Politics and Genetics....

A few days ago I was being sarcastic in joking with Brew over at robot-invasion about the topic of some Republicans not supporting emergency birth control.

I told him if we could convince some of these same Republicans that a majority of the babies born from lack of contraception or for that matter ending abortion would end up being Democrats, the resulting rush to make sure contraception was available would surely happen.

I've thought about that as well as a response when things on message boards have gone wacko with the constant statements about liberals being the main cause of abortions, as if somehow these people think a conservative or a republican or an independent would never support or have an abortion.

So while I was being sarcastic....imagine my surprise in reading this article that states:

Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks left as an adult, unless derailed by some powerful life experience. One reared on tax protests and a hatred of Kennedys usually lists to the right.

But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes.

Environmental influences like upbringing, the study suggests, play a more central role in party affiliation as a Democrat or Republican, much as they do in affiliation with a sports team.

From an extensive battery of surveys on personality traits, religious beliefs and other psychological factors, the researchers selected 28 questions most relevant to political behavior. The questions asked people "to please indicate whether or not you agree with each topic," or are uncertain on issues like property taxes, capitalism, unions and X-rated movies. Most of the twins had a mixture of conservative and progressive views. But over all, they leaned slightly one way or the other.

The researchers then compared dizygotic or fraternal twins, who, like any biological siblings, share 50 percent of their genes, with monozygotic, or identical, twins, who share 100 percent of their genes.

Calculating how often identical twins agree on an issue and subtracting the rate at which fraternal twins agree on the same item provides a rough measure of genes' influence on that attitude. A shared family environment for twins reared together is assumed.

So, while I may not know what the hell I am? Don't blame me.....It's in my genes obviously......

:-)