Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Very little. Even attempting to study this can be a career-ending choice. This is because causal models often translate into curative models. For example, it is widely agreed that there is no "gay gene," but if there were a "gay gene," then we could use embryo selection to prevent gay children from being born. Likewise I have read some hypotheses that hormones in utero play a major role in sexuality, but twin studies show that twins often don't have the same sexuality (though they do have the same sexuality at higher rates than random chance). So there appear to be biological factors involved in homosexuality, but these factors do not appear to be determinate.
Back when it was permissible to study such things, there were some studies that associated homosexuality with being the victim of sexual abuse. But this tends to paint homosexuality as a negative consequence of a blameworthy action, which is not good PR, so this line of thinking is often very vocally shouted down. Furthermore, the percentages vary a lot--in the one I linked, about a third of homosexual men reported having been the victims of child abuse. So even if that explains every single case to which it applies (which would be surprising), it doesn't explain the other 65% at all.
It seems to me, given the evidence I've seen over the years, that sexuality is just super complex--sufficiently complex that even calling someone "homosexual" or "heterosexual" is often a gross oversimplification. Even stuff like the Kinsey scale barely scratches the surface. Because the human sex drive is so deeply biologically wired while simultaneously being inescapably socially situated, I have very little doubt that it is essentially a complex emergent property with countless biological and environmental inputs. There is no clear causal model for a single individual, much less one that will generalize to multiple humans. There do seem to be some identifiable contributing factors, but even factors with impacts large enough to be measurable fail to be clearly identifiable as overwhelming causes. You may as well ask what makes someone a biologist or a sailor: surely there are causes that explain each case, maybe even some obvious contributing factors, and yet being a biologist or a sailor just isn't the kind of thing that could ever have a single, clearly-identifiable cause.
Who/what are you thinking of when you say this?
A large scale GWAS was published in Science a few years ago which is about as far from career-ending as you can get. Another from 2017. Here's a brain imaging/PGS paper from 2021. Evo psychobabble about the hypothetical evolutionary fitness of homosexuality. Here's a paper investigating associations between same-sex attraction and 'psychological distress (anxiety and depressive symptoms), and risky sexual behavior.' A search for 'same-sex attraction psychology' yields a hundred forty odd results in the last five years and is by no means exhaustive. Here's a review from 2020 that discusses genetics, birth order, in utero hormones and environment, abuse as a child, sexual orientation of the parents, etc which covers most of the ideas I've come across (not that I'm particularly knowledgeable about this field).
@Pasha depending on what exactly you're looking for, you most likely won't find a satisfying answer to your question. Our current answer for virtually all of these complex traits is the same: genetic and environmental factors play a role, GWAS can identify a large number of low-impact, difficult to understand variants that explain ~5-40% of the heritability and correlation with a number of environmental factors. Maybe some brain-imaging studies showing a 5 +/- 2% increase in activity in some corner of the brain in same-sex attracted individuals. Grand psychological theories like refrigerator mothers have mostly gone out of style.
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