Well, there has been some talk about possible feminizing chemicals being an issue and perhaps that has been on people's minds whether or not it's what is actually happening. That would be part of "environment" and I think that's pretty distinct from "upbringing", and even cuts over the "born with" side if those effect fetuses.

I think a better survey would categorize the causes more like:
* Genetics
* Physical environmental factors
* Life experiences / upbringing

Also, something that's not discussed much is that people have different personal definitions about what "being gay" is. For some, "being gay" is about what's thoughts and feelings towards the same sex. For others, "being gay" is *acting* on those feelings. The latter is what some people mean by "being gay is a choice" -- and why I think there's a lot of misunderstanding over that and the idea of "rehabilitation", as well as the causes.

To be clear, I suspect that it's not all one thing or another for everyone. Few things are that simple. Nor should it matter when it comes to public policy. Even if it *were* a choice for some or all people, I believe that it is as perfectly valid a "choice" as being straight.

Gay rights advocates have been beating the drum of "nature" versus "nurture," so maybe it's been working. That's presumably because they think it's true, but also because the view that homosexuality is something people are born leads to positive views toward gays and lesbians, and policies that support their rights (I have links to that effect here: http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/gay-rights-birthright/ ). Being "born with it" makes it comparable to race and civil rights. It makes me unhappy, because it allows people to support gay rights while still being "personally" opposed to homosexuality. As in, "You can't blame them..."

I think there might be a fundamental flaw in the reasoning that being homosexual means the same thing, or has the same causes, for men and women. The study asks about gay men and women, but I get the feeling it's really asking about gay men, and people are answering/talking about gay men. Because lesbians tend to answer this queston VERY differently than gay men, based on the research I've seen. While it makes sense for lobbyist reasons, I think it's disingenuous to group gay men and lesbians together. Period.

Meh. I don't care why people are gay. It's not a disorder that needs study. I realize this post is more about people's attitudes, but I think that if we could all look at it as a natural variance in the human spectrum, we could stop seeing people as disordered and in need of a "cure".

Gay people are gay like straight people are straight.

Well I'd reckon after science convinces everybody who can be convinced by science, the rest of the debate becomes about dogma. Dogmatics don't change their mind because of little things like "evidence."

This makes me wonder about the effect of the constant drumbeat against the theory of evolution. The media seems to cover every single crank who claims it isn't true and in many parts of the country, a person can be immersed in a social/religious/school system that coerces people to believe that the Christian creation story is every bit as plausible as the science of evolution, which is, in turn, highly suspect. This must create a pretty serious drag on the trajectory of people understanding and "believing" any scientific information. And when that scientific information flies in the face of religious orthodoxy, I imagine it has an even greater drag.

The point of the matter is, homosexuality is wrong in the eyes of God. Just like overeating, getting drunk, or being greedy -- one can prevent acting on behavior if one wants to resist impulses which are unnatural in the eyes of the Creator. By insinuating one is born this way, and it can't be helped, gives excuse; while saying it is the person's upbringing and environmental factors, gives the accountability of one's action back upon the person's self-control. If a person wants to ignore God, the Creator of all things, in the formula, then they can choose to live in all the depravity and perversity that they want. Just don't force us into saying that it's okay and natural, because it is not. It's wrong. That doesn't mean we can't still love the person, but we don't have to approve of their lifestyle CHOICE. One can choose to stop. It's not easy, but neither is it easy to give up a drug habit or alcohol when addicted. It's the same thing with homosexuality...they can choose to come out of that lifestyle.

i wonder what the graph would look like if people were asked the same question about heterosexuality. no, wait, i know what it would look like. at least homosexuality is no longer listed as a psychiatric disorder. that's... something, i suppose.

I wonder what the results of similar study on the causes of heterosexuality would be. After all, if one can choose to be homosexual, does that mean we also choose to be heterosexual? Or if we are born heterosexual, wouldn't that indicate that we could also be born homosexual? Of course, heterosexual is usually assumed to be the default, with homosexuality being the "other."

I also wonder if a parallel could be drawn between sexuality and gender, in that we are born with certain physical attributes that are then affected by environmental influences.

My guess is that back in the 90s, there were a lot of tolerance movements and less immediate backlash-- as a kid, I remember getting lectures from teachers on tolerance when someone called another kid "gay" and seeing stuff on TV. Evolution was also more widely taught, and I remember a lot of evo-psych theories about gay people improving the survival of their siblings' children. That's still here, of course, but now I see MUCH more backlash, against evolutionary theory, especially evolutionary psychology, and against homosexuality. It's like they needed a few years to catch up to the change before they could launch a counter-attack.

I especially think that the opposition to evolutionary psychology in all it's shapes and forms has been incredibly damaging to beliefs about queer persons. I see people-- conservatives AND liberals-- arguing that gender and orientation, etc are ALL learned, that there is nothing innate about how we think, that evolution makes no difference on our thoughts or actions even if they believe in evolution. Of course, if it's all based on nurture, then proper counseling and education should be prescribed for homosexuals, transsexuals, and any queer person, because objectively life in our culture is easier if you're heteronormative. Thus even progressives will believe it's learned, even if they think that we shouldn't care because homosexuals aren't hurting anyone. Of course, that same mentality leads to progressive's transphobia, since unlike homosexuals, if transsexual behavior was nurture-based they would be doing themselves incredible damage.

Personally, I think it's influenced by maternal hormones in the womb-- too much of something at the perfect time, and the child is gay. That would explain both the consistent failure of reeducation when we can reeducate people on everything else that is based on nurture, the universality of homosexuality in all cultures, the lack of clear lines of descent that would indicate genetics, the tendency of later-born boys to be gay more than firstborn (women's bodies might become more resistant to testosterone after several pregnancies), and the potential (still-unproven) uptick in homosexuality in Western nations, where pregnant women may be exposed to more hormones in their water and food.

Not going one way or the other...yet...but reading the comments have been very interesting. I would point out that it is a scientific fact that the whiptail lizard is asexual and homosexual. Surely this is not by choice. So why the "choice" in humans? Just a thought.

Nothing has been said here yet about bisexuality, which is almost never mentioned in studies like these. Oftentimes, bisexuality is viewed either as a temporary identity on the road to homosexuality, or as a sexually voracious and undiscriminating lifestyle choice. Neither of these descriptions fit the reality of my life or the lives of other bisexual people I know. I've never heard bisexuality included in the "nature vs. nurture" debate.

I'm a bisexual woman married to a man, and have several friends who would describe themselves the same way. I also have some friends who are bisexual women in long-term relationships with women. I don't act on my attraction to women any more, since I'm in a monogamous relationship, but the attraction is still very much there. Most of the time, I'm perceived by other people as straight, but this doesn't accurately describe my sexual existence, even though my sexual behavior is now exclusively heterosexual.

I don't think that sexual orientation is something we're born with; having studied a bit of psychoanalytic theory, I think that our desires are shaped by our experiences. But I also think that, once that shaping has been done--very early in childhood--there's nothing that a person can do to change it. I couldn't be counseled out of my sexual attraction to women any more than I could be counseled out of my culinary attraction to apples. I don't think homosexuality is a "learned" deviation from heterosexuality, but rather that all people are born bisexual--with the capacity to find erotic fulfillment in another person of either sex--and that early childhood experiences suppress a person's capacity for attraction to one or the other.

Attitudes toward sexuality change over time, even within the structure of the monotheistic religions. In the 19th century, married (Christian) women would often carry on romances with other women; they may or may not have been sexual in nature, but when a woman's female friend came to visit, the husband was often kicked out of bed so that the women could sleep together, and the language in their letters to each other was that of romantic love. This was the social norm, accepted as natural and right. These women wouldn't have been considered lesbians, or even as homosexuals or bisexuals, because the idea of homosexuality as a condition or identity didn't even exist until the 1860's. Now the dominant way of thinking about sexuality is within a rigid gay/straight framework, and such arrangements would probably be viewed as strange and/or suspicious. I hope that eventually most people will develop a more accommodating and sympathetic understanding of human sexuality.

I just wonder why people seem to favour the dichotomy so strongly, when we've yet to find a gene which controls sexual orientation? Both a nature AND nurture aspect controls pretty much everything else in humans that we look at, from height to mental illnesses, why so few people think that in sexual orientation, it can be both?

From reading the comments I kind of get the idea that the Nurture/Nature position doesn't quite cut clear the line against/pro gay rights, or homophobic/non homophobic. Some religious will say it's natural but you can and have to fight against it anyway (natural = animalistic = degrading and uncivilized), some pro-gay right will say that it doesn't matter if it's how you were raised, like politics or religions, it's your right to choose or lead your life the way you want, even if you might have been influenced so.

In a nutshell, the Nature/Nurture thing doesn't say much about the morality and righteousness we attribute to it...

Maybe cuz the question is completely misguided. For anyone familiar with Judith Butler or Queer Theory in general, asking why someone is "gay" makes as much sense as asking why someone is "straight". The question assumes identity as fixed and completely in tune with fixed labels, whereas desire is fluid and sexual orientation is part of a process of complex, multi-layered process of subjectivation.

once again, the sociological view seems too limited for understanding your topic... it's like "let's explain, sociologically, why people tend to believe that water and ice is made of the same basic substance - there must be something in the way we imagine the world behind this, not something about how the world actually is".

namely, there was a lot of research on the topic, which states that it's not more than 50% nature. one of them stating, as an example, that in genetically identic twins, if one of them is gay, the other, who shares his/her genes, has a 50% chance to be gay too - i think, these were people growing up in different households, but if they were from the same places, then the difference is even more striking, like small things can have big effects.

I only wonder why the "both" answer isn't more popular. But "nature" didn't get too popular simply because there is plenty of counterproof.

these informations have been used for and against gays, and _this_ is a sociological question indeed.

(and I personally sustain, that if I would decide to change my orientation right now, without nature OR my upbringing making me to... the world still wouldn't have the right to say a world).

Almost everybody posting in this thread assumes that "belief in nature" = "pro-gay" whereas "belief in nurture" = "anti-gay". Has that assumption been examined? Can it be checked against the original data?

In the decade since the human genome was first sequenced, we've been hearing more and more about how no single gene ever controls a specific trait, how complicated the interactions are between genetics and the natural in- and extra-utero environment etc. Then there's the whole new science of epigenetics, only half a decade or so old and already revolutionising our understanding of how our own genes are influenced by environmental factors operating on our ancestors.

It's not unreasonable to suppose that there are quite pro-science, pro-human right and gay equality people who've been reading Scientific American or whatever in the last few years and have just come to the conclusion that "it's a lot more complicated than that"... Which would explain the uptick in "nurture" responses, in combination with the stepped-up anti-gay propaganda.

I think that one potential "answer" in explaining why the trend died out in the graph is the recent issue of gay marriage. The stakes have been raised in the last ten years.

Before, it was all academic and theoretical as to why someone was gay. As soon as the gay marriage issue was on the ballot, people started to pay attention more, and activists from both sides made their cases.

I don't remember seeing anything about "cured" homosexuals more than ten years ago. The religious right has made the "homosexuality as a choice" a cornerstone of their ballot initiative, which helps explain what happened after years of tolerance, acceptance, and respect were taking hold.

I'd be hesitant to say that it's 100% nature because some people might grow up in households where they are afraid of coming out, and would therefore identify as straight. And yes, I agree with MarinaS that there's no simple answer. Every time someone tries to figure out whether a particular trait is nature or nurture, we end up finding out that it's a combination of both. I don't see how this would be any different. This poll could benefit from a bit of clarity in the question.