...The fact that man has a body and sensitive life in common with animals does not mean he is strictly an animal. Nor does it mean that he is a half-animal. Man's rationality pervades the wholeness of his nature so that his sensations, instincts and impulses are not purely animal but have that seal of rationality which characterizes them as human." -- American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property |
| 7. Homosexuality and Mental Health | |
PRO: "Psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals agree that homosexuality is not an illness, mental disorder or an emotional problem.
Over 35 years of objective, well-designed scientific research has shown that homosexuality, in and [of] itself, is not associated with mental disorders or emotional or social problems.
When researchers examined data about these people who were not in therapy, the idea that homosexuality was a mental illness was quickly found to be untrue."
-- American Psychological Association |
CON: "My primary question is: why isn't homosexuality considered a disorder on the basis of its medical consequences alone?...
Homosexuality involves a life-threatening behavior with an addictive component which has serious health implications...
Very simply, it seems, an objective person just looking at homosexuality's lifestyle consequences would have to classify it as some kind of pathology." -- Kathleen Melonakos |
| 8. Anatomical Differences Between Hetero and Homosexuals | |
PRO: "A growing body of empirical literature suggests that the brains of gay males are less masculinized than those of heterosexual males, reflected in visual-spatial task performance - a measure of cerebral masculinazation and one in which heterosexual males usually surpass females.
Several studies report that the cognitive performance of gay males is more typical of heterosexual females than heterosexual males.
Furthermore, the brain waves of gay males while performing verbal and spatial tasks are more similar to heterosexual females than males or significantly different from both." -- Kenneth Cohen, Ph.D. |
CON: "Scientists have barely been able to distinguish between the microstructure of male and female brains in adults, let alone between male homosexual and female brains. Attempts to prove such a similarity have been unconvincing. Male and female brains appear identical at birth, and the only consistently replicable difference, from about age two or three, is their size. Most of the development of the human brain takes place after birth in response to stimuli, learning, and experience. The brain changes so much in response to learning and repeated human behaviors that this could probably account for any differences between homosexual and heterosexual brains which might be ultimately discovered." -- Neil Whitehead, Ph.D. |
| 9. "Reparative" or "Conversion" Therapy | |
PRO: "It is highly doubtful that the so-called 'conversion therapies' and 'reparative therapies' are actually able to change a person's sexual orientation. Claims about their success are based on scattered anecdotal reports, not on rigorous scientific studies that have been subjected to review by other scientists."
-- Gregory M. Herek, Ph.D. |
CON: "This study tested the hypothesis that some individuals whose sexual orientation is predominantly homosexual can, with some form of reparative therapy, become predominantly heterosexual.
The majority of participants gave reports of change from a predominantly or exclusively homosexual orientation before therapy to a predominantly or exclusively heterosexual orientation in the past year...
Thus, there is evidence that change in sexual orientation following some form of reparative therapy does occur in some gay men and lesbians." -- Robert Spitzer, M.D. |
| 10. Christian Perspectives on Homosexuality | |
PRO: "Where the Bible mentions homosexual behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether that Biblical judgment is correct. The Bible sanctioned slavery as well, and nowhere attacked it as unjust. Are we prepared to argue today that slavery is biblically justified?" -- Walter Wink |
CON: "Homosexuality may not have been mentioned by Jesus - many other sexual variations were not, either. But He could not have spelled out the standard for sexual expression more clearly: male to female, joined as God intended them to be. He cannot be assumed to have approved of anything less." -- Joe Dallas |
| PRO Born Gay | CON Born Gay |