New Study Proves that “Gay Gene” Theory Is Totally Dead

By MassNews Staff
Posted 2-1-2005

            This week, in an event that happens with regrettable regularity, it was claimed that another geneticist had discovered the elusive “gay gene”: the specific place on the human DNA that determines homosexuality.  However, what few people in the media are reporting is that the actual data from the new study suggests the exact opposite, that homosexuality is not an inherited trait at all.
           One of the first of such studies was the infamous Hamer study published in 1993 where Dr. Dean Hamer claimed to have found that in 40 pairs of gay brothers, 33 had the same set of DNA sequences in a region of the chromosome called Xq28.  
            This discovery was trumpeted in all of the major media across the world.  National Public Radio, Time, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal all featured the story.  It was suddenly “modern” and “scientific” to acknowledge that homosexuals were “created” that way. 
       Hamer's claim had reverberated through politics as well.  Hamer gave expert testimony to the Colorado Supreme Court, thus forming the basis of the decision striking down Proposition 2, which gay activists considered “anti-gay”.  Hamer himself had declared that he believed that homosexuality was “99.5% genetic”.
        Within a year after the publishing of the Hamer study, however, a different picture of his research began to emerge.  Other scientists attempted to replicate his research.  Some even used the same individuals that Hamer studied.  The unanimous result was that there was no statistical significance to the gene that Hamer claimed was the “gay gene”.    With little fanfare, most of the media and even the gay activist community came to accept the fact that Hamer had falsified his data. 

The Current Research by Brian Mustanski
       The most recent 2005 study that is being touted as a valid “gay gene” research comes with a bit more credibility.  Dr. Brian S. Mustanski is a researcher with the University of Illinois at Chicago, and he boasts that his study is the first “full genome scan in homosexual men”.  It was published on January 12, 2005.  On January 31st, the BBC carried the story under the headline “Non-sex genes 'link to gay trait.'”  However, the data, as well as the researcher himself don’t even make that claim.
       In this study, Mustanski started with the presupposition that there was an inherited link to homosexuality.   He likened the quest to searching in "a town of 40,000 people” for a doctor, believing that a doctor would live there somewhere.  The researchers in this scenario would knock on every door to ask the residents if a doctor lives on their street.  The 40,000 number corresponds to the approximate number of human genes, and the presumption was that at least one “doctor” or gay gene would be found. 
      A large part of the study is devoted to the data from just one address---Xq28---the same gene that Hamer claimed was the “gay gene”.  Mustanski’s study found absolutely no linkage in his overall samples, even though a large part of his subjects were the exact same subjects Hamer used.
       The sections of his study that are being cited by gay activists, however, are the stretches of DNA shared by 60% of the gay men in the study, which are the genes 7q36, 8p12, and 10q26.  Although this to some may sound like a high correlation, what many reporting this are neglecting to say is that a control group of straight men would have a 50% correlation for these same genes.  Mustanski admits in the study that: “Our strongest finding was on 7q36 with a combined mlod score of 3.45 …this score falls just short of Lander and Kruglyak’s criteria for genomewide significance.”
       In other words, the closest thing he could find to a “match” still fell below a threshold for being anything other than “chance”.  In his search through 40,000 households looking for a “doctor,” there was no doctor to be found.
       Lacking any real correlation for the gay gene hypothesis, Mustanski resorted to floating the idea that many genes are somehow interrelated in determining sexual orientation.  However, his own data doesn’t support that either.  In his conclusion, he says: “We were unable to calculate empirically derived significance levels for this project.” 
       In English that means a full genome scan of human beings and their sexuality came up with nothing.  No positive genetic markers at all for being gay.  In reality, it puts to rest the mythology started by Dean Hamer, and in a thorough and comprehensive way, proves that there is no genetic or inherited dimension to homosexuality.