As first reported by Ryan Anderson, a new report from The New Atlantis challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

Our own Michael Brown predicted, and later confirmed, that reaction to the report from gay rights activists would focus not on the arguments, but on attacking the authors.

The Stream caught up with Adam Keiper, editor of The New Atlantis, to discuss the reaction to the report, as well as his hopes for its lasting impact  in the national dialogue.

 

THE STREAM: In an unusual move, you devoted an entire issue of The New Atlantis to this report. Why now, why is TNA the right place for such a report, and why an entire edition?

ADAM KEIPER: Thanks for the question, and for the conversation. The New Atlantis is dedicated to exploring ethical, social, political, and policy matters connected with modern science and technology. Sexual orientation and gender identity are, of course, connected to any number of ongoing policy debates. But our aim with the report “Sexuality and Gender” is to set aside all policy questions and instead to focus on what the science says — on the scientific evidence about the nature of sexual orientation and gender identity, and, crucially, about the health challenges facing LGBT populations.

Let me say a few words about the report’s three major findings. First, the report notes that there is little scientific evidence that people have innate and fixed sexual orientations. Human sexuality is enormously complex and not easy to capture in slogans like “born that way.” While there is evidence that biological factors like genes and hormones play some role in influencing a person’s sexuality, there are no biological explanations that can fully account for a person’s sexual orientation.

Second, the report finds that individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender are at higher risk for a variety of mental health problems, ranging from depression and anxiety to suicide. The dominant explanation for these mental health problems is that social stressors — like discrimination, prejudice, and harassment — contribute to poor mental health outcomes for LGBT people. While these factors probably do account for some of the problems experienced by these populations, the available evidence doesn’t show that social stress can account for all of the disparities in mental health between LGBT populations and the general population.

Third, the report finds that while human beings are born either biologically male or female (with the exception of a very small number of people with “intersex” characteristics), the more modern concept of “gender identity” — as distinct from biological sex — is much more elusive. There is no scientific evidence that individuals who identify as genders that do not correspond to their biological sex have the brain of the opposite sex. It remains unclear why some individuals come to identify as the opposite sex, but scientific evidence does not support the notion that there are boys born with girl bodies or girls born with boy bodies.

Why now? Well, this report took some three years to research, write, and edit — which is to say, it could have come out sooner, or later, but the aim of the authors and editors was to get it right. And why an entire issue? It’s a big subject. There’s an enormous amount of research that has been published on these subjects, and an adequate treatment of the questions discussed in the report requires extensive discussion of many scientific papers.

 

STREAM: What made Dr. Lawrence Mayer and Dr. Paul McHugh the right people to author this report?

KEIPER: Dr. Mayer has a somewhat unusual background. He’s an epidemiologist and a biostatistician. Although we tend to think of epidemiologists as people who study the spread of infectious diseases, that’s just a subset of the field. More broadly, epidemiology is better understood as the study of occurrences among populations. Among other things, epidemiologists tend to have a real expertise in things like statistical analysis and study design. But what makes Dr. Mayer’s background somewhat unusual is that he’s also trained in psychiatry. So he brings to this work an ability to think clearly about these questions both at the level of populations and at the level of persons and minds.

Dr. McHugh is one of the most eminent figures in American psychiatry. He has worked mightily to help make psychiatry more scientifically grounded, among other things working to integrate into psychiatry the findings of neuroscience. He also played a critical part in pushing back against the “recovered memory” phenomenon of three decades ago that was not only bringing discredit to psychiatry but was causing profound pain to patients and their families. He has long studied questions of sexuality and gender.

On top of all that, both Drs. Mayer and McHugh have taught in university settings for decades, and both have lots of experience writing for and speaking to different kinds of audiences, so they are well suited to help explain these complicated scientific findings so that anyone can understand them.

 

STREAM: Reactions to the report have been widespread. What would you say the critics of the report misunderstand? For that matter, are there things that the people who have received the report more warmly may have gotten wrong?

KEIPER: Good question. Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding we’ve seen so far — coming both from the report’s critics and those who have praised it — is the idea that the report shows that sexual orientation or gender identity are chosen, or that the report argues that the environmental factors determine a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The report does not assert that sexual orientation or gender identity is a choice. In fact, it explicitly says that sexual orientation is not a choice; there is no scientific evidence to support such a simplistic view. Likewise, the report does not argue that environmental factors alone determine a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

It has been disappointing to see people who should know better — like the researcher Dean Hamer, in an error-filled piece written for The Advocate — misrepresenting the report in this way.

 

STREAM: What has surprised you most about the reactions from the your readers, and from the scientific community?

KEIPER: Among the scientists from whom we’ve heard, a common response has been to wonder why we published the report — after all, they say, much of what the report discusses is already common knowledge among those familiar with the scientific literature. Which is heartening, since it means that the report is basically right about the science. But of course just because something is well known among scientists does not mean that it is well known more generally, and part of our aim with this report is to bring the findings of science before a wide public audience.

Paradoxically, at the same time that we’re hearing about how the report’s findings are common knowledge among scientists, another response we have frequently received in private correspondence — and not just from scientists, but from the general public — is congratulations for having the courage to publish a report that touches on these topics. Notes of this sort have come even from some readers who disagree with the report’s interpretation of the scientific findings. And although it is gratifying to receive these e-mails, it says something ominous about contemporary intellectual and political life that people feel that courage is needed to publish a report that simply describes and interprets the scientific literature.

 

STREAM: The New Atlantis report examines the results of nearly 200 peer-reviewed studies. But certainly there have been many more studies than that. Some of which, critics contend, might refute the results of the report. How did Mayer and McHugh decide what made the cut?

KEIPER: That’s right — some readers have asked why some studies and papers were discussed in the report while others weren’t. As you say, the authors and editors had to make some decisions about what can and cannot be fit into even a report as long as this one is.

Do some scientific papers reach conclusions different from the ones reached in “Sexuality and Gender”? Yes, of course. The scientific literature on these questions includes many papers reaching many conflicting results. Our undertaking — the aim of the report — is to make sense of it all, including properly weighing the findings of research of different levels of quality. Many of the papers Drs. Mayer and McHugh decided to include in the report were exceptionally rigorous, but there is also a large number of poor-quality papers published in these fields. In some areas, such as the neuroscience of sexual orientation and gender identity, the published research is generally fairly poor, so Drs. Mayer and McHugh selected papers for criticism that were particularly influential or that displayed some of the characteristic shortcomings of the field. In other areas, for instance research relating to mental health outcomes for LGBT people, the quality is generally higher — partly because the questions being asked are simpler, and those papers tend to concern the collection of data rather than the exploration of causal hypotheses.

Whenever possible, the authors of the report draw on meta-analyses — scientific papers that each try to bring together into a single new analysis data from numerous studies. The authors then try to fill in the gaps by discussing the best papers available on the subjects the report addresses, and then the most recent papers available. Some people have pointed out some very recent papers that were not included in our report, which will always be true in publishing — we had to stop incorporating papers at a certain point, or else we would never go to press.

 

STREAM: What impact do you see the report having, and hope it will have in the future?

KEIPER: In the culture at large, we hope that this report will help people understand the limitations of scientific knowledge about the nature of gender identity and sexual orientation. Simplistic narratives about how people are “born that way” are not supported by scientific evidence. Whatever position one takes on how best to support and help youths who identify as transgender, when we hear people say that there can be “women’s brains trapped in men’s bodies” or “men’s brains trapped in women’s bodies,” we should know that the science doesn’t support that formulation.

Among scientists, we hope that this report will encourage more research into the factors that contribute to the high risks of poor mental health outcomes for LGBT populations. More serious and open-minded research into the causes of poor mental health in these populations is essential.

We also hope that physicians will find it useful to have this plain-language discussion of the science so that they can better understand some of the patients they treat.

And then, in a deeper sense, we hope that this discussion of the science will help us all to better understand our communities, our families, and even ourselves.

 

STREAM: Seeing how most of us aren’t psychiatrists or social scientists, how can the average concerned citizen make best use of the information in the report and communicate it to their friends and family?

KEIPER: The important lesson of the report for ordinary concerned citizens is not to presume that the complex, deeply personal aspects of human sexuality and gender identity are settled scientific concepts. This is especially true when it comes to children: if a child behaves in a way that is not typical for his or her sex, parents should not presume that the child is in some sense “really” of the opposite sex.

A reader who wants to share the report with others can find it readily enough on our website for free; for those who do not have time to read the entire report, the executive summary provides a quick overview of the report’s findings. We certainly encourage people to read the entire report, however, and to share it with their professional circles and with their friends and families.