www.pbs.org...

What might be the origin of biological differences underlying male sexual preference? In 1993 Dean Hamer and his colleagues at the National Cancer Institute discovered a preliminary but nevertheless tantalizing clue.[9] Hamer began his painstaking search for a genetic contribution to sexual behavior by studying the rates of homosexuality among male relatives of seventy-six known gay men. He found that the incidence of homosexual preference in these family members was strikingly higher (13.5 percent) than the rate of homosexuality among the whole sample (2 percent). When he looked at the patterns of sexual orientation among these families, he discovered more gay relatives on the maternal side. Homosexuality seemed, at least, to be passed from generation to generation through women.

Maternal inheritance could be explained if there was a gene influencing sexual orientation on the X chromosome, one of the two human sex chromosomes that bear genes determining the sex of offspring.[10] Men have both X and Y chromosomes, while women have two X chromosomes. A male sex-determining gene, called SRY, is found on the Y chromosome. Indeed, the Y chromosome is the most obvious site for defining male sexuality since it is the only one of the forty-six human chromosomes to be found in men alone. The SRY gene is the most likely candidate both to turn on a gene that prevents female development and to trigger testosterone production. Since the female has no Y chromosome, she lacks this masculinizing gene. In forty pairs of homosexual brothers, Hamer and his team looked for associations between the DNA on the X chromosome and the homosexual trait. They found that thirty-three pairs of brothers shared the same five X chromosomal DNA "markers," or genetic signatures, at a region near the end of the long arm of the X chromosome designated Xq28.[11] The possibility that this observation could have occurred by chance was only 1 in 10,000....




What research into human sexuality, then, lies ahead? Dean Hamer has repeated his initial work among male homosexuals in an entirely new group of families and has included a much-needed analysis of women. He has also compared the frequency of the Xq28 marker among pairs of gay siblings and their heterosexual brothers, important control data that he did not acquire the first time around. This work has been submitted to the journal Nature Genetics. Two other teams--one recently formed at the National Institutes of Health and a Canadian group that has reached some preliminary results--are attempting to replicate Hamer's initial findings. All Hamer will say about his latest data is that they have not discouraged him from continuing with his project.

To track down and sequence the DNA from one or more relevant genes at Xq28, from a total of about two hundred candidates, seems an almost insuperable task. To read the molecular script of DNA involves deciphering millions of constituent elements. Moreover, each gene will have to be studied individually and many more pairs of gay brothers will be needed to achieve this goal.



With such partisan pressures dominating the future of the research agenda, the circulation of uninformed opinions couched in scholarly prose is a cause for anxiety. In an otherwise superb and iconoclastic critique of the history of heterosexuality, Jonathan Katz ends with a sweeping and badly informed declaration:

Biological determinism is misconceived intellectually, as well as politically loathsome...Contrary to today's bio-belief, the heterosexual/homosexual binary is not in nature, but is socially constructed, therefore deconstructable....


It is true that the research of Hamer and LeVay presents technical and conceptual difficulties and that their preliminary findings obviously need replication or refutation. Yet their work represents a genuine epistemological break away from the past's rigid and withered conceptions of sexual preference. The pursuit of understanding about the origins of human sexuality --the quest to find an answer to the question, What does it mean to be gay and/or straight?--offers the possibility of eliminating what can be the most oppressive of cultural forces, the prejudiced social norm.

memes.org...


The Human Genome Project was created in a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, on the Private Estate belonging to John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. The Dulles Boys had a claim to fame in that they were primary corporate attorney and earth-movers and shakers for John D Rockefellers..Standard Oil Cartel.




John Dulles was also the attorney for IG Farben in the US. IG Farben did mfgr the gas that killed the Jews in the camps. It's also possible that the "Beetle-shaped" gas Pellet used in the death camps..was actually manufactured in Niagara, New York..by a company called "Degrauss"...but I'm sure no one believes zorro. The "Gas" pellet was never made for Human Consumption. It was made, on the banks of Niagara Falls for use in the "Gold Mining" industry. How ironic..so many "Goldsmiths murdered by Golden Chemistry"!

Originally posted by skeptic1
reply to post by Mercuryae

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I am no scientist, and I don't know the answer to those questions. I just looked up the research.

I have gay friends, male and female. Some of the women are as girly-girly as can be. Some of the men are more men's-men than my boyfriend.

People are people and we are what we are. And, I think the world would be a much better place if we just accepted that and quit trying to disect everything. It just gives me a headache......