That's partially because the science itself is so complex. When the genetics of being gay comes up at scientific meetings, 'sometimes even behavioral geneticists kind of wrinkle up their noses,' says Kenneth Kendler, a psychiatric geneticist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Due to the limitations of this approach, the new work also fails to provide what behavioral geneticists really crave: specific genes that might underlie homosexuality.įew scientists have ventured into this line of research. And the kind of DNA analysis used, known as a genetic linkage study, has largely been superseded by other techniques.
'When you first find something out of the entire genome, you're always wondering if it was just by chance,' says Hamer, who asserts that new research 'clarifies the matter absolutely.'īut not everyone finds the results convincing. Now the largest independent replication effort so far, looking at 409 pairs of gay brothers, fingers the same region on the X. But several subsequent studies called his finding into question. More than 20 years ago, in a study that triggered both scientific and cultural controversy, the molecular biologist offered the first direct evidence of a 'gay gene,' by identifying a stretch on the X chromosome likely associated with homosexuality.
