Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association (AFA) has interpreted a genetic study to mean being gay is the “result of a birth defect” and has suggested that parents would be more likely to abort gay babies.

Recent research published in the Quarterly Review of Biology suggest the genetics which make a person more likely to be gay are passed from fathers to daughters and mothers to sons.

The US National Institute of Mathematical and Biological Synthesis study reported that “sexually antagonistic” epi-marks, sometimes carried over generations, are transmitted through the opposite gender, such as father to daughter or mother to son during foetal development.

However, Fischer said the discovery would lead prospective parents to choose to abort a pregnancy.

Speaking on his radio show, Fischer stated: “As I have said before, I suspect that not even homosexual activists today want the gay gene to be found, even if it exists, because of advances in prenatal genetic testing. It is now possible to routinely screen for 3,500 genetic defects while a child is still in the womb”.

He went on to say: “So these activists rationally fear that preborn children who are detected with this gene will be aborted before they even have the chance to be born.

“After all, if 90% of babies in the womb who are diagnosed with Downs syndrome never draw their first breath, what are the chances that parents disposed to abortion will not exercise the same choice with regard to the gay gene?”

Fischer concluded his remarks by saying scientists “are coming dangerously close to saying that homosexuality is the result of a genetic defect, a genetic abnormality. In other words, read from one angle, these same scientists are saying that homosexuality is the result of a birth defect.”