Do you believe homosexuality is in any way like a disease, or dangerous or harmful? Do you believe giving this pill to a non-consenting adult would be “harmful”? If so, then why would it NOT be harmful to do the same to a child?
What harm would it do to give a child a “Republican” or “Democratic” pill? What harm would it do to give children pills that make them worship someone or something? Or an “atheist” pill (though personally I would favor this)? You tell me – what harm is there to giving someone a pill that will make them believe anything you want them to believe?
The point is that it represents an unwarranted (IMO) degree of control over the future development of a child, one that many, maybe most, parents would be delighted to have. There are already too many parents who want to turn out cookie cutter versions of themselves.
I’m not sure how the straight pill would harm someone. Assuming we agree that there is no sexual orientation that is inherently bad – and ignoring free will – what is the harm of giving someone (who is not in a relationship*) a pill that alters their attractions, and has no other effects?
I’m in no way trying to suggest it would be beneficial to anyone.
*If they are in a relationship it would have obvious negative consequences for that, which might cause emotional difficulties
Wouldn’t it be nice if this were true? Unfortunately, the fact that different kinds of people exist has never guaranteed that a particular group will be accepted by others.
Good, point, and depending on where you think our ancestors became “people”, we’ve already had anywhere from a hundred thousand years to a couple of million years to accept gays.
But I’m sure it will be real soon… in geological terms.
I vote Dem, 100%. I would have no problem with the pill being used by someone that truly wanted to change. I, like many in this thread believe it would inevitably be used on people against thier will or before they really know what they want.
Maybe there could be a system like what’s used for gender re-assignment operations where a period of counseling is required and the therapist has to sign off before any surgery takes place.
Don’t you think it would be just a little bit shitty for those adults already in happy same-sex relationships? That’s quite a lot of people. People won’t have to accept them if their relationship it’s a disease that can be cured by a pill.
And it also means suppressing the way people naturally fall in love - that is far more unnatural than anything else. The idea is that there is no choice.
In the hypothetical situation that this is ACTUALLY completely voluintary and based on unbiased, accurate science, then yes, I’m completely ok: if people DO want to change their orientation, they should be able to.
It’s still difficult – it’s like a woman who wants to look after children and not have a career, she should be able to do so, but people may legitimately think it’s a bad idea to do something society often tries to push on people.
However, everyone ever proposing something remotely similar to this (a) essentially always turns out to be using it as a cover for presenting it as a “cure”, for trying to browbeat people into thinking being gay is a disease, etc, etc. and (b) the likelihood of actually being able to retroactively change orientation of adults seems really low, so even if they SAY the science is genuine, it’s almost impossible for me to believe they’re honest, rather than intending to rely on the usual sorts of lies about brainwashing.
For instance, look at the weakness in your justification for why people would want this: you were obviously not really convinced that people REALLY would.
Although, for contrast, if this gay->straight pill were possible, it’s equally likely you’d have straight->bi or some other combination. It would be interesting if people actually COULD choose to be gay: if you thought you wouldn’t experience too much bigortry, how many people would try it?