You could very well be right. Certainly, it's not going to answer all--possibly even most--of the questions that people here ask. Unfortunately, those answers don't really exist yet. However, from my perspective this is a relatively bias-free summary of current research and it never hurts to know what the people making decisions about you are--or at least should be--thinking.

With respect to causes, there continues to be an ongoing debate with people arguing either nature or nurture, which is funny when you think about it as just about everything else in nature that isn’t “black and white” seems to be proving to be a combination of both. For example, items like hair color or height seem to be clearly genetic, but almost everything that involves thought seems to be both (e.g., risk taking, anxiety, alcoholism, and smoking, to name just a few).

The term “orientation,” at least as it's used here, tends to describe belief structures. Such structures could include identity, preferences, motivations, etc. It may not be a perfect term, but in psychology few terms seem to have completely clear and unambiguous meanings. It’s one of the reasons why it’s so important that there be research and that the results be properly evaluated, considered and interpreted. If you want to be suspicious, question whether the findings are being properly interpreted. We should all be suspicious about that given the tendency for humans to use rationalization to interpret things as they wish rather than how they are.

I will respond privately too, but to “respond to your response,” sorry, but I like to keep public comments at least a bit on the light side, there are as wide a variation in views regarding transgender issues as there are religious groups. I am pleasantly surprised when I find one that is open and welcoming, but there are just too many that seem to feel a need to “draw the line” and find transgender issues an easy line to draw. I will avoid a discussion of the absence or presence of god in the universe and merely point out that the role of religion from earliest times was to provide an umbrella to help human beings get along in groups and survive. Priests were the original scientists, helping to explain the world and how it works, so when I hear of yet another instance of a religious group excluding rather than finding ways to include I am disappointed to say the least.

I actually begin to see the end, or at least the narrowing of the range of issues where the “nature v nurture” can rage. Excluding situations where there is a clear genetic marker (e.g., Prader-Willi, Down Syndrome, etc.) if anything, it is becoming clear for most behavioral events that there are genetic features providing a propensity and the environment (learning, interactions, etc.) that offer the situations in which the behavior can occur. My best example is with respect to alcohol consumption. For Native Americans there was no access to alcohol so alcoholism was never an issue until they ran into us “palefaces.” We put alcohol into an environment and a social setting where there were no prohibitions, no rules. The result was that Native Americans drank to excess. Still, there is the genetic component which is that those that decided to stop could, unless they had a specific marker. Unfortunately, gender identity issues are not yet resolved, at least for human beings, although I did just hear of a recent study where gender identity of rats was apparently changed via genetic manipulation.

A lot of the available research on sexual as opposed to gender identification seems to suggest that early experiences have a strong impact on later sexual behavior. One of the problems we have is with “sexual offenders.” Aside from the problem that their sexual behavior is valued as good or bad by specific societies and other societies hold different values, meaning that which types of sexual behavior is accepted or rejected has little to do with genetics and more to do with issues of control; or in the past survival issues. There may yet be research that discovers a genetic link, especially for some of the “extremes” of sexual behavior, but for now, sexual interest seems to be one of the few issues with less genetic impact than most despite my comments about rats above. Interest in males, females or both as sexual partners seems to be to a significant, but still unquantifiable extent, a learned behavior. The problem is that unlearning those behaviors is rather difficult as there is that issue of pleasure. I find that the only ways to confirm a person’s sexual interests is to either watch them (not my thing, but it’s the only truly reliable method) or ask them (and hope they are being honest or even know the answer).

I hope these discussions are of value and encourage others to think about these issues. We’ll see.