Radiolab - Born This Way?

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Today, the story of an idea. An idea that some people need, others reject, and one that will, ultimately, be hard to let go of. Special Thanks to Carl Zimmer, Erik Turkheimer, Andrea Ganna, Chandler Burr, Jacques Balthazart, Sean Mckeithan, Joe Osmundson, Jennifer Brier, Daniel Levine-Spound, Maddie Sofia, Elie Mystal, Heather Radke EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Matt KieltyProduced by - Matt KieltyOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Matt Kieltywith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Diane Kelly EPISODE CITATIONS: Videos: Lisa Diamond - Born This Way, TEDx (https://zpr.io/WJedDGLVkTNF) Books:  Joanna Wuest - Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement (https://zpr.io/rYPwyhNHtgXe) Dean Hamer - The Science of Desire: The Search for the Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior (https://zpr.io/3FuKZyu2bgwE) Lisa Diamond - Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Desire and Love (https://zpr.io/cj3ZSLC2xccJ) Edward Stein - The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory, and Ethics of Sexual Orientation (https://zpr.io/UQfdNtyE3RtQ) Chandler Burr - A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation (https://zpr.io/GKUDhyfNacUf) Jacques Balthazart - The Biology of Homosexuality (https://zpr.io/um6XMmpfkmQS) Anne Fausto-Sterling - Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (https://zpr.io/rWNrTYLeLZ3s) Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail].  

Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. Okay. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on.

Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on.

Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Let me tell you what I've been thinking about. Hey, I'm Lulu Miller. This is Radialab. And a little while ago, a reporter, Matthew Kelsey, came to me with the story of an idea. Yeah, the idea that you were born into a sexual orientation. This is like the born this way, idea? Yeah, the born this way, idea.

Which I always believed to be true for much of my life, but in the past few years that idea felt essentially like under assault and And he's like pretty public ways and ways that we're happening on both the right and the left and So it's like on one hand you have something like The bill in Florida seven the parents rights and education bill the don't say gay bill the bill in Florida. Seven the parents rights in education bill. The don't say gay bill. The bill prohibits classroom instruction where you can't teach kids third grade and below anything about sexual orientation or gender identity

because the logic there is that by talking about sexuality and gender or reading a book about it or whatever. We will make sure that parents can send their kids to school that those things will like change a kid's identity. To get an education, not an indoctrination. Yeah. And the foundation of the thing is just this idea that like tiny little things in a kid's school environment is going to change them radically.

So that's going on on the right. And on the left. So there are many different theories of gender. And mine is just one. In the past several years, you've had these ideas that become much more mainstream. Ideas like how social norms and cultural values and politics and history, how all these things are maybe the most important thing in shaping your own sense of self and your own sexual preferences. But again, that it's the environment outside you that is really the thing that is making you.

Yeah. I will, and I don't know if it's matters, but I will just say here that as a queer lady, married to a lady, someone who identifies as bi, and someone who's like right about this stuff and thought about a fair amount, this is the idea that makes sense to me that sexuality, that desire, sexuality is shaped by this whole swirl of factors. Like that really makes sense to me. It pretty much lines up with my experience.

Right, and I think for me, as a cis straight man, like I My identity always felt very consistent and I just never really had to think about it and in part You know maybe embarrassingly like I never had to think about it It was just like I grew up in a world where born this way the born this way idea was the thing It was the thing that I thought you were supposed to believe if you were a good ally to gay rights It was the thing that you use as an argument against the idea of conversion therapy that you can just take a kid and like change their environment and make them into something. And it was the thing that I always just like vaguely understood to be something rooted in science.

You had a sense you'd been told like this was how it works in the science. Yeah, the like the sciences of the root of this. And I think I should underline that this is just like, the Bournemouth's way idea was a thing that millions and millions of people believe. How do you know that? Well, so I went googling because I was just like, am I alone now on an island, an old man on an island? And there's a Gallupole from 2018 that shows

that 50% half of all Americans believe that somebody is born that way. And so I feel like I was witnessing all the ways in which this born this way idea was maybe unraveling. And I just started wondering like, why is this even an idea that I believe? Like, okay, so where did this belief come from? Why do I believe it so certain? And why do so many other people believe it?

Yeah, because it's clearly an idea. It's an idea constructed by human beings that must have some sort of history, and I just didn't know what the history was, and I didn't know how this thing became as pervasive as it did. But yeah, for me personally, why do I believe this? What is the truth to this? And is it true? And if it's not true, what does it mean for it not to be true?

Because if you have a right wing front that is making these environmental arguments, trying to annihilate certain types of identities, what argument do you then make in the face of that? Yeah, no, I wonder that. I feel that, I worry about that, and I don't know, I mean, is this because of that? I'm interested in this story, but is this the

moment to look into this history, to talk about this unraveling if there is so much real harm at stake? Yeah. I think, um, you know, talking to a lot of different people, the point is like it, it's unraveling, whether or not we talk about it. And some of the people I talk to, what they said is it doesn't have to be so frightening or it doesn't have to be so scary,

or that like the unraveling itself, like staring at it and understanding why it's happening is actually possibly the path towards a greater and like more durable protection. Huh, okay, okay, well, I don't understand how that could be, but I am curious to find out. So where do you, where does this, where do you, where do you want to start? Well, okay, so I started trying to figure out where this idea actually came from, like the birth of it. Almost everything I came across. The research team's leader.

Everything I read. Dean Hamer. Dean Hamer. Everybody I was talking to. Dean's motivations are what Dean's motivations are. That rightly or wrongly. Are you talking about the Dean Hamer paper from 93? That's it.

Yep, that's him. Oh, interesting. People kept pointing to this one. All Dean is saying is, guy, nothing in science is a fact. It was a capital F. That he was essentially this sort of linchpin. I think that Dean Hammer is to the idea that you were born this way.

Kind of the culmination of a particular project with several decades long process. The origins of homosexuality. So that's on. Hello. Yeah. Oh, shoot. Can you hear me?

I can hear you very well. How is my mic? Your mic sounds pretty good. Good. So last summer, 2022, I began interviewing Dean. How are things over there? Things are wonderful here, as always. He's 72, lives in Hawaii.

It's, you know, 85 degrees in blue skies and the trade winds are blind. Well, that's lovely. So not too bad. And actually, the first thing I ever came across of Dean was an oral history that he did. And the thing that grabbed me about it is how there are these moments from his life. They're almost like these little precursors to the born this way idea. Okay. And I think, like, well, so I think like one of the things is kind of like one of his

earliest memories. So I was in preschool. This is a Mount Clare New Jersey just outside New York. And every day they would make us take a nap and they would give us little mats and we'd lay down and I would lie on my stomach and then I would start sort of rubbing around and having fantasies.

And I always fantasized about the lone ranger. The lone ranger. That mythical law man from TV with the black mask, which I thought was very sexy. Chris Boy Cowboy Hat. And had a nice pouch in his Levi's. And in this little fantasy Dean would hop up on the Ranger's horse, wrap his arms around him,

and ride around the range with him. The way he said he was like, I just knew I wanted to be his friend. Ooh. And so there he be face down in his preschool on his nat mat. And I would gy right into the mat and get a little tiny boner. And he's like three. He's like three or four or five years old.

Five, five, five. But eventually one of the preschool teachers would come up and be like, Dean, you were definitely not supposed to do that. But he says over the next few years when he'd be on something like a school field trip, I would fantasize about guys that I was rooming with or that we were on the bus with.

And still, it wasn't sexual. It's more about friendship. It was just like those first little inklings of desire. You know what we might call, puppy love, that thing that just sort of bubbles up. Attraction. And during any of this, are you confused by it all? Does it- No.

I never questioned the direction of my attraction. It just swelled up in me. It was just there. But this is the suburbs, 1950s. Middle class, heteronormative type of environment. So Dean, in middle school would like make out with girls. Because that's what everybody was doing. Head girlfriends in high school, including the queen of the prom.

We went to the prom. We went to the prom together. But I felt like I wanted to be with boys and I knew I wanted to be with boys, but just had no way to realize that. But then, one night, Dean Zed homie's 15 and I saw a TV program called The Homo Sexuals. With CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace.

It's his hour-long TV news report from 1967. Most Americans are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality. And in it, there are gay men lit indirectly so that you couldn't see their face. This man is 27 college educated. Talking about how horrible it was to be homosexual. I had one friend who was beaten savagely by his father. About violence, the endured. And he beat him in fact with bricks. About how they couldn't maintain relationships,

about how they felt like they had to hide. That it was a sickness. I'm aware that inside. Now I'm sick. And I'm sick in a lot of ways. I looked at that and thought, oh gosh, that's who I am that they're talking about. And it was truly frightening.

Did it make you feel some sort of shame or like I would think I'm ill or something? I didn't feel that. I felt really angry because it wasn't right. And it was who I was. But I couldn't think of any way around it whatsoever, and I knew I'd better keep my trap shut. But then, 1969, Dean graduated from high school. He's smoking a lot of pot. Once he finishes undergrad, he applies to Harvard Medical School.

To my surprise, get in there, so I head off to Boston. And it's in Boston that Dean encounters these two very, very important things. The first gay liberation. This very new part of the gay rights movement that is about being out, that is about gay pride. My sort of first taste of activism. And it's not as though a Dean would become an activist, but I went to my first gay pride parade, literally scary,

people throwing beer cans and the like. In Boston, he sort of swept up in a sea of a movement where you can... And I was like, oh, go to gay bars. This is pretty good. You can have a boyfriend. At one point, I fell in love. How was it? It was amazing and fantastic. But the other thing Dean would encounter in Boston was something that, for better or for worse,

a part of this very gay rights movement would come to rely on him for genetics. He basically stumbled into it at Harvard, fell in love with it. Because you're studying the blueprint of life. It explains everything. I mean, when you start, you're nothing but a little spool of DNA surrounded by a coat. That's all that you are. All of the instructions for everything that we develop into is hidden in that piece of DNA. That was the promise of it.

That promise would end up in twining dean and the gay rights movement. I decided to go work with it. Mid-70s, Dean gets PhD from Harvard. He goes down to DC. The National Institutes of Health. To do genetics work there. It was all very basic science. Figuring out how genes turn on and off.

How your blood carries oxygen. Really technical stuff. How copper islands induce the metallic lining in gene. And saccharomyces cerevisiae. Why do you laughing? So it sounds very boring. Very boring. And it was actually like it was kind of big and important work,

but the details of it were horrendous. And uninteresting. But it does the boring stuff for a good 10 years. And so cut to... I'm 40 years old. It's now 1991. I have a stable career at the National Institutes of Health, but I don't really want to spend the rest of my life working on something that you were that had dozen people in the world

appreciate, and that I want to do something that's bigger than that, and that's more important at that. I mean, it's the whole reason you got into this. To uncover something fundamental about nature. At the same time, so far tonight we've been bringing you news of the world around us. There's this revolution happening.

Now we have news of the incredible world inside us. The very beginnings of what is called the human genome project. The human genome project. A vast effort to map man's entire genetic system. Scientists begin mapping out and identifying every single gene. The very building blocks of life. In our chromosomes.

It's essentially like having a recycled three-year man. The principle will know the complete set of instructions, which make people. And for people like Dean, it was new and exciting. The belief was this is the thing that is actually going to unlock all of that mystery. He did it in that piece of DNA. And not just the basic stuff. From hair color to height. But personality traits shyness,

aggression, empathy, thrill seeking, alcoholism, intelligence, mental illness, depression, everything about life. And so I started thinking about, you know, what are big questions? And it just occurs to me that, wow, attraction, desire, sex. It's so important to Dean, it has to be encoded in us. Because the driving force of evolution is to make organisms that can have more organisms. In other words, sex drives everything. What could I learn about that? And so is he immediately like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,

is there a genetic component to homosexuality? Well, actually he says like, no. Dean says he really just wanted to learn about genes and sexuality. And the first thought he said wasn't even about himself, it was, you know, because I'm gay, I know where I can get subjects. Other gay people. Because whenever you're interested in a trait, the only powerful way to study it is to study the minor version of the trait. Because if you study something that everybody has, it's almost impossible

through genetics to figure out how it works. So the hope is by studying gay people, like that's actually the path into understanding the genetics of sexuality, more broadly. Huh. So the really, he says it wasn't at all about, like, homosexuality or trying to figure out what makes him the way he is. No, I mean, everything I read of or from Dean,

everything I've seen him say publicly and what he told me is no, like it was just trying to understand sexuality and this being kind of the only way to do it. And so, he and his team, they decided they're gonna start with gay men. Okay, so dudes, just dudes first. Right, so basically he pitches this to his bosses

at the NIH. I got the green light. And he began. So we started placing advertisements, engage papers, went to the HIV clinic right at the NIH. Went to a group called P-Flegged, parents and friends of lesbians and gays.

And Dean said when he would interview these gay men, right off the bat, almost all of them would say, it was just there. Like Dean, they'd always just felt this way. But if you're going to show that that has anything to actually do a genetics, what you need are families. And so he's like, okay, do you have any brothers?

Do you have any sisters? Are they gay? What about mom? What about dad? Cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents? Do you think any of them are gay? And I started traveling all over the country. California, Pennsylvania, to the deep south,

to the great heartland. And you would sit down with these family members and ask them all these questions. Basic information about their age and their birth. Then I would ask about their own sexuality. You know, when was your first sexual fantasy? What did you fantasize about? For example, if you masturbate.

What do you think about? Is it another guy or is it a woman or both? How many different people have you had sex with? How many men? How many women? How frequently? How do you have sex? Do you do oral? Do you do anal? Do you had sex with? How many men, how many women? How frequently? How do you have sex? Do you do oral?

Do you do anal? Do you do masturbation? Do you do rubbing? Yeah, that's the basic of a sex interview right there. And it was easy with a gay guy to ask how often do you have sex and do you have anal or oral? It was a little bit tricky doing that with their great aunt and Duluth.

But so Dean does all these interviews. It was a little bit tricky doing that with their great aunt and Duluth. But so Dean does all these interviews. He collects blood from everybody. Eventually goes back to DC mid 1992 or so. This takes them like a whole year. By that time I have about a hundred or so families a little bit over that. He starts drawing out by hand these family trees. The squares for men and circles for a woman. Fill in the circle of the square, if definitely gay. Like if definitely heterosexual, or thought to be heterosexual,

and a big question mark if we're not sure. When he's looking at him, he notices this thing, which is that the gay men in a family. There's virtually none on the father side of the family. They're on the mom side of the family. And it was like a light bulb went off, because for geneticist, if you see something coming down the mother side of the family. And it was like a light bulb went off. Because for geneticists, if you see something coming down the mother side of the family, it means it could be on the ex chromosome.

So, oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes, a man has an ex and y chromosome. The y comes from the dad. The x comes from the mom. So, anything on the ex chromosome tends to come down the mother side. To get DNA, you just take a little blood. They do a bunch of fancy science. That a couple of reagents, shake it, pass it through a filter. And he starts coming through many of these gay men's X chromosome.

The entire chromosome. When he finds this tiny little... Rainbow. No! Lulu? No. Tomorrow's issue of Science Magazine contains the results of a national institutes of health study.

He finds this little genetic tweet. Which shows that male homosexuality may be genetically determined. And it was this, You have evidence today about what causes a man to be homosexual. A little bit of DNA. The origins of homosexuality. They would become to some, a of comfort or a confirmation, to some a misstep towards greater injustice, but maybe most importantly to some it would become this very powerful

weapon. Is it something that happens at birth? Or is it a lifestyle? A is in the military and a is in the military. 58% are against legalizing gay marriages. Open is it birth? Or is it a lifestyle? A is in the military and A is in the 58% are against legalizing gay marriages. And it is a cultural war. We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore.

But this war is for the soul of the We're thick and tired of the size of the wrong, and we deserve a bombination for a man's survival. We are going to fight back. This is not a moral issue. This is not a moral issue. This is a human rights issue. We will be free.

All that in just a moment. Radio lab, Lulu, Matt. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh Okay. All right. So we are here talking about the birth of the born this way idea where

it came from. How true it is. All that. And we left off. Dean had found some genes. Like genes that he thought what exactly? Like did he think that these genes fully predetermined a sexuality, a person's sexuality, or... Okay, so actually, I mean, well, technically, what he found is like a little region that maybe contained a gene, some genes, that's sort of the question, like what are the results actually show?

And I spent a long time looking into this, into the science of this, Dean's science, other science. But then I stumbled across this paper that maybe realized how the science like isn't just the thing here. And in fact, to understand why the born-this-way idea really took off, you have to understand the world outside of the science. So exciting for me to talk to you, surely. And that the born this way idea is kind of the culmination of a particular project, a several decades long process.

Oh, two things before we really jump in one, because I always forget this. If I could just have you say your first last name and then however you want to ID yourself like title at work or whatever. Oh, sure. So it's pronounced Joanna Weist. Weist. Weist. Great.

And I am an assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke. So Joanna wrote a dissertation, which is the thing that I saw, about how the true origins of born this way go back to much earlier than Dean. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, so where would you wanna start? So I think that the natural place that I would begin is in the 1950s, because that's when we see the founding of the Madison society.

One of the first nationwide gay rights organizations. Also the daughters of Bolitis, the lesbian organization. Both of which were predominantly white, middle class. They had dress codes on the books, men had to wear ties, women couldn't wear jeans. It's hard in terms of today to really understand what was going on in the 50s. This is from an oral history of Del Martin, who is one of the co-founders of the Daughters of Baleides.

I mean, the fear and the paranoia was just something fierce. Thousands of suspected gay people were being kicked out of the government. There was a fear of losing your time. He's been in jail three times for committing homosexual acts. Of being arrested, thrown into jail. Or thrown into a mentalistic, yeah. Because at the time, homosexuality is, in fact, a mental illness.

The argument was that homosexuality was a psychological defect. Which has reached epidemiological proportions. That was literally the American Psychiatric Association's definition. Homosexuality was a mental illness. The idea was that it was caused by the environment at home. And having a profound effect on the final pattern of the individual sexual behavior. And so at that point, we needed validation.

Dell says that she and most of the gay people she knew were like, we know we aren't mentally ill. We still have to deal with the rest of society. And Joanna says that these early gay rights organizations decided that the way to deal with the rest of society to fight off the argument that homosexuality was a mental illness in the minds of the public was to turn to science. And start collaborating with.

I feel from the many years of work. Psychologists and psychiatrists. The homosexual is first of all a human being. We were guinea pigs for all our researches. Research being a way to get rid of the sickness label. And so they start going to psychiatric conferences, setting on panels, making inroads with more researchers to say that these people aren't sick.

And I do not look upon homosexuality as a neurotic problem. That being gay is not a mental illness. That being gay. Lives deep in the individual's nature. But it has nothing to do with your parents, that it's essentially natural. And then you would hear this idea, and then life is going to add that.

From somebody like Hal Call, who was the president of the Madison Society, that this whole business of homosexualism is just one of the things that exists in nature. That it's essentially a natural variation of the natural world, which, you know, no one saying that a homosexual person is born that way in a strict sense, but it's that word nature.

It's that word nature is showing up and starting to put some sort of boundary between the environment and something else that's going on inside of a person. And what happens is over the next 20 years, psychiatry and psychology starts to undergo this really big shift. So when we get to 1973, it's huge, it's so pivotal. The American Psychiatric Association drops the definition of homosexuality as a mental illness.

And those prominent gay rights activists who had made these relationships with folks in psychology and psychiatry, they would lean on those allies to start trying to make bigger changes. Exactly. And so, Joanna says all throughout the 70s, gay rights litigators are bringing all of these scientific experts into court to serve as expert witnesses. Now, what you see on the other side, like the anti-gay conservative side, is that

their rhetoric, in these court court cases also starts shifting. He was relieved of his classroom duties because he is a homosexual. So like a teacher would be fired for being gay. We are modeling behavior all the time about what we do as well as by what we say or teach in the classroom. Because their homosexuality is kind of seen as a contagion. Like that's the rhetoric which feels very much like one word groomer. The grooming, seven year olds. What you see from conservatives today. This is propaganda for grooming.

It's groomers pre-groomers. Yeah, exactly. This idea that... There are definite overtones that children will catch, yes, particularly children of today. Sexual orientation is modeled, it is learned. And in response to that... Pioneering scholars and clinicians... ...will come into the court as expert witnesses.

To say things like this high school teacher couldn't change the identities of these students because whatever is causing those identities, those ideas are already going to be set in stone within the first few years of a child's life. Which doesn't mean that the environment still couldn't be playing a role here, but it is pushing the origins of sexual orientation to something much closer to birth. Implying that homosexuality or even heterosexuality is essentially innate. That you're saying in the context of these court battles

that like, Yeah, but it's not just like court cases. Like these scientists are coming to annual conferences held by gay rights organizations to teach them about the science of sexual orientation. And the origin of sexual orientation might not be rooted in psychology, but rather biology.

That's interesting. So you're saying there's almost like this gradient. Yeah, it's like a gradient. Yeah, exactly. It's like this shift from psychology to biology and not just biology of like the natural world of nature, but like two biology, and not just biology of the natural world of nature, but human biology. Which is the beginning of what we eventually will see as a born-this-way rhetoric. Also, did you come across Carl Bean during your research?

The disco song? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Carl Bean. Have you heard of Carl Bean? No, I have not. I'm not familiar with Mr. Bean. Okay, so Carl Bean, Mr.an, gay, black man, activist,

disco singer, 1977, puts out a song called, I was born this way. What? No. Uh-huh. And... I'm walking through life. It's very good. I'm walking through life.

Ooh! Come on out of the dance floor. I would dance to this. It's amazing. Oh my god! Listen to the words. Okay. Come on out of the dance floor. I would dance to this. It's amazing. Oh my god! Listen to the words. Okay.

You laugh at me and you criticize. Because I'm happy. Yes. Carefree. Uh-huh. And gay! Oh my god! It ain't a fault.

It's a fact. I was born this way. Yeah. Wait, so Gaga ripped off Carl Bean? Oh, well, that's a loaded question, but... No, she said multiple... She said in many interviews, the song was inspired by Carl Bean, the album was inspired by Carl Bean. I guess what we can say is Carl Bean is in the Vanguard here.

Okay, join us point is that the ingredients there are there, it just feels really early. Born this way was still not there as like a full-throated message yet. Because like the science wasn't really there. But then once you get into like the mid late 80s, you have somebody like Judd Marmore who was the former president of the American Psychiatric

Association, he was an advocate and collaborator with gay rights groups. He's beginning to place extra emphasis on biological factors. These were studies that were done by the mid-80s that were looking at sexual orientation and hormones and brain development. That's perhaps something happened in utero. And so the idea is like, if you are a male fetus, you are being kind of bathed with estrogen in utero, and so the idea is like, if you are a male fetus, you are being kind of bathed with estrogen in utero, and that's going to influence your brain development,

which is then going to feminize you and to make you into a gay man. And as you can hear there, there's a lot of assumptions about what it means to be a gay man there. It's estrogen, which is a female hormone, allegedly, which is gonna female hormone, allegedly, which is gonna give you feminine qualities

that are baked into your brain structures. And that's where you start to see biology really take hold. So you can see how there's these mainstream cultural assumptions of what homosexuality is that are a part of this work in the 80s. But what happens, and what gets the same thing that's been happening going back through the 70s, the 60s, into the 50s when this all started, is gay rights activists are going to take this work and fold it into their civil rights campaign into their public messaging.

But that's not like a monolith, right? I mean, we're there. It sounds like we're hearing about some of the gay activists, but like, we're there other, I mean, we're, it sounds like we're hearing about some of the gay activists, but were there other, I mean, were there people who are just like, eh, don't grab onto this? Yeah, no, for sure. There were people like Martha Shelley. My feeling was why do you need some psychiatrist to tell you you're okay? A co-founder of the gay liberation front. Which has all these arguments that we want to refuse help from expertise. Here we were trying to supposedly climb the ladder

to respectability step by step. And I would feel like, well, hell, the right thing to do is to say, screw it to the system. In a liberation from was active in the late 60s or 70s, basically being like, who said that clinicians get to say anything about our sexuality's one way or the other? The word liberation means change, openness to something new, seeing yourself as a person who can be fluid, who can do other things than whatever somebody even scribes for you.

And by the late 80s, early 90s, there were also people in academia like Judith Butler arguing that the environment, culture, social interactions, fluidity, all these things were essential to understanding human sexuality and also gender identity. So you're saying there was like, there's a cauldron of ideas here of court. Like there's nuance. Yes, but those ideas are more fringe, they're more radical, and the mainstream of the movement, the most powerful part of the movement, is going to continue to hitch itself to this developing biological point of view. And then... There is some new evidence today about what causes a man

to be homosexual. Two years before Dean's study, December 1991. A new study suggests that the answer to a very large degree may be found in a person's genetic inheritance. Genetics, which in the 90s was like biological determinism on steroids, that shows up. Researchers at Northwestern examined 167 gay men and their brothers. So basically, there's a twin study that comes out.

A twin study is like a shorthand way for scientists to measure the potential genetic influence on a trait. So these researchers look at adopted brothers all the way up to identical twins. And found the more similar the brothers were genetically, the more likely both would be gay. Which leads one of the researchers to say, The substantial proportion of the causes of male sexual orientation are genetic. Some scientists criticize this latest report as simplistic. Indeed, many predict the roles of environment and heredity will continue to be debated,

unless scientists can actually identify genes responsible for homosexuality. Against that's 91. Okay. And that is where Dean comes back. Yeah, exactly. So I have 91. He's pitching the NIH. That's a green light.

Starts doing his interviews. You get DNA. You just take a little blood. Coming through these ex-chromisms. When... Yorika. They find the little genetic tweak. And the tweak, they found it in pairs of gay brothers.

They were looking at gay brothers because gay brothers reduces the amount of just like randomness and chance that could be involved here. And they find this little tweak in almost all of the pairs of gay brothers. And I think it was about like 80 men were involved in the study. It is weird though, just to say with that for one sec. Like that's less than a hundred people. Yeah, no, it's small. So what does that mean in terms of, you know, what does that mean?

Well, so to Dean, what it means is that this little region of DNA is playing some sort of role in determining these brothers' sexual orientation. But how strong a role it's playing is difficult to estimate. Like if it were potentially completely determinative, every gay brother would have had this gene, but they don't. It was more like tilting the scales a bit. It was like a little nudge. Yeah.

That's all we said. Yeah. A little bit, perhaps. Right. But... A week before the paper gets published... July, 1993. My phone just starts ringing off the hook.

Word got out about the study. And I get called by the New York Times in the Washington Post. The LA Times, major magazines. Pretty much every major TV network. And what exactly are they asking you? I think the first question was just, what did you find? And Dean would say, this disacquely significant correlation between markers

on XQ28 and male sexual orientation, and then everybody sort of crossed their eyes. But he says, the very next question you get from these reporters was, well, what does this mean for gay rights? Because this was in 1993 1993 that was like the question the first presidential campaign in which gays and lesbians have begun voting in a block in their own self interest earlier that year Bill Clinton had

taken office I have a vision and you're a part of it you'd run a campaign that was responding to the gay rights movement the first time in the history of this country, our issues are being discussed. And so leading up to Dean's research, all over the news, it's gains in the military. You've got things like, the ban on homosexuals in the military, don't ask don't tell,

the gay and lesbian march. One of the largest demonstrations ever in the nation's capital. There's also the beginnings of marriage equality, debates about homosexuality and sex education. And so people wanted to know in the midst of this whole conversation, if genetics are a part of it, what does that mean? For gay rights.

And Dean would be like, well, I don't know. That's not a scientific question. That's a social question. It's a political question, but it's not about the science. Dean Heymer, a scientific question. That's a social question, it's a political question, but it's not about the science. Dean Heymer, a senior research... But then Dean gets a call to come on a very popular show, Nightline, to talk about his work. Now I was like, no, because that's not, that's a discussion show, it's not really a science show, and they're like, well, we're going to talk about it anyway, so I was like, oh, okay. And I should point out that Dr. Heymer wants only to refer and to comment

on the scientific aspects of the story. But then Ted Copper leads him with this question. If the findings of the study, Dr. Hamer, are confirmed, will it then be accurate to say that homosexuality is not optional behavior? And Dean. What we found is that, basically, disticks to his science. One specific region of one chromosome is linked to homosexuality at least in some men.

But, couple pushes it a little bit further. Will it then be possible at least to say that it is not a purely behavioral thing, that there are inherited characteristics, which are very important? That's correct. And how important? Well, I am unwilling to go to the lengths. He wants me to go to. I'm just trying to get you to put it in commonplace of languages you can so that we all understand it.

And Dean's like, look, homosexuality is not simply determined by some single gene. What's important today is that we clearly demonstrated that genes are involved. And really, it's nearly at the end of this 30-minute long is that we clearly demonstrated that genes are involved. And really it's nearly at the end of this 30-minute long episode that Coppel just finally asks the thing. Back to the science of this Dr. Hamer and ask you to what degree is it appropriate based on the findings that you have reached

that Gays can say, look, it's not a matter of choice. It is predetermined in a sense genetically. Basically, are you born this way? And it was almost as if that word choice unlocked something in Dean. I think all scientists that have studied sexual orientation already agree that there's very little elements of choice in whether or not people choose to be gay or heterosexual.

Wait, wait, all scientists say there's no choice. Well, there's very little choice. Is that even true? Did all scientists think that? Well, okay, so... Well, previous studies have suggested that... Dean has referenced all of the stuff that we talked about, the child development studies, the hormone studies, twin studies, all that stuff, plus his work,

that he believes tells him that there's very little choice involved in sexual orientation. Have they heard of bisexuality? Didn't bisexuality not exist in people's minds then? Wait, hang on, I'm sending you something, I'm sending you something. Okay. The cover of Newsweek with the headline. Not gay, not street, and news, sexual identity, and mood. Okay, thank you. Yes, that's 1995. That's two years after Dean's work.

Okay, but anyway, so. Well, just at the only reason I'm bringing that up is I guess you could just as like, it's just like, there's choice in every aspect of it, which is part of what makes it so darn fun. Right. I think what's tricky about it is, there's like this question of what are we talking about when we're talking about choice. I think I was, I think I was talking about this a lot with Dean. So you think because there's some sort of genetic basis, that means what?

That we don't have any control? Oh, it's within our control to do what you do, including who you have sex with. But Dean believed that what he found showed that when it comes to sexuality, you can no longer make the argument that it's purely a matter of choice. It's something much deeper than that. It's like the thing that strikes you about somebody, like the way they laugh or like the shape of their mouth or whatever, like those flickers of desire that just emerge from within you.

Sure, I get that it feels bodily, it feels that it's just like intuitively that you're not controlling it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's genetic or like biological, I mean, plenty of things that feel deep, really rooted come from our environment or culture. Like that's how it works, it gets in there.

Right, no, no, no, I think, I mean, Like, that's how it works. It gets in there. Right. No, no, no. I think, I mean, Dean, there could be environmental factors. We'll say, sure. It could also be very specific things that happen to you during life. There could be an environmental influence on something like sexual orientation,

but to him, because the gay brothers have that little genetic tweak that at least to some degree, genes are involved. Okay, well, maybe this is what I'm struggling with. Like, this is taking one study that is only on gay men. No women looked at, no other genders, and then this one other pretty small twin study, again, only about gay men,

and to make a claim about genetics being involved in sexuality as a whole, like, that just feels, that feels like a pretty big leap. Right. And I do think that this is important, which is like, if we set genetics aside, in some way, obviously, this was something that Dean had always felt about himself. That for me personally,

sexual orientation wasn't something I chose. It just said something that developed in me. Going back to being five and feeling feelings about the lone ranger, like it was just there. And Dean says those feelings, how would he have modeled them, how would he have learned them? Because, you know, who would be the teachers? It was Montclerny Jersey in the 50s, and if anything. I know that inside, now I'm sick.

The environment was telling them, don't have this desire, get rid of it. But I couldn't think of any way around it whatsoever. And sure, Dean had girlfriends in high school, even in college, just like an unbelievable hottie. I mean, she is really good at sex. He has this three-week affair with a woman. And then I'm just like, but it's just not what I want. It's just not.

There's just this persistent desire he has. And so to have that experience experience to become a geneticist, to find this tweak in gay brothers, it's a confirmation to something that he felt all along, and that he believes to be true, that there are probably genes in all of us that are playing a role. Even if that role,

like, tilting the scales a bit, it's just like a tiny little nudge. But it being 1993 and the way that the media talked about genetics and Dean's work in particular was basically like it appears to determine sexual orientation right here. This is a picture of the entire excromisome is the proof and this is the area believed to be associated with determining human sexuality that you are indeed which points strongly to willing born this way between homosexuality and heredity and in fact think about it for just a moment this oversimplification think only about the legal implication suddenly created this new

very powerful legal tool for the gay rights movement to use. While it is constitutional, for example, to prohibit certain behavior, it is not constitutional to make status such as race illegal. In other words, you can make laws that target certain types of behaviors or actions that people take, but you can't make laws that simply target somebody for their identity. This is the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment that were all treated equally under the law. But the thing about equal protection

and the thing about identity under the law is that there's this weird catch. Yes, so I think we're starting to get into this idea of immutability here. Yes, yes. Yeah, so this for Quar is getting just a little bit into the weeds to really get. But so that's very, let's kind of get into it.

We'll just see where we go. I'll do it quickly. So join explain that going back to the 1950s, the Supreme Court started making these rulings saying that certain types of identities get special protections. Yes. Race, sex, being foreign born is another.

And the court said one of the reasons why these identities get special protection protections. Yes, race, sex, being foreign-born is another. And the court said one of the reasons why these identities get special protection is because they are immutable. Meaning that identity is something that is deeply held through chance, luck, or quote, an accident of birth. Meaning like you didn't choose this identity, you have no control over it, and therefore- Therefore, legally, you shouldn't be held culpable for anything pertaining to your identity.

But seen as the gold standard of civil rights protections. And so many in the gay rights movement, many gay rights litigators look at Dean's work and think this is a really powerful thing that we can use. And so whenever they can, they're going to bring biologists into court to say, gay and lesbians are immutable. And so the born this way idea shows up in military exclusion cases, autonomy cases, marriage equality cases, and I get called up anti discrimination cases

and asked to testify in Denver, Colorado. It's done and angry with voters who said no homosexual rights laws here. In 1992, voters in Colorado had overwhelmingly voted for an amendment to the state constitution that said, if you were fired for being gay, if you were denied health insurance for being gay, you had no legal recourse. You couldn't claim discrimination.

I mean, hate is okay, you know, they just made it okay. Bunch of other cities and states put forward similar ballot initiatives and this anti-gay front, their argument was, it's a choice and being gay. People aren't born that way, they just become that way or they choose to be that way. And because it could be changed, so they thought.

This was the lead attorney, Jean Dubovsky. It would mean that they weren't entitled to equal protection under the law. So Jean started grabbing experts, psychiatrists, medical doctors, to come testifying court. That wait a minute, sexual orientation has a biological or genetic basis. And Dean did come and testify about his work,

which tells us that there is at least a substantial genetic component, it's not purely a choice. And all of this was kind of what Joanna was referring to. Kind of the culmination of a particular project, a several decades long process. To use science in the courts to argue for civil rights, but also to define the nature of homosexuality that it's fixed, that it's immutable.

We'll hear our human next and now. Now, whenever these cases, Lawrence and Tyrone Gynebres' texts ended up making it too. The Virgothel versus Hodges. The Supreme Court. The intimate and committed relationships of same-sex couples. The justice is use legal principles like privacy and due process

to give gays and lesbians more civil rights than they previously had. But they don't touch immutability. Exactly. They refuse to give gays unless they insist special protection under the 14th Amendment, which I think is a good thing. But I'm a little confused

because I mean, you testified in court. Well, I think I felt right from the beginning that the naturalness of sexual orientation was something that was really important. And I do think it's important to have correct and true information. But for me, immutability is not a requirement for human rights. It just doesn't enter into the argument at all. But I think that the argument of immutability affects people's perceptions and affects people's beliefs in a very deep way.

And ultimately, what is decided legally depends on what people think about things. We think that we have these laws that are somehow abstract, but really they're based on people's opinions about things. What's good and what's bad, what's moral and what's immoral. And that information that sexuality is something innate, that affects people's opinions and that in turn has a big effect on the law. And do you know, I mean, do we know if there was like a sea change just in what your average Joe believed? Well, let me take way too long to answer that question.

Joanna says, Deans work definitely impacted public opinion and actually right after it came out. The born gay narrative, you can see it everywhere in press releases from national gay rights organizations during the time. Quotes and papers from gay leaders. Saying that homosexuality is, in fact, innate. The Human Rights Campaign starts passing out pamphlets and essays to its members and the members of Congress, with a born-this-way idea of homosexuality. It becomes explicitly a way to change the minds of the mainstream, straight public. He flag, for instance, parents and friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Hires a consulting group to ask, among other things, how we should use the biology of sexual orientation in our activism. I knew it. I just knew it. Because it's a very powerful narrative to tell parents that they did nothing wrong. It's confirming of why I've always felt in my heart. And even when he was little, I would think I couldn't be doing this many things wrong. Oh, that tape is, that's like, it's in her relief you can hear. She still so clearly thinks it's a defect. Yeah. And actually, in fact, in the report that the consulting group wrote for Peaflag, they write, quote, explaining the source of homosexuality allows straight people to reassure

themselves that sexuality is a given. If sexuality were a matter of choice or even contain some degree of choice in ambiguity, people would have to think about a volatile and complex dimension of human experience. Unquote. Wow, keep that trapdoor shut. Oh, it's just like, don't look at it and all don't think about it. Wow.

So it's like, it's like explicitly being used in that in sense to like comfort us straight. Yeah, it's a majority straight public. And join us by the time you get to 2003, the ACLU will tell canvassers doing door-to-door knocking in support of marriage equality to emphasize biology and immutability when they talk about why queer people

should be able to get married. And it was actually in that year, 03. Today was gay rights and the law of the land will never be the same. The Supreme Court rules sawdame bands to be unconstitutional. Homosexual conduct is no longer a crime. Then 2004, do you believe homosexuality is a choice?

In a presidential debate, Democratic hopeful John Kerry, I think if you talk to anybody, uh, it's not choice. Even says vice president Dick Cheney's daughter, who was a lesbian. And she's being who she was. She's being who she was born as. A 2010 town hall.

Don't think it's a choice. Then President Barack Obama. I think that people are born with a certain makeup. Also, in 2010. It's called born this way. How beautiful in my way, cuz God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way. That's where it really got its wings.

Yeah, I mean, like, Born This Way around here really starts to like like move through the culture and Joanna points out actually that when Gaga put that song out she's actually overtly campaigning for a repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. The continued ban on openly gay people in the military and on the heels of that song Obama overturns Don't Ask Don't Tell. And then, 2015, you've probably got one of the most incredible moments of born this way, which is when the Supreme Court overturns the ban on same-sex marriage, and even though the court doesn't rule

on the immutability question, in the court's majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, he writes, quote, sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable, unquote. So that moment, UC has just like full belief has permeated. Yeah, mind.

Yeah, that it's everywhere. I'm feeling where you were. She was born. I really know that you were born this way. And I can't where you were. She was born in. We know that you were born this way. And I can't hear you do that. And now, I will finally answer your question, which is if you remember, okay, so the 2018 Gallup poll about born this way. Yes. is if you remember, okay, so the 2018 Gallup poll about born this way. Yes, yep, okay, the one you were

part of the C of 50% of people who think that I'm not on that island, I'm floating in a sea of half of America. Who believes that? Born that way? Born this way. Okay. So, it turns out Gallup has actually been asking

about this all the way back since 1977. And in 1977, that number was at 13%. Turns out Gallup has actually been asking about this all the way back since 1977. And in 1977, that number was at 13%. 13% of Americans believed that somebody was born that way. Wow. Okay. So that's like a really big leap in just a couple of decades. Yeah, if you look at it on a graph, going to do.

Okay. Can I see? I had it. Do you want to look at it on a graph, going to do, can I see it? I had it. Do you want to look at it? Yeah. Okay, here. Okay, what am I looking at? A green line and a green line.

Okay, yeah, just look at the dark green line, which is born this way. And it's going, and it's boop, and it's boop, and it's boop, and it's here. Yeah, you see it. Yeah, exactly. You see it's like a very slow climb through the 80s

and then boop. And that's like, right after teens work, it just starts shooting up. Wow. So there's this nice correlation. Between growing acceptance of homosexuality and the belief that homosexual person is born that way. But what's really cool is, in those surveys,

you can then go in and ask people, what do you think about gay rights? What do you think about gay marriage? And there's been some research that shows that the number one shared characteristic of somebody who supports something like gay marriage is that they believe a person was born that way. So that trumps political affiliation, geographic location.

It was even stronger than your religious affiliation, which is quite remarkable. Well, how so it's like, regardless of how accurate or not it is, this belief, they think, is the thing changing minds politically? Right. Yeah, it's fascinating, but we don't have any way of saying that born this way is what led those folks to be supportive. And there have been some experimental public opinion research papers published in the last few years that kind of throw some cold water on that idea. And they argue that born this way is more of the way that a person who already supports gay civil rights

expresses that support for gase of rights. So rather than born this way, being the thing that causes you to change your opinion on homosexuality, it's just something that allows you to express an opinion that you already held. Yeah, and I think it's a little bit above. I mean, I think I've read that like media representation has also been a big thing in acceptance.

And yeah, I could give you one other thing that maybe might help. Sure. So, there are a lot of recent public opinion scholars who have looked, Jeremiah Garrett's and in particular, he has this book where he looks at the importance of the HIV AIDS crisis in kind of making gay and lesbian visible and visible in the media, but also visible to their family members and their social networks. One way to think about what's happening here is as people are coming out and being forced to come out, this is precisely at the moment that the gay brain and the gay gene and all these kind of

studies are being published and there's the media reaction and oh gosh, now everyone's talking about born this way. And so we can definitely think of a lot of congruence there. People are coming out. Here's the story that the national organizations are giving to people. And if you look at NBC, nightly news, you might see someone like Dean Hammer talking about the implications of the gay gene study for your son or daughter. Okay. Before we go further, I just want to take like

a tiny break. Okay, I can stay here. Oh, there's A lot of info. It was. So just short little break, refresh, come back. And when we come back? Yeah, we'll get into the unraveling. Okay.

Ready to level, be back in a moment. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom.

I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm gonna go to the bathroom. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the idea that AIDS might be the actual thing that changed American attitudes regarding homosexuality, which meant maybe born this way. Wasn't as much of a driver. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so that book came out in 2018, and that same year,

re-starcher and professor Lisa Diamond. True or false? Out of the University of Utah. Sexual orientation is something you're born with. In 2018, she gives this TEDx talk that has like over half a million views at this point. Chances are that if you support LGBT rights, you said true. Which is essentially about the fact that born this way... There are three problems with the born that way argument.

Shouldn't exist anymore. First, it's not scientifically accurate. So as you pointed out, a lot of the early research that became a part of born this way was very male-focused. Diamond's own work. Over 20 years ago, I started a study. Focus is on women. Tracking over time, 100 women with different sexual identities. And a work shows how there's a lot of fluidity and plasticity and female sexuality. Some individuals start out exclusively attracted to one gender, and over time they find themselves attracted to both genders or vice versa.

And that it's not just women, that many people experience these changing desires or orientations over time. So basically clearly it's not set at birth. Right, there can be fluidity throughout a lifetime. Now let's move on to the second problem, with the born that way argument. That it's not legally necessary. She points out that the Supreme Court never ruled on immutability.

It never actually hitched its wagon to it. Right. So although we keep shouting, we're born this way. The courts have been saying, we don't care. Now for the third and most important problem, but the born that way argument, that it's unjust. Diamond says, look, it creates a narrow definition of a lived sexual orientation, which excludes all sorts of people.

But also, as an argument in and of itself. We were born this way. You can't punish us for something that is not our fault. Now, do you see how that argument just goes along with the notion that being LGBT is a fault that it's inherently sad and tragic. It's like we have this terrible disease and we need to be pitted instead of punished. Thankfully, times have changed and if there is one thing that LGBT individuals want now, it is certainly not petty. What we want, what we deserve is dignity, autonomy, self-determination, and that is our strongest argument for equality. So that was 2018, and then 2019... A new study found there is no single gene that can determine a person's

sexual orientation. Genetics, all grown up, there's this huge paper, hundreds of thousands of people's genomes are sequenced, both men and women. What is being considered the largest genetic study on sexual behavior? And the researchers claim that unlike where deen expected there may be a dozen genes associated with sexual orientation, now we know that there are thousands of genes involved and we've identified a few. Complex human behaviors all work like this.

And I talked to one of the co-authors of the big paper, Robbie Widow, who was like, all human traits have a lot more to do with probability and statistics. That if you look at complex traits like depression or risk taking behavior, there are thousands upon thousands of genes

that might have this little bit of an influence on what you become. And instead of deterministic, it really just has a lot more to do with probability. The sort of likelihood of what your genes might lead you to become in an environment. And the way this study got reported on a lot, and the way it even got messaged was that when it comes to sexual behavior

Genetics plays a very very limited role and that a lot of this does indeed have to do With the environment and what you start to see after all this now more than ever before is this sort of explosion Americans are openly identifying this lgbt Of people, especially in Gen Z, identifying as gay, bi, trans, queer, and what you see is a reaction to that. What the left used to tell you is, look, you're just born this way. Is the right starts making all these arguments? The one thing we were told about the environment

is that none of this has anything to do with culture. None of this has anything to do with nurture. None of this has anything to do with education. None of this has anything to do with education. So in Florida. So this is where you get the Florida bill, this is where you get the whole groomer thing. And all of a sudden with her group of friends, they all decided they're trans.

Quote, trans trenders. And she went on hormones, social contagion theories, and this rise of anti-LGBTQ legislation. That says we're gonna try to eliminate a lot of these kind of ways of being able to live one's life And Joanna says even though it seems like born this way is maybe unraveling. It's that anxiety It's that real threat that has kept the idea very much here in the world today She says you see it in trans rights cases where lawyers bring in brain scans twin studies

You see it in the way that people talk about the fact that there's this jump in LGBTQ identity. That people are much more likely to be out. Now that the world is more tolerance. In an environment that accepts them, a community that accepts them, a family that accepts them, a country that accepts them. People can actually just be. We didn't just wake up one day and decide to be gay, lesbian or bisexual. Who they always intrinsically were.

It was never a choice. It was something we were born with. Of course we are, born that way. to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Who they always intrinsically were. It was never a choice. It was something we were born with. Of course we are, born that way. And this is the thing is, if you believe that there's some sort of genetic basis for something like sexual orientation, it's almost like the born-this-way idea still kind of holds true.

No, no, so. And when Dean and I would talk about this and talk about genes, I think they influence you're just what you particularly desire. He would emphasize the role he believes they play. And that's really important. That's what you're going to pursue in your life, most likely. And we would spend hours.

Genes are having... Debating that role. A big influence. And that being the case. I guess it might be more important. You might have a disagreement though, on big influence. And Dean would cite studies that claim that

if you look at sexual orientation, like 25% to 50% of that has to come from genetics. It's hard to get below. Although someone argue, someone argue lower. Oh, yes. Okay, great. Eight percent. Fine.

Great. And I told Dean about this thing that Joanna had said that always stuck with me. But what may be happening is something that conservatives have always feared and that liberals could never bear to admit, which is that it might not be all about biology. Yes, we are biological beings, but we are a part of a very complex environment. And organisms change their environment and environments change organisms. Well, there's no evidence for any environmental effect, at least in men, zero.

There's never been any study that showed any effect of the environment. It's important to recognize that. The environment, meaning the shared environment, schools, language, religion, stuff like that. Stuff that's shared within the household. Does that mean in women there have been studies? No, I mean, none that I could find. I mean, like, there's studies that show that sexual behavior is malleable, that like environmental circumstances will change

how people have sex with one another, but there's nothing that shows like this thing here is what leads to a sense of orientation. And because of that, for Dean, I think that at the time of birth, your orientation gay straight or by that is very, very strongly influenced by these innate factors that we have right from the very beginning.

And we know what the effect is of saying, you know, we don't know how this happens. It's not good. It's not good at all. So I'm not saying at all that that should be the basis of our arguments or our moral arguments or our law. But I think it's a pity if we if people don't know what's known. Yeah, but I just don't know much of anything is known. And if we do want to say that there are things that that we know about sexual orientation or something. They're like, what we know, to me still feels so, so small.

I agree. We know about as much about sexual orientation as we know about depression or schizophrenia, which is not much. And I guess what I would just be wary of is confusing the idea that we don't know everything with the idea that there's nothing to know. I don't know why I'm trans. I just know that I am. But I think by the time I was transitioning I knew too much about some of these biological stories. And I knew I could start probing the past and that I could tell a story about why I did something

when I was five years old. But kids are gender nonconforming in many different ways. I've known many kids who played with dolls, that's this boy who played with dolls for a period of their life and then don't. And it's not this kind of story that you would hear, like if you're a little boy's playing with dolls, you can't give them a football

because he's gonna be gay in the end of the day and you should just accept the fact. I mean, that was the narrative. I think these stories are too easy. I don't think they explain everyone's experience, but they are neat and tidy stories that tell us the way the world is, is the way the world was always meant to be.

And it also that the born this way thing, that narrative doesn't protect us from conservatives who talk about, you know, transcending because the fact of the matter is, there is much, much more identification with gender diverse identities and living sexuality out in different ways. And I think we're back in ourselves up into a corner if we don't kind of correct course a little bit. Well, what is the correct course if it's not making these sorts of scientific arguments

about biology born this way, immutability. Well, yeah, I think that I wrote the book in part because I've grown a little bit kind of weary of the kind of queer theory accounts that say, oh, we should just get rid of any kind of involvement with scientific or medical expertise when we're fighting for political equality. Oh, is that a thing that people are talking about? Yeah, I think it's a thing you hear in academia. And you might hear it in some kind of more left-leaning queer, smaller activist groups,

which is like, get rid of science, we don't need science anymore. Yeah, but I would not be so willing to say that I don't want a gender identity clinician coming to court and saying that trans kids should have access to gender affirming healthcare because if you don't give it to them, they might experience trauma, they could even die. And you don't need a biological story to explain why that's the case because those studies that prove that don't investigate the sources of identity.

They just say that if you punch someone, it's gonna hurt, and I'm okay with that kind of scientific authority, and it seems to have a lot more credibility than an assertion that we know of a gay gene, or that we're so close to finding a gay gene, which is just, we're nowhere near that. And I don't think we ever will be. The Reporter Matthew Kilti This episode was reported and produced by Matt Kilti with original music by Matt as well

Dialogue with mixing help from Ariane Wack fact checking by Diane Kelly And some news Joana's dissertation is coming out as a book in mere days It's called born this way science citizenship and inequality in the American LGBTQ plus movement, born this way by Joanna Weast, check it out. Also, huge special things, a ton of very smart people weighed in with edits to help us navigate through this thorny, complex history, big things to Sean McEathen, Joe Osmondson, Jennifer Breyer, Maddie Sophia, Daniel Levine Spound, Heather Radke, and Ellie Mistal. Additional special thanks to Angela Petulli, Carl Zimmer, Eric Turkheimer, Andre Agana, Chandler Burr, Jacques Balthazar, Mike's, Breakfast Saoances, and a huge thank you to the Lesbian

Her Story Archives for letting us use some of their oral histories of founders and members of the daughters of Politis. The Her story archives are so cool. I highly recommend you check them out. I'll do it for today. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being catchin' next week. Radio Lab was created by Chad Abumad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulou Miller and Lotta Fnazza are our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kusik, Aketty Foster Keys, W. Harry Fortuna,

David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindu Nyanosambada, Matt Kilti, Annie McEwan, Alex Nysin, Saurikari, Anna Ruskuit Paz, Alyssa John Perry, Sarah Samback, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster, with help from Timmy Broderick. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, I'm Erica and Yonkers. Leadership Support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Conditional Support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. You