The claim usually arrives with total confidence. Lisa Fields recalls a guest on CNN saying, in effect, that science settled long ago that people are born gay and that nobody should still be arguing about it. Has it? Biologist Rasheda Likely went to the research to find out. Her answer is no. Science has not proven that people are born gay. The studies she read point in more than one direction, and some of them have real gaps in how they were designed.
To test the claim, it helps to know what a genetic explanation would have to show. Likely began at the most basic level. Genes carry the instructions for traits like eye color and height, so, she reasoned, “if sexual orientation were biological, it would in some way link back to genes.” A convincing study would need to identify a genetic pattern and then show that it appears more often among gay people than among straight people. It would also need to hold for women as well as men, since same-sex attraction is not limited to men. A finding that meets those tests is evidence. A finding that skips them is a description of one group, not an explanation.
Genes are also only part of the picture. “Our genes are expressed also based on environmental factors,” Likely explains. Her example is local. People in Jacksonville are warned to stay out of a contaminated river, because exposure to hazardous material can trigger the expression of cancer-causing genes. Someone who never enters that environment may never see those genes expressed. Then she asks the obvious question herself: “Does this apply to sexual orientation? Still a question.” A genetic contribution and an environmental influence are not rivals that cancel each other out. Even the researcher Likely cites as arguing for a genetic basis describes genes interacting with environmental factors.
What was actually inside the studies?
Likely, who holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in biology from the University of North Florida and was working in a Department of Health virology lab, read papers going back further than she expected. The earliest she looked at was from 1989, and she notes gene and chromosome linkage studies were already underway in the eighties. Some of the work was, by her description, genuinely impressive. Then she reached the conclusions. One paper that mapped chromosomes and linked genes ended by saying it could not definitely conclude. Her reaction: “So you did all this work and you still cannot definitely conclude.”
Two problems stood out to her in other studies, and both map directly onto the tests above.
The first was the population. She saw multiple studies whose subjects were only men. Findings from all-male samples cannot simply be extended to everyone, which is exactly what popular summaries tend to do.
The second problem was more basic. Two studies she describes examined gay men, including brothers, twins and other relatives, but included no heterosexual men to compare against. She says one study had about 819 people in its population and not one heterosexual man. Her objection is the logic of comparison itself: “you’re not giving me another population to compare to, how do I know that those genes just aren’t linked anyway?” If a genetic pattern is common among the gay men studied, that means nothing until you know how common it is among straight men. It might be equally common in both.
Likely is careful about how she phrases this. “I don’t wanna call it a control,” she says, because calling heterosexual men a control would treat one orientation as the normal state and the other as the deviation, which is part of what the research is trying to find out. What she wants is simpler. “It would be a comparison.” The question is whether any genetic variation actually differs between the two groups.
She is also measured about her own critique. “I’m not sure how the papers got through peer review,” she says, while noting from her own publishing experience that peer review is intense. She allows that the authors might be able to answer her questions if she contacted them. Her claim is that the papers themselves did not make those answers clear. Her summary of the whole search is direct: “I came out with way more questions than answers.”
Doesn’t decades of research have to prove something?
This is the strongest version of the objection. Many researchers have studied this for many years. Surely the weight of all that work leans clearly one way.
Likely’s answer is that it leans both ways. She found credible articles supporting the genetic side and credible articles against it, and she describes many studies on each side. To show how sharp the split is, she read two statements side by side. One came from a 2005 study by an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who concluded that multiple genes, probably interacting with environmental influences, help explain differences in sexual orientation, and that genes play an important role in whether a man is gay or heterosexual. The other came from a specialist in neuropsychiatry and behavioral medicine in 2002, who argued that no evidence shows homosexuality is genetic, that the research itself does not claim it, and that only the press and some researchers speaking in sound bites do. That second researcher added that traits can run in families without being innate, since families also pass along viruses and habits.
Both are trained researchers describing the same general body of work, and they reach opposite conclusions. Likely says she could read all of their work and still not know which was right. Lisa Fields draws the same conclusion from the conversation: “It’s really a hypothesis on either side.”
The limits of this evidence need to be stated plainly. What the reader has here is one biologist’s account of a selection of papers. She names few of them, and she does not walk through sample sizes, replication attempts or the full run of twin studies. Her reading is enough to show that specific studies have specific weaknesses, and that respected researchers disagree in print. It is not enough to say how the field as a whole leans today. That would take a systematic review of the literature, and Likely does not claim to have done one.
Within those limits, her method still gives the reader something to check. She acknowledges that as a Christian the material creates tension for her, and that she could present it in a way that favors one conclusion. She refuses: “It would be unfair and unjust for me as a scientist to present only one side of an argument when I know the other side is there.” Because she names both positions instead of selecting one, anyone can look up the opposing studies and test whether her description of the split is fair. She also explains why one-sided presentation is so easy: “you can skew and make data look like whatever you want it to look like, it’s all in a presentation.” Numbers can be framed to alarm people or to calm them, and a study can be designed to produce the result its author wants. Her verdict on that kind of work is blunt: “No one will respect your work because you can see straight through it.”
The consequence runs in both directions. Someone who says science has proven people are born gay is overstating the evidence. Someone who says science has proven they are not is overstating it just as much.
Where does the word “proven” come from?
Not from the research. Likely’s professors trained her never to use the word in presentations. In her words, “science has strongly suggested a lot of things, but we don’t prove anything. We can only give backing support.” Even gravity, which no one doubts, is still being studied because nobody knows everything about it. Scientific findings are supported by data and further research, and they stay open to revision. As she put it, “All you need is one more article to come out and say, this is all wrong.” She has seen it from the inside: her own published paper added a different perspective to what the field held and met heavy pushback for it.
So the word usually enters somewhere between the journal and the audience. Likely describes reading news stories about a study, then reading the primary paper and finding something completely different. “They took one line and just ran with it and made an entire news article about it.” On a topic with two well-supported sides, that is easy to do, because a reporter or commentator can pick whichever line fits the story.
Her practical advice follows from this. When you want to know what a study found, skip the news source and go to the journal article. Lisa Fields puts it as a habit for conversations: when someone uses science to end the discussion, “ask them where the study is.” Then read it, and hear the other side before deciding. Fields notes that Christians often repeat what a commentator says without studying it themselves, so the habit cuts against believers’ own shortcuts as much as anyone else’s.
What would a confirmed genetic link settle?
Less than the headline implies. Lisa Fields points out that Christians already read a possible predisposition in different ways. Some would grant it and say it fits the biblical teaching that every person is born with a sinful nature. Others argue instead that same-sex attraction is not what God created people to have. As she says, those are different arguments biblically, and neither one waits on a lab result.
That is because the biological question and the moral question are separate. Jude 3 Project holds the historic Christian sexual ethic, that sexual intimacy belongs within the marriage of one man and one woman, and holds it alongside genuine welcome, honesty about the ways the church has wounded gay people, and the love of God first. That ethic is a claim about what God calls good. A genetic finding in either direction describes how human beings are formed. It cannot, by itself, answer what they are made for.
One more distinction keeps the evidence honest. In the nature versus nurture debate, “nurture” refers to upbringing and environment, including the way surroundings shape how genes are expressed. That is not the same as saying orientation is simply chosen. Likely’s findings do not show that, and the uncertainty she describes undercuts that slogan as surely as it undercuts “born this way.” People wrestling with their own attraction are owed better than either claim, which is why a pastor or trained counselor who will listen does them more good than a study waved in an argument.