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Example research essay topic: Sexual Orientation Le Vay - 1,387 words

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Is it Gay Gene Homosexuality Is it Really a Choice? Since the 1800 s, psychiatrists and psychologists have concluded that homosexuality is a mental disorder. They have believed it is brought about by misguided upbringing and their social environments. For instance, it was believed that if the child was lacking a male figure in the home, he would most likely be gay. Or that child abuse can lead to lesbianism when the special needs of a little girl are denied, ignored, or exploited and the future womanhood of the child is in jeopardy.

However, inconsistencies in the research subjects abuse records ruled these theories out. And if this were the case, then why is homosexuality present in different cultures? Some believed homosexuality was caused by a difference in brain structure. In 1991, Simon Le Vay published research stating that sexual orientation may be the result of differing brain structures. The hypothalamus, a region in the brain that governs sexual behavior, was the structure that Le Vay was pinpointing as the structure at fault. In his studies of the hypothalamus, he found that in homosexual men, the hypothalamus was smaller than that of heterosexual men.

Instead it was the size of the female hypothalamus, thus explaining their sexual tendencies. It would begin to suggest why male homosexuality is present in most human populations, despite cultural constraints, says Dennis Landis, a neurologist who studied brain structure at Case Western Reserve University. (Williams, 1993) A woman by the name of Barbara Grizzuti Harrison criticized Levay's theories and found several flaws in his experimental studies. First off, she looked at Levay's sample population. It turned out that Le Vay had autopsied 19 homosexual men, 16 men presumed to be heterosexual, and 6 women presumed to be heterosexual. So already we have one flaw, too small a sample size. Flaw number two was that Le Vay simply presumed that the 16 males and 6 females were heterosexual.

Perhaps they hadnt come out of the closet yet. Or perhaps they were bisexual! Flaw number three being that all of the 19 homosexual men died of AIDS, which infiltrates the central nervous system. How could he be sure that there wasnt some relationship between the disease and the size of the hypothalamus? So you see, differences in brain structure couldnt be proven according to Levay's studies. More recently, however, scientists have begun to view sexual preferences as hereditary.

It is no longer a question of nature vs. nurture. Most homosexual men and women have always had the same sexual orientation. Among gay men, 96 % had their first crush on another male. Whereas 100 % of heterosexual males were first attracted to females. One thing that didnt differ between heterosexuals and homosexuals was the age at which they had their first attractions.

Most males had their first attractions around the age of 10. Also, 86 % of gay men had their first sexual activity with another male. With heterosexual males, on the other hand, only 73 % had their first sexual activity with a female! The age median age for puberty among males, regardless of sexual orientation, is approximately 12 years of age. Although gay men who reached puberty later tended to have fewer sexual partners than men who reached puberty at an early age. Most gay men self acknowledge that they are gay anywhere between the ages of 4 through 30, with the median being at age 16.

Coming out of the closet and revealing their identity to the public generally took longer. Most gay men revealed their secret at the median age of 21. Some individuals go through a gay phase as a result of emotional or mental rejection. This helps explain why some individuals carry the gay gene, but dont express it. And adversely, why other individuals dont possess the gay gene, but do express gay tendencies. There was one man in particular that took great interest in this debatable topic.

A graduate from Harvard University with his Ph. D. in Genetics, Dr. Dean Hamer now works in a division of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as chief of Gene Structure and Regulation Section of the Laboratory of Biochemistry. In 1992 the NCI became especially interested in Kaposis sarcoma (KS), a cancer of the skin cells that appears most frequently in Greeks, Italians and in gay men with AIDS. Hamer began thinking about the role of genes in complex traits and began to question the possible role of genes in sexual orientation.

He began his research by drawing out family pedigrees of gay men to prove its heredity. In the pedigree shown in Figure A, the gay form of the sexual orientation gene is present in the maternal grandfather. The gene seems to disappear in his offspring, but he has passed the gay gene onto his daughters. The daughters, however, dont express the trait because they received a straight gene from their mother. The trait then reappears in the male grandchildren in the next generation. The mother was a heterozygous carrier and passed the trait on to her sons.

In Part B of Figure A, the gay gene is passed down from the maternal grandmother to the gay subjects uncles and male cousins. Another way they tested their guinea pigs was by asking them a set of select questions based on their sexual preferences. Figure E shows an outline of the topics covered to determine their sexual orientation. Another technique used was the Kinsey Scale which was developed by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940 s for sexual research. The Kinsey scale ranks sexual orientation on a six level scale ranging from exclusive heterosexual to exclusive homosexual. 0 being exclusively heterosexual and 6 being exclusively homosexual. A series of questions is again asked based on these four aspects: Self-identification, attraction, fantasy and behavior.

See Figure D for the distribution of these four aspects in homosexuals and heterosexuals. For the individual to classify as Definitely Gay, they had to have a Kinsey score of 5 or 6, meaning that they had openly acknowledged their attraction to the same sex to themselves of to other family members. They were classified as Definitely Bisexual if they received a 2 4 on the Kinsey Scale and as an adult, they openly acknowledged that they were bisexual. The individual was possibly gay or bisexual if they had some reason to suspect something other than heterosexuality, but not openly acknowledged. A person was considered heterosexual if they had a Kinsey Score of 0 or 1 and they indicated an acknowledged attraction to the opposite sex. Once their sexual orientation was determined, 76 gay individuals were asked how many of their relatives were gay, if any.

And if they were, which ones, so they could determine the possible genetic linkage. After drawing out 76 family pedigrees they found that there were far more gays on the mothers side of the family than on the fathers side. Because of these findings they concluded that it must be a sex lined trait. They found a small region of the X chromosome, Xq 28, appeared to be the same in a high proportion of gay brothers.

Out of 56 pairs of identical twins, where one gay twin was interviewed, 52 % of the co twins were also gay. Also along those lines, a brother of gay twins has a 22 % chance of being gay. Whereas they found that individuals with twin brothers, one gay and one straight, had only a 4 % chance of being gay (Hamer and Copeland, 1994). If you look at Figure B, you will note that there are more gays on the maternal side than their are on the paternal side. Figure C is a chart of lesbians male relatives. Their values are different of those of the gays values, but both have relatively the same results.

Since they found that sexual orientation is a recessive X linked trait, that would explain why it appears more frequently in males than it does in females. The results of this study were published on July 16, 1993 and since then, the topic still remains debatable and argumentative. Gays and lesbians seemed to appreciate and make light of the subject, though. Shortly after the report publications were released, T-shirts were made that read Xq 28 thanks for the genes, Mom!


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