By: Simon Ewins To: Johnny Mckinney Re: Check It Out... JM+gt; This is a more kinder way o

By: Simon Ewins
To: Johnny Mckinney
Re: Check It Out...

 JM> This is a more kinder way of the NT saying
 JM> that homosexuality is not right.

 And if it is genetic, and if your god created such genetic
 characteristics when it created mankind then how will you rationalize
 your bigotry?

 The following is excerpted from an essay by Liz Saunders:

   "There are certain biophysical aspects of us, as humans, which are
   under strict biological control and no amount of socialization can
   change them.  For example, a person who has been frightened will have
   an adrenaline surge that prepares the body for a fight or flight
   response.  Although our culturalization/socialization teaches us
   acceptable methods of dealing with this biological phenomena, the
   initial reaction that leads to the learned response is nonetheless
   biological.

   Another similar example is that of a lactating woman who physically
   reacts to the sound of her own baby's cry by producing oxytocin, which
   leads to a "letting down" of milk in preparation for feeding.  This
   will only happen when her own child cries and not at the sound of any
   other child.

   When it comes to gender identification and sexual behaviour our
   hormones play a large part in our lives from conception. In the early
   stages of life, all foetus' are gonadally female. Once the hormones
   begin to develop, based on our chromosomal sex, male foetus' begin to
   be differentiated. Dr. Richard Green studied a society with a hormonal
   anomaly in the Dominican Republic.  Some males are missing one
   masculinizing hormone prior to birth, so are raised female. At puberty,
   these children become "masculinized" by their hormones and  apparently,
   make the transition to male (Green 1987:43-4) thereby overcoming  their
   early socialization through their biology. Dr.  Green suggests that
   their  brains were in fact 'organized' male before birth so that the
   transition is  easy (ibid).

   One hormone, testosterone, is found in both sexes, and is the catalyst
   of aggression, physical prowess and libido. Although women's bodies do
   produce differing levels of testosterone "varying with the phase of the
   menstrual cycle" (Hoyenga 1979:139), men's bodies regularly produce
   more. Numerous studies on animals have shown that injecting either sex
   with testosterone will increase its aggression levels. Over the years
   male and female athletes have used testosterone and other steroids to
   improve their physical performance and stamina and gain an aggressive
   "winning edge". With prolonged testosterone  use, the female athletes
   also become very masculinized in appearance.

   Although human females do not experience an annual "season" or estrus
   as do other mammals, we do still experience hormonal cycles on a
   monthly basis which affect our behaviour, as evidenced by recent
   studies of premenstrual syndrome.  "Aggression in women has also been
   related to the premenstrual syndrome, a time when estrogen,
   progesterone and testosterone levels are rapidly falling" (ibid:139).
   For sub-primate animals, neither males nor females can control their
   behavioural responses to the female estrus cycle.  During certain parts
   of the cycle "females lose interest in sex ...  and...  males lose
   interest in  them" (ibid:126) Alternatively, when a female is "in
   heat", males can't ignore  her.  Although we have the ability to reason
   and therefore "control" our biology, or at least our reaction to it,
   which animals do not, this does not negate the biology.

   There are a few conditions where the biological building blocks
   provided for an individual are abnormal such as Kleinfelter's syndrome
   and extra "Y" chromosomes for males, or Turner's syndrome and
   congenital adrenal hyperplasia  (CAH) for females.

   Males suffering from Klinefelter's syndrome "have both the male (XY)
   and the female (XX) chromosome pattern...[and]... are usually referred
   to as pseudohermaphrodites" (ibid:33). They have physical abnormalities
   (sexual and non-sexual characteristics); electroencephalographs
   frequently show "aberrations, indicative of some disorder of brain cell
   functioning"; and social/emotional problems (ibid). The latter may be
   related to gender identity, as some of the physical abnormalities are
   the development of female secondary sexual characteristics, and lack of
   adult development of male secondary sex characteristics. Although,
   Klinefelter's males show lower levels of testosterone than the general
   male population, they have an abnormally high incidence of
   incarceration, either in penal or psychiatric institutions (ibid:35).
   It is impossible to say definitively whether the social and emotion
   difficulties experienced by Klinefelter's males are a direct
   biological/psychological response to cultural stimulus or cultural
   reaction to cultural stimulus, but, if the Klinefelter's syndrome was
   not present, with its biologically determined abnormalities, then in a
   great number of instances, the resulting confusion and even
   incarceration would probably not occur.

   Men with extra Y chromosomes (XYY or XYYY) tend to be the most
   aggressive group. "The XYY male,... has been characterized as impulsive
   and as having a low tolerance for frustration or anxiety (Nielsen and
   Christensen, 1974)." (ibid:36) It is believed that some of the most
   dangerous criminals are XYY or XYYY. Many surveys have been done trying
   to prove that the extra Y chromosome is the "criminal" chromosome.
   Nielsen and Christensen (1974) concluded that it was, Jacobs (1971)
   found "there was no significant difference found between the incidence
   of males with an abnormality of the sex chromosomes in particular with
   an XYY complement in these establishments [prisons and psychiatric
   hospitals]..  and the incidence of such males among the newborn"
   (ibid:37). Therefore, the evidence is inconclusive, but intriguing.

   Another biological aberration is Turner's syndrome. Turner's syndrome
   females have only one X chromosome instead of two. They too suffer from
   physical abnormalities (short stature, infantile sexual development,
   including infertility in most cases). In a 1972 study Money and
   Ehrhardt "found that Turner's girls were less athletic and fought less
   in childhood, but had a greater interest in jewelry, perfume and hair
   styling. Theilgaard (1972) also found that Turner's women dressed so as
   to exaggerate their gender identity." (ibid:30) Further, Turner's women
   tend to score lower on "tests of spatial ability" (Liss 1983:28,
   Hoyenga 1979:30) than their "normal" female contemporaries and can
   become easily confused regarding the location of objects and themselves
   in relation to their environment.

   Much recent study has gone into the biological causes of homosexuality.
   Richard Pillard believes there is a definite hereditary aspect to
   homosexuality and that he is uniquely qualified to search for it as he,
   his brother, his sister and probably his father are gay, and he has a
   bi-sexual daughter. (Burr 1993:60)

   Early experimentation with artificially created "homosexual" rats
   demonstrated that after treatment with "electrolytic lesions of the
   ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus, a nucleus close to the stalk
   of the pituitary gland and also in close proximity to those centers
   that regulate gonadotropin secretion, and thereby sex hormone
   production...male mating behaviour prevails [where previously female
   mating behaviour had been present]. (D”rner, 1976, pp.  139-140)"
   (Parsons 1980:110).

   In recent studies Dick Swaab of the Netherlands Institute for Brain
   Research, reported in 1990 that "the suprachiasmatic nucleus [in the
   hypothalamus] was nearly twice as large in homosexual men as it was in
   heterosexual men" (Burr 1993:52). These tests follow on the heels of
   tests by Roger Gorski on the hypothalamus of rats which showed that
   these same cells were "five times larger in volume in the male rat than
   in the female" (ibid) Further tests were  carried out by Simon Levay of
   the Salk Institute who states "the discovery that a nucleus differs in
   size between heterosexual and homosexual men illustrates that sexual
   orientation in humans is amenable to study at the biological level."
   (ibid:55)

   There is also a suggestion that male homosexuals are "unfinished"
   males, inasmuch as there may have been missing hormones or insufficient
   quantities of certain hormones so that the female foetus does not make
   a complete transition to male. The analogous argument for lesbians is
   that there was an overabundance of certain male hormones, leading to a
   certain masculinization (such as in CAH)."

 I hope that this helps you to, perhaps learn to, react through
 understanding and knowledge rather than through misinformation and
 bigoted opinions put forward by those who fear that which they do not
 understand.