Thanks karlyboo san !! Next time your in this neck of the woods, bring that 6-pack...and I'll light the fire, and we'll have a great BBQ. !!
Here I'd like to quote the words of Jared Diamond, whom, if one does not know, I suggest he be looked up:
"It's tempting to restate this simple fact (that the natural tendency of our bet-hedging primordial gonad is to develop as an ovary if nothing intervenes) in emotionally loaded terms. As the endocrinologist Alfred Jost put it, 'Becoming male is a prolonged, uneasy, and risky venture; it is a kind of stuggle against inherent trends towards femaleness.'
Ok, so there is the possibilty of the 'skewed X chromosome' ① Which is not necessarily any 'gay gene,' (unless you are non-Japanese, and live in Japan....har, har, har....american joke...) AND...what can be made from the following: '
In this section we review evidence for prenatal androgens as a key biological mechanism. Androgens, including testosterone produced by the testes in fetal and neonatal life, act on the brain to produce sex differences in eural stucture and function.' ②
" In addition to variations in the fetal brain's hormone exposure, another biological basis for average, but not nearly absolute difference between the sexes in many tendencies is that there are some sex-linked genes that are quite unevenly distributed between women and men, but which are not exclusive to one sex." ③
'...the hypothalamus, being the primary factor in regulating hormone production controlling basic behaviours such as eating, drinking, and sex, has a role in that sex hormones (steroids) bathe the fetal brain. It was found by (Goldstein {Harvard Medical School}) that at least some sex differences in cognitive function do not result from cultural influences or hormanal changes associated with pubery--they are from birth. ' ④
In that environment (thus nurture) cannot and do affect the outcome of sex, there are the cases of what has been called 'Kwolu-aatmwol.' These are otherwise termed as 'pseudohermaphroditism.' There are those few cases such as are found in Pauap New Guinea or the Dominican Republic which provide further evidence to the understanding that the biological element plays a greater role than the enviromental element. ⑤ An infant had been raised as a girl due to the genital appearance and what that had implied socially. When the person reached puberty, however, the biological setting took control, and the person who had been raised as a female, somewhat suddenly threw off all things that had been taught, and became just as a male. This is the biological function, rather than the genetic function.
There are yet many other cases and point which all go to show that it's not just a genetic matter, no, but a biological matter as well. What the ancient religious belief-systems do not concede to is exactly that which undermine their authority and claim to know. Therefore even the allusion to such, in presentations which are couched in scientific terms, is an invitation to fallacy.
① NewScientist 6, Nov. '04, p14;
② Science VOL 310, 4 Nov. '05, p 821;
③ Eve's Seed--Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History, by Robert Mc Elavaine, p 81;
④ Scientific American May, '05, pp 22-24
⑤ The Psychology of Gender and Sexuality, by Wendy and Rex S. Rogers, p20