That site is too funny. Hold on...
Nov. 24th, 2004 01:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
Anti-gay stuff.
For the past fifteen years, homosexual activists have staked their political strategy on claims that homosexuality is an inherited trait, like left-handedness, for a significant minority of human beings.
Homosexuality, they have argued, is thus a "natural" condition and is not morally significant.
Interestingly, for many many years left-handedness was considered to be morally significant, and wrong. Something to ponder.
Back in 1999, clinical neurologists George Rice and George Ebers of Canada's University of Western Ontario reported that they had failed to find a link between male homosexuality and chromosomal region Xq28, a link which had been claimed by other researchers. The Canadian results were supported by work at the University of Chicago which, according to Science, "does not provide strong support for a linkage." Rice stated that the cumulative evidence "would suggest that if there is a linkage it's so weak that it's not important."
On this statement, he then claims that any evidence for sexuality being biological is non-existent.
Let's do this slowly.
ONE gene that was linked to homosexuality turns out to probably not be connected.
This makes sense. Given that sexuality, like handedness and autism is a spectrum trait (you can have varying degrees of ambidextriousness, autisticity, or bisexuality) it makes sense that it wouldn't be governed by a single gene.
If it's governed by several genes, like height and eye color are, then it could be very difficult to track those genes.
Additionally, it could also be governed in whole or in part by external factors, like hormone levels in utero. We don't know. That's why there's still research being done in this area (politically motivated, all of it, so I doubt any of it can be trusted).
The argument that homosexuality is matter of biology rather than morality is too useful for the homosexual community to abandon it altogether.
I do agree that the "it's biology, stupid" argument has a few flaws - mainly that it attracts this sort of nonsense. Why not say "it doesn't matter what caused *insert pronoun* to be gay, it's not a moral issue" instead? After all, many other things are not biologically based (for example, a preference for Monet over Manet), but we do not consider them to be moral issues.
All of these represent efforts to remove social stigma and to classify sinful behaviors as normal, or at least understandable.
I thought we were all sinners. If that is the case, isn't sinful behaviour understandable by its very nature?
The doctrine of total depravity reminds us that no part of ourselves is free from sin and its injury. That certainly includes our genetic code as well. As the church father Ambrose of Milan (340-397) stated, "Before we are born we are infected with the contagion, and before we see the light of day we experience the injury of our origin." In the end, the scientific evidence is not morally important, though it may be medically useful.
Shit, that scares me.
Moving on to practicality, I've never understood why any loving deity would make people flawed, then get mad when they acted as they were made. *shrugs*
For the past fifteen years, homosexual activists have staked their political strategy on claims that homosexuality is an inherited trait, like left-handedness, for a significant minority of human beings.
Homosexuality, they have argued, is thus a "natural" condition and is not morally significant.
Interestingly, for many many years left-handedness was considered to be morally significant, and wrong. Something to ponder.
Back in 1999, clinical neurologists George Rice and George Ebers of Canada's University of Western Ontario reported that they had failed to find a link between male homosexuality and chromosomal region Xq28, a link which had been claimed by other researchers. The Canadian results were supported by work at the University of Chicago which, according to Science, "does not provide strong support for a linkage." Rice stated that the cumulative evidence "would suggest that if there is a linkage it's so weak that it's not important."
On this statement, he then claims that any evidence for sexuality being biological is non-existent.
Let's do this slowly.
ONE gene that was linked to homosexuality turns out to probably not be connected.
This makes sense. Given that sexuality, like handedness and autism is a spectrum trait (you can have varying degrees of ambidextriousness, autisticity, or bisexuality) it makes sense that it wouldn't be governed by a single gene.
If it's governed by several genes, like height and eye color are, then it could be very difficult to track those genes.
Additionally, it could also be governed in whole or in part by external factors, like hormone levels in utero. We don't know. That's why there's still research being done in this area (politically motivated, all of it, so I doubt any of it can be trusted).
The argument that homosexuality is matter of biology rather than morality is too useful for the homosexual community to abandon it altogether.
I do agree that the "it's biology, stupid" argument has a few flaws - mainly that it attracts this sort of nonsense. Why not say "it doesn't matter what caused *insert pronoun* to be gay, it's not a moral issue" instead? After all, many other things are not biologically based (for example, a preference for Monet over Manet), but we do not consider them to be moral issues.
All of these represent efforts to remove social stigma and to classify sinful behaviors as normal, or at least understandable.
I thought we were all sinners. If that is the case, isn't sinful behaviour understandable by its very nature?
The doctrine of total depravity reminds us that no part of ourselves is free from sin and its injury. That certainly includes our genetic code as well. As the church father Ambrose of Milan (340-397) stated, "Before we are born we are infected with the contagion, and before we see the light of day we experience the injury of our origin." In the end, the scientific evidence is not morally important, though it may be medically useful.
Shit, that scares me.
Moving on to practicality, I've never understood why any loving deity would make people flawed, then get mad when they acted as they were made. *shrugs*
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-24 09:06 am (UTC)Now, me, I'm bi, I support gay rights I'm all for gay people being allowed to do anything they like but this far I agree with them
SEX IS A CHOICE
Which pretty much makes the entire argument over whether homosexuality is a choice pointless.
Me, I choose to have sex - and I'm not married (though I'm in a het relationship right now) so that's a sin too (if I happened to be Christian I mean). I could easilly choose to *never have sex with anyone*. Just like I could choose to never drink alcohol, never smoke, never shoot a gun... Just because you desire a thing (for whatever reason you desire it) does not mean that you have to do/have that thing.
So wilst possible genetic/hormonal causes of homosexuality interest me at a scientific level they remain an utterly useless part of the 'I should be allowed to do what I want' debate because a desire and an action are two very different things.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-24 09:19 am (UTC)Yeah, I know, and I carefully avoided commenting on those parts of that essay which pointed this out.