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From: ddw@cornell.UUCP (David Wright)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Sources of homosexuality
Message-ID: <5201@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Aug-83 12:47:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.5201
Posted: Wed Aug 31 12:47:53 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Sep-83 20:47:49 EDT
Sender: ddw@cornell.UUCP
Organization: Cornell Computer Science
Lines: 34

From: ddw (David Wright)
To: net-singles

Most of the people on this net seem to assume that either

  1) Homosexuality is genetic, or
  2) Homosexuality is learned, or
  3) Some combination of the above.

Neither of these is necessarily correct.  Anyone ever heard the term
congenital?  I'm referring to physical conditions that exist at birth
but are due to some in-utero misfeature that is not genetic.  Birth
defects due to rubella or Thalidomide would be examples.  Now, kiddies,
there's some evidence (not conclusive) that homosexuality is due to 
hormone deficiencies in the fetus during gestation.  It's not a genetic
problem, it's due to some minor malfunction in the glands of the fetus.
Assuming that sexual orientation is rather delicately balanced, it would
be surprising if this never happened, if you consider the number of
things that can go wrong during development.

Even if homosexuality (or a predisposition that way) \is/ genetic, it
need not be only picked up by inheritance.  It may be a mutation. 
Before you scoff, note that JBS Haldane showed that most cases of
hemophilia are due to this (if not, to explain the incidence of hemophilia
in Britian in the 1930's you'd have to assume that 1000 years earlier
nearly half the population had it!) so why not homosexuality?

People flaming about "unnaturalness" will be crushed and melted...

                         David Wright

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