Born gay?

I have been reading too many articles and comments online about whether a person is born with TEH GAY. Everyone's talking about whether or not there's a gay gene ("No, there's NO gay gene!" "But I've always KNOWN I was gay!" etc...). So please, puh-leeeeeez, allow me to set the record straight (....haha...."straight") and follow it up with my opinion.

People who don't consider a gay medical student with an honours degree in human physiology talking about the nature/nurture hypotheses of homosexuality should tune out. Right about...now.

So, much to your dismay/pleasure/utterly-unphasedness, homosexuality isn't entirely genetic. In fact, genetics explains only about 35% of a person's tendency to turn out gay. But does that really surprise you? So many aspects of your life are goverened by your environment and development; even those that are genetically-based!

For example, you have the genetic potential for a certain height. BUT!!! if you, say are raised in a famine-stricken country for the first 15 years of life, chances are you'll be a little shorter. OR if you eat foods with a bunch of anabolic steroids (no, I can't think of a real life example--so sue me!) you'll be bigger (and "bacne"-er).

The interesting thing you'll notice if you follow the link above is that an additional 64% of homosexuality can be accounted for by environmental factors. Just to be clear, that excludes having an overbearing mother or distant father, being exposed to Madonna rather than Mozart while in the womb, and being born in the Castro in 1980. Oh, right, and also that means...

PEOPLE ARE, INDEED, SOMETIMES BORN GAY.

Of course, "born gay" in the sense that someday they will likely be sexually attracted to the same sex, not in the sense that there are a bunch of baby boys out there who think that JT "is, like, so totally hawt!" That would be too weird...

Maybe someday I'll get around to talking about what those "environmental" factors could be...

But for now, I'll just say this: it doesn't matter anyway. Who cares if it's biological or not? Because then it would be a choice? So what? People are religious (or not) by choice, and we still protect religious minorities with hate crimes laws, we allow people of all religions (and none) to marry, to assemble, to equal treatment under the law. And why? Because a person's religion has no direct negative effect on anyone else. So there's no reason to discriminate against someone for how they identify themselves religiously.

And the same goes for sexual identity.