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From: jim@randvax.UUCP (Jim Gillogly)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Biological basis for homosexuality?
Message-ID: <2159@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Nov-84 19:11:06 EST
Article-I.D.: randvax.2159
Posted: Fri Nov 30 19:11:06 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Dec-84 06:08:01 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica
Lines: 38

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From Science 84, December 1984.

	"Biological basis for homosexuality?"

Stony Brook, NY. - Some homosexual men have been shown for the first time
to differ from heterosexual men in the way they respond to hormones.
Researchers at the State University of New York say that their study could
be a significant step in answering the long-debated question of what
determines sexual orientation.

Twenty-nine heterosexual men and women and 14 homosexual men were injected
with the female hormone estrogen.  As expected, the heterosexual men's
hormonal systems responded to the estrogen much differently than the women's.
The homosexual men, however, responded in a pattern between that of the
heterosexual men and women.  Psychobiologist Brian Gladue, one of the
researchers, cautions that this hormonal difference is hardly a reliable
test of someone's sexual orientation.  "It only starts us looking more closely
at human sexual development," he says.

Previous studies have shown that hormones seem to affect many types of
behavior, even in young children not yet infludenced by social conditioning.
Research with animals suggests that some differences between the sexes --
females' tendency to be less violent, for instance -- are shaped by
hormones that begin affecting the brain even before birth.  Gladue believes
that biological factors may also predispose someone to be homosexual.

"A lot of people think that homosexuality is a societal phenomenon caused
by factors like an absent father or a domineering mother," Gladue says.  "It
would be a major leap to say that the orientation is established at birth,
but if people are willing to accept that heterosexuality is already
determined, why not homosexuality?"

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Just reporting it - no opinion from here.

	Jim Gillogly
	{vortex, decvax}!randvax!jim