The only time I’d give something like this even a possible consideration is if it avoided a potential TransGender situation. I’m not really up with those issues, far from my area of expertise, but I expect none of them so afflicted like being all confused and mixed up like that, and would rather be fully one or the other from birth.
Straight male.
It’s a whole lot more factual than anything you’ve said in this thread. You’re making all sorts of assumptions about our lives, based on nothing but your own misconceptions. Being gay is no more disadvantageous than being black, female or short. It’s only your point of view that makes it something worth eliminating. And since you’ve consistently spoken out against my rights . . . you are the problem, not the solution. If my life is more difficult because I’m gay, it’s people who share your bigotry who have made it that way. So thank you for making me stronger.
A separate issue I just thought of. If you did give your unborn child the heterosexual shot (or any other shot for that matter) would you tell your child this someday?
It would seem to me that would be an awkward conversation. You’re pretty much telling your child that your love wasn’t unconditional - you made a choice that you preferred your child to be one way over another, which is essentially the same thing as saying you wouldn’t have been as happy with your child if he or she had been the other way.
And the child is going to be wondering things like, “What if that shot hadn’t existed and I had been gay? My parents say they would have loved me anyway but they’re admitting they wanted to have a straight child. What about the things they couldn’t give me a shot for? Would they have been happier if they could have given me a shot to make me smarter or more attractive or a better athlete? Do they feel they had to settle for what I was rather than what they wanted me to be?”
Some people might figure to avoid this kind of situation by just not telling the child you gave him or her the shot. But then consider the morality of your decision if you feel you can’t tell the person it was done to about it.
I would give the shot, I would not tell him or anyone else. Kind of like a firing squad where onlly one gun was loaded, chances are the shot did nothing anyway. I would love my child the same gay or straight but would prefer he or she was straight. I would actually very much prefer he or she was straight.
Do you think there’s any analogy there to opposition to cochlear implants for children? Substitute “implant” for “shot” and “deaf” for “gay” and your post looks almost like one of those arguments.
Straight male.
The mother gets to choose. If asked, I’d advise giving the kid every advantage. A shot for tallness, a shot for saavy, a shot for drop-dead handsomeness/beauty. The kid would be nothing like me.
Oops.
When my wife was pregnant, we had the “standard” downs syndrome tests done. Does that mean that our love for our daughter is “conditional” on something?
Most pregnant women will take vitamins, change their diet, cut our alcohol etc to ensure a healthy as possible baby - does that mean that their love is conditional?
If the such a shot existed, yes we would have it done. I don’t know a lot of gay people, but those that I do know have not had it easy. They have faced additional obstacles to the straight people that I know. If I can remove those obstacles - why wouldn’t it?
Female, straight, unlikely to have children and no. I wouldn’t do that any more than I would use selection techniques to pick physical sex or eye color.
If I was going to have a kid, I’d have whatever kid it happened to be. And hopefully, some day, whatever decent grownup it happened to be.
Wow. You guys are falling into this trap very, very easily. the OP has very carefully set up this hypothetical where it is logical that you would do it. By saying you won’t, you’re showing your closed mindedness, that you don’t believe what you believe because it’s logical, but because you’ve bought into some mores. Thus you are no better than those who have mores against gay people.
And, no, black and white isn’t the same, because a white child born to black parents would suffer more. And changing one’s religion would prevent you from being able to raise your child as well as you could otherwise since they would see you as the enemy.
I’ve yet to see anything but rationalizations for why they wouldn’t do it. The only thing I can think of is the idea that homosexuality is going to become so accepted soon that knowing your parents did this is going to hurt your child–but what a backwards society that would be, blaming the child for the parents’ choice.
It’s supposed to be embarrassed, but look at it!
I think we have a reasonably intelligent crowd here, and they’re fairly quick to jump on skewed hypotheticals biased toward a certain point of view. I think the OP’s scenario was straightforward and (maybe) even plausible some time in the near future.
Now, if he had set up a false dilemma of “you must choose that your child be heterosexual or homosexual,” and no matter what you answered he came back with “oooh, so you’re prejudiced against the other outcome, well, it looks like we’re all prejudiced then, aren’t we?” that’d be more like what you’re talking about. And he would be rewarded with discussions of how someone’s cat’s breath smells like cat food and when come back bring pie.
In short, give your fellow Dopers some credit, eh?
I’m confused. Why is the choice to take the shot the ‘logical’ choice?
I can’t figure out how it’s different for the future children of my marriage (mixed couple)- if the pill changes our kid from appearing “black” to “white”, then he/she might be less likely to be the victim of bigotry. Seems the same to me.
I’m a 20 year old bisexual woman. Hell no, I wouldn’t take the shot. I’m not going to participate in an effort to remove people like me from the human race.
The comments about ‘but their life would be so much harder!’ don’t fly with me. My life is just fine, TYVM. The hardest things for me about being a non-straight person were finding the courage to come out to my parents, and the unequal marriage rights thing. My kid would never have to worry about coming out to me, so that’s gone, and I have high hopes that by the time I’ve reproduced and my offspring have reached an age where they want to marry, that won’t be an issue any more. (Even if this shot is widely available, the gay people who exist now will keep fighting for our rights.) I was never bullied as a child for being queer - I was bullied for being quiet, nerdy and a loner, which would be the case even if I was straight. I have experienced someone screaming in my face that I’m going to burn in hell, but I was able to shrug it off and say fuck that guy, I have faith that there is nothing in heaven or earth that can separate me from the love of Christ.
I’m not messing with my unborn child’s identity to please bigots.
It’s not necessarily a false dilemma, or an impossible situation. Let’s go with the idea that homosexuality is not genetic, but is a result of placental environment. Homosexuality results when the environment includes X level of vitamin/nutrient Y during Z week of gestation.
If you know this to be true, can you really go through that week of pregnancy without making a choice that affects it? Can you actually stick your head in the sand and not know how much of Y you’re consuming? Does it make sense to deliberately randomize your nutrition in order to make this particular outcome uncertain?
For the OPs hypothetical, I probably wouldn’t go for the shot, but I’d seriously consider it. If it were an anti-male-pattern-baldness shot, an anti-miserable-PMS shot, an anti-frizzy-hair shot, or an anti-burns-like-a-lobster-after-10-minutes-in-the-sun shot, I’d definitely go for it. I’m going to love my child either way, but if I can make his life a little bit easier, it doesn’t make sense not to. An anti-gay shot is harder to accept because of how much weight we give to sexual issues, but gay is no more “who you are” than your hair or skin.
There isn’t any organized opposition to allowing bald men happiness, so I wouldn’t feel like I was helping the bald bigots win by accepting the shot. Since there organized opposition to gay rights, the anti-gay shot gives me more pause than anti-Trait-X shot. Frankly, if there was absolutely no anti-gay sentiment, it would be easier to say yes to the shot, though there would be less reason to want it in the first place.
That’s the term for which I was seeking.
BigT, I have two close relatives who had planned for their children to be a certain sex. Both of them have firstborns who are the wrong sex. Neither one has forgiven her child for it, so far - at the ages of 44 and 6.
Maybe I would have had a less-screwed childhood if my mother had been able to get a shot to ensure her child would be male, but it wouldn’t have been me; if my nephew had been a girl, it wouldn’t have been him and his sister wouldn’t have been born (since all my sister in law wanted was a, one, girl). I don’t think it’s right for a parent to plan how their children have to be, at all. Hope they will be healthy and decent and all that, yes: have a mental cookie cutter and any child who doesn’t fit isn’t worthy, no.
Now more responses from a broad selection of gay males is what I’d need to come up with an answer if I was a mother to be (straight male myself) … many gay males I’ve known, when discussing the attitudes of those who think they have chosen to be gay and could choose otherwise, have stated that they’d never have chosen to be gay, that being gay is very difficult, especially growing up, that if they did have a choice they have chosen to be straight.
Did they mean that last bit or not? If their mothers had had it within their power to have made that choice a reality, would they have preferred their Moms to have done that?
That’s the information that would inform a response and any response formed without getting a full set of those responses would be premature. The issue as a parent is making a decision in the best interest of the child on the child’s behalf. Not for the best interest of society or for my preference. It does not matter that, short of the small “aw” of less likely biological grandchildren from that line, I don’t give a shit either way, my life is not the issue.
Straight male.
Not a chance. If my child turns out to be gay and society has a problem with that, fuck 'em. Maybe we can invent an anti-bigot shot for them.
Straight Male, and No.
First off, there isn’t anything wrong with being gay, and the chances of that occurring are actually pretty low anyway. Secondly, I have an ethical issue with that sort of meddling with humans in utero and before they are able consent. However, to play along with the spirit of the OP, if you asked me if the sperm and eggs could be engineered in the same manner, I would still decline. Sexuality is a weird, varied and fluid thing, and it would be rather boring world if we were all the same.