Researchers have found a new anatomical difference in the brain structure of homosexual men and heterosexual men, a discovery that supports a theory that sexual orientation may be set by nature.

UCLA School of Medicine scientists Laura Allen and Roger Gorski report that in autopsy studies they found a brain structure called the anterior commissure to be 34 percent larger in homosexual males than in heterosexual males.

The finding, Allen said Friday, adds weight to the theory that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice, but a function of biological developement.

"It's very supportive of the concept that (sexual orientation) is not an enviromental factor, not something acting early in childhood, but probably some thing acting (before birth) or slightly afterwards," she said.

Allen said early studies showed that hormones active just before and just after birth can determine the sexual behavior and brain structure of laboratory rats.

"Based on these animal studies, we would expect the differences to occur very early in humans also," she said. "In the rat," Gorski said, "we have good evidence that brain is abasically female. To develope characteristics that are typically male, the rat brain has to be exposed to specific hormones around the time of birth."
The hormones cause some structures in the male rat brain to grow up to 500 percen t larger than in the female rat brain, said Gorski.

In the new study, to be published Saturday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Allen and Gorski measured the size of the anterior commissure in tissue removed in autopsies of 34 homosexual men, 75 heterosexual men and 84 heterosexual women.

Allen said the anterior commissure structure was clearly larger in homosexual males, by about 34 percent, when compared with heterosexual males. The homosexual male brain structure was 18 percent larger than in the heterosexual female, but Allen said that difference disappears when adjusted for the brain weight difference between men and women. Between homosexual males and heterosexual males, Allen said, "the difference is very real."

The anterior commissure is a structure of nerve cells that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain near the back of the skull. Allen said brains of homosexual women were not included in the study because of difficulty in getting specimens. She said one weakness in the study is that 24 of the homosexual male brains came from men who died of AIDS, a disease that may affect brain tissue.

The UCLA study follows by about a year work by researchers at the Salk Institute is San Diego, Calif. who found the size of another part of the brain, the interstitial nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus, smaller in homosexual men.

Commentary

by Charles Weisman; Author of "Handbook of Biblical Law"
Available from
Scriptures for America World Wide,
PO Box 766-c, LaPorte, CO 80535, USA,
$9.00 postpaid

It seems that modern science and research has finally confirmed what the Bible long ago stated about homosexuals. The Bible says that since homosexuals "did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind" (Rom. 1:28). In other words, their minds or brain would be different than normal. The research conducted by UCLA medical scientists have proven that the brain of homo sexuals has a "very real" abnormality in its structure. The same has also been discovered with the brains of murderers.

Homosexuals thus cannot claim that their "lifestyle" is just another lifestyle which they have "chosen." It is the result of an abnormal and dysfunctional brain. This also ends the argument that homosexuals can be "converted." The physical construction of the brain determines certain behavioral characteristics which cannot be changed.

-- C.A. Weisman