Still More Evidence

For years, scientists have been finding little bits of evidence that suggest that there is a lot more to someone's sexual identity than 'personal choice'.

In the early 1990s, Simon LeVay made one of the first important observations about differences in brain structure.

This small observation (and I am cautious about treating it as conclusive) blew open the whole "nature versus nurture" debate around homosexuality. LeVay's finding was one of the first things that pointed to validating the assertion that so many in the GLBT community had made for years - 'they were born that way'.

Then, in 2005, another study popped up, this one analyzing brain response to sweat. Again, not a hard-and-fast finding by any means, but another piece of evidence that suggests strongly that there are in fact differences in how brains work.

Most recently, Antonia Zerbisas notes that Swedish researchers published another study of brain physiology that looks quite significant, as it demonstrates differences in brain structure which show gay male brains as being more consistent with straight female brains.

This last study strikes me as particularly important, as it has the potential to provide considerable insight into the vast dynamic range of human sexuality, but it also goes an enormous distance towards providing some degree of explanation for the existence of cross-gender identity (transsexualism) as well as potentially providing some means to understand that homosexual and bisexual behaviour is somehow related to differences in brain structure. I'm reluctant to say that it is "caused by brain structure", as I believe such an explanation is overly simplistic, but the presence of structural similarities that are cross-gender consistent (e.g. A gay male showing a brain structure that is consistent with a straight female) is intriguing.

When I wrote this series of essays, it was with a predominantly psychological perspective that I was working. To add to the mix the influence of physiological brain structures goes a huge distance to explaining the "I always knew I was different" narrative that is common among both homosexuals and transgender people.

Do these kinds of findings "prove" the idea that sexual and gender identity are genetic? Not entirely, because we don't fully understand much about how the brain develops, and when these differentiations occur; nor do we have sufficiently meaningful understanding of how brain structure influences individual personality and behavioural traits. What we have is an emerging correlation that suggests that brain structure is involved somehow.

This growing body of evidence is gradually leading down a path that is consistent with other parts of science - namely that the human body is vastly diverse in its individual expression, even in areas that are not readily seen from outside.

Politically, these findings have huge implications - particularly for the gay-hostile religious lobby. (Who I am sure will be working hard to find some supposed "expert" to denounce this latest study) These findings suggest that sexual identity has physiological anchors to it, and that tends to fly in the face of the oft-raised complaint that GLBT people are trying to "recruit" others - especially children. As the GLBT side of that argument has often claimed, you either are part of that population and know it or you aren't.

Those who can "swing either way" (Bisexuals) likely have brain structures somewhere in between those of strictly heterosexual and strictly homosexual individuals - and are likely the people for whom "reparative therapy" manages to "convert" to being straight (mostly).

If you have a strong biologically-based explanation, then it becomes much easier to understand the frequency of occurrence (relatively rare), and much harder to justify enforcing 2,000+ year old scriptural prohibitions as a reason to marginalize GLBT people as a whole.