“Conservative, right-wing people hated it because they felt that it was saying that being gay is like being black, that it was in-born, that it would somehow ‘excuse’ gay people or give them more rights,” says Hamer. The discovery caused Hamer to be attacked from all sides. The region also goes by another name: GAY-1, a genetic marker linked to male homosexuality. The search for ‘gay genes’ goes back to 1993, when a US team led by Dr Dean Hamer described a region of DNA located on the X chromosome called Xq28.
