Are People Born Gay?

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Reducing the “born gay” debate down to genetics oversimplifies and invalidates the unique experience and complexity of individual human beings. For example, I know families where cancer is common and yet not everyone gets it.  Why?  Because more goes into having cancer than just genetics.  We have to take into account someone’s lifestyle and their environment.  For someone who struggles with unwanted same-sex attraction, we must also consider the developmental and relational factors that clearly prove far more significant than any potential genetic or biological impact. I have two adopted children and every book I have read has confirmed the truth that the environment and family that they are raised in is far more influential than their genetic or biological predispositions to psychological problems.

One thing both sides in this debate agree upon is that many factors contribute to the development of same-sex attraction. Most researchers, including Dr. Dean Hamer, the “gay gene” researcher who self-identifies as gay, agree that homosexuality, like other psychological conditions, stems from a combination of social, biological, and psychological factors. Dr. Hamer has said, “Genes are hardware...the data of life’s experiences are processed through the sexual software into the circuits of identity. I suspect the sexual software is a mixture of both genes and environment, in much the same way the software of a computer is a mixture of what’s installed at the factory and what’s added by the user.”
 
As someone who became dissatisfied living as a homosexual, I began to examine the various influences in my life that led me down the path to same-sex attraction. I found that abuse and a poor relationship with my father drove much of my need to seek acceptance in the arms of other men. To dismiss all of my experiences to a genetic component is ignorant at best, and denial at worst.

While these events played a pivotal role in my life, they are hardly unique. I’ve sat in enough support group sessions to know that many who struggle with homosexuality deal with a similar constellation of factors, including a distant relationship with the same-sex parent, isolation from same-sex peers and a profound feeling of alienation from their own gender. Could all of this be purely coincidental? If sexual preference boiled down to an issue of genes alone, then why do we see a disproportionate number of people dealing with the same sets of root factors? Of course, this is not the case for everyone, but it happens often enough to convince me that there might be more than just our DNA at work here.

Alan Chambers is the President of Exodus International—the largest worldwide Christian outreach to those dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction.