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There was a time in human history when homosexuality, a roughly 2% occurrence, was perceived by the vast majority, heterosexuals, as a conscious choice, and thus, because of homosexuality's attendant deviant behavior, it was considered a moral failure. The punishment for such moral failure was to be stoned to death, as prescribed by certain religions.
Creating a government that separated church and state helped to put that barbaric penalization behavior behind most of humanity.
So heterosexuals, mostly under religious direction, then began counseling homosexuals to surrender their deviant practices, to choose heterosexuality, even resorting to religious sponsored "deprogramming". This was largely a failure, much to the puzzlement of those heterosexual counselors.
However, it wasn't until after the middle of the twentieth century that a number of studies were conducted that validated the growing speculation that homosexuality wasn't a conscious choice, but, though obviously aberrant, was an intrinsic neuropsychological compulsion for homosexuals, like heterosexuality is for heterosexuals.
Initially it was then speculated that sexually attracted-to orientation was inculcated unconsciously in family of origin during the first four years of life when the brain is still forming and in response to specific idiosyncratic reactions of the child to specific parental dynamics/behaviors that psychologists thought were identifiable and could be categorized and analyzed to predict the likelihood of homosexuality.
I was one of those who pursued analysis of that theory, which I thought held promise. However, like most, I found it nearly impossible to differentiate between environmental causation and genetic causation, as the two seemed to emulate each other, and were difficult to distinguish.
But, in absence of a "gay gene", this was still the best explanation for the aberration of homosexuality.
Meanwhile, investigation into the cause of the abnormality of transsexuality lead to understandable supposition that transsexuality's cousin, homosexuality, would have a similar cause.
It was discovered that, during gestation, two hormonal "blasts" occur, one that determines physical sexual characteristics (genitals, etc.) and one that determines neuropsychological sexual characteristics (self-identity gender, attracted-to gender, etc.). In normal function, these hormone blasts create a physiological and neuropsychological heterosexual person, where the physical sexuality matches the self-identity gender and the person's attracted-to gender is that of the opposite sex. However, when a dysfunction occurs in the hormonal blasts, on rare occasion, between 0.2 to 0.4 percent of the time, the result is a transsexual person, someone whose physical sexual characteristics are at defective cross-purposes with their neuropsychological self-identity gender and sometimes also with their attracted-to gender.
The supposition with respect to homosexuality is that roughly 2.0 percent of the time the dysfunction in the hormonal blasts doesn't as much adversely affect the self-identity gender but greatly adversely affects the attracted-to gender to cause it to be at defective cross-purposes with the person's physical sexual characteristics.
But the precise cause of the hormonal dysfunctional was a mystery. There didn't appear to be a specific gene to account for the anomaly. Nor could environmental causes in and of themselves be pinpointed.
Enter epigenetics: What is epigenetics? | Laboratory News
Epigenetics now accounts for what was previously speculated to be just genetic:
From a topically relevant perspective, epigenetic activity during gestation is now realized as the cause of many defect abnormalities:
Indeed, today [2013] we have confirmed this role of epigenetics, and epigenetic modifications have resulted in reducing the incidence of the birth defect of spina bifida, for one: http://www.elsevierdirect.com/companions/9780123749475/boxes/Chapter_041.pdf
Clearly, functions occurring during gestation that are epigenetically regulated can go awry, creating birth defects.
Today, the dysfunction in the epigenetic mechanism is considered to be at the root of the birth defect of transsexuality.
But, is the same true for transsexuality's apparent cousin homosexuality?
Based on recent research, the answer appears to be yes.
Here's an article on a recent scientific discovery about the role of epigenetics in the birth defect of homosexuality: Scientists May Have Finally Unlocked Puzzle of Why People Are Gay - US News and World Report
And here's another reference to this mathematical/biological model implicating epi-marks in the birth defect of homosexuality with respect to the hormonal blasts' effect: Epigenetics Is A Critical Factor In Homosexuality
These epi-marks are supposed to guide normal development of physiological sex, self-identity gender, and attracted-to gender:
But when they are abnormally passed, like from father to daughter or mother to son, an aberration occurs that can create a defective mismatch of these three that causes homosexuality:
Or more simply put: Evolution Of Homosexuality Epigenetics - Business Insider
The challenge now is to find a way to keep these markers for the parents but prevent opposite-sex passing to the offspring, a defect-causing situation that now occurs roughly 2 percent of the time.
Birth defects, such as spina bifida, transsexuality, cleft palate, homosexuality, etc., occur in a surprisingly high six percent of births worldwide, and scientists now believe that limiting exposure to certain environmental chemicals, ingestions, inhalants, etc. can reduce the incidence of birth defects by inhibiting the dysfunction-creating epi-marks from passing: Nutrition, Epigenetics and Complex Birth Defects -- Finnell 24 (1): 401.3 -- The FASEB Journal
Today, scientists are spreading the word: Understanding the Epigenetics of Birth Defects : Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Indeed, soon there will be supplements prescribed for women during gestation to prevent sexuality related defect-causing aberrations from occurring, just like taking high doses of folate when pregnant greatly reduces the epigenetic dysfunction from occurring that causes spina bifida.
Most all transsexuals support research into finding a cure for the birth defect of transsexuality.
But a challenge in funding research to find a cure for homosexuality is that homosexuality has been greatly politicized by ideologues, both left and right, who will irrationally oppose both the recent scientific findings and subsequent remedial action.
Ideologues on the right will insist the research is faulty "once again" and that homosexuality is a conscious choice, so they'll be adverse to supporting funding for a cure, though there will be rather strange exceptions: Bryan Fischer: Homosexuality May Be A 'Birth Defect' That Could Lead Parents To Abort Children
Ideologues on the left, though they'll accurately deny homosexuality is a conscious choice, will suddenly stop there and feign dumbness that homosexuality isn't the obvious birth defect that it is, in fear that the obviously accurate status of "birth defect" will reduce support for political agendas championed by the left wing.
Regardless, the obvious defect-nature of both transsexuality and its scientifically obvious etiological cousin homosexuality will spur scientists dedicated to fighting birth defects to explore ways to prevent the epigenetic dysfunction that causes these defects.
Hopefully ideologues on both wings of the political spectrum will just get out of the way and let birth defect-fighting science and our species progress.
Creating a government that separated church and state helped to put that barbaric penalization behavior behind most of humanity.
So heterosexuals, mostly under religious direction, then began counseling homosexuals to surrender their deviant practices, to choose heterosexuality, even resorting to religious sponsored "deprogramming". This was largely a failure, much to the puzzlement of those heterosexual counselors.
However, it wasn't until after the middle of the twentieth century that a number of studies were conducted that validated the growing speculation that homosexuality wasn't a conscious choice, but, though obviously aberrant, was an intrinsic neuropsychological compulsion for homosexuals, like heterosexuality is for heterosexuals.
Initially it was then speculated that sexually attracted-to orientation was inculcated unconsciously in family of origin during the first four years of life when the brain is still forming and in response to specific idiosyncratic reactions of the child to specific parental dynamics/behaviors that psychologists thought were identifiable and could be categorized and analyzed to predict the likelihood of homosexuality.
I was one of those who pursued analysis of that theory, which I thought held promise. However, like most, I found it nearly impossible to differentiate between environmental causation and genetic causation, as the two seemed to emulate each other, and were difficult to distinguish.
But, in absence of a "gay gene", this was still the best explanation for the aberration of homosexuality.
Meanwhile, investigation into the cause of the abnormality of transsexuality lead to understandable supposition that transsexuality's cousin, homosexuality, would have a similar cause.
It was discovered that, during gestation, two hormonal "blasts" occur, one that determines physical sexual characteristics (genitals, etc.) and one that determines neuropsychological sexual characteristics (self-identity gender, attracted-to gender, etc.). In normal function, these hormone blasts create a physiological and neuropsychological heterosexual person, where the physical sexuality matches the self-identity gender and the person's attracted-to gender is that of the opposite sex. However, when a dysfunction occurs in the hormonal blasts, on rare occasion, between 0.2 to 0.4 percent of the time, the result is a transsexual person, someone whose physical sexual characteristics are at defective cross-purposes with their neuropsychological self-identity gender and sometimes also with their attracted-to gender.
The supposition with respect to homosexuality is that roughly 2.0 percent of the time the dysfunction in the hormonal blasts doesn't as much adversely affect the self-identity gender but greatly adversely affects the attracted-to gender to cause it to be at defective cross-purposes with the person's physical sexual characteristics.
But the precise cause of the hormonal dysfunctional was a mystery. There didn't appear to be a specific gene to account for the anomaly. Nor could environmental causes in and of themselves be pinpointed.
Enter epigenetics: What is epigenetics? | Laboratory News
Epigenetics is a relatively new area of research that is currently attracting a high level of interest. The term epigenetics describes heritable changes in genome function that occur without a change in the DNA nucleotide sequence. The basis of epigenetics lies in the control of gene expression.
Epigenetics now accounts for what was previously speculated to be just genetic:
The existence of epigenetic mechanisms is not a new discovery. For many years, certain examples of non-Mendelian inheritance have been attributed to epigenetic events, such as position effect variegation in Drosophila. In this instance, expression of an eye colour gene is prevented when a chromosomal rearrangement moves the gene near to an area of heterochromatin, resulting in a variegated eye colour phenotype.
From a topically relevant perspective, epigenetic activity during gestation is now realized as the cause of many defect abnormalities:
Today [April 2006], scientists are uncovering evidence suggesting that epigenetic mechanisms, very different to those that occur in the Drosophila example, are key to a diverse range of biological processes in mammals. Interest in the subject has been raised further as new data emerges showing that epigenetic dysfunction plays a central role in the cause of many human diseases including cancer and birth defects.
Indeed, today [2013] we have confirmed this role of epigenetics, and epigenetic modifications have resulted in reducing the incidence of the birth defect of spina bifida, for one: http://www.elsevierdirect.com/companions/9780123749475/boxes/Chapter_041.pdf
In ongoing research, evidence for epigenetic factors at all three levels mentioned above has been found in Alzheimer’s disease (Coppede & Migliore, 2010) and in a variety of developmental diseases involving epilepsy in humans, mental retardation, X-linked syndromes, particularly fragile X syndrome, and thalassemia (Qureshi & Mehler, 2010c). ... Dietary supplements of B6, B12 and folate to raise methionine levels and DNA methylation have dramatically reduced the incidence of spina bifida ...
Clearly, functions occurring during gestation that are epigenetically regulated can go awry, creating birth defects.
Today, the dysfunction in the epigenetic mechanism is considered to be at the root of the birth defect of transsexuality.
But, is the same true for transsexuality's apparent cousin homosexuality?
Based on recent research, the answer appears to be yes.
Here's an article on a recent scientific discovery about the role of epigenetics in the birth defect of homosexuality: Scientists May Have Finally Unlocked Puzzle of Why People Are Gay - US News and World Report
Scientists from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis say homosexuality seems to have an epigenetic, not a genetic link. ... passed from father-to-daughter or mother-to-son, explains William Rice, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Barbara and lead author of the study.
And here's another reference to this mathematical/biological model implicating epi-marks in the birth defect of homosexuality with respect to the hormonal blasts' effect: Epigenetics Is A Critical Factor In Homosexuality
Sex-specific epi-marks are made during early fetal development and serve as security against the considerable natural variation in testosterone that happens in late fetal development. For example, sex-specific epi-marks prevent female fetuses from becoming masculine when there are unusually high testosterone levels present, and vice versa for male fetuses.
These epi-marks are supposed to guide normal development of physiological sex, self-identity gender, and attracted-to gender:
Different kinds of epi-marks safeguard different sex-specific characteristics; some protect the genitals, others protect sexual identity, and this study suggests others keep safe sexual partner preference.
But when they are abnormally passed, like from father to daughter or mother to son, an aberration occurs that can create a defective mismatch of these three that causes homosexuality:
When these epi-marks are passed between generations from fathers to daughters or mothers to sons, they have the potential to result in reverse effects. The outcome is feminization of characteristics in sons or masculinization of some characteristics in daughters, occasionally affecting sexual preference.
Or more simply put: Evolution Of Homosexuality Epigenetics - Business Insider
So these epigenetic markers are valuable to the parents in protecting them as adults from over-exposure to the opposite-sex defining hormone, but when these epi-marks are dysfunctionally passed to the developing prenatal child, the defect of homosexuality can occur prior to birth.So, the theory goes that a woman possesses epigenetic traits that made her react to hormones in a typically "female way" — and if they were to pass to her son they could potentially interfere with his normal male development by making his genes react to hormones the way a female's genes would. The same goes for a man passing on his epigenetic traits to his daughter, which would expose her to testosterone in a "male way."
So, the researcher's theory goes that these epigenetic modifications would be useful to the parent, and only infrequently make their way to the second generation and cause "abnormal" fetal development — so they would still be useful evolutionarily.
Environmental factors could influence epigenetics, and frequently do, so they also play a role in when or how often these epi-marks get passed on.
The challenge now is to find a way to keep these markers for the parents but prevent opposite-sex passing to the offspring, a defect-causing situation that now occurs roughly 2 percent of the time.
Birth defects, such as spina bifida, transsexuality, cleft palate, homosexuality, etc., occur in a surprisingly high six percent of births worldwide, and scientists now believe that limiting exposure to certain environmental chemicals, ingestions, inhalants, etc. can reduce the incidence of birth defects by inhibiting the dysfunction-creating epi-marks from passing: Nutrition, Epigenetics and Complex Birth Defects -- Finnell 24 (1): 401.3 -- The FASEB Journal
Today, scientists are spreading the word: Understanding the Epigenetics of Birth Defects : Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Indeed, soon there will be supplements prescribed for women during gestation to prevent sexuality related defect-causing aberrations from occurring, just like taking high doses of folate when pregnant greatly reduces the epigenetic dysfunction from occurring that causes spina bifida.
Most all transsexuals support research into finding a cure for the birth defect of transsexuality.
But a challenge in funding research to find a cure for homosexuality is that homosexuality has been greatly politicized by ideologues, both left and right, who will irrationally oppose both the recent scientific findings and subsequent remedial action.
Ideologues on the right will insist the research is faulty "once again" and that homosexuality is a conscious choice, so they'll be adverse to supporting funding for a cure, though there will be rather strange exceptions: Bryan Fischer: Homosexuality May Be A 'Birth Defect' That Could Lead Parents To Abort Children
Ideologues on the left, though they'll accurately deny homosexuality is a conscious choice, will suddenly stop there and feign dumbness that homosexuality isn't the obvious birth defect that it is, in fear that the obviously accurate status of "birth defect" will reduce support for political agendas championed by the left wing.
Regardless, the obvious defect-nature of both transsexuality and its scientifically obvious etiological cousin homosexuality will spur scientists dedicated to fighting birth defects to explore ways to prevent the epigenetic dysfunction that causes these defects.
Hopefully ideologues on both wings of the political spectrum will just get out of the way and let birth defect-fighting science and our species progress.