Is Being Gay Hereditary/Genetic?

[TomBrooks]

Is being Gay a genetic trait?

All gay persons parents, grandparents and their entire ancestral lineage engaged in heterosexual sex. How could being gay be a genetic trait?

[diebitter]

Superficially this is a stupid question. However, if gayness is inherited, it could be by being a recessive gene or set of genes. Recessive genes means they only come to the fore when they meet the same recessive genes in pairing. A bit like blue eyes, or blood groups etc.

However, if they were strictly genetic and were, in all other respects, neutral (eg having a gay gene didn't confer better hunting skills, or better abilities to survice), there'd be powerful evolutionary forces at work to cut out the gayness (simply put, you don't breed, you don't get in the next generation).

It's possible gayness could survive if carrying the recessive gave the carrier better skills at carrying on into the next generation. Say having the recessive made you superfit, then those carrying the recessive would breed more successfully in the long run than the others.

This is speculative and off the top of my head, but there are bound to be some good works on this somewhere.

Also, this should be in SMP not OOT.

[soko]

100% social conditioning.

[mrkilla]

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100% social conditioning.

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but if it helps you sleep at night to think that you were born that way , more power to you.

[chesspain]

[ QUOTE ]
Is being Gay a genetic trait?

All gay persons parents, grandparents and thier entire ancestral lineage engaged in heterosexual sex. How could being gay be a genetic trait?

[/ QUOTE ]


Being "genetic" is not the same as being hereditary. The latter means that you specifically received something from or through one or both of your parents. The former simply implies that it is something that you were born with--and "genetic" is probably not even the right term, because it implies that whatever we are speaking about is due to your specific genetic coding.

My understanding is that sexual preference is set at a very early age, possibly even by the time of birth. However, a lot happens from the moment of fertilization through the time a child is three or four years old.

I think the best way to summarize this is to say that for most gay people their sexual preference isn't really a choice.

[peterchi]

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100% social conditioning.

[/ QUOTE ]
Unless you're being sarcastic, I'm going to have to go ahead and say that this is a really ignorant statement.

[diebitter]

Given homosexuality is exhibited in many species - in the sense that activities that primarily are for sexual activity such as 'presenting' and 'mounting' occur between male/male and female/female - then 100% is very likely to be incorrect.

[peterchi]

Could also be incomplete penetrance. i.e. not everyone who have a genetic susceptibility for cancer gets cancer.

And along those lines, homosexuality is most likely due to some gene x environment interaction, not unlike just about everything else about us.

[imitation]

Only if you are [censored] your dad in the ass.

[evil_twin]

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100% social conditioning.

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Yes because those gay dogs and other animals are so socially conditioned to be gay.