"Ralph,you know I have to contact the NYT about the activities I witnessed today"
Posted on 01/24/2007 10:41:21 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Of Gay Sheep, Science and Peril of Bad Publicity
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: January 25, 2007
Charles Roselli set out to discover what makes some sheep gay. Then the news media and the blogosphere got hold of the story.
Dr. Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, has searched for the past five years for physiological factors that might explain why about 8 percent of rams seek sex exclusively with other rams instead of ewes. The goal, he says, is to understand the fundamental mechanisms of sexual orientation in sheep. Other researchers might some day build on his findings to seek ways to determine which rams are likeliest to breed, he said.
But since last fall, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals started a campaign against the research, it has drawn a torrent of outrage from animal rights activists, gay advocates and ordinary citizens around the world — all of it based, Dr. Roselli and colleagues say, on a bizarre misinterpretation of what the work is about.
The story of the gay sheep became a textbook example of the distortion and vituperation that can result when science meets the global news cycle.
The news media storm reached its zenith last month, when The Sunday Times in London published an article under the headline “Science Told: Hands Off Gay Sheep.” It asserted, incorrectly, that Dr. Roselli had worked successfully to “cure” homosexual rams with hormone treatments, and added that “critics fear” that the research “could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.”
Martina Navratilova, the tennis star who is both openly gay and a PETA ally, wrote in an open letter that the research “can only be surmised as an attempt to develop a prenatal treatment” for sexual conditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
.. searched for the past five years for physiological factors that might explain why about 8 percent of rams seek sex exclusively with other rams instead of ewes.
--
physiological factors ?
hmmmmm?
Gay Sheep Ping!
"Ralph,you know I have to contact the NYT about the activities I witnessed today"
It's the clash of left-wing absolutes:
on the one hand the scientist may prove that being gay is encoded in DNA,
and
on the other hand people may demand to abort gay offspring(detectable via a DNA test).
What does the Left do?! They must have abortions, but they can't let people abort gay babies...
...thus, the Left seethes with rage at the mere possibility that the issue is even being studied.
It appears that they even object to gene therapy. I am sure that they will fund a research which can turn a normal people into gays.:-)
They're afraid their ruse that claims homosexuality to be genetic will be exposed for the false propaganda that it is. They definitely don't want the facts exposed.
might as well repudiate much of classical history, if they are going this route. how many bisexuals/others were prominent in greek and roman history? How many conquered Gaul?
By "gay" the writer apparently means homosexual. The two are not synonymous, despite the currently fashionable, egregiously incorrect, usage.
In the local school the word "gay" has become associated with anything that used to be "bogus", unfair, unacceptable, geeky, wrong, etc. Funny how the language gets manipulated back and forth, huh? Homosexuals adopt a word to disguise their nature, and the kids revise the meaning yet again in a negative way.
Homosexuals adopt the word Gay to disguise their nature.
You don't think it is genetic? I guess the sheep also choose to be gay? LOL.
Oh my. You can't be serious?
That is very easy. Scotsmen wear kilts because the sound of zippers scare the sheep! There ya go laddy...
They like the lifestyle. They get to decorate their pens any way they want to, eat arugala salads and say "Fabulous!" a lot.
Science News, a long time ago, reported finding on "homosexual " frogs. They found that some male frogs of a certain species became homosexual when there were too many males and not enough females. They found that the frogs brains changed in a specific area and that when the ratio came back to normal, the frogs did also both in behavior and brain.
They were not sure if the behavior caused the brain change or the brain change brought on the behavior.
So, at least for one species of frog, it is "natural", but only when there are too many males. But the finding also says that it is reversible.
It would be interesting to see if those frogs that changed were less aggressive than others that did not, and took the easy way out.
China is going to be having a similar problem due to its one child policy and parental penchant for boys. Girls have either been aborted, killed at birth, or abandoned and adopted out of the country. In a few years it's going to become evident that there are far more men than women and that not every man will be able to find a wife because there aren't enough to go around. Then the sociologists can start looking at what is happening.
There isn't a single credible scientist that does think it's genetic.
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