If I was President.

[kahljorn]

You aren't born gay.. excepting for the issue of intersexed people, with chromosomes like XXY, XXYY etc. I don't like posing stories but I will post it to make an excuse for my life.



Evidence Gender Identity IS Genetic!
Mon October 20, 2003

California researchers at UCLA have published important new finding in the Journal Molecular Brain Research which repudiates the concept that homosexuality and transgender identity are a choice.

"Our findings may help answer an important question -- why do we feel male or female?" Dr. Eric Vilain, a genetics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, said in a statement. "Sexual identity is rooted in every person's biology before birth and springs from a variation in our individual genome."

Since the 1970s, scientists have believed that estrogen and testosterone were completely responsible for sexual differentiation of brain structures. Recent evidence, however, indicates that hormones alone cannot explain everything about the differences between male and female brains.

The experiments were carried out on laboratory mice using two genetic testing methods. The researchers compared the production of genes in male and female brains in the embryonic mice which occurs in gestation long before the animals develop sex organs. The basic genetic principles are so fundamental to the process of sex differentiation that the results are believed to be directly applicable to human beings. The research team identified 54 genes produced in different amounts in male and female mouse brains, prior to hormonal influence. Eighteen of the genes were produced at higher levels in the male brains; 36 were produced at higher levels in the female brains.

It is already an established scientific fact that male and female brains differ in a number of measurable ways both anatomically and in function. The scientists plan to undertake additional studies to determine the role for each of the 54 genes they've identified.

Some physicians are hopeful that the UCLA discovery will provide them with a better means of determining the "base sex" of children born with ambiguious genitalia - using the genetic findings as a factor in surgical gender assignment decisions for such infants.

Realistically, though, there will likely still be a bias toward female gender assignments because the surgical procedure is easier to perform. Statistics indicate doctors choose erroneous gender assignments for intersexed children at least half the time. Without surgical advancements making assignment as male equally feasible the findings of this research are unlikely to greatly affect the trend of surgical misassignments. Intersex advocacy groups maintain that such surgery is, by and large, medically unnecessary anyway and see no great benefit in the addition of one more factor for surgeons to take into consideration when considering performance of a surgery that many intersexed people believe is simply "mutilation" of a defenseless infant for no reason but cultural bias dictating individuals be either "male" or "female."

As for transgendered the research provides yet more evidence their gender identity are not a "lifestyle choice."

"Our findings may explain why we feel male or female, regardless of our actual anatomy," said Vilain. "These discoveries lend credence to the idea that being transgender --- feeling that one has been born into the body of the wrong sex -- is a state of mind.

[source article at Reuters. Editorial note: The prevelence numbers they give for intersex births appear to be incorrect]