© ALEKSANDAR STOJKOVIC/SHUTTERSTOCKThe biology of human sexual orientation is a fascinating and important area of basic research, but given the intensity of the worldwide social, political, and ethical debates over this topic, it is bound to have consequences outside the lab as well. In considering the social ramifications of this work, it’s instructive to look back at the role that science has played in the quest for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights and visibility in the United States over the past 20 years. To ignore the historical record of this shift in public opinion, or even to stifle further research on the basis of unfounded hypotheticals, is a disservice to both science and human rights.
My involvement in sexual orientation research began in July of 1993, when my lab at the National Institutes of Health reported in Science that the maternal but not paternal male relatives of gay men had increased rates of same-sex orientation, suggesting the possibility of sex-linked transmission in a portion of the population (Science, 261:321-27, 1993). This hypothesis was supported by DNA linkage analysis, which demonstrated that gay brothers in these families had an increased probability of sharing certain markers on the Xq28 region of the X chromosome. Our study provided the first molecular evidence for a genetic influence on human sexual orientation—findings that other researchers have recently replicated and confirmed in a large independent study. (See “To Study Unfettered,” here.)
While the claims of our ...
