What makes men homosexuals

In rats, manipulation of hormones during pregnancy produces offspring that exhibit homosexual behavior. Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain how homosexuality can be beneficial in perpetuating familial genes. Sexual behavior is widely diverse and governed by sophisticated mechanisms throughout the animal kingdom. As with other complex behaviors, it is not possible to predict sexuality by gazing into a DNA sequence as if it were a crystal ball.

Such behaviors emerge from constellations of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of genes, and how they are regulated by the environment.

You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Biological factors shape sexual preference. Between 2 and 11 percent of human adults report experiencing some homosexual feelings, though the figure varies widely depending on the survey. Homosexuality exists across cultures and even throughout the animal kingdom, as the authors of a mammoth new review paper on homosexuality write.

Between 6 and 10 percent of rams prefer to mount other rams, not ewes. Certain groups of female Japanese monkeys prefer the company of other females:. In certain populations, female Japanese macaques will sometimes choose other females as sexual partners despite the presence of sexually motivated male mates. Female Japanese macaques will even compete intersexually with males for exclusive access to female sexual partners. Specifically, people who believe sexual orientation is biological are more likely to favor equal rights for sexual minorities.

When Atlantic contributor Chandler Burr proposed in his book, A Separate Creation , that people are born gay, Southern Baptists called to boycott Disney films and parks in protest against the publisher, Disney subsidiary Hyperion. So what are we to do with the Born This Way rhetoric? There are several reasons for this. The evidence to date offers no consensus that the Born This Way argument is the beginning and end of the story. We should stop pretending that it does.

For that matter, why play their game and pretend the only forms of difference that deserve justice are those we were born with? Finally, I would argue that the Born This Way narrative can actively damage our perceptions of ourselves. In my sophomore year of college, I attended a Gay Student Alliance event at a nearby campus. It was the last meeting before Thanksgiving break, and the theme was coming out to your families.

This is just who I am! Because we are beautiful and fabulous. Ward sees this as a self-hating narrative. Perhaps it is time to look to the beginning of the gay rights movement. Gay and lesbian activists, says Ward, used to draw on religion parallels to argue for inclusion.

But there are still legal protections for them. Fortunately, we have now made enormous strides in understanding and affirming our queer sexualities. A recent UK poll from J. More than a third chose a number between one and five. In response to the poll, one of my Facebook friends quipped about how natural selection must be working in overtime, what with making all of us gay!

I was born the way all of us are born: as a human being with a seemingly infinite capacity to announce myself, to re-announce myself, to try on new identities like spring raincoats, to play with limiting categories, to challenge them and topple them, to cultivate my tastes and preferences, and, most importantly, to love and to receive love.

This story is part of our Sexual Revolutions series on our evolving understanding of sex and gender. Brandon Ambrosino is a freelance journalist.

He Tweets as BrandonAmbro. Ignacio Lehmann is an Argentinian photographer who has travelled the globe for his World Kisses project.

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. In Depth Sexual Revolutions. Share using Email. Is sexuality purely the result of our biology? Brandon Ambrosino argues that simplistic explanations have ignored the fluid, shape-shifting nature of our desires. People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often cast as homophobic, and their thinking is considered backward. So what does the science say about Born This Way?