born that way?

In some cases there’s probably a natural component involved. I’ve met very effeminate men and very butch women. In one particular family, the children’s behaviors were “swapped” i.e. the girls were very masculine and the boy was very feminine. It’s difficult to accept it was solely a  matter of nurture or environment because:

• The parents both exhibited the expected masculine and feminine traits.
• They appeared to be brought up normally.
• That this would be a conscious choice by the children — one, maybe two but all three? Something doesn’t seem right about that.

What I’m getting at is that certain people could be born with predispositions which make them susceptible to certain behaviors and for some that innate drive is difficult if not impossible to overcome.

Consider people with fetishes — some of them get off on farts and poop. There’s no way any rational person will believe they make a conscious choice to be sexually aroused by those things. There has to be something going on at the genetic level contributing to that abnormality.

That article is deceptive. It’s a common strategy of science deniers. They cherry pick one or two scientific studies that go against their narrative, then point out that the study doesn’t explain everything, and try and discount it. That’s not how it works.

What’s worse, is they actually take a quote from of the NLGN4Y study out of context and pretend it discounts the study’s results, which it doesn’t.

Here is from your article: “Even the authors themselves admitted they don’t know how this protein might have a role in determining behavior. They stated, “It is not certain how NLGN4Y might operate at the cellular level on the neuropsychology of men’s sexual orientation”

The full quote from the study goes: “It is not certain how NLGN4Y might operate at the cellular level on the neuropsychology of men’s sexual orientation, but the interaction of NLGN4Y with its binding partners, the neurexins, in the formation of synapses (27) (Fig. 3) may influence relative sexual/romantic attraction to others of a particular sex.”

So your article actually omits the finding. The referred study was not about neuropsychology, it was about pathology.

The study also explains what these antibodies do:
“There is also evidence that maternal immune products, including antibodies, can enter the fetal compartment and pass the blood/brain barrier of the developing fetal brain (16–20). Finally, an incremental maternal immune response occurs to a Y-linked protein (SMCY/H-Y) in relation to prior male fetuses (21), a phenomenon that, at times, may underlie widespread alteration of fetal development and induce miscarriage (22).
Unlike SMCY, two Y-linked proteins—protocadherin 11 Y-linked (PCDH11Y) and neuroligin 4 Y-linked (NLGN4Y)—have special relevance as candidates to underlie FBO and sexual orientation (2, 3) because they are represented in the fetal brain and feature primarily extracellular structures (23–25), which allows these proteins to be accessible to circulating antibodies. Thus, antibodies could bind to these proteins and alter their role in typical sexual differentiation of the brain (without necessarily resulting in death of the affected cells or inducing miscarriage). Both PCDH11Y and NLGN4Y are part of families of cell adhesion molecules thought to play an essential role in specific cell–cell interactions in brain development (23).”

Most importantly, the study has found that screening mothers for these antibodies can accurately predict the sexuality of their sons.

“Mothers of gay sons with older brothers were predicted to have the highest concentration of antibodies, but we also predicted mothers of gay sons with no older brothers to have higher concentrations than mothers of heterosexual sons and women with no sons, on the assumption that the former could be immunized on a first male pregnancy or, for example, include a subset of mothers immunized by miscarried and possibly undetected male fetuses.[…]
“As expected, mothers of gay sons with older brothers, relative to mothers of heterosexual sons, had higher antibody levels on all three NLGN4Y variables (anti-isoform 1, P = 0.00035; anti-isoform 2, P = 0.011; combined anti-NLGN4Y, P = 0.001). Mothers of gay sons with older brothers, relative to women with no sons, generally had higher antibody levels on all three NLGN4Y variables (anti-isoform 1, P = 0.008; anti-isoform 2, P = 0.09; combined anti-NLGN4Y, P = 0.023). Mothers of gay sons with no older brothers, relative to heterosexual sons, had higher antibody levels on anti-NLGN4Y isoform 1 (P = 0.024) and combined anti-NLGN4Y (P = 0.045). Mothers of gay sons with no older brothers, relative to women with no sons, had higher antibody levels on anti-NLGN4Y isoform 1 (P = 0.021).”
Here’s the full study.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1705895114

Once you have a biomarker that can accurately predict outcomes, you have scientific proof. Barring any grave error in their sampling or testing, the study proved that male homosexuality is indeed biological (in most cases, surely there can also cases of trauma etc that can lead to it, which is why they refer to neuropsychology, which their study is not about).

What I find truly puzzling though is this:  Christians seem more interested in discrediting the findings, rather than applying them. With homosexuality proven to be due to antigens in most cases, this also means that it will be possible to inhibit these antigens through immunosuppressant drugs in the future. Which means, consequently, virtually no child will be born homosexual anymore. This would without a doubt reduce suffering. It would also reduce “sin”. Why then, I wonder, is there such fierce opposition to the findings?

Fair enough, I shouldn’t have generalized like that. I meant it in the sense that pushback against these studies seems to come from Christian organizations, sites or individuals, rather than Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, etc or nonreligious.  There is plenty of pushback against homosexuality itself from Muslims (and man, do they ever hate gays) or Jewish Rabbis or Hindu organizations or even from Atheist countries like China. I’ve just never actually seen any of them try to discredit any actual scientific studies. They just tend to ignore them. I do read a bit on Islamic and Jewish forums and facebook groups, mainly because I’m interested in how the same news story gets framed and interpreted by different groups. I haven’t yet come across these studies even being mentioned. I’m sure someone has somewhere, but I’ve never found it.

“Sin is not based on how you were born or any physical attribute. ”
But if you are born without the physical desire to commit sin (i.e. attraction to the same sex), there would be less committing of sin overall.

“What is a sin is acting on your desires that God has laid out to be sinful.”

That harkens back to the article audie posted. In it, they explicitly state that god does not make men homosexual. That no one is born gay.

What these studies prove, and what motivates the pushback, is that people are indeed born gay. So that means, god made them gay. Proven beyond a doubt at this point.
So if god declares homosexual acts evil or a sin, but creates men with the explicit instinctual desire for it, then it begs the question why.

Contradictions don’t exist, when you encounter one, check your premises, one must be false.

The possibilities are:
1. Man was not created by god, religion is a lie
2. God created man, god created some men homosexual, and the condemnation of homosexuality from leviticus 18:22 may either be contextual (in the preceding passages it speaks of temple prostitution) or a mistranslation. In which case homosexual acts are not a sin, or only if committed via prostitution, on sacred grounds, “in beds of women” (the exact hebrew transliteration) or out of wedlock.
3. God created man, god created some men homosexual as a special trial, much like some people are born in extreme poverty or with a disability. Apparently god likes to subject some people to torture to test their virtue. This view is supported by the bible, but to my knowledge more with exterior circumstances (i.e. poverty, loss of a child, etc).
4. Demons, the devil, or some evil influence affects some babies to be born with a desire to commit evil. This idea, however, has no biblical basis, and would constitute pure speculation, as well as call into question god’s sole authorship of man.

As we know from the whole flat earth debacle, the Church does sometimes get things wrong, or mess up with the translation of the OT from Hebrew to Greek and later Latin. The leviticus passage at very least has some context to temple prostitutes. Jesus never once mentions homosexuality in the NT. Homosexuality was primarily practiced in Greece, where adult men would use slave boys for sexual pleasure and rape them, often violently.

Overall there seems to be a good indication that homosexual acts are condemned by the OT and NT, the context is murky, and the translations are questionable. And it does clash with the more important passages about all men being born in the image of god.
If you are convinced that god made man, and we have proven that some men are born gay, then at the very least this warrants having a closer look at the translations and context of Leviticus 18:22 and other passages, before accusing people of being sinful. Satan’s role in the old testament being that of “the accuser”. Probably a good indication, that this a role one shouldn’t be too eager to inhabit.

If I was religious, these are theological waters I would tread a lot more carefully in. I don’t think the god of the bible would look kindly upon those who would cast stones against his creation on the basis of a mistranslation or out of context reading. I would at the very last study Greek and Hebrew to be able to read the texts in their original form.

150 people is not too bad for a medical study of this complexity. It’s not like they were testing new medication or doing FDA approved drug trials, which would indeed require larger samples. But for establishing diagnostic criteria and biomarkers, 150 is absolutely valid. There are studies on life altering surgical treatments with lower sample sizes.

“What was misrepresented? The people who did the study admit that what they are studying is one possible factor among many in what they call a “complex phenomenon.”

Of course, nobody can claim to know if this is the only cause and diagnostic criteria for homosexuality.
Compare it to cancer research. We don’t know all causes of cancer. We likely never will. But that doesn’t invalidate individual studies. Let’s say we find that roofers who worked with asbestos have a higher rate of lung cancer. We do some in vitro testing and find out that asbestos on lung tissue can cause cancer. It doesn’t mean EVERY case of lung cancer was caused by asbestos, right? Some roofers may have gotten it from smoking or having mold in their home. But the statistical deviation and the predictability still proves that inhaling asbestos causes cancer.

Same thing with this study. The study doesn’t prove that ALL cases of homosexuality are caused by this, but it did show that screening for these antigens was able to accurately predict whether or not a mother’s son was gay. Just like we could predict a rate by which roofers who worked with asbestos get lung cancer.

That’s what I mean when I say the AIG article is deceptive. They try to discredit the entire study, just because the study doesn’t claim to have the ONLY answer. That’s not how science works. Science is like a puzzle, which you complete piece by piece. This study solved a large part of the puzzle. The methodology was spot on, and the sample size good enough for what it set out to establish. To discredit it as junk science with an out of context half sentence quote is dishonorable.

@wisdom

“But if you are born without the physical desire to commit sin (i.e. attraction to the same sex), there would be less committing of sin overall.”

NO ONE is born without a desire to sin.  You  speak as if gay was by far the worst sin or the only sin.  This is not at all the case.

“That harkens back to the article audie posted. In it, they explicitly state that god does not make men homosexual. That no one is born gay.”

No it does not, it comes from what I believe and what I believe sin to be.  In the case of being homosexual, I do not think God makes mistakes.  I think he creates people as he wants them.  Just because we cannot ourselves figure out the reason someone is a certain way does not invalidate that there is a reason. So yes I firmly believe people usually are born gay and no that is not a mistake by God.  That is their cross to bear in life.  EVERYONE has one or multiple.  EVERYONE is challenged in this life and that is entirely the point.

“So if god declares homosexual acts evil or a sin, but creates men with the explicit instinctual desire for it, then it begs the question why.”

Yes, it does beg that question.  But we will never know the answer to that and that does not invalidate God’s will.  But again, this is not a special case.  All humans (especially men) are created by God with the desire for sexual interaction. And typically to the point where we desire it frequently and with all sorts of people.  But that too is deemed sinful.  But it is still a desire.  Everyone (straight or gay)  is called to control themselves sexually at almost all times.  Only within the confines of straight marriage is it not sinful.  On the face of it people will call that restrictive and controlling.  Well sure, that’s the point and there is great logical reason for that restraint which should be obvious now since removing that restraint (morality) has harmed society terribly.

Sometimes I think the whole modern LGBT movement (not the people themselves but the organizations) is about being anti-Christian.  It is through this movement where we have arrived at a point that society is saying any desire you have , simply because you have it, is valid, natural and good and equal to all other desires.  This thought process has opened the door (as it was prophesied decades ago) to many harmful things including grooming children and eventually will lead to legal pedophilia if not stopped.

People are not animals.  Animals cannot decide to not act on their instinct but people can.  However, the left will have you believe we must act on sexual desires, bar none.  There are many Christian homosexuals out there whom do not participate in the lifestyle because they wish not to sin or offend God.   It is not impossible at all to abstain.  Difficult? Certainly I am sure.  And I am sure no one does it perfectly but the idea is you try.