That’s less likely to happen because it doesn’t work, so there’s no point to it; the pill in this scenario does work. But even now you have such practices as the “corrective rape” of lesbians, or forcing homosexual children into camps where they are systematically terrorized into acting straight (if they aren’t killed by the brutality).
And guess what; killing and calls for killing homosexuals over their orientation isn’t all that rare. They are shooting them; or beating them, or stabbing them, or whatever.
As a gay man, who would honestly love to be able to have a kid produced during a night of passionate love making, the hetero pill is a cool idea.
I’m happily committed to a man right now, but if I ever found myself single and the pill were available, I’d give it a try (assuming it were reversible by simply not taking it anymore).
Are we assuming the pill is a one time thing, and changes you irreversibly forever? I was thinking of it more as a daily or weekly pill, something along those lines, that you would take every day to maintain a given sexuality.
I think such a thing would be great, honestly. And this coming from a guy who is very happily gay
Why would it make a difference if the conception was via passionate sex? Wouldn’t the point re kids be enabling yourself to have kids that are biologically both of yours with someone that you’re in love with? Seems a bit pointless to take it for good sex, then go back to being gay and presumably split up with the other parent.
No, killing isn’t conversion, and it’s harder for even bigots to justify as “good” to themselves. Plus the penalty for forcing the pill on someone is likely to be much less than the penalty for murder.
And people who would do those things if they thought they worked, would use a pill that actually does.
We’re going in circles here. So what? The potential harm to the victims is certainly no greater than that resulting from reparative therapy, corrective rape or murder.
We already allow parents to forcibly medicate their children. Why consider this one differently.
As a kid I was forcibly drugged against my wishes even after complaining of serious side effects. You know, the sort of black box type warnings that start. “Seek immediate medical attention if any of these rare but very serious side effects occur: chest pain, slow/fast/irregular heartbeat, fainting…”
Chest pain. Check, <20bpm? Check.
Fainting. Right in the ER. Check.
The treating psychiatrist declared that I was faking the symptoms and, with my parent’s consent, continued to inject the same drug into me while I was restrained. Fun times.
Gratefully the insurance finally ran out and I was suddenly and magically “cured” and sent home.
Harm to individuals forced to take these pills is not the only potential harm – others have already mentioned the possibility that the introduction of a hetero pill would undermine efforts to promote greater social acceptance of and equality for gay people who don’t want to take the pill. But beyond that, “the pill or ex-gay therapy/corrective rape/death” is a false choice. There are other possible outcomes for gay people.
The hypothetical isn’t asking us to consider a situation in which the hetero pill already exists, but one in which a well-intentioned and pro-LGBT rights person is deciding whether to spend money on researching such a pill. If his goal were to help LGBT people avoid abuse then he could write some fat checks to the Trevor Project, PFLAG, etc., rather than spending money on development of a hetero pill, something that may be impossible or that could come with horrible side effects.
Except once again, there’d be a much larger push to force the pill on people, since it works and forcing it on people would come with fewer (or as Iggy points out, no) penalties. I think the existence of such a pill would result in the near elimination of homosexuality within a decade or so of its invention.
I would oppose the creation of a “straight pill” for several reasons.
The only people who will want to do this to themselves are closeted gays who fear their own sexuality. I would argue that the problem they have is their fear, not their sexuality.
There are tons of people who will want to use this on others. In “enlightened” countries like ours, I suspect that group will be mostly straight parents who want to make damn sure their kids are too. And I don’t see any way to prevent its use that way. In a lot of other countries, there’s a very good chance that anyone suspected of being gay would be sentenced to take the pill, and I don’t see any way to prevent that either.
And I can see it being used as a kind of test – for membership in churches, clubs, for jobs with certain employers. Everyone joining has to take the pill – it won’t have any effect on those who are already straight.
Then there idea of just how flexible such technology could be, as noted upthread. What if you want your children to grow up liberal, or conservative? Are we going to medicate ourselves and our future generations into pre-defined mindsets?
Unfortunately, I think the answer to this last question is going to be “Yes.” As we learn more and more about brain function and chemistry, as our tools to intervene get better and better, we will inevitably use all the knowledge and tools more and more. And it will be more and more acceptable.
What if we could wipe out impulsive rage? Maybe we could get rid of most murders and assaults. I suppose that’s good, but we won’t allow a drug to wipe out violent aggression loose on the population, because society still needs (or thinks it needs) people willing to kill on command in the military.
To make a long story slightly longer, we will go down this path, but we won’t go down it in a way to assure that individuals get all their own choices of who they’re allowed to make themselves into.
I vote Dem and I vote against developing this pill for reasons others have already expressed nicely. As a society we would probably use the pill for bad purposes most often. I feel similar discomfort about hypothetical pills that would “fix” being Asian or black or female or Hispanic or Latino or transgender. A friend of mine who is black and female and lesbian and transgender says people sometimes ask her if she wishes she weren’t black (or whatever) and she is frustrated by the question because it offers to fix the wrong problem. The only problem with being black is some of the people who are not, and the only problem with being gay is some of the people who are not, and so forth.
A pill that makes people able to appreciate those who are different from them, yes.
After reading the OP, the movie X-Men comes to mind, where the father of a mutant wants to ‘cure’ his son and other mutants of their ‘affliction’ with a new radical medicine (ironically from another mutant’s DNA).
Nah. Nothing good can come from this pill idea.
You are correct in that parents can forcibly medicate their children. I’m sorry about what you went through, and I wish you had a better psychiatrist and that your parents saw what distress you were going through and believed you that you weren’t faking your symptoms.
But just because some psychiatrists are incompetent and medicate children that don’t need it doesn’t mean that medication is never necessary. Some children do genuinely have psychiatric problems. These problems can be helped by therapy, a change in environment, medication, or some combination of all three.
If a child has a psychiatric problem, then that is a genuine problem that needs to be addressed, maybe with medication. If a child is gay, then that is not a problem that needs to be fixed, and so medication like the straight pill is not necessary at all. If a child is gay and bullied or depressed, then those are problems, but it’s the bullying and depression that are problems that need to be solved, not the homosexuality of the kid.
I agree with you, and that’s one of the reasons I would be against the development of the pill like I said in my first post. Too many children are pushed into ex-gay therapies today. If the straight pill existed today, then a lot of those children would be forced to take it instead of going to ex-gay therapy.
The thing is, I don’t think anyone has established what harm this would do. They definitely didn’t in the other thread. The best they came up with was that homosexuality wouldn’t be accepted. I doubt this for reasons I’ll cover in the next paragraph, but, if so, so what? If there are no homosexual people to be accepted, why does it matter?
I do understand the idea that you don’t want your child to be coerced, but I don’t think that’s a real problem for one very important reason: if homosexuality is not a disease, then there should be no reason that a homosexual pill couldn’t also be created, and, ultimately, the child will still have a choice. And, as long as there are homosexuals in existence, people will wind up having to accept them.
