Homosexuality Essay Research Paper A personality is

Homosexuality Essay, Research Paper

A personality is a mixture of traits that define ones individual personality. Examples of this include, impulsiveness, openness, intelligence, etc. These traits are tools, which are used by individuals to navigate social situations.

Dr. Dean Hamer is a molecular psychologist and he is exploring the roll that genes play in a human personality. He said until recently, research into behavior genetics was based on a study of identical twins. This study was based on the idea that if one of the twins turned out to be homosexual then there is a 50% chance that the other one will be as well. (That study was conducted b psychologist Michael Bailey of Northern University). Hamers research picked up where that study left off which on exact sections of DNA that influence behavior. Copeland, 1993

In the first part of research of Hamers into behavioral genetics created quite a controversial when published journal Science 1993 because Hamer and his research team determined that homosexuality appeared to be linked to a stretch of DNA at the very tip of the X chromosome men inherit from their mothers. Three years later, in 1996, Hamer and his collaborators at HIH seconded an Israeli group. They found a link to a gene on chromosome 11 to the personality trait psychologists call novelty seeking. That same year Hamers’ lab helped pinpoint another gene, this on chromosome 17 that appears to play a role in regulating anxiety. Copeland, 1993

These kinds of genes are not the kinds that cause people to be homosexual. The chemical balancing of a person is much more intricate than that, what genes seem to do, is subtly bias the psyche so that different individuals react to similar experiences in surprisingly different ways. Copeland, 1993

Other scientists question these results because no other research team has been able to replicate Hamers work results.

Possible there s no link between these genes and personality traits. On the other hand, they re maybe an even better explanation. Dr. Dennis Murphy of the National Institute of Mental Heath Suggests that a simple trait acidity is not controlled by a simple gene of a tomato it takes as many as 30, this he speculates maybe the way humans act in a given circumstance.

To argue the biological part of this, It is known that those who are mal-adaptive, or don t produce in other words, don t survive. Now, if that were true homosexuals would have been weeded out long ago. Strait Science. McKnight, Jim PG 19

Biological Accounts

The oldest explanation to homosexuality is; Homosexuality is an interruption of normal heterosexual development. The old theory was that Homosexuality was basically a birth affect. And now resent research, has tried to discover a genetic basis for homosexuality, which will expect it as a normal variability Scientists say that if it keeps happening over and over then there must be a purpose. Strait Science. McKnight, Jim PG 22

Homosexuality is beloved to be a couple of different things such as, chemical imbalances, birth affect, or perverted experimentations.

Another interesting point to this is At conception we re all female but, by the end of the first trimester of pregnancy those who will be male are exposed to small doses of two triggering hormones, Choriconic gonadotropin and luieinising hormone. These are secreted by our mothers pituitary gland and enter her blood stream, cross the placenta and start the differentiation of gonads into testes. The rapidly developing testes then take over the job of continuing male differentiation and secrete male sex hormones. Strait Science. McKnight, Jim PG 22

The brain is a sexual organ and part of the differentiation into maleness is an appropriate androgenisation of the brain. Yet unlike other gross sexual characteristics, androgenisation of the brain does not require defeminisation of the basic female pathways. Whereas the undifferentiated gonad becomes either a testis or an ovary, in the brain differentiation seems to lay down independent pathways towards maleness and femaleness. Thus, acquiring masculine brain characteristics, and at different times Goy and McEwen, 1980 and involve quite different neural substrates as well as different hormonal metabolites Byne and Parsons, 1993. Homosexuality is seen as an interruption of this process, an altering of the relative balance between the two systems, leading to a change in the sexual orientation, which is at odds with one s genetic predisposition Jim McKnight, 1997. One example of sexual inversion is 5-alpha reductase deficiency. Julianne Imerato-McGinley and her colleagues in 1974 reported a pool of natural transsexuals who started life as girls but later became boys. For at least three generations several families in the central Dominican Republic have had sufficient numbers of girls turns into boys to suspend a final gender assignment until puberty settles the matter Imperato-McGinley et al., 1974 1979. These guevedoces, (eggs (testes) at 12) children, are born with female genitalia. At puberty, under the influence of testosterone, some girls make a complete transformation to boys, developing full male genitalia. For others the physical changes are less complete with only partial fusion of the vagina, requiring reconstructive surgery. While the incidence of 5-alpha reductase deficiency seems concentrated in t