Myths and Fact about homosexuality

Myth 1: Animals do it too!!

Fact: Yes, they do. Monkeys have also been observed to eat their young, spiders eat their mates, other animals kill their young (or other youngs) to enhance the lives of other animals or enhance the chance their other young survive. The original mammals would eat their children if it meant saving their lives. Is it natural for people to eat their young too?

Myth 2: They where born that way

Fact: I made a parody of that song once......

Anyway. The majority of studies arguing a genetic born that way factor are highly flawed, many had small sample sizes, non random samples, and sometimes mis-classification of their subjects. These fatal flaws destroy the heart of the scientific evidence of the theory. As studys point out:

1. Critical review shows evidence favoring a biologic [genetic] theory to be lacking. ... In fact, the current trend may be to underrate the explanatory power of extant psychological models.  ¹

2.  [After saying gene theory is laughable] In contrast, out results support the hypothesis that less gendered socialization in early childhood and preadolescence shapes subsequent same sex  romantic preferences. ²

3. The chief causal factor [of homosexuality] is the affect of anxiety, which inhibits standard stimulation and compels the 'ego action system in the individual' to bring forth an altered scheme of stimulation as a 'reparative adjustment'. Both the inhibitory and the reparative processes begin far back in early childhood, leading up to the picture which we encounter in the adult.  ³

 Myth 3: Well... 10% of people are gay, some study said that!

Fact: That study has found to be highly flawed and has been discredited by other analysis, and its numbers have not been reproduced. And he also said anyone who engaged in homosexual acts in teenage years, but are self identified as straights in their adult lives, he classified them as "gay". Based on his own results, only 4% of the population was gay for their whole lifetime.  ⁴  

^{Newer surveys disprove this estimate. All of these surveys use 3 points to estimate homosexuality accurately: 1. self Identification, 2. behavior, 3. and attractions. Based on data, the number of people who have been exclusively homosexual on all three of those specifications is extremely low: 0.6% of men and 0.2% of women. 5}           

That's enough of that, right? Only myth people care about is myth 2. Lets expand more studies!! (all quotes) 

1. Although the popular perception of homosexuality has been that, at least in men, homosexuality is caused by biological factors, the most current and best scientific evidence appears to show that at most homosexuality is only influenced by biology in a predisposing way. The research efforts which have attempted to determine a biological cause for homosexual attraction have failed.   

Source: Stony Olsen, Homosexuality: Innate and Immutable?," Regent University Law Review (2002)

2. While some authors have speculated about the existence of 'genes for homosexuality,' genes in themselves cannot directly specify any behavior or cognitive schema. Instead, genes direct a particular pattern of RNA synthesis which in turn specifies the production of a particular protein.

There are necessarily many intervening pathways between a gene and a specific behavior and even more intervening variables between a gene and a pattern that involves both thinking and behaving.

The term 'homosexual gene' is, therefore, without meaning, unless one proposes that a particular gene, perhaps through a hormonal mechanism, organizes the brain specifically to support a homosexual orientation.

Source: William Byne "Science and Belief: Psychobiological Research on Sexual Orientation"Journal of Homosexuality (1995)

3. It's important to stress what I didn't find. I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn't show that gay men are born that way, the most common mistake people make in interpreting my work. Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain.

Source: Simon LeVay "Sexual Brain" Discover (1994)

4. Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard who focused on identical twins, non-identical twins, non-adopted siblings and adopted siblings... found a 52% concordance rate for the identical twins which means that for every homosexual twin, the chances were about 50% that his twin would also be homosexual... If there is something in the genetic code that makes an individual homosexual, why did not all of the identical twins become homosexual since they have the exact same genetic endowment?... Some comparative data on twin studies [are] the concordance rate for identical twins on measures of extroversion is 50%, religiosity is 50%, divorce is 52%, racial prejudice and bigotry is 58%. From the Bailey and Pillard study one has to conclude that environmental influences play a strong role in the development of homosexuality.

Source: Dean Byrd, "Born That Way? Facts and Fiction About Homosexuality," Meridian Magazine (2004)

5. Bailey and Pillard found that the incidence of homosexuality in the adopted brothers of homosexuals (11%) was much higher than recent estimates for the rate of homosexuality in the population (1 to 5%). In fact, it was equal to the rate for non-twin biological brothers. This study clearly challenges a simple genetic hypothesis and strongly suggests that environment contributes significantly to sexual orientation...

Indeed, perhaps the major finding of these heritability studies is that despite having all of their genes in common and having prenatal and postnatal environments as close to identical as possible, approximately half of the identical twins were nonetheless discordant for orientation. This finding underscores just how little is known about the origins of sexual orientation. 

Source: William Byne, "The Biological Evidence Challenged" Scientific American (1994) 

Special thanks to:

Although many of these studies I have read through PDF files on google, many of them I got from Pro Con.org (I had other quotes but used PRO CON.orgs quotes as they where better) [http://borngay.procon.org/]

Not all of my quotes where PROCON.orgs though. A few where from the FRC's "10 myths about homosexuality". 

But as we can see, no one is "born gay".

  ¹  Dean H. Hamer "A Linkage Between DNA Markers on the X chromosome and Male sexual orientation" Science (1993)
  ^{2   Peter S. Bearman and Hannah Bruckner "Opposite-sex twins and Adolescent Same Sex Attraction" American Journal of Sociology (2003)
  3} Sandor Rado "A Critical Examination of the Concept of Bisexuality,"  Psychosomatic Medicine (1940)

  4  His model was created in 1948: Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell P. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin "Sexual behavior in the human male" Philadelphia: Saunders (1948) 

  ⁵ Laumann, Edward O. "The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States." Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994.