I came in on the very end of the story "The Science of Sexual Orientation" on 60 Minutes the other night. I honestly don't have the answer as to what makes one person gay and not another. Nature vs. Nurture? Personally, I believe that I was born this way. It wasn't anything to do with my upbringing. I have 3 straight siblings who were raised in the same house by the same parents. The best that I can recall, I was a typical girl growing up. Pretty much right up the middle of the road- not too foo-foo, but not too much of a tom boy either.

Michael Bailey is a psychology professor at Northwestern University and a leading researcher in the field of sexual orientation. Bailey says he doesn't think nurture is a plausible explanation. Psychologists used to believe homosexuality was caused by nurture n.mely overbearing mothers and distant fathers but that theory has been disproved. Today, scientists are looking at genes, environment, brain structure and hormones. There is one area of consensus: that homosexuality involves more than just sexual behavior; its physiological. Bailey and his colleagues set up a series of experiments in his lab at Northwestern University. In one study, researcher Gerulf Rieger videotaped gay and straight people sitting in a chair, talking. He then reduced them visually to silent black and white outlined figures and asked volunteers to see if they could tell gay from straight. The idea was to find out if certain stereotypes were real and observable. Based on physical movement and gestures of the figures, more often than not, the volunteers in the study could tell a difference. "So, is the conclusion that gay people do in fact move differently?" Stahl asked Rieger. "Yeah, absolutely," he replied. It's not true 100 percent of the time; it is true on average. The researchers also studied the way gay and straight people talk, and they found differences on average there too. This research is controversial. Some say it is reinforcing stereotypes. But to Bailey, the stereotypes suggest there's a feminizing of the brain in gay men, and masculinizing in lesbians.

I am not a very masculine woman. I don't fall into many of the cliches at all. I don't play softball, I'm not good at building things, I wear makeup, I carry a purse, I like to buy clothes (pink clothes even!), I like to decorate, I know what colors go with what, I don't have short hair, I don't own 23 cats, I don't watch Xena, I have a child.... Also, I don't actually believe in any of those cliches! I do, however believe that you can sometimes tell that someone is gay just by watching they way he or she moves, just as mentioned in the quote above. I'm not talking about the totally "obvious" types either. There's just something, an un-nameable quality, that sets off my "gaydar" on some people. It's not anything that I can put my finger on, it's just something that I know.