Unqueering the Double Helix: Conversion Therapists, the “Gay Gene,” and Culture Wars in the United States

In 1993, geneticist Dean Hamer and his colleagues published a groundbreaking study suggesting that a region on the X chromosome—Xq28—might be linked to male homosexuality. Widely covered in the press and championed by LGBTQ rights advocates, the study lent scientific weight to the argument that sexual orientation is biologically rooted rather than solely the product of psychosexual developmental failure. This posed a significant threat to the cultural authority of conversion therapists, who had long relied on psychoanalytic frameworks that pathologized same-sex desire as a "curable" condition. In response, conversion therapists launched a coordinated counteroffensive, rejecting the emerging biological evidence about homosexuality and doubling down on psychodynamic theories about same-sex desire developed in the mid-20th century. This article argues that the publication of Hamer's research drew conversion therapists into the heart of the United States' culture wars, where they forged interfaith political coalitions and constructed alternative knowledge-production networks to preserve the plausibility of sexual reorientation. Their opposition to genetic research was more than scientific skepticism; it was a strategic political effort to defend heteronormativity, enforce rigid gender roles, and delegitimize queer and trans identities. By tracing how conversion therapists selectively engaged with emerging scientific discourses around LGBTQ individuals being "born that way," this article reveals how marginalized actors helped shape—and distort—the boundaries of scientific authority in service of a broader anti-queer agenda.