Homosexuality Debate Nature 3

Homosexuality – Nature or Nurture?

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Homosexuality is biologically determined; so far the affirmative team has presented reasons why this is correct and has addressed the issue of hormones, gay genes and brain structure differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals. The negative team has presented reasons about why nurture is a determinant of homosexuality however before I continue with the affirmatives case there are a few things that I would like to clarify about the negative team’s argument.

Firstly the negative team brought up the issue of homosexuality as a hidden but incapacitating fear. If this is in fact the case it is interesting that homosexual men tend to take on and mimic the feminine characteristics of females who they apparently fear. One would logically deduce that because of this fear homosexuals would become more masculine and take on masculine qualities instead of feminine ones which they apparently fear in relation to this point.

Secondly if this so called fear is the cause of homosexuality it is then a contradiction of Freud’s proposed fixation on one’s mother. If homosexuals fear the opposite sex why are they fixated on their mother who is a person of the opposite sex and engage in homosexual behaviour only to remain faithful to her?

Thirdly Freud and the psychoanalytical approach fail to produce any scientific evidence and has been highly criticised about its validity. Dr Peter D Kramer a psychiatrist and faculty member of Brown Medical School said about his work “I’m afraid [Freud] doesn’t hold up very well at all. It almost feels like a personal betrayal to say that. But every particular is wrong: the universality of the Oedipus complex, penis envy, infantile sexuality.” Similarly others shared this thought.

Hans Eysnek well known psychologist whose focus was on intelligence and personality claims that Freud ’set psychiatry back one hundred years’, consistently mis-diagnosed his patients, fraudulently misrepresented case histories and that “what is true in Freud is not new and what is new in Freud is not true”.

All in all these arguments simply do not add up or stand to reason in this day and age they provide no scientific evidence and are not falsifiable. They demonstrate flaws and contradictions and have been criticised for their lack of validity by reputable sources. Because of these reasons nurture is not a determinant of homosexuality.

Biological theorists have found however substantial evidence in support of homosexuality as a biological cause (as addressed by Evelyn and Ashleigh) Ashleigh our second speaker addressed the issue of genes and genetics further evidence of this can be found when looking at twin studies.

Richard Pillard Boston University psychiatrist and J. Michael Bailey a Northwestern University psychologist conducted a study on twins which focused on homosexuality in identical twins, nonidentical twins and regular siblings according to Byrd and Olsen in their article homosexuality innate and immutable. Pillard and Bailey studied the incidence of homosexuality in one twin and then correlated it with whether the other twin also displayed homosexual tendencies. The results found a correlation of 52% in identical twins, meaning that for every homosexual twin the chances were about 50% that his twin would also be homosexual. For non-identical twins the rate of concordance was 22% with non twin brothers having a correlation of 9.2%. Because identical twins share 100% the same genetic make up it was genes that accounted for the difference between non identical twins and non twin brothers as they only share about 50% of their genetic make up. Hence demonstrating evidence of genetic and therefore biological connections between homosexuality and genes or in other words nature.

Now just in case any of you are still in doubt about whether homosexuality is biologically determined look no further- evidence can be found in the animal kingdom. Homosexual behaviour can be found between animals. The basic fact that this happens is proof enough as animals and humans definitely have different surroundings, definitely do not get raised the same, and I am pretty sure animals do not have as Freud would put it homosexual tendencies because of a domineering mother or an absent father, I can’t imagine many apes sitting around thinking “I blame this on my mother if only my father was around more.” In this case nurture cannot be a determinant of homosexuality.

Some animal species that engage in homosexual behaviour aside from apes however are the Bottle nose dolphin, Elephants, sheep and the spotted Hyena just being some of the 1500 species of animals that engage in this behaviour. Robin Dunbar Professor of the Evolutionary psychology at the university of Liverpool England stated, “The bottom line is that anything that happens in other primates and particularly apes is likely to have strong evolutionary continuity with what happens in humans” Human DNA and Ape DNA are 94.6% identical to each other, because of this genetic connection between humans and Apes one would assume that like Professor Dunbar stated anything that happens with apes is likely to have strong evolutionary continuity with humans even homosexuality.

To conclude, the American Psychological Association says about human sexuality that, human beings can not choose to be either gay or straight. Hence if there is no choice and as the evidence I have just presented stands, we can conclude that homosexuality is biologically determined or in other words caused by nature.

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