• Question: if people say opposits otract (hormons)why are some poeple gay/lesbians?

    Asked by yashwini to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      You get gays in hundreds of different species of animals.

      I don’t think there is an obvious evolutionary reason for homosexuality.

      The planet is so overcrowded already, we can’t go on reproducing at this rate, so perhaps that is why some people are born gay. I can’t think of a logical way to back that up though.

    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      There are other species where homosexuality and even hermaphrodites exist – we don’t really know any evolutionary reason for or against it as far as I know.

    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Opposites don’t always attract. That’s just a saying which is based on how magnets behave – opposite magnet poles attract and alike poles attract each other. I believe our genetic make up determines whether we are gay or not.

Comments

  • Photo: nshah1996

    nshah1996 commented on :

    No one really knows what determines a person’s sexuality. Some people believe that homosexuality is a choice. Most gay people disagree, and weight must be given to them, since no heterosexual can truly know what a gay person’s experience of his or her sexuality is. Most scientists and biologists agree that there may be an environmental component to sexuality (Nurture), but that most likely, the strongest likelihood is that sexuality is determined before birth, at the genetic level.

    The truth is there are a bunch of theories out there, but no one can absolutely say what the right answer is. Some would like to point to past molestation, but that theory has been discounted – for every lesbian who was molested by a man as a child, there are at least 3 straight women who were molested similarly. As to bisexuals, they are as much a mystery as whatever the elusive reason is that some women are straight and some are lesbians.

    Sexuality is believed to be biologically influenced initially, but all biologically programmed personality traits (such as agression, intellect, ability to nurture) are subject to the influence of environment too. So a woman who might be biologically ambivolent (not strongly hetrosexual or homosexual) could be tipped to the heterosexual by social programming toward raising a family or perpetuating the species but tipped to the homosexual by abuse by a male at an early age and rejection of the abusive sex.

    People are born with chemicals in their brain that stimulate sexual drive, chemicals in our brains decide before we are even born what we will be attracted to. Thus nobody can choose their sexuality, it’s given to them, but depending on how their life goes or other factors humans can undergo changes in their brain which will allow them to gain a higher attraction from one stimuli or another, not changing their sexuality, only making it more defined to them. Choosing to act on your sexual desire may allow you to lie to the public, but if you like men you cannot change that, if you like women, you still can’t change it, and if you like both men and women, well guess what, you can’t change that either. Religion has nothing to do with this question and should not be in the answer. People cannot change their sexuality.