Sexuality 'hard-wired' before birth?

Findings by a team of University of California, Los Angeles researchers

suggest homosexuality isn't a choice.

The UCLA scientists discovered 54 genes in mice they say indicate sexual

identity is hard-wired into the brain before birth and the development of the sex

organs.

According to the research published in the latest edition of the journal

Molecular Brain Research, the genes are produced in different amounts in

male and female brains before being influenced by hormones. Specifically, 18

of the genes are produced at higher levels in male brains and 36 are produced

at higher levels in female brains.

Historically, the hormones estrogen and testosterone were thought by

scientists to call the sexuality shots.

"Our findings may explain why we feel male or female, regardless of our

actual anatomy," lead UCLA researcher, Eric Vilain, a professor of human

genetics, urology and pediatrics at UCLA, said in a statement.

While stressing the study was "not about finding the gay gene," Vilain said some of the 54 genes might explain homosexual behavior. Additionally, he said the research brings better understanding to transexuals and offers a tool for gender assignment of babies born with ambiguous genitalia.

"These discoveries lend credence to the idea that being transgender –
feeling that one has been born into the body of the wrong sex –
is a state of mind," he said.

WorldNetDaily columnist Judith Reisman, president of the Institute for Media Education and author of "Kinsey, Crimes & Consequences," told WorldNetDaily she smells a political agenda behind the UCLA study, as there was with three earlier ones promoted as scientific breakthroughs "proving" homosexuals are born, not made. Reisman calls the genetic studies "an outrageous farce" and said each had been repudiated after grabbing big headlines. She said one of the studies' researchers was even exposed as having also written promotional articles for pedophile publications.

Indeed, in an interview with the Edmonton Journal, Vilain gave the UCLA

research a pro-homosexual spin, putting it in the context of the contentious debate over "gay" marriage and other "rights" sought by the homosexual community.

"If it's not a choice, you can't have the typical conservative argument that

says you choose this lifestyle so you have to bear the consequences," Vilain

told the Canadian paper. "If you can't do anything about it, therefore you should

have all the rights to be integrated into society and have the same rights as

heterosexuals in terms of marriage and the rights to inheritance."

"My question of all of these so-called discoveries is where in the genetic

findings do they explain the early-child sexual abuse, which they know is

predominant?" Reisman said, adding the political motivation behind the

"genetic and unchangeable" theory actively promoted by "gay" activists is to

cover up abuse by suggesting it is consensual sex.

"If we admit homosexuality is not genetic and that it's created by

experiences, then we're talking about mass child-sex abuse," Reisman told

WorldNetDaily. "And that would prompt questions of where are all the arrests

of homosexual adult abusers, just as we've had arrests of heterosexual adult

abusers?"

Reisman and other critics of homosexuality, including former "gays,"

contend homosexuality is a choice and that environment – particularly the "gay" rights lobby and child abuse – prompts a person's choosing to practice homosexuality.

"No one is born homosexual; it has everything to do with one's childhood,

and complete change is possible," contends Stephen Bennett, a former

promiscuous "gay" who has written columns for WorldNetDaily.

WorldNetDaily reported a 2001 study conducted by Robert Spitzer, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, republished in the current issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior demonstrated some "gays" are capable of becoming "predominantly" heterosexual through reorientation psychotherapy.

According to the findings, all 143 men and 57 women who claimed to have switched their homosexual preferences said the therapy altered their view of the same sex to some extent. All reported maintaining the change for at least five years.

"The current, politically correct view is that this therapy never works. I think it doesn't work a lot of the time but in some people it does," said Spitzer. "I do believe that people who are bothered by their homosexuality have a right to have this therapy."

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, an organization dedicated to providing psychological understanding of the cause, treatment and behavior patterns associated with homosexuality, points out no researchers claim the orientation is simply genetic. Only correlations between genetic structure and behavioral traits are found.

NARTH maintains the correlations get trumpeted as scientific breakthroughs on the "gay" gene front by journalists who lose sight of the distinction between correlation and causality. An illustration of this, according to NARTH, is a British study published in the October issue of Behavioral Neuroscience that claims to find contributing biological factors for homosexual development. Even reorientation theorists, or advocates of psychotherapy to treat homosexuality, generally agree that biological factors set the stage for feelings of differentness from their own biological sex.

Yet an article in Health Day News promoted on the Internet by Yahoo mischaracterized the study's scope and findings with the headline, "Startling Study Says People May Be Born Gay."

Vilain said he and his UCLA colleagues believe genes, hormones and environment collectively shape the development of sexuality.

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