Born Gay? : Many Cheer a Second Study Suggesting That Homosexuality Has Physical Causes

T-shirts with “It’s a brain thing” emblazoned across them are hot sellers in West Hollywood these days.

The way R. J. DiCamillo, manager of “Don’t Panic,” recounts it, gay shoppers are saying “I knew it. I’m sending this to my mother” as they snap up the T-shirts in the wake of the second study in a little more than a year to find fundamental differences between the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men.

The mounting evidence of a biological link to homosexuality has been welcomed by many gays and lesbians as a powerful piece of ammunition in their struggle for greater civil rights and acceptance--yet the research’s impact on the courts of law and public opinion remains unclear.

“It is something we will definitely use,” said Jon Davidson, a gay rights attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “I’m just not convinced that all of a sudden we’re going to see a sea change in the courts.”

The research certainly has not sent religious conservatives into retreat. “It still remains a moral argument,” said David Llewellyn, president of the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom, a conservative public interest firm. “It’s not something which I see as being resolved on the basis of genetics or biology.”

Moreover, some in the gay and lesbian community warn of the pitfalls of relying on a biological justification for gay rights.

“I don’t like the notion that we will only be accepted if we were born that way,” said Lindsy Van Gelder, a New York writer. What happens, Van Gelder cautioned, if a decade from now a scientist proves the recent research “is fluky and meaningless? Does that mean we will go back to being sick sinners?”

In the most recent of the two studies, UCLA neuroscientists Roger A. Gorski and Laura S. Allen found that an important structure connecting the left and right sides of the brain--already known to be larger in women than in men--is larger still in homosexual men. Their findings follow by 13 months another study conducted in San Diego by neuroscientist Simon LeVay, who discovered that a different part of the brain is smaller in gay men than heterosexual men.

Both studies examined brains taken from male cadavers. Researchers said they did not include women because of the difficulty of identifying lesbians, whereas men who had died from AIDS are often identified as homosexual on the death certificate.

While LeVay has said the research strongly supports a biological basis for sexual orientation, Gorski is a tad more cautious.

“It’s consistent” with a biological basis, Gorski said, noting that neither study establishes cause and effect. Are the brain differences the result of differing sexual orientation or the cause of it?

“Finding these structural differences does add something to the whole story,” Gorski said. “But we’ve got to know which comes first and if it’s hormonally related.”

However undefined, the indications of a biological role in homosexuality have been greeted with enthusiasm by many in the gay community.

The research will help put “professional homophobes” out of work, predicted Steve Martin, president of the Stonewall Democratic Club, a gay and lesbian political group. “It validates what we in the community have always said, that our behavior is not something you can change through psychology or legislation. We are who we are . . . one of God’s creations.”

Torie Osborn, executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, agreed. “The experience of most gay people, both men and women, is that this is not a choice, and having more and more scientific evidence accrued to validate people’s personal experience only pushes forward our movement.

“I think it’s extremely significant politically,” Osborn said. “The right wing argument against us hinges (on the contention) that this is a perverted lifestyle choice.”

Others find the research fascinating, but doubt it will cause more than a ripple in public opinion.

“I find it very intriguing but I don’t think it’s going to change the way bigots think of lesbians and gay men,” said D. Lisa Powell, a Los Angeles attorney and member of United Lesbians of African Heritage. “Bigots hate us and don’t care a whole lot about science.”

From a legal perspective, evidence that homosexuality is an inborn trait bolsters arguments that gays deserve protection against discrimination, since one of the criteria courts have looked at in granting civil rights protections is whether discrimination is based on a group characteristic that is unchangeable or “immutable,” such as race.

Yet ACLU attorney Davidson says that line of argument is by no means clear cut. For one thing, he noted that courts have shown “a substantial disagreement about whether mutability is a factor to be looked at” in discrimination cases involving gays.

Furthermore, Davidson said “it’s not quite clear that these (brain) studies say anything about immutability.” The research indicates a physical correlation between sexual orientation and sections of the brain, but it doesn’t address whether orientation is alterable.

Davidson said the LeVay study was cited to no avail last year in Hawaii by gay plaintiffs in an equal protection case, now on appeal. In throwing out the case, the trial judge concluded that homosexuality is behavioral and can be changed, citing Christian “reparative therapy” to “cure” gays.

“My view, as borne out by this case, is that when you have judges who have trouble dealing with issues of sexual orientation, who have personal feelings about it, they will read the evidence in a way that confirms their pre-existing attitudes,” Davidson said. Biological evidence may be persuasive to some courts, but not to others.

In the political arena, Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) said the biological arguments may slightly influence the legislative debate over anti-discrimination protection for gays.

“If this can reduce some of the emotion, maybe it will help,” speculated Friedman, sponsor of a gay rights bill vetoed last year by Gov. Pete Wilson and a subsequent bill under consideration in the Senate.

Whatever the biologic evidence, Friedman says one argument against gay rights is already undercut because “we do protect choices--the choice of whether to be married or not, the choice of religion.”

On the other side of the debate, Llewellyn of the religious freedom center said that even if sexual orientation proved to be of biological origin, “that would not make a substantial change in our position.

“The biological nature of homosexuality does not transform it into a desirable trait. It is still a natural defect, not a benefit,” said Llewellyn.

The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, dismissed the research as unproven theory. “We don’t believe that it is genetic in any way, shape or form,” he said.

Van Gelder, for entirely different reasons, also doesn’t think much of the “we-were-born-that-way” argument.

“It sounds like we’re saying we can’t help it, which implies we would be something else if we could,” Van Gelder said. “It may be politic in the short run, but I don’t think it’s politic in the long run.”

Even those who embrace the research data as a potent argument on gays’ behalf say it should not be the primary weapon in the gay rights crusade.

Regardless of the cause of homosexuality, “there should be no discrimination,” Osborn said. “The gay movement needs to be careful to not rest our moral case on the genetic research.”