One of the big, and oftentimes highly contested arguments in regard to the LGBT community is that children can be born homosexual. While there is consensus within the LGBT community and its allies, many disagree for one reason or another, sometimes religious, sometimes scientific, sometimes both.
It’s a topic that has been argued extensively, with both sides offering proof and testimonies. Some homosexuals stating that they knew they were attracted to people of the same sex from a very young age, and others offering up people who have discontinued homosexuality for happy heterosexual relationships. At the center of it all is no scientific proof that a “gay gene” exists, despite years of trying to find it. Regardless, saying that homosexuality is a choice has been something of a taboo string of words that could land you with “social pariah” status.
However, according to a new report published in The New Atlantis, “Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological and Social Sciences,” there is strong evidence that it’s time to disregard the social pressures on this topic, and put the “born this way” myth to bed. The study itself was reported on by Mary Rice Hasson, and Theresa Farnan at The Federalist in great detail, and I highly suggest you read the whole article.
“This report is about science and medicine, nothing more and nothing less,” the lead author, Mayer, writes. A “sober assessment of the science” led the authors to decry the “great chasm” between “public discourse” and “what science has shown” about sexual orientation and gender identity, particularly among children. Indeed, the report indicates that many of our prevailing cultural narratives and health-care practices regarding the LGBT population have little or no sound scientific basis.
The findings, in summary, state that homosexuality and transgenderism are far more complex than just a gene, and that there are so many factors that play into someone’s sexual preferences.
“The understanding of sexual orientation as an innate, biologically fixed property of human beings—the idea that people are ‘born that way’—is not supported by scientific evidence…Genes constitute only one of the many key influences on behavior in addition to environmental influences, personal choices, and interpersonal experiences.”
And later…
The view that “homosexuality or heterosexuality is in any given person unchangeable and determined entirely apart from choices, behaviors, life experiences, and social contexts…is not a view that is well-supported by research…Sexual orientation may be quite fluid.” An “ambiguous” term, “sexual orientation” may refer to one or more measurable dimensions: “attractions, behaviors, identity” and “belonging to a certain community.”
The claims of gender and sexual fluidity has been pervasive, especially within the LGBT community, for a few years now, stating that anyone can be homosexual or transgendered. While some within the LGBT community state that this is because gender and sexuality are social constructs – an absurd theory destroyed by biology itself – the fact is that their claims are correct, they’ve just been saying “fluid” where the rest of the world would call it “choice.”
This throws a wrench into the gears of a lot of talking points and plans put forth by activist groups and our current administration. This includes coverage by Obamacare for unnecessary surgeries that the report says are not a cure at all.
An ideological partnership among LGBT organizations, the progressive medical establishment, and the Obama administration has used erroneous narratives about sexuality and gender, based on thin science, to advance their policy agendas. (Expanding coverage for transgender surgeries under the Affordable Care Act, along with current pressure on states to extend coverage for assisted reproductive technology to “infertile” same-sex couples are recent examples.)
This new report gives us language and authority to push back, as it challenges these false narratives, and by extension, the policy protocols that rely on them. Although it’s impossible, in one column, to analyze the many policies implicated in the Left’s false narratives around sexuality and gender, we offer a few examples below, focused on children.
It should be noted that the report itself says that there are in fact gaps, and that further study is definitely needed to fish out the whole truth so that science can fill in the blanks. This report itself has no new original research, but instead, compiles the findings done on the subject so far. Thus the authors of the study urge for more scientific study.
That said, the compiled report does make it clear that there is little reason to believe homosexuality and transgenderism is a genetic condition that individuals don’t have a choice in.
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