From what I’ve read, the study makes no reference to birth and foetuses, only adults. As I understand it, the human brain is not fully formed at birth, so how do they know that the post-birth environment does not matter?
Abortion is illegal in Egypt except when the health of the mother is at risk (cite)
Also, I realize it’s an increasingly lost cause, but I’ll try once more and point out that neither the OP nor the article linked in the OP had anything to do with aborting gay babies. But if people really feel the need to turn this into a proxy debate regarding prochoice/life, because there just aren’t enough of those, have at it I suppose.
I don’t think that the state should make restrictions on prenatal care designed to bring about desired characteristics in the eventual child (or to select against unwanted ones) unless the potential for damage is substantial.
If the hypothetical anti-gay treatment results in a large number of developmentally disabled children that end up being cared for by the state, for example, then there’s a good reason to ban it. If all it does is reduce the number of homosexuals in the population, well, that’s not a characteristic of the world that is worth imposing on other people to keep. If those parents feel that homosexuality is worth undoing, and it’s done in a non-invasive way, I don’t see how it’s my right or obligation to stop them, even though I disagree. People who feel otherwise are certainly free to have more gay children to balance it out.
While I can understand people who lament the loss of Down Syndrome people, I don’t agree with them. If I would want to “fix” problems in my children that others don’t see as broken, how can I claim that others’ perceived problems also aren’t?
Compare this to deaf parents who wish to have deaf children and select for that trait. While I do really believe that deafness is a disability, it’s certainly not a debilitating one that keeps people from functioning in society. I am conflicted personally, but philosophically I think that that should be their right as parents.
It well may, but when feminized and masculinized brains tend to be attracted to the opposite sex of the brain state a good deal of the time, that would generally indicate a real strong tendency (even if not 100%) to followup on that predisposition if the surrounding culture doesn’t kill you for doing so. There are plenty of gay oriented men and women in cultures where it’s not allowed, who are leading nominally heterosexual lives, and any action beyond that is very discreet or non-existent.
The question is why you think terminating a pregnancy to avoid giving birth to a gay child is any worse than terminating a pregnancy for any other reason. If you think abortion is wrong regardless, then calling attention to abortions motivated by sex selection or orientation selection is just special pleading.
Not that the OP had anything to do with abortion.
No, nor any other trait.
From reading the article, it sounds like they’re just starting to test newborns to see if they can accurately predict which ones will be gay or not. That study is going to take at least ten years or more for the children to become sexually mature and aware of their orientation, won’t it? And only then will they have proof that orientation is determined before or at birth and not sometime during puberty.
It’s going to take 20 or 30 years for this to become an issue, I think. And it’s hard to say how society’s attitudes toward abortion and homosexuality will have changed between now and then.
The idea of no more homosexuality is alarming and sad to me. As difficult as being queer can be, thinking of the love shared between same sex partners never existing again just upsets me on an emotional level I can’t quite justify. It just seems like, who wants less love and fewer ways for humans to connect like that? What’s the point of eliminating an entire category of love?
You’re telling me - I’m not getting laid enough as it is.
As Goblinboy says we’re a loooooooooooooong way away from this new discovery turning into an actual medical intervention, if indeed it ever does. As was discussed in another thread on being able to change sexuality a couple of years back the societies with the least favourable attitudes to homosexuality are also usually the ones that are the least favourably disposed to tampering with unborn foetuses, or least able to access the methods to do so.
For the record I have no problem with people aborting foetuses that are shown to be possessing a disability, especially one as extreme as Downs syndrome. At the same time I am completely against the notion of, for example, deaf parents selecting for a deaf child - no child should have it’s potential constrained by its parents in such a way, it completely violates the fundamental principles of reproducing and caring for a child. If you’re okay with doing that would you also be okay with a paraplegic parent having their child’s limbs removed either pre or post birth? It’s the same principle.
Yet again, we’ve discovered the true and only cause of homosexuality! Whoopee! (I wonder what it will be next time we discover it)
I actually think the whole scenario is too fucked-up and contorted (but its own intertwined layers of moral, social, ethical, religious, cultural tensions, etc) already to be made right by either a yes or no answer.
Hey… I was surprised! I thought it was show tunes.
What little information we have so far seems to indicate that gay boys result when they don’t get enough testosterone in the womb, and lesbian girls result from getting too much testosterone in the womb. You can give a pregnant woman more testosterone, but how do you make her have less testosterone? (If you are wondering, both sexes have testosterone and estrogen. It comes mostly from the adrenals, and some other places.) So, if this info points to a “cure” for homosexuality, it’s only for boys.
Okay, the moral part. Any minister will tell nearly-married and pre-pubescent folks that sexuality is “God-given.” (meaning heterosexuality) Do they think God takes a smoke break when gay children are made? Isn’t homosexuality God-given, as well?
The OP didn’t deal with abortion, but it has come up, in reference to place where couples get ultrasound viewings to find out gender, then abort “inconvenient” girls. I’m pro-choice, so the abortion itself is not offensive to me. However, I am uncomfortable with a society where girls are inconvenient. In some places, it has to do with dowries, but there a big gender inequality there, too. That stinks.
This is an interesting dilemma for me as a pro-choice female and ally. I think the major issue for me is that if the parents are that messed up about having a gay child, perhaps their home isn’t the right one for the poor kid. In that case, maybe it is better, if we get to this point, that they simply chose not have a gay child.
If, for some odd reason, I woke up tomorrow having changed my mind about breeding, worrying about my son or daughter’s sexual orientation wouldn’t even enter my mind. If a doctor gave me the choice, I’d find another doctor. Straight or gay, all I would care about is making the best home for them in this world. I suspect that as tolerance increases, more people move in this direction, and these are the people that we need raising gay children - to have the self esteem and sense of acceptance they need to excel in this world.
I hate that this is even a discussion as a future option.
That being said, the pro-choice side of me doesn’t agree with any legislation stepping in to prevent this from happening.
What surprises me about this thread is that ‘most’ posters don’t seem to have a major problem with this, providing there’s no harm caused to the child.
However, I’m going to be a lone dissenter. Considering the ongoing, often accepted, prejudice, even hatred, shown towards gay people, I have a major problem with a procedure that effectually brands ‘gayness’ as a malfunction that it’s desirable to correct. Fine for the unborn child, a disaster for gay people who already or will exist.
It’s effectually sanctions the branding of my lifestyle, my relationship, as some kind of deformity that needs eradicating. What progress!
One would use a drug that binds to the testosterone receptor, but does not activate the receptor (antagonist).
Well, one could just as easily argue that one could “cause” homosexuality by encouraging these fetal developments. I just skimmed this thread, but I didn’t see anyone say that parents should be encouraged to “correct” homogenic* conditions in the womb.
Which is not to say that people wouldn’t favor this, much much more than people would favor artificially creating homogenic conditions (see former threads on parents deliberately having a deaf child.) There’d probably be even some on these boards who would be more in favor of artificially encouraging heterogenic conditions than homogenic.
I just don’t see that here, now.
*a word I just made up, meaning “conditions that favor the forming of homosexuality,” because for all I know, the conditions might not cause homosexuality %100 of the time.
Nope, you only invented a new definition for an existing word
Darn, I was gonna go with “homogenetic” but I figured that probably had a meaning, too.
But it’s still sort of new, cause words with the same spelling but different etymologies are usually listed as different “words” in dictionaries.
I’d go with “endogenous sexuality.” The “homo” prefix doesn’t really work as a synonym for “homosexuality,” since “homo” means “same,” and since that’s its ordinary meaning in Greek word compounds.
I thought of that but people commonly understand “homo” to mean “homosexual” so the meaning is quite clear if you know you are talking about tendencies to encourage homosexual development. Do you have the same linguistic nitpick with “homophobia”?
Also, I was trying to come up with a term for “a growth environment which encourages the development of homosexuality.”