The Editor, Sir:

With the continuing debate over Prime Minister Golding's unfortunate comments and at least one letter writer who is questioning their orientation, I feel compelled to type this brief.

First, I'm not gay and I don't feel insecure about that. I've met, worked with, and am friends with many openly gay (male and female) people, and some who are a bit more cautious about revealing their sexual orientation.

OWN RESEARCH

What I would love to see is a qualified professional in the area of medicine or social science speak out and state what the medical scientific and/or social scientific facts are when it comes to homosexuality and bisexuality, but since I've been met with large silence on those fronts, I did some research on my own.

What I can say from the research and discussions I've had with people qualified in the medical field is that homosexuality occurs naturally within the human population. You can no more choose to be gay than you can choose to be black - Michael Jackson and other 'bleachers' notwithstanding.

Natural sexual tendencies

In fact, what continuing medical research shows in what is broadly termed 'sexual differentiation' is that humans occupy a rainbow of natural sexual tendencies from homosexual through heterosexual to bisexual where the spread peaks in the heterosexual category.

It has been shown that human sexual development goes through a critical phase inside the womb where the action of certain 'sex hormones', namely oestrogens, androgens and testosterone, subtly nudge the brain on a path to female/male gender identification and appearance, and homo-, hetero- or bi-sexuality.

The initial programming by these hormones is also thought to affect the development of the hypothalamus (section of the brain) which largely controls how humans respond to external stimuli (how you react to what you see and feel). Again, the point:People are not gay by choice - they are born that way.

When one starts discriminating against homosexuals due to their sexual orientation, he makes himself or herself no better than racist people discriminating against blacks just because they are born black.

I am, etc.,

'Sensible Jamaican'

sensiblejamaican@googlemail.com