The belief that homosexuals are born that way has strongly influenced the acceptance of same-sex behaviours in Western societies, including Christian churches. A review of relevant studies, however, shows that there is no generally accepted scientific evidence supporting that belief.
Research in the early 1990s purporting to find biological correlates for same-sex attraction has been discredited. Despite repeated attempts, none of those studies has been replicated. As other researchers have shown, those early analyses were plagued by design flaws, self-selected samples, and other problems with statistical and scientific methodologies.
Dr Douglas Abbott, Professor of Child, Youth, and Family Studies at University of Nebraska-Lincoln argues that it is extremely unlikely that a gene, or set of genes, that causes same-sex attraction will ever be identified.
Genes are complex strands of DNA that through the processes of transcription and translation, direct the synthesis of amino acids into larger proteins that influence cell structure and functioning. Complex social activities such as sexual behavior cannot be directly traced to the activity of a single gene.
Many uninformed people take a simplistic view of behavioral genetics: they believe that one gene controls and determines a specific behavior. This is true for a very few, abnormal physical conditions including Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis, PKU, and achondroplasia (Dwarfism). This fact has led some to believe that there is an alcoholic gene, a manic-depression gene, or a gay gene. However, "Genes do not act as master puppeteers within us. They are chemical structures that control the production of proteins; thereby indirectly affecting behavior…Genes do not determine one's destiny". "It is an oversimplification to say that any gene is 'the gene for a trait'. Each gene simply specifies one of the proteins involved in the process [of gene-environmental interaction], notes Hubbard.
Complex psycho-social behaviors such as sexual preference are not determined by a single gene, but by a gene-environmental process involving possibly hundreds of genes acting through complex environmental factors. [p. 5 of pdf document, references omitted]
Dr Abbott’s well-documented review bears on issues discussed in The Episcopal Church’s 2005 theological statement To Set Our Hope on Christ, which said,
Altogether, contemporary studies indicate that same-sex affection has a genetic-biological basis which is shaped in interaction with psycho-social and cultural-historical factors. Sexual orientation remains relatively fixed and generally not subject to change. [p. 25 of pdf document]
According to Dr Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan, that statement relied entirely on pre-1995 studies that have been controverted and superseded by later research. Dr Keenan refers to several more recent analyses that found a substantial degree of mutability over time in sexual orientation among people who professed to be homosexual at a young age. These studies also discovered considerable differences in behaviour between homosexual men and lesbians.
In short, the 2005 statement was not supported by scientific studies publicly available at the time it was written.
[A]ll of this new information should have been considered before writing a theological paper based on a scientific understanding of how homosexuality functions in our society. By making a liturgical change before stating a theology, the opportunity for reasoned dialogue was lost. … My hope has been that if people could see how unclear our understanding of homosexuality really is, they would not pull the church off of its historic foundations in the Anglican Communion.
But the Episcopal Church that claims to hear all voices does not want to hear a voice like mine. The conservatives will not talk to the liberals about what worries them as I have, and the liberals have made up their mind, so all new information is suspect.
Dr Keenan sent her research to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and all Episcopal Church bishops. One hopes the current state of scientific knowledge concerning same-sex attraction will figure in the planned September meeting between Dr Williams and the Episcopal House of Bishops.
h/t for Abbott paper: LifeSite
h/t for Keenan paper: TitusOneNine
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