Could prenatal hormones play a role in human sexual orientation? I recently found this article in Wikipedia. But I was aware of the theory for some time. I know the Merck Manual posits that Diethylstilbestrol (DES) is responsible for an inordinate amount of women who become (or think a lot about) lesbianism.
If this is the case, how does it affect the gay rights movement? I mean, if we are hardwired from birth to be a certain sexual orientation, isn’t therapy designed to remove homosexuality (even in adulthood) pointless and even dangerous?
Just because a person is “hardwired” a certain way doesn’t mean that it’s an immutable trait. For instance, they are finding that many people who later develop schizophrenia in early adulthood can have tell-tale signs at birth and in childhood. But schizophrenia can be treated with medication and go into remission all on its own.
Handedness is another good example. Handedness is set in the womb. However, a person CAN train themselves out of it with enough practice (raises left hand–I mean–right hand).
My guess is that sexuality is like schizophrenia and handedness, in that it’s a spectrum rather than a binary. The extreme cases will be more recalcitrant to treatment. But most cases can be influenced to varying degrees.
The question isn’t whether medical intervention is pointless and dangerous. The real question (IMHO) is whether we should treat homosexuality like its a medical disorder. I suppose if an individual makes the choice for him or herself and knowingly accepts the risks, then they should be able to avail themselves of this kind of intervention. I’d be pissed off, however, if people started sending their children and teenagers in for hormone therapy against their will.
I think this post fell through a time warp from 1993 or so. I mean, we’re getting closer to identifying the actual hormonal process whereby gay people are “born that way,” but the general idea that they are, and that that’s why we should accept them and give them rights is at least 2 decades old.
It’s also one I don’t agree with. I think that we should accept them and give them the same rights as anyone else because they’re human beings who deserve human rights. But tomayto, tomahto.
And yes, gay conversion therapy is pointless, dangerous and increasingly falling out of favor. It’s illegal in a couple of states now, and one of the biggest proponentsjust fell all over himself recanting and apologizing for causing so much pain and suffering with his efforts…and this was a year after the doctor most famous for his (rather tepid, actually) support of anti-gay therapy recanted his very flawed study on the subject.
The real question is if homosexuality can be “treated” in the womb, should parents have the right to undergo the procedure? Or even just selective abortion, if a sufficiently accurate prenatal test can be performed.
I don’t see how the law can realistically prevent these kinds of things without trampling on other rights. Assuming the determining factors are largely prenatal, it seems fairly inevitable that there will be a decline in the homosexual population. That will be a net negative in quality of life for the remaining homosexuals, for fairly obvious reasons. That’s a pretty bad thing, but on the other hand I don’t think a declining culture is enough to demand new, heavy-handed law.
Of course, maybe it will turn out that there’s no remotely accurate prenatal predictor of homosexuality, let alone treatment. It doesn’t seem like that’s the direction things are headed, though.
By the end of this year, I’ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of my coming out. Back then, I read everything I could get my hands on about what made me the way I was. I didn’t find an answer back then, nor in all the intervening years. And after a few decades, the question became less and less meaningful. Now, it’s totally irrelevant.
But we continue to have threads like this, an endless preoccupation with what made me the way I am. And I have to ask “What is the cause of heterosexuality?” Not in an evolutionary sense, but in a personal individual sense. What makes a given individual heterosexual? And don’t give me that “hard-wired” crap. That’s not an explanation.
But anyway . . . I’m more interested in the causes of homophobia. That’s at least relevant. And probably 100% post-natal and preventable.
People who base a debate on sexual preference on science run the risk that the scientific opinion will change, but if it did, would it change their position? Should it?
IMHO, it shouldn’t. It’s a matter of ethics, not science. Let’s take an example where we all agree on the ethics: when a man marries a women with another man’s children, should he kill them all? Of course we all agree the answer is “no”. But let’s say science proves that this is a basic instinct in primates (it is, in many, but that’s besides the point). Let’s say they prove that it’s “biologically normal” for men to do this, and that the only thing keeping them from doing it more is socialization.
Would that change our opinion on whether murdering babies is wrong?
Heck no.
Same goes for gender issues. Regardless of the reason for a person’s sexual preference, that person should be treated as a fully functioning member of society – assuming that there aren’t other issues with that sexual preference (e.g., pedophilia). Our legal judgments on acts should be based on the acts and their effects, not the proclivities that cause them. (Treatment, if appropriate, should be based on causes, but that’s an entirely different question. Likewise, if we all agree that some kind of act is bad for society, it behooves us to understand the causes and use that to guide public policy. But not whether it’s right or wrong. Nature has no special ethical place.)
Whether sexual preference is an immutable trait is irrelevant, and people who are using that issue on either side of the question are making both a tactical and an ethical mistake.
