Here Today... Gone To Hell!

The Science Of Sexuality (http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/68/gay_or_straight)

I think it's genes. Being straight, the thought of going gay is in no way appealing to me. Which makes me think that it definitely is not a conscious choice. I could never choose to be gay. Just like gays really can't choose to be straight.

I think who gives a shit . just let people be who they are.

IMO not genes. I'll probably get flamed for this, but I don't think nature will provide for a situation in which there is no chance for procreation. I would say situation and circumstance.

Did anybody watch the video yet?

People get born with genes the way they are, and childhood also affects the orientation...not that you can't be born with it.
So thats right, as for now there is no definite answer thats been proved.

I think genes plays a big part tho

yeah, thanks for the link.  I've read similar studies on twins before, how one child is completely straight but the other isnt, even when they are the raised in the same family, same upbringing, etc.  So it's something more than genes, environment.  A while ago, I read 'A Scanner Darkly'  (not just because Axl likes it too  :P),  and it really opened my eyes to the study of the brain. Its development affects you just as much as genes/hereditary factors.   For example, the real Rainman whose name is Kim Peek may have inherited his dad's eye color etc, but what makes him a savant is his incredibly weird brain.  His left-side and right-side are not connected as they are for everyone else! 

So being a savant was not a "lifestyle choice" for him nor did he inherit it from his parents.  you see what I mean?



It's not "no chance" - gays arent sterile like mules.  Certainly less chance, but there's millions of gay men who marry and have kids because many times it's not acceptable to come out and live an 'alternate lifestyle'.  I'm sure there are situations like this in India too.

I meant with each other. Marrying due to social stigma and having kids doesn't count.

i'm straight,but i haven't anything against gay population,but i can not understand how can two biys can make love.

But on the other hand,with gay population we will be dismisede from the earth (i think with 100%)

i think they have butt sex.

well Maybe the don't make love!!! Maybe the just fuck .

open up your mind man.. they can go anal.. and there's more to do in sex then intercourse/penetration

naah, actually, if all the women forced men to freeze there sperm then kill the men the female population could survive physically.. it might have been very lonely if they still were straight (the dildo is in most cases better then a penis :hihi:) but emotionally it could have been hard..

very interesting conversation here.. as one of the forst openly gay guys on GNR forums.lol goin back to 2002.lol but who the fuck cares, man just live life. And haters ya know what fuck off, I can care what you think about me, you should try to worry about your own damn life and how to live it and care and love about who you want than worry if I liked to get fucked ! or like fucking with other guys, ..lol some of these conversations really ..lol!

It's choice.

It is a choice to admit if you are gay. A person can be gay and stay in the closet, thus choosing to live his/her life not true to themselves.

But what the hell do I know.......

I should have made this clearer before, gays dont only have offspring due to social stigma, many of them want to be good parents and raise a child regardless of whether the child "counts" on their side as you would put it.   Both of the twins in the video can grow up to be dads, one will do it the straight way, the other can take the route that is used by straight couples when they have to find a surrogate mother.  Regardless, it all leads to procreation of human beings.

Missing my point. I didn't say that gay couples don't make good parents or that they couldn't adopt one or have one through a surrogate. My point was in opposition to the claim that sexual orientation is in one's genes and that it is decided by nature. The fact that some gay people say "I can't help being this way, I was born to be gay"  (Anne Heche comes to mind) is pure BS IMO. Being gay or not, is influenced by circumstance and somebody's personal choice.

Yeah the Anne Heche argument is a great one, seeing as the first recorded incidence of homosexuality was in Hollywood sometime in the 80s. There's absolutely no record of homosexuality in every culture throughout history.

Anyone here want to seriously claim that they chose to be straight?

If, as one of the twin kids in the video (you know the thread topic, and all....), you behave a certain way because it feels natural for you, then it's just how your brain is wired.  As I replied to SLC, the process of wiring the brain is influenced by your genes, but not entirely.  But neither is it up to you.  The environment in which the fetus' brain develops is not well understood.  What makes someone left handed/gay/a savant is dependent on how their brain is wired.  You're constrained to the binaray genes vs. chice argument, and I'm pointing out that there is something else that factors into who we are.

Perhaps. I don't know. Anyway as somebody said, it shouldn't matter.

excellent point.

As far as choosing to be gay or not, there are examples in the animal kingdom of homosexuality.  Ex, the gay penguins in the NYC zoo.  Its totally genetic.

Did they get a little too close to Greenwich Village?

All kidding aside, I think it's genetic.  It's believed that somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the world's population is gay.  Going on a typical Mendelian theory of heredity with only one variable (Tt crossed with Tt makes TT, Tt, Tt, and tt), if homosexuality is a recessive trait, then approximately 25% of the world would be gay.  Going on the Mendelian theory with two variables creating homosexuality, then it's only 6.25% gay.  But what I believe it to be is a system of co-dominance among multiple traits that would essentially create a "continuum of sexuality," the Kinsey scale essentially, where everyone is somewhere between 1 (exclusively straight) and 10 (exclusively gay) for example.

Going on a mendelian square of only two variables, here's how it would work out, approximately.

Exclusively straight: 6.25%
More straight than gay: 25%
Evenly bisexual: 37.5%
More gay than straight: 25%
Exclusively gay: 6.25%

Anyways, enough of my scientific explanations.  I think it's largely nature over nurture.  It seems a little high, but hey, who knows how many "straight" people are closeted gays either forced to cover up because of the stigma attached to homosexuality or forced to cover it up on moral/religious grounds (e.g., the militaristic father in the movie American Beauty)?  We don't know.

It's not a choice, you're either born a homosexual or you're not.

every time i see or hear about gays i think of that shirt that Bazz wore in the 80s "AIDS KILLS FAGGOTS DEAD" :rofl: thats just funny to me. Sorry it just is. Like something you'd see on south park ya know?


i say turn or burn ........in hell.

But really i don't care.  :peace:

Ever seen anybody die of AIDS? I knew (give or take) about ten guys who died of it in the early 90's.

Ugly.

no doubt man ......no doubt its an ugly disease, but i just thought that shirt was kinda funny.

how'd they get it? dirty needels or sexual?

They were all gay men for the most part, one woman.

Soul?

Like most things in life it's a complex relationship between nature and nurture.  What's most important when it comes to this age-old debate is what we can gain from the discussion.  For the vast majority of moral conservatives who deny the nature component of the equation, I feel sorry for them.  Scientific study after scientific study prove there is a genetic component involved.  It's 2007 and the faith-based fear-mongerers are alive and strong.   :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpsRRJ2308o

i love that song

That's quite a bit for the average person to see in a short time frame. Where were you hanging out?

South Tampa which has a high population of gay men. 

Watching two women having sex makes me pop a major woody--does that mean I'm part gay? I'd love to be a woman so I could rub my face in the bare naked buttocks of another woman for 12 hours.

Agreed.  Going on my theory, that would put a person somewhere in the "more straight than gay category," but more toward the straighter end of the continuum.  If that makes any sense.

For someone with so many gay friends, I am rather surprised that you used the most offensive term for gays in one of your most recent posts.

i am certain there is a proportion of homosexuals who are because of childhood emotionnal hurt and fearing the other sex or disliking the other sex.

I have enough examples in my personal life of people who like their own gender for emotionnal security and who have sex with their own gender rather than seeing a shrink to deal with why their mother was a controlling bitch or why their father was a sick bastard.

I also know paris has very well known streets where gay meet and if you look at them closely, half of them have wedding bands and you can hear some of them call their wifes from there telling them they have a meeting at 5 pm when they are really appointing a penis in a backroom.

Is this genetic ? not to me.

One of my best friends is gay and gay for everyone to see, never lied, never hurt never nothing but being attracted to men since childhood.

I do think REAL gays whatever the gender are pretty rare actually.

 I have met/ heard about guys who had turned gay seemingly? because of abusive mothers... So, yeah, there may be an original trauma. But it could also be a total coincidence and we'd like to say it's someone else's? fault because we feel powerless when we face something/someone different. We'd like to explain but there may not be any explanation and we should accept things the way? they are.

Tactful as always.  :rofl:


What are you, fuckin' loony?  Don't you know you have to choose a side? 

Seriously, though, it's both, to some extent.  Nature is the best explanation for those who truly are attracted to one gender more than the other, but I think environment is a better explanation for large scale societal shifts.  For example, the ancient Greeks were notoriously lascivious and seemed to be less concerned about gender than many other societies.  Of course, this could also act as evidence that many more of us than expected are bisexual, though we restrict our own behavior, consciously or not.   

I didn't say I had a high amount of gay friends, but lived in an area that had plenty of gay men (although I do have a gay friend or two, most of us do, if we know it or not.) Most trendy areas have a high proportion of homosexuals-and during that time I lived in a trendy area as many young people do.

Heston is a fag, and I don't feel bad saying that because he's an asshole, not a homosexual. Of course you missed my obvious sarcasm, since Heston is a chest beating, gun waiving moron, calling him a "fag" is the ultimate insult and polar opposite of who he is and what he stands for. Anybody with a brain could see he clearly isn't gay, nor was it meant as a slam against gays.

You can also be rest assured, if I did call Heston a fag in front any of my gay friends they'd laugh their ass off.

Science disagrees with you.

so yu're gay?

He just said he was didn't he?

you still can't tell after that ?

Some people have no gaydar...... :hihi:

 :hihi:

Shit now I have to clean up the coffee I just spit out ...thanks..

every 100/150 years, science proves science was wrong.

jessica i'm impresed with your comments (first twin peaks),where are you from?

Give me a break for Chrissake.

It a never ending cycle. so who care. none of use will see it .


Here you go .
(http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w273/timothywilcox/kitkat_small.jpg)

i am originally from france, although i have a british mother and a french father.
But i do have many other european " options" in my blood.. :hihi:

homosexuality has been around for CENTURIES!!!  you honestly think that the "environment" that "makes" people gay now is the same as it was centuries ago??  c'mon, thats just dumb.

and how do you explain homosexuality in nature?  Are there gay penguins b/c their mothers were mean to them?  ::)

That is the whole point of the 60 minutes article/video. People used to make these claims for years and they are finding that it is simply not the case.

I actually had a gay roommate in college, who had a straight identical twin.  So, there ya go.

That was in the video also.....

I watched the video!  Just because many seem to have commented without watching it first, doesn't mean we're ALL guilty!  ;D

I'm just pointing out that this isn't some non-existent situation, manufactured by 60 Minutes.

LOL, no I wasn't saying it that way, this time.  ;D

Just backing your life experience with it.

do you have a sloven bloods?

just a kidding

I don't watch "gay roommate" videos so I wouldn't know anything about it... Even if they feature one straight twin.

But it's an interesting question, and while I do believe it's not in someone's DNA, I also believe that it's not really a choise. Why would any gay who's in the closet just because the society around him pretty much forces him to, make that "choise"?

If it's not dna and it's not enviroment, what is it?

I didn't say it wasn't environment (don't know if your post was directed at me).

Your dna is right there from birth. All other development has variables in the equation. Somewhere, along the way, something just clicks and it's the same click that makes you wave your arms uncontrollably when you see a 50% sales on scarves (without making any generalisations). That's my scientific explanation on the subject.

If so shouldn't it be cureable? To my knowledge that isn't so.

I think it's genetics, considering you can actually see if a person is gay.

I also didn't say it was a disease. (what logic makes something that isn't genetics a disease?)

There's a lot of things that we don't know about the human development... Okay.. Maybe the 'click' was a bad way to describe. We all develop differently is what I'm saying. We don't know what makes us do the things we do. At this moment (from the evidence I've seen) there's no telling what makes a person gay. At what point the switch (or if it even is a switch but something that just developes at some part of your life) happens.

How do you explain the gayness or not being gay of the identical twins who have the exact same dna if it's genetics?

They found that a majority of the brothers and sisters of gay (identicals) twins were also gay.

I think it could be a combination of genes and enviroment. In that you can carry the gene but not necessarily 'start' it without the proper impulses. This is supported by the fact that the children of homosexuals are more often homosexuals themselves.

It's just a theory on my part, but I'm pretty certain the genes plays a part in it.

This could be true...

But it is more or less speculation. All of it. All that can be done is to narrow it with 'what it isn't'. 'till the answer's found of course. Don't know how much it matters whether it will change opinions to any directions. Some will always think that it's a defect just like everything else that isn't the exact same as eveyone else.

who cares if you are a decent person.at this point im nothing niether gay or straight.wanting no one right  now.but sometimes while drinking a hot woman wouldn't be so bad to wake  up with lol.

im pretty sure these thesis have been discarded for years ... maybe i missed some new news ... ???

What study showed this?




D has plenty of gay roommate videos, just ask.

it could be true you are in the wrong body i think.like them kids who want to be the opisit sex while at a young age.who knows maybe in genes.

I saw it on 60 minutes a year ago or so. Did some searches yesterday on google to verify.

But it's logical really, that it has to be at least partially attached to your genetics. Attraction to the opposite sex is an instinct, and no enviromental impulses can change that code.

I think the attraction is connected to one's sense of smell. Anyone looked into the science there?

Not exclusively. Science has alot of theories on the subject.

I guess that such experimentation would be hard to conduct for ethical reasons.

That's what the Chinese are for. 

To conduct the experiments, I mean...not to experiment on.

I remember reading that while flipping through the Advocate.  I was standing in a grocery line so I didnt have time to really read it, but it was describing the results of a study on attraction of women/gay men/straight men to male pheremones (sp?)   Sweat!