A Separate Creation: How Biology Makes Us Gay

by Chandler Burr

In August 1991 newspaper headlines around the world announced an amazing discovery: a difference in the brains of heterosexuals and homosexuals. In 1993 American scientists claimed they had discovered a gay gene. Sexual orientation, it now seems, is not a choice, not a disease nor a faddish whim, but a fundamental biological part of who we are.

Chandler Burr's ground-breaking work is the first and only comprehensive look at this revolutionary new science, biology on the farthest edges of current scientific practice. A Separate Creation: How Biology Makes Us Gay takes us into laboratories where researchers are using incredible technologies to discover what makes us straight or gay. From studies of male rats that ovulate and a species of African animal in which the female has a penis, to the political fire-storm surrounding the claim of a gay gene, from a new silicon chip made of human DNA that could discern the sexual orientation of the foetus in a woman's womb, to a working theory that homosexuality is a genetic/bacterial condition that could be 'cured' with an antibiotic, Burr explores this fascinating and often ethically ambiguous territory with clarity and an objective eye.

Genres: Psychology, Gender, Biology, Sexuality, Science

512 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Chandler Burr is the New York Times scent critic and author of The Perfect Scent, The Emperor of Scent, and A Separate Creation. He has written for The Atlantic and The New Yorker. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good information in this one. I loved reading it, too because it was not overly verbose, but not overly technical either.

[Marsha Altman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book goes into a lot about science and research that I didn't quite understand, and amusingly interviews a lot of scientists who don't seem to quite understand that their research into the biological origins of sexual orientation might have political implications. The author's conclusion, based on the evidence available at the time, seems to be this: yes, homosexuality is hard-wired in the brain, people do not "choose" to be gay, but we don't have good evidence for how or why it happens. And the idea that there's a gay gene is actually terrifying - identifying it could mean that parents could choose to abort their child if the child carried the gene the same way they abort children diagnosed with Downs or tay-sachs. While there is some significance that there is a genetic component to sexuality, the implications of this are vast and the science is incredibly shaky and studies are hard to replicate. I actually thought this book would have aged more than it did; it still holds up quite a bit.