The gay gene does not exist and is perhaps the tip of the most dangerous ideology ever!
Please don’t mistake this as anything other than an examination of the gay gene and by far this is not the rejection of the ontological worth any individual places on their inner world that includes the belief that they were born gay. If anyone does truly believe that they were born gay then of course this holds immense value to them by which no method should it ever be undermined. This follows on from a conversation that I had with someone who does believe that. Whilst they were citing functional magnetic resonance imaging and genetics, the strange notion came across that there were simply two choices. The first is that people are born gay and the other that through learning & being brought up in a certain fashion or perhaps by some bad experience with the opposite sex, that they have chosen their sexuality. This in itself is a fallacy, a product of thinking more about reductionism than complexity. There is much more to understanding sexuality than these two opposing perspectives. While I cannot reproduce the complexity of this issue, maybe the suggestion of the combination of both nature and nurture is valid. Still that is not my point, I don’t know where sexuality really comes from but here I reject the notion of being born gay on two grounds.
The very idea that someone is born with certain innate functioning or characteristics is the same reasoning that is behind almost all racism, sexism and similar discrimination. In both Montessori and Lombroso’s scientific work at the start of the 20th century both claimed that there was a certain pathology which would allow them to take those who had committed crimes, measure them and then pick out those in the general population who had done nothing wrong but displayed those pathological characteristics deeming them potential dangerous thus requiring control. This was the start of the eugenics movement, which not only led to mass starvation of the mentally ill in European hospitals during the 1930s but later on to the forced sterilization of those with mental disabilities, which did not stop in the USA until the early 1960s. It had been decided these people were not worth saving and in order to protect the human race from degradation they were to be dealt with by not allowing them to have children or even the continuation of their very existence. The change came about, at least for forced sterilization, after the Second World War. Where to be Jewish was only but to hold something negative according to the Nazis, a notion rejected as immoral and false which could easy be seen to apply to other groups. If we are to assume that any human has something innate before they are born it can often result in having the potential for misguided action. This is the first rejection as, I say this with some caution, this is not a moral position to take since result of the ‘final solution’ followed this same reasoning.
A blunt analogy with religion here is that religion being an ideology itself allows for good people to justify bad actions as cited by Christopher Hitchens on more than one occasion. The gay gene itself was never according to those scientists who discovered it a determining factor for sexual preference; it was nothing more than an indication of a particular configuration which might contribute to some extent to these preferences (cited by Mark Smith). The question was never about whether the gene itself had the power to determine sexuality rather how it was then represented to the general public, mostly through the media. The media attention to the innate nature of sexuality was in stark contrast to general opinion such as that of Bancroft who in 1974 thought that homosexuality was the result of picking up certain social patterns to which the answer to ‘unacceptable’ social behaviour was re-education. The gay gene was therefore, the answer for both the gay rights advocates who then could demand for the confirmation of their sexuality based in the non-choice of their biology and the answer to those who wanted to remove homosexuality from society which at the time could have been achieved through genetic engineering. To be fair at the same time arguments about aids as the gay plague were also raging. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that being gay is based on genetics or pathology, to argue that would be to completely ignore the complexity of us as individuals. The gay gene was never based on evidence rather was a production of ideologies, it allows those with an opinion the right to stand their position and only to suggest its existence seeks differences between us all were none should be.
The gay gene was born out of discrimination itself, which is the second rejection, when we have a complex issue it is only natural to seek and find some underlying or basic cause. There was a time when it was an issue but it should no longer be one. We are who we are and there is no need to seek to justify that position by citing the gay gene or anything that suggests that you are made in a certain way. If there is no acknowledged difference between two different people, even if those people are different through their sexuality, gender or skin colour, we then can say we are no longer living in a society that discriminates against people who are different from us in ways in which do not matter. This does not mean that anyone who is gay should not value themselves, rather there is no need to describe it as a factual statement because it is not where the meaning is, the meaning is in the person and not the production of evidence to support who they are. Of course we don’t live in a discrimination free world but we should. To be determined before you are even born is a helpless and useless ideology; it is also dangerous because it allows us all to think in simple terms and in turn it will allow those who still wish to discriminate the space to carry on.
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The very surmise or hypothesis of a gay gene is discriminatory as such, because it implies that gays are different from heterosexuals on the deepest biological level of genes and DNA, thus offering both parties, as you state too, the final and decisive argument to explain, justify and validate their stand on homosexuality. ‘Proud to be Gay’ is quite often heard. It implies that there’s something that sets them apart from or even above heterosexuals. That ’something’ has as yet to be found or defined. The gay gene could be the ultimate term to sum all of that up, whatever gays, as individuals, may come up with to demonstrate the difference and uniqueness of their person. Gefundenes Fressen. There’s no need to elaborate on the euphoria homophobic and even people who were rather indifferent to the whole matter, as long as a gay couple doesn’t come and live next door, would display if a gay gene or a chromosome (equal to the x or y chromosome that determines the gender) would be discovered. Designer babies comes to my mind. Weed out any genetically determined illnesses and, oh doctor, while you’re at it, not a gay child, please.
Dominique (m – 47)
Belgium
I agree with you in part, still I don’t think that there will come a time where designer babies are designed not to be gay since there is no evidence to suggest that this is a methodological possibility, if we already know that there is no genetic thus no biological determined sexuality [in this sense at least]. What troubles me is that when a baby is born you can easily say “It’s a boy or girl” but no one says “it’s a gay” also, I don’t actually know if this is true or not but, I did read that the Romans (in some era) made no distinction between a heterosexual act and a homosexual one thus it could easily be concluded that sexuality is a construct of our society rather than an innate factor at least in its definition.
I would argue that being “proud to be gay” is the result of discrimination rather than a claim of being set apart or above others. Again I wish to convey that this does not mean that gay people are not different to others but rather that difference should not matter. If a man and woman kiss at a train station it is ignored, I hope that one day when two men kiss in such a public space we offer the same reaction. It is at that this point statements like “proud to be gay” won’t be necessary and will be replaced with “proud to be me” whatever you define yourself to be.
Thank you for your comments.