A study suggesting biology may be a determining factor in male homosexuality has met with skepticism, resentment and curiosity in the gay community.
Some feared the research may somehow be used against them. Others expressed hope the groundbreaking research by neurologist Dr. Simon LeVay could lead to greater societal understanding and acceptance of homosexuals.LeVay, a researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, examined brains from 41 cadavers, including 19 homosexual men.
He found that a cluster of cells in the hypothalamus - a marble-sized part of the brain regulating such functions as appetite, body temperature and sexual behavior - was much smaller in gay men than their heterosexual counterparts.
"People already think we're ill. This is all they need to jump on a band wagon and say we have some kind of brain deformity," said Gene Riendel, 43, a volunteer office worker at Concord's Diablo Valley Metropolitan Community Church, which serves a predominantly gay congregation of 200.
"To me, it's bogus," Riendel said. "Judge me for myself, not for my sexuality, not for the size of my brain stem core. I feel that my lifestyle is the way I was created by my maker. This is the way God made me. I'm satisfied and happy with it. Those who aren't, that's their issue to deal with."
San Francisco gay activist Paul Boneberg, who estimated the city has 80,000 gay people among its 724,000 population, viewed the research "with the greatest skepticism" because it used such a small sampling.
Dr. Leon McKusick, a psychologist with the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco, said traditional psychoanalytic theory on male homosexual behavior has focused on environmental factors and upbringing.
"But I've treated many men who were aware of their homosexual feelings as very young children, long before they were even aware of what it is to be gay," McKusick said. Those observations, said McKusick, lead him to believe that some people can be "born gay."
But the research does lend support to what many gays have been saying - that they were born with their sexual orientation and that it was not a result of upbringing, or a "sinful" choice as argued by some Christian groups.
"It's an important study. It has to be replicated and expanded," said Dr. Richard Green, a psychiatrist and lawyer at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Green said there could be wide-ranging cultural and legal ramifications if LeVay's preliminary findings are verified.
"From a legal standpoint groups that are stigmatized and discriminated against receive special protections, if, among other things the trait for which they're stigmatized is immutable, or unchangeable," Green said.