Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site randvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!randvax!jim 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 -------------------------------- 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?" -------------- Just reporting it - no opinion from here. Jim Gillogly {vortex, decvax}!randvax!jim