London Times: Scientists Claim to Have Discovered Gay DNA — Page 2

Well, I'll see if I can't get in touch with the women I know who told me they felt they made a conscious decision in their later years to inform them that they did it wrong.

ETA It seems like there will always be somebody to inform you that the way you describe your experience in the world is wrong. And then they'll explain it in a way that better fits their vision of the world and re-describe your experience for you. And THAT way, it's easier to make sweeping generalizations they like after they help you to fit squarely into them.

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Updated On: 2/18/14 at 05:56 PM

Because. My point is not everyone agrees with the original assertion. Period. Not everyone does. Honestly, what the **** difference does it make what my friends told me, and they were activist friends and it was the late-80s and gender studies hadn't evolved to such a state where a smart grad student could tell them they didn't understand a single thing about themselves that they were saying?

It doesn't ****ing matter what steps they experienced or if they came to understand their sexuality in an evolutionary manner that conforms with contemporary orthodoxy. What difference does it make?

People can be who they want, they can call themselves any one of the dozens of contemporary gender options, and they can choose their sexuality.

Again, for the final time, WE don't all agree that sexuality is definitely genetically determined.

The end.

Somebody, anybody else, can take up this ****ing baton.

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Updated On: 2/18/14 at 06:13 PM

Choice or not a choice?

It's a red herring.

First of all, do we have a choice about anything. Free will is not universally believed to exist.

Second, what difference does it make if it's a choice or not? Is that ever a basis for moral stances on anything.

Third, if we were to legitimize gay love because being gay is not something a gay person has chosen then what does that mean for our bisexual brothers and sisters? - and please don't tell me that bisexuality doesn't exist.

All that being sad, what we are dealing with here isn't politics, or shouldn't be politics, but rather science. Not scientific inquiry but rather what we do with science puts us potentially in moral jeopardy.

For the last time Horse Tears and TRULY I am not going to spell this out again.

My objection was with LH writing that "WE all know it's genetic" in the original post. As you can see, OTHER people in this thread had problems with LH speaking for anybody but himself. It wasn't just me. I mentioned the women who said what they said about their sexuality not as a peer reviewed study result or even as a story that could possibly meet the contemporary gender studies understandings of sexuality. My point is that I knew some women who felt they made a choice. I am sorry I didn't do a full intake with them so I could answer your curiosity. HOWEVER, nobody here is saying PEOPLE CAN CHANGE THEIR SEXUALITY. I said I knew some people who felt they made a conscious choice later in life.

I am sorry I introduced that minor point, it was never ever ever to say that "people can change their sexuality." It was to say "WE" don't all "know" something that science has not proven and I hope to hell never does.

Okay? Can this end now?

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"Of course they were born that way, I mean, who would choose to be gay?"

I've actually heard well-meaning people say that, and I always say "Me!"

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Me too, Jay Lerner-Z!

I always find it strange when people say that homosexuality is caused by genetics because I am gay, but I have an identical twin who is straight. We have the same DNA, and we were raised in essentially the same environment. We spent our early childhood almost entirely at each other's side, and we were in the same classes at school through 6th grade, so we shared so many experiences together. I don't feel that my sexuality was a choice, but that's not to say that I wouldn't choose it. And I can only speak for myself and my personal experience. I've often pondered how it happened that I am attracted to men while my brother is attracted to women, but I have to think that it's the same reason that I like classical music while he prefers jazz. Why I enjoy Sex & the City while he likes Breaking Bad. Why I like Dickens while he only really reads nonfiction. There are so many other factors that shape who we are beyond genetics and environment in early development. Genetics could certainly play a role in determining sexuality, but that seems highly unlikely in my own case.

We can look to the Coultergeist for a glimpse of how such a gay gene would be spun:

The general premise of her words: Gays and lesbians should become pro-life, because liberals may start aborting their unborn gay children once a homosexual gene is discovered.

“The gays have got to be pro-life. As soon as they find the gay gene, guess who the liberal yuppies are gonna start aborting?,”


Link

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Updated On: 2/19/14 at 07:42 AM

"How is a quest for knowledge--in this case an understanding of how someone could actively choose their orientation as opposed to just experience it--taking a moral stance? As for whether choice is ever a basis for moral stances on anything, isn't choice (or free will) at the core of most of our moral stances and laws?"

Clearly many people have asserted a link between accepting homosexuality and concluding that it is not a choice. It is that proposition, and not behavioral dna research (into sexuality or anything else), that I object to.

As to your other point, before we get to choice in assessing morality, I would suggest that we generally first consider whether the thing potentially chosen is something harmful. Today most people accept religion as ultimately a choice (albeit one impacted by early conditioning). But discrimination based on religion is broadly (if not universally) condemned. And the reason for that is not because it isn't a choice (which it is; at least it is when we exclude the question of the neuroscience of free will in general and in the abstract; that exclusion being your respectable and understandable "choice," HorseTears, not mine), but because people generally believe that unless someone is foisting their religiously based moralizing or prejudices on us, it is none of our business what religion someone "chooses" to practice. It is a private matter which causes no social harm (or even if we might believe that religion does cause practical harm, it is not a harm that we generally cite to support depriving individual practitioners of their civil rights and equality under the law).

The gender of those someone is sexually attracted to, romantically loves, or gets it on with is similarly none of our business and should pose no moral threat to us. This is true whether it is an innate and or indelible trait or whether it is something within one's arguable control.

The flip side of this is that there are many things which science suggests are not within the control of the actor but the law still requires to be criminalized. One example is that many believe that for a great many (if not perhaps all) pedophiliacs, the act of having sex with young children is an irresistible impulse acquired from themselves being victims of child sexual abuse. Let's assume for a moment that this is true. It does not follow from that that pedophilia practiced by those who "have not chosen it" should be lawful or that those who have not chosen it should not be subjected to having their liberty restricted. Although we may not wish to punish childhood sex abuse victims who have fixated on the trauma and relive it as adults with other children, we obviously still have to consider the harm that they are perpetuating, legislate accordingly and isolate offenders from children. (Of course the considerations I have just outlined bring up questions of how and where to isolate pedophiliacs, and of the interplay between criminality, mental illness, addiction).

Although the threat of imprisonment can not always deter the potential offender from "choosing" to offend, it does not follow that the offense must therefore be deemed socially tolerable.

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I think you understood, although it wasn't very clear from parts of your response, that I wasn't suggesting that there was anything morally corrupt or wrong about the research. I applaud it. It's a completely valid scientific inquiry. It's what many view as the moral application of the results which I question, not the studies themselves.

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You are right in saying that sexual orientation as a genetic determinant may apply to bisexuality as well as hetero and homosexuality. My point was a different one. If sexual orientation including bisexuality is genetically determined, there remains an issue as to "choice" of romantic and or sexual partner/s of the bisexual. If, for instance, one is, for the sake of the argument, a Kinsey 3, should one's "choice" of a same sex partner be less socially acceptable than a Kinsey 6's "non-choice" of a same sex partner? I would hope no one would suggest that.

Updated On: 2/19/14 at 09:25 AM

Please give your brother my card.

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I hope people read that post carefully, sonof, not least of all because it is so beautifully written. Apparently my name next to something not as calm and measured is a REAL stumbling block for some.

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"I still fervently believe that it doesn't matter and that, indeed, it's even the wrong question to ask."

And I think, at the end of the day, that's where the difference comes in for some homosexuals. Some believe it does indeed matter while others don't. That's the way of the world.