Question: Why do people become gay/homosexual? i know about the hormonal inbalance and stuff, but what is the real answer :/?

Douglas Blane answered on 18 Jun 2010:

There’s no easy answer to this one from science, I’m afraid. Why not?

Well you can’t easily do experiments on sexual orientation – which is how science makes progress. You certainly can’t do genetic experiments on people.

You can do two things though:

1) look at how often one twin is homosexual when the other is, and
2) look at homosexuality in animals, which some scientists are prepared to experiment on.

So what do these studies tell us?

Well mainly that sexuality is very complex – in humans and other animals – and lots of factors have an effect. What are the factors?

Genes come into it. The proof is that your chances are higher of being homosexual if you have an identical twin who is homosexual.

There is no such thing as a homosexual gene, though. And other things have an effect too. These include what happened to you in the womb. Scientists now know this has far more effect on people than we thought.

Something else that comes into it is brain structure. Studies on animals a few years ago showed that the brain structures of homosexuals and heterosexuals are different – in a part of the braincalled the hypothalamus

The hormone balance of our bodies – and the reasons for it – are incredibly complex.

Why some people are homosexual is a good scientific question, because of how evolution works. Being homosexual clearly doesn’t help somebody to survive and have healthy children. If our parents were both homosexual we wouldn’t be here.

So it’s a question scientists are asking. But they’re a long way yet from an answer.

I am sorry to be so indefinite.

But sometimes science has to admit: “we just don’t know yet.”