Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Live and Let Live

I’ve not exactly hidden the fact that I’m a Christian, but I am sadly atypical. Having said that, I’d like to mention something that Randall McElroy recently wrote:
I’ve never been too sympathetic to the argument that people can choose to be homosexual (and hence, can choose not to). I know I couldn’t choose to be gay. Think about it. Could you choose to be gay? If you already are, I find it perfectly believable that you couldn’t choose to be straight.
While that seems to be common sense, some folks reject it out-of-hand. Regardless, commenter/contributor Matt McIntosh offers a scientific perspective:
There’s well-documented evidence of brain structure differences between gays and straights. Specifically, Simon LeVay found that the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus is more than twice as large in straight men than in gay men, on average. This is roughly the same dimorphism you see between straight men and women. (Notably though, the second nucleus which is also smaller in women was normal-sized in gays.) The INAH plays a crucial role in sexual behaviour, so that’s as big a smoking gun as you can hope to find.