Jon Stewart: They are not easy questions to answer, as we'll learn from some of the world's leading psychologists, biologists and geneticists in this field.Ĭhris: Children's author-yeah, I'd like that it would be fun. Jon Stewart: Are the stereotypes correct? Do more gay men become hairdressers and interior designers rather than engineers and construction workers? Is sexual orientation a learned behaviour or something more innate? Are homosexuals born or made?Ĭhris: A book keeper-no. So I would strongly not want to be in a convent. How much Chris would like to do different types of jobs, for example.Ĭhris: Would strongly like to do, would strongly not like to do. Jon Stewart: The questions are intriguing, some of them are obvious like are you straight or gay? But others sound frankly weird and seem to have little to do with someone's sexual orientation. So think about my sexual feelings to the extent to which you are attracted to and fantasise about persons of the opposite of the same sex?Īnd I would say they are predominantly homosexual but occasionally. How many girls? That's zero, as I'm the youngest of two. How many boys did your mother give birth to before she had me? That was just one. I have a choice between male, female, transgender, male to female, trans gender, female to male and my age. Jon Stewart: It sounds bizarre but this study will add to the work will being done to try and answer the question, what makes someone gay? So what are some of the questions you have to go through.Ĭhris: First question is asking my gender. Richard Lippa: All we have to do is take a digital photograph of the back of your head and you fill in this questionnaire. Jon Stewart: And are you willing to take part in the hair whorl study?
Jon Stewart: Well we have a few volunteers here, can you introduce yourself? I take a digital photograph of the back of men's heads and they fill in a brief questionnaire-we've done this with a lot of college students of course to get a big gay male sample-that's why I came to the Gay Pride Festival. Richard Lippa: There's a little whirlpool of hair that goes either in a clockwise or counter clockwise. Jon Stewart: By hair whorls you mean where the crown is on our head, which direction the hair turns. Richard Lippa: I'm doing a study on hair whorls, this sounds strange and weird but there actually is some research suggesting that gay men have a higher rate of counter-clockwise hair whorls than straight men do. I've come to meet Richard Lippa, a professor of psychology, conducting an experiment here. People have turned out en masse under the rainbow flags, expecting to see bands, comedy, food and drink stands, charity stalls but perhaps not expecting cutting edge science. Jon Stewart: Gay Pride at Long Beach California. So this is a really very broad question, and in that sense it should be of interest to every single person in the world, because we all have a sexual orientation and it seems like a fundamentally interesting question to me-what causes us to be attracted to the people we are attracted to? So I think it's a bit limiting to think of this as research on the causes of homosexuality it's really about sexual orientation in its broadest sense. You know the survival of the species, human reproduction, depends on sexual attraction.
To understand what causes gay people to become gay is also to understand what causes straight people to be straight. It's kind of the Yin and the Yang of the same question.
And when you view it from that perspective this research is every bit as much about heterosexuality as it is about homosexuality. Richard Lippa: People always ask what causes people to be gay and I think the broader question is what causes sexual orientation. And I think the science really supports that point of view. But our actual sexual feelings, where they come from, that's something in my view that's nothing to do with making decisions, conscious decisions. Simon LeVay: There are aspects of choice to sexual orientation in terms of our behaviour, who we actually choose to have sex with, how we choose to call ourselves and so on. Your guide is my California based colleague, British science journalist Jon Stewart, who's taken to the streets of LA for the occasion. Now remember those headlines a few years back about the search for a gay gene, and the biological roots of homosexuality? Well, on the show today we're climbing into that controversial research effort-still fraught with questions of gender stereotyping, experimental bias and beyond, but still extremely interesting and powerful science. Natasha Mitchell: All in the Mind on ABC RadIo National, welcome, Natasha Mitchell with you, great to have your company.