Short notice but check out this webcast today (july 18 at 19:00pm in Britain) called Sourcing Sexuality, hosted by the Dana Centre. The program features discussion from Sven Bocklandt, geneticist, University of California, Los Angeles, Qazi Rahman, psychobiologist, University of East London and King’s College London and Jeffrey Weeks, Executive Dean of Arts and Human Sciences, London South Bank University. I am writing this as I wait for it to come on and the music playing is worth the visit.
UPDATE: Good program. The video will be available soon at the same link. When the Q & A came up, mine was the first question. It was:
Michael Bailey and colleagues in 2000 only found an 11% (for men) and 14% (for women) pairwise concordance homosexuality. These twins were reared together, shared the same womb and same genes.
Doesn’t this argue that chance is involved in sexual orientation outcomes? Different biological and environmental factors would be more dominant for different people. Thus, the search for the cause of sexual orientation is likely to always be frustrated by exceptions since there may be multiple pathways to sexual attractions.
I would hope that both social constructionist and biologically minded panelists could have a go at this question.
More later
UPDATE: I was going to say more about the program but it is supposed to be online within a couple of days. I think it was a valuable program for anyone interested in this issue so keep checking the website. Regarding my question, Sven Bocklandt said there are several twin studies, some with larger concordances but whatever they were, environment must play a role. The social constructionist, Jeffrey Weeks, indicated agreement with my statement.