Gay Bellwethers
I wrote this….call it a year and half ago.
If homosexuality is genetic in nature, doesn’t that argue that at some point a “treatment” could be developed for it? Gene therapies meant to address a host of other genetic conditions either already exist or are on the near horizon. Shouldn’t it be logical to assume that at some point in the future a procedure will be developed that essentially rewrites the genetic code that homosexuality arises from–in short, reversing or (as is more likely, if the genetic conditions for homosexuality can be detected at a fetal stage) preventing the condition from arising in the first place?
The problem with “If you think about it, if homosexuality is a choice, who would choose it?” is that such an argument presupposes that such a choice cannot exist.
What if it does, one day?
What if that day is closer than it seems?
Scientists are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of “gay” sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.
The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.
It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the “straightening” procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.
Once the choice exists, it will be interesting to how the percentage of homosexuals in the population changes. Presumably most couples will choose to have a child that reflects their own sexuality, though some hetero couples of a more liberal bent may opt for a pregnancy without that specific genetic treatment, much as they opt for organic pesto and free-range chicken. I’ll expect we’ll see some rather impressive mental acrobatics when it comes to justifying a decision to address fetal deafness in the womb, but not fetal homosexuality . Conservative couples will likely take the opposite course, even as they perform similar acrobatics justifying the need to genetically treat what many will still insist is a moral choice. Given their penchant for producing offspring, the Quiverfull families will face that choice long before it becomes a national issue.
Since conservatives tend to outbreed liberals, homosexuality might well be much rarer a generation or so after a genetic therapy for it becomes available, and possibly more valued, as many rare things are–at which point producing a gay child might become fashionable. Then unfashionable, as the unwashed masses seize on that which was once a marker of taste among the hoi-polloi.
So, expect a bumper crop of gay children–many likely named Brittany, Britney, Brittani, Brittanie, Brittney or Brittni–in the trailer park equivalents of the future.
BW, was there a point to your post or are you just stirring the pot to see what floats up?
Even if homosexuality is found to have a specific genetic origin, which seems pretty reasonable to me, the argument against this kind of gene therapy is the same as arguing against breeding out any other trait that is socially, but not medically, undesirable. To take your example, congenital deafness, it would be easy to argue either side of the question of which trait would be more debilitating.
There’s another term that’s relevant here: eugenics. Only here, we’d be talking about eugenics-lite, since it presummably wouldn’t take generations to do it.
I’d be happy if we could just get Brittney to stop flashing her bits-n-pieces to the press, although Kehaar might be upset.
You leave my girlfriend alone! I don’t care if she’s a bloated trailer-trash whore or not. I love her.
Sincerely.
Just noodling, Wankle, though it strikes me that the definition of eugenics, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder.
Fetal Downs syndrome testing has led to fewer of those pregnancies being carried to term. Does that count as “eugenics?”
Now, a case could be made that Down’s, like deafness is medically undesirable, and as so doesn’t qualify, but what if a genetic treatment for low IQ becomes available? Stupidity is socially rather than medically undesireable, yet I don’t see parents turning down a treatment that prevents it.
And for me, that act of parental choice is why I don’t really consider it eugenics, which is defined as the …hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding.
To me, “controlled” implies a state or governmental program overseeing breeding, as in China’s one child program, rather than the individual–and so, uncontrollable–decisions made by millions of parents regarding their future offspring.
So to me, if a genetic therapy for homosexuality was extant yet outlawed by the government, that would be eugenics, in that the outcome would be breeding controlled by legislative fiat, based a fear of what the populace would choose were the option available. Any program or law requiring that therapy would also be eugenics, of course.
But the collective comprised by millions of individual breeding decisions can never be eugenics, no matter how disagreeable some of them may be.