Sexual Orientation Determination

Sexual Orientation and its Determination: What Makes Us Who We Are?

What makes us who we are, an important factor that helps us understand and illustrate our being. Genetics—the thing that makes us who we are, yet people do not fully realize that genetics determine more than just eye or hair color, they play a vital role in the determination of sexual orientation. Asking a child where they got their blue eyes from, if both of their biological parents have brown eyes, is not far from asking a homosexual why and how they acquired their homosexuality. Sexual orientation is something that cannot be controlled, still many people believe that it can be determined by nurture, or influenced by other explicit factors, but sexual orientation is defined

Scientific research conducted has shown that genetics do in fact have a role in determining sexual orientation. In 1993, at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Dean Hamer and his colleagues published the results of a study on the genetic origins of sexual orientation. Hamer and his colleagues disclosed that at least one type of sexual orientation, male homosexuality appeared to be genetically influenced. They discovered that male homosexuality might be linked to a set of five DNA sequences located on the Xq28 region of the X chromosome, which is passed down by mothers to their offspring. Their study concluded that gay brothers tend to share these Xq28 sequences, which initially suggested a genetic origin for homosexuality passed through the female line. Hamer later stated that female sexual orientation would likely be inherited just as male sexual orientation is. Although he felt it was unlikely that the same version of Xq28 associated with male sexuality would be responsible for female homosexuality ("Sexual Orientation

In the article "Gay by Choice?", author Gary Greenberg interviews and follows around a fifty-one-year-old male named Aaron who identifies as an ex-gay and frequently expresses his disgust for his past homosexual thoughts and urges. Aaron consulted a reparative therapist through the phone for ten years, and learned that his then homosexuality was directly influenced by the lack of attention from his father and his fear of women was heavily influenced by his overbearing and intrusive mother. It is apparent in this article how reparative therapy teaches the patient to submerge and suppress their desires and participate in internalized homophobia to an extreme level, causing them to "change their sexual orientation", yet Aaron scoffs at these statements and says that his decision to "go straight" had nothing to do with political or religious factors, rather that he just didn’t want to be gay and chose to "reinvent" himself (Greenberg). In a similar situation, a thirty-eight-year-old man, Steve Simmons, also went through reparative therapy, with the full support of his wife after he admitted to her that he was gay. Reparative therapy also helped Simmons realize that his homosexual tendencies were because of his weak father figure and his intrusive and controlling mother