Didn't have a chance to post about this yesterday, but it's pretty interesting. A study of nearly 1,000 gay and straight men has shown that the more older brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay:
“Bogaert found that the link between having older brothers and homosexuality was present only if the siblings were biologically related — this relationship was seen between biological brothers who were not raised together. The amount of time that a man was reared with older brothers had no association with sexual orientation.
‘These results support a prenatal origin to sexual orientation development in men and indicate that the fraternal birth-order effect is probably the result of a maternal ‘memory' for male gestations or births,' Bogaert writes in his report in PNAS Early Edition.”
Bogaert's theory behind the biological process:”A woman's body may see a male foetus as “‘foreign', he says, prompting an immune reaction which may grow progressively stronger with each male child. The antibodies created may affect the developing male brain.”
With this news there's little doubt that families with many brothers will be scrutinized (although the photos above are not meant to insinuate anything, simply to illustrate).
It is gratifying to see the mounting evidence that homosexuality is genetically determined. Said Andy Forrest, Stonewall spokesman: “It adds further weight to the argument that lesbian and gay people should be treated equally in society and not discriminated against for something that's just as inherent as skin colour.”
