When considering if sexuality is socialised, we need to look at the way it would be. The idea of socialisation is that a persons attitudes, views and lifestyle is moulded by others and society.
Primary socialisation is that which comes from our family and takes place during infancy and early childhood. It provides the base upon which all-future learning will take place.
Secondary socialisation begins later in childhood when outside interaction is taking place, i.e. with people their own age outside the household and teachers etc. As the person gets older the less socialisation effect their parents have on them, and by the time a person reaches adolescence their peer group becomes the main area of socialisation.
Due to quite a lot of homosexuals realising that they are different at a young age, the socialisation agent, if it exists, must mainly take place during early childhood and therefore come from their parents. For a child to be socialised into been a homosexual then he would have to come from a certain life style. Firstly, his parents or other main bodies of socialisation must not be critical or hateful towards homosexuals; even thought the choice is subconscious why would a child choose to be something his parents ridicule and hate?
If the socialisation of the homosexual didn’t take place until later in life, post-childhood adolescence, then the peer group of the person would have to not express anger and hatred towards homosexuals.
Both of these are flawed. Homosexuals can, and do, come from families where outright hatred and persecution is commonplace. Homosexuals are found in all cultures and societies, including those where hatred for gay people is high, for example Middle Eastern countries where homosexuals are executed for been the way they are. If socialisation were primarily responsible people would not choose to have these desires if they knew it would be a danger to them. The same can be said about secondary socialisation in adolescence, where in a large number of cases derogatory views on homosexuals will be held by a persons peer group, sometimes even including violence against homosexuals or suspected homosexuals.
To put it plainly if it were down primarily to socialisation, then homosexuals could not come from societies where they are told it is wrong to be gay.
Another argument against the socialisation stance is that the children of gay parents do not turn out to be gay themselves. Research conducted in 1995 on 74 children of gay couples found that only 12% of them had homosexual feelings or conducted in homosexual relationships.5 Whilst this is slightly higher than average, suggesting that socialisation may play a part, if socialisation was the primary reason for homosexuality then you would expect a significantly higher level of it amongst a group living in an environment of full acceptance.
Contrary to all those, Kinsley’s research in the 1950’s goes some way to aid the socialisation argument. He stated that the vast majority of people are somewhat bi-sexual.2 For this to happen socialisation would have to play a large part in the decision of someone’s sexuality, as the concept of a gay gene would not account for this bisexualism.
It is clear that socialisation must play some part in the sexuality of a person, however that part does not seem as big as it was once thought.
The second stance on this issue has in recent years taken a major downturn in its support. The notion that homosexuality is a pathological disease is now widely ignored by most researchers, and the only groups that takes it seriously are religious ones, out to seek a valid justification for the biblical ban on gay sex, and anti-gay groups.
However, even though the majority of people now accept that homosexuality is not a mental problem, it was still classed as a mental disorder by the American Health Council until 1970, and by the British Medical Authority until 1992.
One of the main points that lay waste to the pathological theory is the fact that the sexuality scale is so diverse. In the 1950’s, Kinsley conducted research on sexuality and in his findings he stated that a persons sexuality can be placed on a scale ranging from one to six, the Kinsley Scale, one been 100% heterosexual with no homosexual thoughts; and six been 100% homosexual with no heterosexual thoughts.2
He also found that practically no one was either one or six, the vast majority of people ranging from two to five, especially around adolescence. Therefore for homosexuality to be a mental disorder the majority of people would have to have that disorder to account for the diversity in society; making it no longer a mental problem but the ‘norm’. In this case it would be the small number of people who were one or six that were actually suffering from a pathological problem.
In this day and age the mental disorder position can be largely disregarded.
The third proposition is the one that has received the most research out of the three. It is also, perhaps, the most controversial; even more so than that of a mental disorder which has all but been discredited in recent years. People look upon this position in two ways, People who support gay rights state that if sexuality is indeed genetically linked then it gives them more arguments for full acceptance. However on the other end of the scale anti-gay protesters look upon it as a way to make gay people ‘normal’ by aborting the homosexual gene.
It should be noted that for a genetic trait to be considered ‘normal’ by science it has to be contained within at least 1% of the population, placing homosexuality within the normal bracket if in fact it is biological.
There are two major findings that have given leverage to the biological argument, the uncertainty of genes and the family clustering of homosexuals.
Many genes in the human makeup have no known function. Many of them although fully active, baffle scientists trying to understand the role they play. In a much-discussed study in 1993, the National Institutes of Health in America found a part of the X chromosome that they believe contains a gay gene. The NIH team is now in the process of trying to pinpoint the gene itself, although they are having major problems in associating it with homosexuality, which has already been registered by the name GAY-1.1
Another two studies were conducted in 1993. The first was by the Hamer at the National Cancer Research Centre in Washington DC. He studied thirty-two sets of gay brothers, none of whom were related. In his research he showed that two thirds of the sets, twenty-two, had similar genetic makeup on a part of the X chromosome known as Xq28. Although it should be stated that this is not a complete gene, the researchers are hopeful that one can be located. Similar studies done at the same time on female homosexual siblings could not find any of these genetic tags. This study has been criticised by a number of people, stating that if the researchers had included the straight brothers of the homosexuals they would have found the same similarities on their X chromosome.2
A similar study later that year conducted by Macke et al. concentrated on the area of the X chromosome highlighted by Hamer. They found none of the genetic similarities.2
More studies in 1993 tracked the family history of homosexuals and found that the majority of cases had a large number of homosexual relatives on the maternal side of the family, suggesting that is there is a gay gene it is in fact passed down from mother to son on the X chromosome. No concrete evidence was put forward but the results do suggest that a biological link could well exist.2
A large number of studies on the possibility of genetic sexuality compare it to genetic handedness. Like sexuality the gene that controls peoples left or right handedness orientation has never been found, and yet unlike sexuality scientists know that genes control it. The clinical profile for both left-handedness and homosexuality are also virtually identical. Research done has shown that left-handedness has a 12% correlation between monozygotic (identical) twins against a background rate of 6%, whilst homosexuality has a 60% correlation between monozygotic against a background rate of 8%, suggesting that homosexuality has a much higher genetic component than left handedness.1 However an interesting point can be brought in by this comparison. A right handed person can write semi-legibly with his left hand, this does not however make him left handed; similarly a person without the gay gene, if it exists, may have and enjoy gay sex, does this make him gay even thought he does not have the genetic makeup?
As stated above the Kinsley research of the 1950’s, goes someway to disprove the concept of a gay gene due to it proposal of majority bisexualism.
Looking at the research done on the subject it is hard to argue that genetics do not play a part in sexuality. How much of a part however has yet to be proven.
Of all the arguments put forward the one for a gay gene seems to be the most convincing. More factual evidence and statistics can be put forward for it than the other two, and it is been more widely accepted by the public.
However the socialisation position cannot be ignored and it is clear that it must play some, however small, part in the sexuality process.
The question of what is the main course, I feel, cannot be answered until either a gay gene is located or the entire human genome is mapped out and no gay gene found.
Using the research conducted we can however make a large assumption about the source of sexuality. Most of the research seems to point to a large part been played by genetics, with a small part by socialisation. Whether the research is pointing in the right direction and our assumptions are correct is something that we will most probably have to wait a long time to find out.
