From: exe00595 Subject: Fundie Lie Exposed Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 19:07:49 -0500 (EST) Another Fundamentalist Lie Exposed In fighting against the University of Wisconsins proposed gay studies program, fundamentalists have pressured Wisconsin State Legislators into pen opposition. They erroneously claim that sexual orientation is a matter of choosing a lifestyle. Those who support that positon often claim that there is no homosexuality among animals other than free-willed, choice-making man. The evidence of animal homosexuality in the literature, such as Dr. Alfred Kinsey's film of two bulls engaging in anal intercourse to the point of ejaculation, is ignored and covered up. The current issue of the Magazine Science news publishes a report giving more new evidence that homosexual behavior is a naturally occurring phenomenon among "dumb" animals, and that it is genetic in nature: Gay rams lack hormonesensitivity In male sheep, a lack of docking sites in the brain for a specific chemical messenger leads to homosexual tendencies. This finding strengthens the idea that biological factors underlie behavior, says Anne Perkins, an animal behaviorist at Carroll College in Helena, Mont. For breeding purposes, ranchers evaluate the sex drive of rams by watching whether they try to mate with males or females and whether they ejaculate. To understand why some males prefer other males, Perkins tested the ponses of both male and female sheep to estrdiol, a type of estrogen important to the development of sexual characteristics. She treated the sheep, then studied their brains a month later. In one respect, all the rams responded alike, no matter what their sexual leaning: The hormone did not cae a surge of luteinizing hormone, which is impornt to female sexual response, Perkins reports. However, the homosexual rams were more like females in that tpossessed far fewer docking sites, or receptors, for estradiol in a part of the brai called the amygdala than did other rams. In rodents, the differing responses of male and female amygdalas to estradiol account for differences in courtship behavior between the two sexes. Estradiol may play a similar role in sheep, says Perkns, by making heterosexual males responsive to female odors. The omosexual males, in contrast, respond more like emales and are aroused more by male odors. "This may be one piece of the puzzle to help us understand sexual orientation" she says. ----- SCIENCE NEWS, VOL. 145 MARCH 5, 1994. Thus the results of science. Too bad that fundamentalists and legislators don't know what science is.