I’m OK with abortion on demand for any reason at all, up until the point of viability of the fetus. If a woman wants to abort her fetus because it might have the wrong hair color, that’s her perogative. I might think she’s shallow, but so what?
If a gay person decides that he wants to take a drug to be straight (assuming there is such a drug), then good for him/her. Technology should help us be who we want. Of course, things are rarely that easy-- side effects might be a big problem. Or people might still discriminate against people who are “straight by chemicals”.
So, if you feel that way, too, what difference does it make what the mechanism is? If it turns out to be learned, it can be unlearned.
Not necessarily. There a plenty of psychological conditions that can only be moderated, and not entirely corrected. A biological answer would allow those happy with themselves to better defend against intolerance. A psychological answer would, I suppose, be just as likely to cause any degree of new intolerance as well. Either way, a definitive answer would allow us to pursue logical avenues for re-orientation for those who want it, and help us to better understand those who do not.
For those basing their views on religions doctrine, it won’t make any difference. And I think you overestimate peoples’ willingness to have rational discussions about emotional issues.
I don’t see scientific research changing the mind of people who are religiously humanist, either. Scientists could discover a specific chemical that causes human “gayness” and it wouldn’t change a thing in social libertarians defence of homosexuality.
Not to slam gay people. I think whatever’s screwed up in them is not societally damaging. It’s just the defenses of “gayness” are usually ridiculous. Desperate attempts are made to make it out like maybe a gay uncle is evolutionary benefit to the species. There’s got to be some incredibly useful reason gay people exist, right? :rolleyes:
The only defense homosexuality need be given is that no one has ever come up with a rationally indicting moral argument against homosexual activity; it should be considered acceptable by default. Which is why I think it’s kind of sad (though perhaps pragmatically advisable all the same) to make arguments which ground its defense in its biological mode of origin or any such things; as if, were the research to come out slightly differently, it would then be properly considered morally suspect. Such defenses are too contingent; they merely attempt to slap a band-aid on the problem of homophobia, rather than truly dealing with the underlying issue: that people somehow misguidedly think harmless consensual acts of this type can be immoral (or, alternatively, that they have some bizarre idea of harm which can be wreaked by homosexuality). Whatever the origin of homosexuality, whether or not it is biological, fixed, and/or involuntary in nature, these views are disastrously mistaken, and the proper counterarguments are ones which don’t depend on any such premises about the mechanism of homosexuality. The sort of “defenses” homosexual activity demands should be just the same as, say, the “defenses” dancing demands: sure, the latter is very much a learned voluntary behavior which can easily be avoided, but that in no ways weakens the fact that there’s nothing wrong with it, and in no way mitigates the evil of attempts to punish it.
Indeed. And the flip side of that would be to point out that we don’t consider, say, thievery to be excusable simply because the individual is born with a predisposition to steal; either the urge needs to be controlled for the good of society or it does not, and if it does not then there is no reason to be prejudiced against acting upon it, and if it does then it is no use pleading the excuse that one was born that way.
As far as I can tell I think I agree with you completely*, Indistinguishable. Except for that last sentence. Unless you come from some bizarrely puritan region, dancing is a bad analogy to use, Dirty Dancing notwithstanding.
*eta: like i said “is not societally damaging”
Well, I chose dancing as an analogy precisely because we can all agree that belief in its immorality is bizarrely puritan, even though it’s a completely voluntary behavior which admits no attempt at a “But it’s in my genes!” defense. [Not that it really matters for the analogy, but I think there have been significant contemporary societies which prohibited dancing as immoral (under the influence of Wahhabism, for example).]
Also, that’s a very good point, Malacandra, although I think maybe some people would (misguidedly, I would say) get carried away if it were to be discovered that there were some genetic factor which significantly tracked predisposition to steal. You’d probably hear a whole lot of irrelevant blather about free will vs. determinism in the ensuing debates about morality, at the very least.
I don’t see why that must necessarily be the case - It would probably be true to say that if it’s learned, we could concievably prevent it being learned in future generations, but I don’t think it can be true that something learned during development can be unlearned later. Could you unlearn the English language?
Anecdotally, I believe it is the case that people who learn a new language to the point that they are able to think in it, and who use it to the exclusion of their mother tongue, can actually lose facility with their mother tongue. I’ll go no further than the qualified expression above, since I have neither a cite nor first-hand experience, but I’d be interested to hear from any non-native speakers who may be able to confirm this.
Well, insofar as homosexuality is not so much an attraction towards the same sex as a revulsion towards the opposite, to the point of being unable to breed, you have to admit that it would be a pretty harmful predisposition on the face of it. It’s perfectly possible that there are either counterbalancing advantages to homosexuality itself (gay uncle theory) or to the genetic marker (sickle cell analogy), but that’s another topic.
Well, it kind of goes without saying that they are sexually screwed up from a physiological perspective. They are inclined to be functionally sterile. No moral judgment being made.
Anybody who accepts the “being gay is a choice” argument has already given up the fight. Eating broccoli is choice, too, but nobody thinks there is anything wrong with it. Whatever floats your boat.
The question is whether or not being gay is a bad thing (it isn’t), so that finally concluding one way or another if it is biological in origin will not settle anything. If people “chose” to be black, would that make racism any more acceptable?
No shit. I was just going to say that the fact that we understand “race” as a physical trait to be completely genetic and biologically-based hasn’t removed the problem of racism from our society. Why would it be any different with sexuality?
As for the whole fruit fly thing, I’m thinking the only way to definitively figure out what “homosexuality” means in this context would be to ask the fruit fly. Until that’s possible, I don’t think we can draw many conclusions from this.
I agree - hanging our hopes on the idea that this or that piece of research will convince those who need convincing is just unrealistic - after all, a significantly overlapping group of the same people are still in massive denial about the fossil record and a whole bunch of other science - why would they accept scientific evidence that homosexuality is 100% non-choice? (if such evidence were possible)
I don’t think that is the actual issue we were discussing, though. The majority of research is (and should be) done without a desire on the researcher’s part for the result to come out a certain way. When you attack a problem wanting a certain result, you’ve got a good chance you will miss something important that doesn’t fit your bias. I can do research with a certain application in mind (curing cancer), but I shouldn’t be predisposed to look only for a certain type of cause (genetic vs environmental).
As for homosexuality in humans, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there was a combination of things that caused it, or that there might be different causes under different conditions.
:rolleyes: And insofar as homosexuality causes spontaneous combustion it’s a bad thing too. Homosexuals have plenty of attraction towards their own sex, and no special revulsion that’s I’ve ever heard of; certainly none more extreme than straights have toward their own sex. Show a photo of a naked man to a lesbian and she’s more likely to roll her eyes at you than cower like a vampire presented with a cross.
And homosexuals can and do have children if they feel like it. And plenty of straights can’t or don’t want to have children. How is not having children “harmful” ? We have far too many people, not too few.