Rugby player says he is happier since stroke 'turned him gay'

A rugby player who claims suffering a stroke turned him gay has said he is happier now than when he was straight.

Chris Birch says he is happier since suffering a stroke turned him gay Photo: Wales News Service / Splash News

A year ago, Chris Birch, 26, was a 19st beer-swilling athlete from the Welsh valleys who loved motorbikes and was engaged to marry his girlfriend at the time.

However, after suffering a stroke, he woke up to realise that he was no longer attracted to women.

He has since slimmed down, quit his job in a bank to become a hairdresser and is engaged to another man.

Reflecting on the dramatic change, Mr Birch, from Caerphilly, told the BBC: “The Chris I knew had gone and a new Chris sort of came along. I came to the realisation that the stroke had turned me gay.

“I'm happier now than I ever have been, why would I want to change?”

Mr Birch had been attempting a forward roll down a hill in 2011 when the blood supply to his brain was cut off, causing a stroke.
Without oxygen, any part of the brain can be destroyed as brain cells die, leaving the brain to make new connections, which can affect how a person thinks, moves or feels.
There are few known cases of a stroke turning a straight person gay, and major personality changes in stroke sufferers are rare. A change in sexual orientation in a stroke sufferer is a controversial issue that divides scientific opinion.
Even Jak Powell, Birch's fiancé, believes his partner may always have been gay.
Dr Qazi Rahman, an expert in human sexual orientation who has researched the neurological differences between gay and straight people, invited Mr Birch to undergo tests to see if he may have been born gay.
He found that in half the tests, Mr Birch performed in the "expected direction" for a gay man, and for the other half was within the range of a straight man.
Dr Rahman, of Queen Mary, University of London, said: “The bulk of the evidence in the biological sciences of genetics and psychology and neuroscience suggest that sexuality is something you are born with and it develops later on through life.
"Sometimes it takes something like a neurological insult – which is what a stroke is – to make you reassess those feelings, perhaps that are lying dormant, and bring them into the front of your mind and it is possible that is what has happened with [Mr Birch]."
However consultant neuro-psychiatrist Dr Sudad Jawad, who has worked with young people who have had strokes, said he has come across a similar case in his practice of a man whose sexuality changed from homosexual to heterosexual.
"Just like a stroke can change you as a person, your behaviour, your personality, the way you think, why not sexual orientation, it is part of the personality of the individual," he said.
Mr Birch can remember little of his life before the accident, but is convinced from looking at photographs of himself and speaking to friends that he was not gay before the stroke.
“I'm convinced more than ever looking at the photos that the stroke did turn me gay, because there is no way that I was gay before. I have photos as proof and I have friends as proof and now I have memories as proof.
"It's like looking at somebody else, but with my face only younger, and in all fairness, if I met myself I'd probably carry on walking."
He added that realising he had become homosexual was difficult.
"It was a sort of lonely time. It was a time I was afraid to tell anybody because that wasn't who I used to be, so it shouldn't be who I am now," he said.
"You're afraid to tell people, you're afraid to have that conversation or even talk about the possibility that I have even changed in some way, and I suppose I dealt with it by moving out of my family home by myself and having to realise who I was all over again.
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