Nicole Eresis

English 1101

Professor Fraad

          In the world, as it is today, there are billions upon billions of different race, African American, white, Hispanics and so much more. Around these billions of people they are surrounded, does not know each other’s story’s or our sacrifices, to where we are today. Different kinds of cruelty are shown in the world, and it is used against us. There is cruelty shown and demonstrated to our people just because they love the same sex. The people that love the same sex are viewed differently because they like their sex although they did not choose to be judged by their parents, friends, nor their religion. It was not their choice to be gay, want to look feminine, or masculine. Homosexuality is the result of genetic and environmental factors.

       In the chapter “The Lost Mile” by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2016), the author claims that a person becomes homosexual based on biological and environmental factors. A study cited by Mukerjee (2016) showed that of about 110 pairs of male twins, both pairs turned out to become gay, and then the result was “ among the fifty-six pairs of identical twins both twins were gay in fifty-two percent of the fifty-four pairs of non-identical twins, twenty- two percent we both gay” (373).  A way that this work was cited shows biology, as well as environmental in his study, was that being gay could also be influenced by a person’s surroundings and the people that they surround themselves. There is a forty- two percent of male twins that is shown to be gay and the other pair not gay.

    In another study created by Dean Hamer, cited by Mukerjee, Hamer’s idea was to map out genes related to homosexuality. The second examination that Hamer did was an AIDS-related study, which was during the 1980s. With this illness different that is known in the gay community a result of AIDS was that a “Kaposi’s sarcoma (rare) indolent tumor had been found at a strikingly high frequency among gay men” (375). The information of this study by Hamer was able to create a family gay gene, a tree of the one hundred and fourteen gay men from his study. The outcome is “higher concordance in sexual orientation about 20 percent” (375). This study shows that being gay can be a genetic possibility, as Hamers was able to create a family tree of one hundred and fourteen gay man, as well as being able to find out were the gay gene could have come from.
    Another study that was done by a scientist named Thomas Bouchard was based on both male and female twins. His research was to show if twins have the same likes and dislikes even after being separated their whole lives and returned together (383). The outcome of this experiment was that it is true, after not knowing that there was a twin of themselves they both have equally common dislikes and like, and that is because there are profound genetic aspects.
      Moreover, Mukherjee and the author of “Homosexuality: Born or Bred”  in Newsweek both showed the outcome of Bailey study that genes do influence gays by how their brain is structured in the beginning of their lives. In the article written by the Newsweek staff, they demonstrated a study by Simon LeVay that scanned brains and showed that, “LeVay determined that a tiny area believed to control sexual activity was less the size in gay men than in heterosexual […] evidence of what some gay have long contended that whether or no they choose to be different, they were born different” (2/14).  After LeVay examined the brain of forty- one that being including homosexual male brain he concluded that being gay was during their early lives there was a sport in your brain that was for sexual preferences, even without the person knowing. Hamers, LeVays, as well as Bailey all three of these scientist research how does the gay gene works and how does a homosexual become homosexuals.
      A way that the gay community shows the impact of environmental factors is is in the article “Pas de Deux of Sexuality is Written in the Genes” written by Nicholas Wade. Wade wrote on the impact of both biological and environmental aspects. A fact that was mentioned in the passage was how the fetus in a woman’s stomach is being formed, “the body of a developing fetus by default and becomes male if the male-determining gene known as SRY is present (⅙)” which is the dominant gene. Despite the first female form, if it turns out to be a male just because of the strong Y chromosomes, so they have a females soul but the body of a male. Another way that a similar study is shown in the article by Newsweek‘s Staff is when the writer mentioned “once a gay fetus is detected in utero, it is aborted” now the question bring, how can a mother adopt will something that the child didn’t choose.  

      Homosexuals are being judged and killed because their religion or family does not allow them to be with the same sex. In today’s day Muslims cannot come out with their partners outside, or they can not show their true selves. If both females and males comes out to be gay, they would be either executed or in prison. However, other people believe in there being more of an environmental aspect in the process of being gay, but there are also biological factors. Hammer, Bailey LeVey and many other scientists studied the “gay gene” as well as the brain. They concluded that the homosexual males and females where born with it, and it was not a choice that they were given.

Works Cited

Mukherjee, Siddhartha “ The Last Mile.” The Gene: Scribner, 2016, PP 370-390.

Newsweek Staff. “Homosexuality: Born or Bred?”  Newsweek, 23, Feb 1992, https://www.newsweek.com/homosexuality-born-or-bred-200636. Accessed 4, Nov. 2018.

Wade, Nicholas. “Pas de Deux of Sexuality is Written in the Genes.” The New Yotk Times, 10 Apr.

2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/health/10gene.html. Accessed 5 Nov, 2018.