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A few years ago, Dr James Watson, the Noble Prize winner who co-discovered DNA, reopened the controversy over the so-called gay gene when he defended a woman’s right to abortion. He was quoted in The Sunday Telegraph as saying: “If you could find the gene which determines sexuality, and a woman decides she doesn’t want a homosexual child, well, let her (abort the foetus)”.
Much of the reaction to Dr Watson’s statement focused on its homophobic versus freedom of choice implications. Largely overlooked was the fact that such an esteemed scientist was giving credibility to the flawed theories which claim a genetic causation of homosexuality.
These theories have been given a recent boost by research suggesting differences in the brain structures of gay and straight people.
According to gay gene theory, genetic factors are responsible for sexual orientation, with our genetic inheritance programming us to desire one sex rather than the other. This is a very simple, deterministic thesis: A causes B.
I don’t disagree that genes (and hormonal exposure in the womb) influence sexual orientation. The scientific evidence for these biological influences is presented in the book, Born Gay (2005), written by Glenn Wilson of the Institute of Psychiatry in London and Qazi Rahman, a lecturer in psychobiology at the University of East London.
But contrary to what the authors seem to suggest, an influence is not the same as a cause. Genes and hormones may predispose a person to one sexuality rather than another. But that’s all. Predisposition and determination are two different things.
There is a major problem with gay gene theory, and with all theories that propose the biological programming of sexual orientation. If heterosexuality and homosexuality are, indeed, genetically predetermined (and therefore mutually exclusive and unchangeable), how do we explain bisexuality or people who, suddenly in mid-life, switch from heterosexuality to homosexuality (or vice versa)? We can’t.
The reality is that queer and straight desires are far more ambiguous, blurred and overlapping than any theory of genetic causality can allow.
After studying the sexual experiences of thousands of men, Dr Alfred Kinsey presented evidence, in Sexual Behaviour In The Human Male (1948), that “many males combine in their single histories, and very often in exactly the same period of time, or even simultaneously in the same moment, reactions to both heterosexual and homosexual stimuli”.
Some years later, the Kinsey researchers famously reported the case of a happily married young woman who, ten years into her marriage, unexpectedly fell in love with a female friend. Divorcing her husband, she set up house with this woman. Many years later, despite a fulfilling on-going lesbian relationship, she had an equally satisfying affair with a man. Examples of sexual flexibility, like that of this woman, don’t square with genetic theories of rigid erotic predestination.
One of the main original proponents of gay gene theory, Dr Dean Hamer, now concedes that it is unlikely that something as complex as human sexuality can be explained solely in terms of genetic inheritance. He seems to accept that while genetic factors may establish a predisposition towards homosexuality a predisposition is not the same as a causation.
Many studies suggest social factors are also important influences in the formation of sexual orientation. These include the relationship between a child and its parents, formative childhood experiences, family expectations, cultural mores and peer pressure.
By about the age of five or six, a combination of biological and social influences seem to lay the basis of an individual’s sexual orientation. Because our sexuality is fixed at such an early age, many lesbians and gay men feel they have been homosexual all their lives and therefore mistakenly conclude that it must be genetic and that they were born queer.
They also see the gay gene explanation as a useful defence against the arguments of the religious right, which dismisses same-sex relationships as a lifestyle choice. But no one sits down one day and chooses to be gay (or straight). Sexual orientation is not a choice like choosing which biscuits to buy in a supermarket. We don’t have free will concerning the determination our sexual orientation. Our only free will is whether we accept or repress our true inner sexual and emotional desires.
The relative influence of biological versus social factors with regard to sexual orientation is still uncertain. What is, however, certain is that if gayness was primarily explainable in genetic terms we would expect it to appear in the same proportions, and in similar forms, in all cultures and all epochs. As the anthropologists Clellan Ford and Frank Beach demonstrated in Patterns Of Sexual Behaviour (1965), far from being cross-culturally uniform and stable, both the incidence and expressions of same-sex desire vary vastly between different societies.
They found, for example, that young men in some tribes (the Aranda of Australia, Siwan of Egypt, Batak of Sumatra, Anga of Melanesia and others) had relationships with boys or older male warriors, usually lasting several years, often as part of manhood initiation rituals. Eventually ceasing homosexual contact, they subsequently assumed sexual desires for women.
If sexual orientation was genetically prefixed at conception, as the proponents of the gay gene claim, these young men would never have been able to switch between heterosexual and homosexual relations with such apparent ease.
Likewise, a glance at history reveals huge disparities between configurations of homosexuality in different eras down the ages. Same-sex behaviour in Ancient Greece was very different, in both its prevalence and particular manifestations, from homosexuality in Confucian China, Renaissance Italy, Meiji Japan, Tudor England and late twentieth century USA. Moral values, social ideologies and cultural expectations – together with family patterns and parent-child interaction – seem the only credible explanation for these massive historical divergences.
Despite obvious theoretical and empirical weaknesses, the claims that certain genes cause homosexuality have been seized upon and vigorously promoted by many in the lesbian and gay rights movement (especially in the US).
The haste with which these unproven, questionable theories have been embraced suggests a terrible lack of self-confidence and a rather sad, desperate need to justify queer desire. It’s almost as if those pushing these theories believe we don’t deserve human rights unless we can prove that we are born gay and that our homosexuality is beyond our control: ‘We can’t help being fags and dykes, so please don’t treat us badly’. This seems to be the pleading, defensive sub-text of much of the pro-gay gene thesis.
Surely we merit human rights because we are human beings? The cause of our homosexuality is irrelevant to our quest for justice. We are entitled to dignity and respect, regardless of whether we are born queer or made queer, and irrespective of whether our homosexuality is something beyond our control or something freely chosen.
The corollary of the ‘born gay’ idea is the suggestion that no one can be ‘made gay’. This defensive argument was used by some gay leaders during the campaigns against the homophobic Section 28 law in the UK, which for 15 years (from 1988 to 2003) banned the “promotion” of homosexuality by local authorities, and again during the lobbying of the British parliament in the 1990s for the equalisation of the age of consent.
Supporters of Section 28 and opponents of an equal age of consent justified their stance with the claim that people need to be protected against ‘pressure’ and ’seduction’ into the homosexual lifestyle.
Some gay spokespeople responded by arguing that it’s impossible to ‘make’ someone gay, and that a same-sex experience at an early age cannot ‘persuade’ a heterosexual person to become homosexual.
At one level, they are right. Sexual orientation appears to become fixed in the first few years of life. For most of us, it is impossible to subsequently change our sexual orientation.
However, what definitely can change as people grow older is their ability to accept and express formerly repressed queer desires. A person who is ostensibly heterosexual might, in their mid-30s, become aware of a previously unrecognised same-sex attraction that had been dormant and unconscious since childhood. Society’s positive affirmation of homosexuality might help such a person discover and explore those latent, hidden, suppressed feelings.
The homophobes are thus, paradoxically, closer to the truth than many gay activists. Removing the social opprobrium and penalties from queer relationships, and celebrating gay love and lust, would allow more people to come to terms with presently inhibited homoerotic desires. In this sense, it is perfectly feasible to ‘promote’ lesbian and gay sexuality and ‘make’ someone queer. Individuals who have a homosexual component in their character, but are inhibited by repression or guilt, definitely can be encouraged to acknowledge their same-sex attraction and act upon it.
Were future generations to grow up in a gay-positive, homo-friendly culture, it’s likely that many more people would have same-sex relationships, if not for all of their lives at least for significant periods. With this boom in queer sex, the social basis of homophobia would be radically undermined.
In this state of greater sexual freedom, where homosexuality becomes commonplace and ceases to be disparaged or victimised, gayness would no longer have to be defended and affirmed. Gay identity (and its straight counterpart) would thus, at last, become redundant. Hurrah!
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I think this is a great start for Liberate the Mind!!
congratz
I’m glad you didn’t choose a topic related to any recent war, humanitarian conflict or political scandal as an opening article. Although these are important topics, I appreciate the sense of openness and diversity that this first article gives to the magazine.
I also think the theme of the article goes perfectly well with the original concept of the online magazine: Freeing oneself from the constraints imposed by structures and institutions that have ruled our society for enough time.
Anyways, what I want to say is hurray for you guys, the world is complex, diverse and vast, there’s a place for every idea, thought and belief, and I’m happy to know that there is a new window for observing the world with another angle!
A (hopefully) faithful and regular reader.
Thank you Peter for your insightful article. However, there is one thing I do not understand. If your article is correct, it means that in societies which are gay-friendly there would be more homosexuals. However, if you check the statistics you will see that the amount of homosexuals per capita is gay friendly countries (such as Germany and the Netherlands) are not much different from societies where homosexuality is not openly accepted. How can this be explained?
It’s a nice article. It’s true that sometimes we forget that the function of science is to understand nature, but nature is the one who’s putting the rules here. If it decides to mix up all the rules sientifically proven, then it will do it. If I don’t have the homosexual gene, but want to live with a woman it would be my decision.
Also, I think John about your question that the society do affect the our sexual orientation, yet not in a direct way. For instance in societies where men and women are separated all the time in schools, public places, parties, …etc. and women are covered all the time. This absence of “sexy woman figure” could make a man’s sexual desire tending to reveal itself towards other men, the only human creatures that seem to exist in this kinds of societies.
Mr Tatchell’s article just reminded me of two premises of Modern thinking. The first one is the authority of nature. Under the optics of modernity, science is only authoritative because it spells out the laws of nature in a ‘rational’ manner. Thus, in any serious debate you are obliged to prove your argument based on how nature backs it, precisely the way American activists tried to prove the naturality of being homosexual based on the gay gene theory. Secondly, we love thinking in binary terms (Derrida has an excellent explanation for this), meaning good/bad, heterosexual/homosexual, male/female and so on. This leads to a simplistic understanding of ‘reality’, very useful for heuristic purposes but not for serious apprehension of the complexity of the ‘reality’ we wish to explain. However, what really concerns me is the terrible consequences this binary thinking poses by creating associations between the pairs namely, marginalisation, exclusion, discrimination,… Perhaps we could all be better by opening ourselves to more complex readings of ‘the world out there’ and realising that at the very end our humanity expresses itself in countless ways and to deny a single one of them is to reject our human condition.
I tend not to agree. The question we have to answer is if humans are only dependable on natural laws. My opinion is that they are not. Social sciences are created because man has created a world ‘parallel’ to the natural laws. How we behave, what we do (except the necessities), what we find important and to what/whom we commit are all created in our mind, not out of a natural necessity. Some things are very ambiguous and unclear – like sexual preference. Sexuality is a natural necessity – survival. From that perspective, sexual preference should be too. Without heterosexuals, there is no survival. If homosexuality is natural, is it a flaw of nature as it just made survival impossible?
But, as we have seen with many things, if the way we live and the quality of the society goes up, we tend to change our natural behaviour. People have less children for instance. Following this logic, it means that homosexuality can exist purely because we can survive easier.
Secondly, if our sexual preference is decided by the age of five, it means that before that it can be ‘influenced’. I cannot see any possible ‘attributes’ which could influence a child of 4-5 years old to change his/her sexual preference. Would it then mean that a child with two mothers or two fathers will have a bigger chance to become gay? What would happen if a child would not be influenced by anything until he/she is 6?
A question to Mr Tatchell: If you say that a gay friendlier society would allow people to openly be homosexual, wouldn’t a gay friendly society also have the same effect an ‘anti-gay society’ has now: Making people believe they are gay, even if they are not?
I do not agree with Neni at all.
First of all, nature is the greatest teacher ever, and she has shown is throughout studies and research that homosexulaity DOES exist in the animal kingdom. penguines, Lionesses that form long lasting couples, different species of monkeys that have homosexual relationships, dolphins and whales that have sexual intercourse with males and females alike, etc…etc..
Therefore, even though modernity and transformation have been a consequence of humanity living in this planet, they have not increased (so I believe) someone’s tendency of being or not being gay. If survival is the ultimate biological goal for a specie, wouldn’t under this logic, homosexuals be directly related to survival by not generate overpopulation of their own species?? I truly believe that the active heterosexuals in this planet are doing an exemplary job in procreating tons of babies. I do believe that neither can be a flaw, for both exist, both have a reference in nature, which is the closest thing we have to a perfect balance in a given ecosystem or living space.
Influences do exits, but taking this into account, would it not be preferable to have a child exposed to a same sex family but have two loving and caring parents than for him or her to be on an orphanage or changing families through the foster care system? What would be preferable, love in a different package, or for a child to be left alone or to never experience a ‘family’life’??
I also believe that sexual preferences go beyond how you were raised, as we can see siblings inside of a family being homosexuals and others choosing heterosexuality or bisexuality, and they all had a similar background.
on the last point, a gay friendly society will only make people be comfortable with what they choose, and who they choose to love, you can’t impose homosexuality just as you can NOT impose heterosexuality. Maybe more people will dare to admit their feelings and nature, but that is a consequence of openness in a society, it is not a consequence of a gay friendly environment.
I do agree with Samuel, reality is complex and it has different levels of manifestation and understanding, therefore binary terms are not sufficient to define something as varied and deep as human nature.
Well the point of all of this is: we need to learn to love, learn to accept others, acknowledge that homosexuality is just as NATURAL as heterosexuality (for if we are using the adjective “Natural”, it does happen in nature), and that sexuality is a private matter, that nobody needs to explain to others, and certainly no one has the right to say with whom you should or should not have sexual relations: We should Make Love freely (with a condom, in most cases
) and stop considering if things are natural or not, they are here and they are harmless, what is harmful is trying to put laws, rules, causes, and explanations for things that go beyond our limited capacity as humans to understand ourselves.
Jose, Thank you for your elaborate comment.
As I said, if the society we live in improves on a social and welfare level we tend to have less kids. One can thus state that children are the ultimate attempt for survival. Why else is the average amount of kids born per family consistently dropping in every Western country since the industrial revolution? Why would the society then not have some kind of influence on our sexual preference? And then again, what about survival?
I do agree with you that sexual preference must go further than the way someone is raised and in what kind of environment he/she is raised. With my comment earlier I was trying to address Mr Tatchell’s argument that our sexual preference is a combination of biological and sociel factors. This does not make sense to me. If it is (partly) biological, it means it is genetical, and thus that sexual preference can be detected – and even changed (but that is another discussion). If it is social, then again, my argument I used earlier is valid: Does that mean that same-sex parents will have more chance of raising a homosexual child?
Personally, i salute the thinking behind Mr Tatchell’s illuminating article, i will not go as far as saying it is the truth, since none of us knows the definite cause to homosexuality, whether they be predetermined or not. Nevertheless, the subject being discussed rather tends to tell two things: eitheer how contemporary society promotes/provokes and accepts homosexuality, or, denies and prosecutes homosexuality, but, no matter from which society a random person is asked their sexual prefference, i strongly suggest that the choice of sexual prefference is a common topic anyone, from any contemporary society applied all different kinds of dogmas, had to make up for in some ways.
My plea for justification will therefore be, and not only to people not being researchers or thinkers, but more directly to the researchers and (free) thinkers progressing the gay-gene theories as an accepted fact of nature – who’s nature do you really explain? your own cognitive behaviour and concepts, or the one you see best suited? (excuse me for the leading question)
Neni, concerning your question:
Why else is the average amount of kids born per family consistently dropping in every Western country since the industrial revolution? Why would the society then not have some kind of influence on our sexual preference? And then again, what about survival?
I truly believe that blaming the decrease of birthrates in western countries on homosexuality is like blaming sharks for low fish stocks, i think it is completely irrelevant.
I think this can be attibuted to longer life expectancy rates, increased cost of life, greater advances in medicine that allow a better quality of life, thus increasing the possibilities of reaching old age, the freedom women are experiencing from being used as child factories, etc, etc.
I thinks there is a conjunction of factors that create the above stated situation, but I do believe that same sex couples are not the reason why western contries do not have growing or increasing birth rates. Again, humanity is overpopulated, just distribution and balance is out of tune, and this has nothing to do with a small percentage of humans that have different sexual preferences, because for that matter, then single men and women, young peeople, and barren and infertile couples would also be responsible for this “Ultimate goal of survival through reproduction” that you stated previously.
Concerning the last question: Does that mean that same-sex parents will have more chance of raising a homosexual child?
We can not confirm or deny this assumption, but i am sure that homosexual parents would not raise their children to be gay, they will expose them to a more open environment and probably if they already have a homosexual tendency, then they will not supress it, but this does not mean that gay parents create gay children, otherwise, why would straight couples create gay childre. Saying this is the same as stating that single parents create individuals that will not be succesful at a relationship, because of the influences they had in their childhood.
I think the reasons for your questions are much more complex than having some men having relationships with men and some women dating women.
Cheers!!
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