The Homosexual Brain?

The Homosexual Brain?

In 1992, Vice-President Dan Quayle said that homosexuality "is more of a choice than a biological situation...It is a wrong choice." (1). Quayle's statement counters the sentiment of many homosexuals that their sexual orientation is neither a lifestyle nor a personal choice, it is innate and unchangeable (2) . Is homosexuality a choice or does sexual preference have a biological basis? This question is at the forefront of academic, scientific, political, legal and media consciousness (3). The debate over homosexuality has influenced a myriad of research in finding a biological cause for differences in sexual behavior.

The quest to find a biological substrate for homosexuality resembles an earlier movement in research to determine the nature of I.Q. scores. Both revolve around finding a biological basis for differences in human behavior. Like the previous research on intelligence, the research on homosexuality is plagued with difficulties. One large obstacle in this type of research is the difficulty in making statements about causality from correlational studies (simple, linear relationships between two variables) (4). In other words, it is difficult to determine what comes first the chicken or the egg.

Recently, a plethora of research has been done on determining brain differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Simon LeVay's work on the anterior hypothalamus is the most widely discussed and debated research in the area of sexual orientation and neuroscience. This paper will examine Simon LeVay's research which declares that there is a physiological difference between the brains of heterosexual and homosexual men (5). Furthermore, it will discuss the shortcomings of his research and the n...

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...tation.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jun/burr2.htm

3)Johns Hopkins, Criticism of LeVay's study of sexual orientation on Johns Hopkins web site.

http://www.press.jhu...nals/substance/v029/29.1wilson.html

4) University of Texas , web site outlining the biological determinism of homosexuality.

http://www.utexas.edu/courses/bio301c/Topics/Gay/Text.html

5)Rice University, Lecture notes from Rice elucidating the relationship between hormones and behavior.

http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~psyc362/lectures/lec14/tsld001.htm

6)Journal of Neuroscience, Allen, Hines, Shryne, and Gorski journal article titled "Two sexually dimorphic cell groups in the human brain."

http://www.jneurosci.org/misc/special.shtml

7)Simon LeVay's Web Page, Provides details about LeVay's work from his own perspective.

http://members.aol.com_ht_a/slevay/index.html