This is in response to this article regarding the outrage of some about scientific experiments to see if gay sheep can be made “ungay.”
Simply put, it’s not unlikely that in the near future, all sorts of things will be “changeable” by science, and if homosexuality has a significant genetic component the prospect of it being screened for, and screened out, isn’t unthinkable, nor is the possibility of medical treatments that cause gay people to become straight (and, probably, vice-versa!).
That means we are going to have to confront the ethics of providing parents with the ability to choose not to have gay kids, or even to allow gay people to choose make themselves straight (or straight people make themselves gay). It’s a pretty startling issue. I’d like to raise and debate some of those things here.
Would it be unethical to offer to gay people a treatment that would make them straight? As a generally liberty-minded guy, I wouldn’t support the need for anyone to have such a proceedure done, but I would also find it hard to justify banning such a treatment from those that want it.
Would it be wrong if, owing to treatments like this, homosexuality nearly or even entirely vanished from the human population (let’s stipulate that this is due to two factors only: large percentages of parents choosing not to have gay kids, and some gay people choosing to become straight. We could imagine horrible coercion to force gays straight, but this sort of thing is probably unlikely in the US at least, and we shouldn’t easily confuse it with more voluntary changes)?
The question I’m asking is, perhaps going to be misinterpreted. A common answer, no doubt, will be “of course it’s wrong: THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH HOMOSEXUALITY” and that of course has some merit: it might well be that wanting to eradicate homosexuality is wrong irregardless of whether or not homosexuality being around is important or not.
But I think because most of us already agree with the idea that homosexuality is fine, the more interesting question is more: does it matter if homosexuality is around or not? If we might face the prospect of it vanishing, would that be a bad thing?
The only major current debate of this sort I can think of is over deafness and deaf culture. We are not too far away from the point where deafness as a condition could be substantially and perhaps near totally ended in most medically developed western populations. Many deaf people, of course, regard this prospect as tantamount to genocide.
This isn’t a perfect matched example of course. I for instance, do think that deafness is at least a material disadvantage in life and wanting to cure it in most people is not particularly horrible (and we can have that debate, because it’s by no means an easy issue), but I don’t think the same of homosexuality: homosexuality is no particular disadvantage in life (outside of the conditions of how society regards gays.
But the deaf example at least provides some sense of a guide as to how a group of people with a particular very powerful identity that they have experienced as natural and they did not choose might be horrified at the idea of no more members of their group being born, or even of people who identify as being part of that group suddenly being able to decide to leave it and in fact doing so. It’s a very strange thing to be confronted with, especially if it is the case that the group would vanish not because anyone destroyed it, but because everyone either chose to leave, or never came into existence that way in the first place.
And of course the final interesting issue would be: if we could medically change someone’s sexuality, would you try it? I myself would be tempted. It’s a truly fascinating idea. I’m a man attracted to women. But you know, I think if someone could indeed throw a switch and make me attracted to men, that would be a pretty fascinating thing to have happen to me, because it’s something that’s very hard to imagine. A basic component of my identity, suddenly changed into something else. What would that even be like?
