Posted on 10/20/2013 3:50:56 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
[Imagine a prenatal test that, like the one for trisomy 21 (Down's syndrome), could show a predisposition to gayness.]
In a New York magazine piece, “The Science of Gaydar,” writer David France looks at the growing scientific evidence for innate differences between gay and straight people. France ends by gazing toward the future, and asks the question, “What if prenatal tests were able to show a predisposition to gayness?” Well, France reports, “[Northwestern University psychological professor] Michael Bailey, for one, isn’t troubled by the moral implications any more than he would oppose fetal screens for potential birth defects, though he quickly adds his personal belief that homosexuality is ‘a good’ on par with heterosexuality.”
Bailey espouses a definite Seinfeldian “not that there’s anything wrong with that” attitude toward homosexuality. In a paper he published on the subject with lawyer Aaron Greenberg in 2001, he wrote: “Because homosexuality causes no direct harm to others (other than those who take offense at it on irrational and/or inhumane grounds) and because homosexual behavior is crucial to the ability of homosexual people to enjoy their lives (as heterosexual behavior is to heterosexuals), homosexuality should not be morally condemned or proscribed.” But, Greenberg and Bailey say, it’s wrong to tell parents they can’t select for (or against) a heterosexual or homosexual predisposition in their children.
Greenberg and Bailey take a libertarian view of the matter—they believe the right of parents to make these kinds of decisions is paramount, “even assuming, as we do, that homosexuality is entirely acceptable morally.” Their point is that, “allowing parents, by means morally unproblematic in themselves, to select for heterosexuality would be morally acceptable” because “allowing parents to select their children’s sexual orientation would further parents’ freedom to raise the sort of children they wish to raise and because selection for heterosexuality may benefit parents and children and is unlikely to cause significant harm.” It ought to be the case that defending the rights of parents to use this technology doesn’t ultimately undermine queer rights, but it seems hard to believe that in practice it won’t lead to support of the idea that one ought to try not to have a gay child.
Greenberg and Bailey’s paper is quite interesting—interesting enough that, when my class of smart, thoughtful, and generally progressive Medical Humanities and Bioethics masters students discussed it with the authors earlier this year, many of the students who began in agreement with the paper ended up disagreeing with it, and vice versa. I admit I wavered, but I didn’t ultimately flip; I started with, and still have, several problems with the paper.
The first is, I suppose, a general problem I have with libertarianism: It’s selfish. And I don’t like selfish philosophies. (I guess I’m selfish that way.) Greenberg and Bailey seem to assume that the larger social effects of individual decisions like the ones they are supporting are not really a pertinent moral issue, because we should just take care of our own individual needs, the neighbors be damned. What happens to gay strangers once we offer “selection” against more people like them is not the issue when I’m deciding whether to professionally justify or even personally use this theoretic technology—unless that happens to be what I feel like troubling myself about. Greenberg and Bailey just don’t spend much energy worrying actively (in their paper or in follow-up discussions) about what effect defending the right to use this technology could have on queer people and their rights.
Now, to be fair, they may not worry about that in part because they just disagree with me that they are effectively undermining queer people and their rights by arguing that this technology would be morally acceptable. In an email to a sex research discussion group, Bailey argued against me: “I think it is possible both to support the message that homosexual people are as good as heterosexual people and to support parents' freedom to disagree with that message and to act on their disagreement.” But I think he’s naïve here.
Sure, it ought to be the case that defending the rights of parents to use this technology doesn’t ultimately undermine queer rights, but it seems hard to believe that in practice it won’t lead to support of the idea that one ought to try not to have a gay child—just as in practice the prenatal test for trisomy 21 (Down's syndrome) has led to a general attitude (at least among the vast majority of my very “progressive” childbearing acquaintances) that one ought to try not to have a child with trisomy 21. I have a friend whose young son has trisomy 21. This friend was out and about with her son one day when another woman looked at her and her son and—recognizing that the son has Down's syndrome—scolded my friend with the question, “Didn’t you get the test?!” I can fully imagine a scenario where, 30 years from now, a woman tells a friend her son has come out as gay, only to have the friend respond, “Didn’t you get the test?!” Could we really imagine that offering such a test would have no negative impact on how an already-homophobic culture views people who are gay (and their parents, for that matter)? In that sense, can we really imagine that supporting parents’ right to choose against homosexuality supports the message that gay people are as good as straight people?
Had Greenberg and Bailey bothered to look at the substantial literature on prenatal testing and disability rights, I think they might have been less sanguine in their assumptions about the social meaning of prenatal testing for conditions that typically become identities. They might have understood something more about the social model of disability, and how being gay could easily be construed as a disability—except, as it turns out, one that has already been explicitly excluded by the Americans With Disability Act.
Now, I should note that, because they maintain a “not that there’s anything wrong with that” stance—and, knowing them, I really do believe they are both fully comfortable with and supportive of queer people—Greenberg and Bailey argue that it would also be fine for would-be parents to use such technologies to choose predisposition for homosexuality over predisposition for heterosexuality. And, indeed, I can imagine some parents making that choice—gay parents and even some straight people like myself. (I’d be happy to have more gay people in the world, because I think it would further advance gay rights, and I’ve always thought I’d make a much better mother-in-law to a gay man than the alternatives.) But let’s get real: Most of the choices made in such circumstances would likely be against homosexuality, just as most choices about congenital deafness and trisomy 21 and achondroplasia turn out to be against, not for. You can argue that homosexuality is different than these conditions because it doesn’t “harm” the child, but many people have the same sorts of non-evidence-based fears about the “harm” a child will face from being gay as they have about the “harm” that will come to a child from being deaf or having trisomy 21 or achondroplasia (more ways in which homosexuality starts to look like disability). Moreover, can you really, in this culture, treat homosexuality as a preventable genetic condition and not expect people to see it as … a preventable genetic condition?
Thus, while I think Greenberg and Bailey are right in generally defending would-be parents’ rights to choose reproductive technologies, I also can’t help but suspect that their vigorous defense of this option at some level feels like (apparently unwittingly) enabling homophobic bigotry. Certainly I defend Greenberg and Bailey’s right to say what they want, and to think what they want, but I think it is tough for them to claim they’re not potentially contributing to an undermining of queer rights.
In France’s article, Bailey is quoted as saying, “There’s no reason to ban, or become hysterical about, selecting for heterosexuality. … That’s precisely what parenting is about: shaping the children to have traits the parents value.” I find I side with Simon LeVay, a gay sex researcher who has, like Bailey, long been studying the biological origins of sexual orientation, and who shared his views with me in an email: “I agree with Mike that we shouldn't ban it. Because that would be allowing governments to make decisions about our reproductive choices, which isn't a good idea…. But I reserve the right to become hysterical about it.”
Yes there are always exceptions.
In the insane world that we live in, it’s a good bet that there will one day be a law that it’s illegal to abort a gay baby.
Yes, I know there’s no gay gene and none will ever be discovered, but that doesn’t change the radical crazies.
The monozygotic twin studies for male homosexuality done so far indicate there is a weekly heritable component, but it cannot be determinative since many identical twins do not share homosexuaal preferences.
So for females, we are not going to find any gene. For males, we might find one (or more) genes causing predisposition. Are parents going to abort their children on the basis of a possible disposition? Well, some states have left them with no choice, since they will not be permitted to administer any type of cognitive or behavioral therapy once the child is born.
In light of the evidence we have so far, that homosexuality is mostly a learned behavior (entirely learned in the case of lesbians) here is a far more important question: eventually someone (probably in Russia, China, or another advanced society where homosexuality is still considered undesirable) is going to develop a pharmacological solution to male homosexual predisposition. Will American parents be allowed to give their child that chemical, or not?
So far, the evidence is pretty strong that they will not.
For some reason homosexuals will always want their children to be males; likewise lesbians will always want female children.
I'm not sure sexual orientation comes from early family life. I'm informed there's a cluster of factors that tend to nudge a young person in that direction; pretty sure also that there's a lot more going on that we don't understand yet.
It's inaccurate and unjust to blame good, caring, decent fathers and mothers for homosexual offspring.
And none of this "forces" or "requires" a person to actually commit sodomy. That's behavior; conduct; a choice; it's another thing altogether.
• Chinese researchers found blocking serotonin in female mice caused them to prefer sniffing and mounting females
• Researchers believe the chemical could be part of 'chemical chain' that determines our sexual preference
I have seen it many times. Parents are very conscientious for the first children, the consistency starts to wear down as they get older. Parents start to drop the ball and take their eye off the prize. The rules become lax and the child starts to experiment with people and things foreign to the others.
You can greatly increase the chances of having a troubled child if you raise them poorly.
You make a point, but it’s true that celebrities tend to not be at home a heck of a lot.
“A discussion that starts with an impossible premise reveals a lot about the people discussing it, but doesn’t generate much light in terms of usable ethics.”
If you actually believe the question about choosing sex of one’s child to be “an impossible premise” may I suggest you have arrived at that point in ones intellectual life known as ‘premise revision’ time.
Control of our heredity is going to happen, sooner than you think.
Sooner than a friend of mine thought, and he had a Nobel in physics and had successfully switched to genetic engineering and founded one of the two leading labs in that field. We were talking progress in inter-species gene splicing while sitting on an airboat out in the interior of the Everglades.
He guessed the human DNA chain would be sequenced in his daughter’s lifetime (She was 15 at the time). As this was in 1980/81, clearly neither of us gave sufficient weight to the asymtotic curve of knowledge, as it has been sequenced for some years.
Count on Dr. StrangeLove’s Handy_Dandy_Gene_Lab opening up sooner than we will be prepared to make wise choices.
And choose we shall be forced to do - or our offspring will be left in the dust by those with “designer genes” and I am not referring to clothing.
Probably a stereotype but Lesbians never seem to like men. They even seem to “hate” men. I have known a couple of lesbian couples and they always seem to avoid me. My wife, no. And I am always friendly. Rose O’Donnell doesn't like men. She even had a bad relationship with her father.
Surprised that this has never been considered.
But the premise is, that if there is some factor that can be detected prenatally (e.g. uterine environment-- they say a pregnant woman's exposure to progesterone or to anabolic steroids can cause deviations in the male child she is carrying , for instance) would the pro-LGBT's be against selectively aborting the baby?
This author here is abortion-choice all the way, even if it expresses a lethal prejudice against the survival of "pre-homosexual" children. I think that's strange.
And repellent.
The impossible premise to which I referred is choosing the “sexual orientation” of one’s children.
Not even identical twins have exactly the same environment conditions. Family order can determine character traits which can lead to major differences between siblings. Peer acceptance is major too. Nurture and environment can never be separated.
Attachment Theory decides the mental, and even the physical health of children to a large extent. Studies on foster children prove it, as do all studies on adult deviance which pinpoint addictions and dysfunctional behaviors to abuse in early childhood.
Now they say that most addictions are caused from emotional abuse in early childhood-—that the inability to turn off those “stress” regulators——which only is done by adults in the first few years of life because of helplessness—if adults neglected their cries/emotional needs (touch) that their stress levels constantly elevates affects the limbic area of the brain. Children who are neglected have emotional issues that are easily noticed by early ages-—and if no therapy, they will become worse—and addicts. Without love and nurture, it is impossible for children to be able to be self-regulatory—to control their emotions without drugs-—which is a learned ability. All Virtue is learned and habituated....it is not innate. All humans need love in early life and need to learn empathy—or they will not be “human”. All is learned.
Sexual identity formation is fixated with abuse and emotional belittling-—which is trickier in boys since they have to break away from the mother to re-identify with their father when they discover they are male. That is easy to warp-—like with the homosexual Samurai-—or boys in Afghanistan-—who are in harems-—it is easy to warp perceptions in children. Sexualization of children destroys normal sexual identity formation. Sex Ed was a Marxist construct to collapse Christianity and Western Civ. It corrupts their innocence which is necessary for dignity and respect of opposite sex. Without awe and mystery—there is no dignity—man is reduced to animal. There is no “homosexual” gene. It is an immature fixation in Latency-—usually from sexual abuse like with Chastity Bono and Harry Hay—but emotional/peer abuse can warp perceptions of self and desires also. Sometimes the emotional abuse is worse and more destructive than actual physical abuse.
I always laugh at the idea that homosexuality isn’t “learned”-—it is like saying that baby rapers were born with this “desire” to rape babies. It is such a lie-—it is childhood abuse which creates such sick “desires”/”fixations”. That is all it is. The sex instinct is so powerful that when it is warped in childhood it does severe damage-—like with all the Serial Killers who are/were sexual perverts.
It is a “learned” situation from the earliest interactions with adults who are supposed to care for them.....detached, abusive parents almost always create dysfunctional deviant children, unless they have an adult who interferes and rescues them.
There is certainly a correlation between lesbianism and depression. A causes B? or B causes A? or C causes both A and B? I don't know.
A little Wittenstienian logic.
If a little boy says “I think I am really a dog” and then tries to constantly act like a dog, not just in play but because he actually believes he is a dog we say he is psychotic
If a little boys “I think I am really a girl” we........
Same problem. Same issue different response. To claim that homosexuality is not a form of psychosis is illogical
Thanks DriftDiver.
I think you’ve pretty well nailed down my position on this. We’re in agreement here.
I’ve noticed that as well. I think it’s human nature. The first few months you own a new car, you want a shield around it that’s about ten feet thick at it’s closest point to the car.
As time goes by, that changes.
I know it’s somewhat of a stretch, but it’s somewhat the same dynamic with kids. For your first ones, you’re sure you need to intervene every second of their life. By the time you’ve had two or more, you start to realize it doesn’t take that sort of over-control.
I’m not saying you should let your kid do whatever they want, but even with a very controlled environment, you can only do so much.
Just because homosexuals threatened psychiatrists to remove homosexuality off the DSM list of disorders doesn’t mean we should support such a unhealthy, dangerous, and immoral behavior. We have gone completely mad. The New Left pushed homosexuality as a means to destroy the establishment and it is an effective tactic of theirs.
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