No Evidence People Are Born Gay or Transgender

Source: Tyler O'Neil, "Johns Hopkins Research: No Evidence People Are Born Gay or Transgender", PJ Media, 23 Aug 2016.

Source: Dr. Lawrence S. Mayer and Dr. Paul R. McHugh, "Sexuality and Gender," The New Atlantis, No. 50, Fall 2016.

"The understanding of sexual orientation as an innate, biologically fixed property of human beings — the idea that people are “born that way” — is not supported by scientific evidence."

"The study breaks down in three parts: First, Mayer and McHugh examined whether homosexuality is an inherited trait, and concluded that people are not simply "born that way." Second, they looked at the causes of the poor mental health associated with gay and transgender people, concluding that social stress does not explain all of it. Finally, they studied transgenderism, concluding that it is not innate and that transgender "treatments" are associated with negative outcomes."

"One environmental factor that appears to be correlated with non-heterosexuality is child sexual abuse victimization, which may also contribute to the higher rates."

"Compared to heterosexuals, non-heterosexuals are about two to three times as likely to have experienced childhood sexual abuse."

"Longitudinal studies of adolescents suggest that sexual orientation may be quite fluid over the life course for some people, with one study estimating that as many as 80% of male adolescents who report same-sex attractions no longer do so as adults ..."

"The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be “a man trapped in a woman’s body” or “a woman trapped in a man’s body” — is not supported by scientific evidence."

"In one sense, the evidence that we are born with a given gender seems well supported by direct observation: males overwhelmingly identify as men and females as women. The fact that children are (with a few exceptions of intersex individuals) born either biologically male or female is beyond debate. The biological sexes play complementary roles in reproduction, and there are a number of population-level average physiological and psychological differences between the sexes."

"Compared to the general population, adults who have undergone sex-reassignment surgery continue to have a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes. One study found that, compared to controls, sex-reassigned individuals were about 5 times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide."