On Facing the Extinction of My Kind
Jason Kuznicki on Jun 24th 2008
There’s a very good chance that homosexuals will cease to exist, and soon. And the rest of you — You’ll cheer. Or at least you’ll breathe a little easier. You’ll be glad we’re gone.
No, it’s the truth. Parents overwhelmingly don’t want to have gay kids, and the science is getting better all the time. Eventually, there will be screenings in utero, and treatments, and it will all be a big relief to parents — never to have a kid like me. Never to have to worry.
After that, the only serious questions will be whether the treatment works on adults, too, and whether it’s ethical to force adults to take it. (And how well-armed and willing to fight the adult homosexuals may be.)
I considered these issues four years ago, when I saw that John Derbyshire had written the following:
A young woman in the late stages of pregnancy, or carrying a small infant, shows up at her doctor’s office. “Doctor,” she asks, “is there some kind of test you can do to tell me if my child is likely to become a homosexual adult?” The doctor says yes, there is. “And,” the woman continues, “suppose the test is positive — would that be something we can fix? I mean, is there some sort of medical, or genetic, or biochemical intervention we can do at this stage, to prevent that happening?” The doctor says yes, there is. “How much does the test cost? And supposing it’s positive, how much does the fix cost?” The doctor says $50, and $500. The woman takes out her checkbook.
Of course this is not happening anywhere in the U.S.A. right now. If my understanding of the state of current research is correct, however, it might very well be happening on a daily basis ten years from now.
It would also be a very miserable one for homosexuals, as they became an aging, fading cohort, with practically no younger people of their inclination to socialize with. The situation would also be self-reinforcing: As more and more parents took the test and got the fix, the loneliness facing homosexuals would become so dire that no person of conscience could think of raising a person who might become homosexual. The fix might even be applicable later in life, with adult homosexuals “converting” en masse.
In which case, there would be someone, somewhere, who was the last homosexual. What a situation! Think what a playwright or a novelist could do with it!
The legal logic is ironclad: Either parents have the right to make medical decisions for their children (an ancient and indisputable right), or else the gay community will be found to have some collective right to impose gay kids on parents who would otherwise prefer to be rid of them (a fanciful creation without any legal warrant). Want to lay bets on which way that one will turn out?
It’s a fairly good test, I think, of my own political beliefs, for there is nothing in libertarianism that forbids the extinction of homosexuals through technology. I have to let it go, hate it though I may — and I do. I think there’s something wrong, perhaps not at the level of government, but at least at the level of individual respect for human diversity, to the urge to wipe out all human differences. We will have lost something of our wonder, when this difference disappears.
Today’s young people more likely than not think that it’s brave, and kind of cool, that gays and lesbians are getting married in California, Massachusetts, and a few other places around the world. Soon, though, they may have the ability to rescue their children from homosexuality — and they will think of it as a rescue. Then another generation will grow up, who will look on gays and lesbians as being kind of like polio victims: Yes, they’re human, of course, but what a shame for them. And what a shame that we had to make such strange accommodations for them, in our laws, even. It’s a good thing no one has to suffer like that anymore.
But it’s not suffering, I’ll say to them from my grave. Will they listen?
I don’t know. I’m simply glad I won’t be the last living homosexual, and that I have already found a lifelong love, with whom I can watch the coming extinction at some degree of remove.
Filed in The Boudoir
I’m not sure I share your pessimism here, Jason.
Partly because I don’t see things happening as quickly as you. There may be a time when an expectant mother would be able to write a check and have her fetus’s sexuality ‘corrected’.
But I doubt it will be happening soon, even with the research. Instead, we’ll likely see a long period of time wherein doctors possess the means to determine a fetus’s sexuality, but not the means to alter it.
And I think that very few people will choose to abort their gay fetuses. For most conservatives, abortion is probably the greater of two evils. And even those less-phased by abortion are probably not as concerned about their children’s sexuality.
By the time we actually have a way of heterosexualizing a child in the womb, I think that homosexuality will have become a non-issue.
And if not, another point arises. Will any parents (gay parents in particular), have their fetuses turned gay? Will that even be an option?
Interesting questions. Deaf and autistic people are already facing them. I can’t see forbidding anyone from reproducing, but deliberately inducing, say, deafness in a child is much more problematic.
This is a good thought experiment, but I think the “problem” of homosexuality is not considered as such by a large enough segment of the scientific community to produce the research needed to do what you propose in a timely manner. In the short term I do foresee up and coming scientific powerhouses with stronger biases against homosexuality (aka China) working on these sort of treatments. What they are likely to do however is find and possibly correct a minor genetic predisposition or two. Even if they are correctable there are still countless environmental factors that contribute to our sexuality.
Any treatment plan to completely stamp out homosexuality would be so profoundly life changing to not only the child but to the parents that most parents would go into denial that they need to change themselves so much. No one would accept that they and the factors they don’t even control would have such an effect. It would also be in the genetic treatment manufacturer’s best interest to not disclose how little of a role the genes really play. Probably leading to a class action against them exactly 20 years after the product hits the market.
In the mean time while an ignorant billion or so of the masses are pushing pills to normalize their children diversity will rage on in the underclasses. People will continue to better understand their differences and the societal benefits that come from them. Already researchers are finding societal benefits to homosexuality in animal groups that they hypothesize contribute to the survival of the society. This field of looking at Darwinian evolution in the context of societies as organisms is fairly new. It may well be that if we make homosexuality extinct we’ll make the remainder extinct as well.
I too think a “cure” for homosexuality is far from imminent. It would have to be tested on humans before it could be approved, and that means that somewhere a pharmaceutical company is going to have to decide it makes good economic sense to test a drug a) on pregnant women, that b) is explicitly designed to alter their fetuses. It’s a bit of a stretch–no one wants liability for the next Thalidimide or DES. Assuming they do run the tests, they’ll then have to wait fifteen years at an absolute minimum to know if it does what it’s supposed to, and even then they couldn’t be sure, considering how many people don’t come out until their twenties or later. Plus, the DES symptoms took decades to manifest, and DES was basically a female hormone supplement not unlike what we’re talking about, although given for a different purpose. So a 15-25 year lag, just to complete the first round of human testing.
And that assumes that anyone invents a credible means of diagnosis paired with a viable drug. Human psychology is complicated, and I seriously doubt we’ll be able to reliably test for it, let alone rewrite it, in utero for the next couple of decades. On top of which, the drug imagined in the column would only work if prenatal hormones are the determining factor in sexual orientation, which is hardly proven. If it turns out there’s a major genetic as well as prenatal environmental component then sexual orientation would be much harder and more dangerous to change, since it would require gene therapy on an unheard of scale. If there’s any post-natal component then all bets are off.
By the time it becomes possible, if it ever does, hardly anyone will think of homosexuality as a disease anymore, except perhaps in the Third World, where only the rich will be able to afford testing and treatment.
By extension, a mother (or likely, also the father) can go into the office and tell the doctor to engineer for them a son. Who cares about sexuality, when you can determine the sex of your child, and make sure that child has PRECISELY the features you require? The right kind of left-right hemisphere balance, the right kind of in vitro environment for temperament and estrogen/testosterone exposure, removing certain problematic genetic carriers from your genetype that escaped into the fetus, and to ensure your child has the best chance in this world, the “right” kind of equipment between the legs. Some families don’t care what the child does in general as long as its appearance and behavior is correct in front of others. It doesn’t need to be correctly behaviorialized in the sexual department if at least you can ensure heritage by breeding it to the right genetic stock.
That’s a thought experiment, and I suspect there will be enough voice from human rights organizations, discrimination organizations, the ACLU or whatever, and the AMA of all things prohibiting this. Not to mention the severe problems inherent in the mentality of the parent who does this for themselves.
Yes, if I had a choice, given what I experienced, I would rather be straight. I wouldn’t wish the condemnation I felt from friends, family, and the world at large on anyone. It’s enough that others would wish that pain on me. last month, my mother appologized to me for her treatment of me during the last 20 years of my life. Wow. It will be a while until I can accept that, but she had the guts to say it. But I am sure that she would NOT have selected for my sexuality had she the chance because it would be a moral outrage. It would be an aspect of HER ability to cope and concieve to think that a gay person in MY lifetime would have it as hard as during hers.
So why not hope for the future of us, than their past? Then again, I am taking the optimistic tack as a counterpoint.
Jason,
Doesn’t your argument here make you re-think your recent skepticism about same-sex marriage? Here’s what I mean: if one, and it’s not the only one, reason parents might choose to “de-gay” their kids is that they can’t imagine their gay/lesbian kids having the happy, fulfilling life the parents have, doesn’t the possibility of same-sex marriage and the more complete legal integration of gays and lesbians into the world of family counteract that significantly? (This is a point that Andrew Sullivan has made.) Wouldn’t legalizing SSM as well as all the other cultural shifts we’re seeing make the lives that gays and lesbians lead that much less “tragic” in the way that parents might imagine and would lead them to “de-gay” their kids?
I could certainly understand a parent making that choice 50 years ago (not that I would condone it), but it’s harder and harder to imagine it now and into the future, especially as the current teens and 20somethings, whose views of gays and lesbians is certainly more enlightened, themselves become parents.
Several reconsiderations:
The practical side, brought up by Harry and Tilts, probably decides everything, at least in my lifetime. (Unless the adult treatment comes first — then all bets are off.)
Also, I realized last night after I posted this that genetic therapy to “correct” minority status already has an easier candidate than homosexuality. I’ve read recently that only six genes control for having dark skin color. We could have a so-called cure for blackness probably a lot faster, since we don’t even know all of the genes influencing sexual orientation, and since it seems certain that more than genetics is at work in the gay/straight division. But we know the genes for skin color, we know that we’ve found all of them, and we know it’s entirely genetic.
Yet no one even talks about trying to “cure” blackness. And that’s a very good thing, I’d say.
Steve writes,
if one, and it’s not the only one, reason parents might choose to “de-gay” their kids is that they can’t imagine their gay/lesbian kids having the happy, fulfilling life the parents have, doesn’t the possibility of same-sex marriage and the more complete legal integration of gays and lesbians into the world of family counteract that significantly?
Maybe. It depends a lot on what the individual parents think of same-sex marriage. Do they view it as basically a “regular” marriage, or is it more like braces for the kid who has polio? I mean, sure, he can walk, kind of, but we wish he were normal. Which one is it?
As to the skin color question, “race” is a fiction, but skin color most certainly bears on individual health. The main reason, it is thought, that people whose long-ago ancestors lived in the lower latitudes have darker skin than people originating from the upper latitudes is the trade-off between absorbing enough radiation to produce sufficient quantities of vitamin D and absorbing too much radiation and thus being prone to skin cancer and other cancers.
As people live indoors more and more, might it not become more healthy to have lighter skin? Or, as technology advances allow more effective production of vitamin from inside lighting, might it become better, on balance, to have darker skin?
Or maybe the much more mobile upper classes of the world will gradually mix and comingle their genes until a happy medium spontaneously arises. The lower classes would be known by their “racial” characteristics: overly pale skin and hair, or overly dark.
Lots of thoughts here:
I think there’s something wrong, perhaps not at the level of government, but at least at the level of individual respect for human diversity, to the urge to wipe out all human differences.
It’s not necessarily an urge to wipe out differences so much as to ensure the passing on of one’s genes. Gay couples have to either adopt or resort to artificial insemination. If the former, the children’s grandparents through adoption will have passed on none of their genes. If the latter, the children’s grandparents will, on average, pass on 50% fewer of their genes.
Already researchers are finding societal benefits to homosexuality in animal groups that they hypothesize contribute to the survival of the society. This field of looking at Darwinian evolution in the context of societies as organisms is fairly new. It may well be that if we make homosexuality extinct we’ll make the remainder extinct as well.
But this just makes it a public goods problem. It may be good for the group to have a homosexual population, but from the perspective of passing on genes it’s bad for whoever sires that population. So you would still expect people to opt for straight children.
Also, the loss of an advantageous trait is not the same as being doomed to extinction. If all humans lost their left hands tomorrow, we’d manage to scrape by for quite a while.
Yet no one even talks about trying to “cure” blackness. And that’s a very good thing, I’d say.
But in that case you would have black parents trying to ensure white children. That is, you would have a “race” trying to wipe itself out by having its children be different. In the case of homosexuality, most of the parents would be straight, and they would be trying to make sure their kids are more like themselves.
Also, skin color is not all there is to “race.” Take a black child, alter his skin tone, and there will still be plenty of physical differences between him and the white child born to white parents.
And finally, a question to Jason. What do you think the world would lose if it lost homosexuality? Note, I’m not asking what it would lose if it lost the people who are currently homosexual. If the world lost you, I would suffer loss because I wouldn’t have your blog to fill some of my free time. But if you (everyone who is homosexual) had grown up straight, in what way would the world be poorer?
I’m also not insisting that we would lose nothing, because I really don’t know. I’m not gay, and if I have any gay friends, they are deeply in the closet. So I’m asking from a position of genuine ignorance and curiosity.
What do you think the world would lose if it lost homosexuality?
Interesting question. A point of view, maybe. No doubt puberty and sexual awakening is a marvelous and terrifying experience for everyone, but for a straight person it doesn’t necessarily require reflection; it follows the path expected by her and everyone else. Realizing you are gay is a different, more self-conscious, kind of coming of age. It forces you to question fundamental assumptions about sexuality, gender, and identity that many straight people will never even notice. A gay person is in some sense an outsider not just to mainstream culture, as ethnic minorities are, but to all cultures, and even to their own family. That can be both a blessing and curse, but I think the world would be poorer without the people who’ve lived it.
I know I wouldn’t be the same person if I’d been born straight. Not better or worse, necessarily, but not the same, any more than I’d be the same if I’d been born a man.
I’ve thought about this issue a lot too, though it first occurred to me for different reasons. (I have Asperger’s Syndrome, and I’m pretty certain our time is nearly up.) I’m pretty sure that the issue of a “cure” for a homosexual fetus to make it heterosexual will never become a serious issue. All that’s needed is a prenatal test. Once that is available, a modified version of Kuznicki’s scenario will play out, with abortion as the “cure.” People will give the proper platitudes about diversity and respect in public, then pay a quiet visit to the abortionist so they can dispose of the unsatisfactory fetus and try again for another child more to their liking. Liberals will congratulate themselves for their compassion, saving the kid from having to go through life gay. As for conservatives- well, over 90% of fetuses diagnosed with Downs Syndrome are aborted . Conservatives might be less likely to get the testing in the first place, but unless Downs only affects the children of liberals, it looks like a great many nominal pro-lifers are quite willing to change their mind when it’s convenient. Only a very few homosexuals will born; ironically, almost all them will probably be the children of hardcore religious conservatives.
I can actually see this driving the stigma of homosexuality up. Even many people who don’t think gays are immoral still regard homosexuality as a bad thing, albeit in a “Oh, what a shame, the poor fellow/his poor parents!” sort of way rather than in the more traditional form of overt hatred or disgust. Once prenatal screening is available, people will shift from “Such a shame that he has to suffer like that” to “If he only he had been prevented from suffering like that!” Whether or not the object of pity is actually suffering or not is immaterial. “Tolerant” liberals will have a license from their conscience to wish that homosexuals- both the orientation and the specific individuals- did not exist. Being considered a freak is bad; being considered a freak who ought to be dead is worse.
I suspect that traditional fire-and-brimstone hatred for homosexuals will continue to diminish, but I don’t think it’s going to make any difference on this issue. I really wish it wasn’t going to end this way, but widespread, genuine respect for human diversity would require cultural (or perhaps even biological) changes in people that I can’t imagine ever happening, much less happening within the necessary time frame.
And finally, a question to Jason. What do you think the world would lose if it lost homosexuality? Note, I’m not asking what it would lose if it lost the people who are currently homosexual. If the world lost you, I would suffer loss because I wouldn’t have your blog to fill some of my free time. But if you (everyone who is homosexual) had grown up straight, in what way would the world be poorer?
I don’t know. I’m not even sure it’s a properly formed question, since it asks about a value held by a collective, whereas individuals are the only real valuers.
Thus I can only answer it based on my own experience: If I’d been heterosexual, as I told myself that I “really” was throughout high school, I would have been a doctrinaire conservative, and I might never have questioned the ironclad devotion to the Republican Party that my family raised me to have. It’s hard to see me even finding politics a problem, let alone an intellectually interesting one, if I hadn’t had that huge disconfirmation of GOP dogma in my own life. I might not have sought out other answers or ended up as curious as I became.
“What do you think the world would lose if it lost homosexuality?”
This is going to sound like a joke, but it isn’t: The so called “queer eye.” Not all gays are intelligent or creative. Rather we are talking about a qualities that are more likely to be found among homosexuals. There may be something special about the “gay brain” — in particular the gay male brain — the way it mixes stereotypical masculine and feminine qualities and seems to disproportionately have higher rates of intelligence and creativity, that more regularly produces great works of genius and human accomplishment.
This is just a theory and I’m not the first to advance it. Camille Paglia advances something similar where she notes that a prototypical gay man’s brain seems to have the best of the male and female psyche and is irrefutably connected with great works of Art in Western Culture.
If you want a good anecdotal case connecting homosexuality to genius and human accomplishment, see Bruce Bawer’s classic article, Canon Fodder, on the matter.
There’s a very good chance that guys like me — 5 feet, 7 1/2 inches — will cease to exist, and soon. And the rest of you — You’ll cheer. Or at least you’ll breathe a little easier. You’ll be glad we’re gone.
No, it’s the truth. Parents overwhelmingly don’t want to have short kids, and the science is getting better all the time.
You aren’t that short. You are taller than Tom Cruise and plenty of other notable folks who are considered “ideal” in physical appearance.
False comparison, itchy. A significant amount of my own happiness depended at one point on there being a potential life partner out there to find, and this would have been much more difficult if homosexuality were “treated” and gay men were far fewer.
Your happiness in this regard is not appreciably affected by your height.
“What do you think the world would lose if it lost homosexuality?”
Some good answers above; it’s very true that the world’s “outsiders” often have a different point of view - and a new look at a situation that people often don’t consider. Also, the very fact of the existence of gay people can have “unsettling” effects on the status quo. The whole to-do about homosexuality in the church is going to change religion itself, I think, and in some unexpected ways having nothing to do with sexuality.
Jon Rowe points out the “Queer Eye” factor, and that seems right to me, too. Virginia Woolf (I think it was?) also elaborated on the masculine/feminine mix and its advantage in terms of art and a person’s point of view.
Gay women also have had their niche (although it’s one that many don’t appreciate at all): they have often been at the forefront of movements for human rights. And many gay women have been wonderful and influential writers, too - I think for the same reasons involving point-of-view and the mixing of masculine/feminine POV.
I’d also like to propose something else - that gay people do not (generally) form partnerships for any reason except those of love and companionship. There aren’t (usually) any other motives; procreation isn’t one, nor is the merging of family fortunes or influence. (Not that the latter happens much anymore among heterosexuals, either - but it once did.) Not sure if other people will see this as a “loss” - but I think I would.
Jason,
I don’t share your pessimism. First, gay people will continue to have children, and most certainly in increasing numbers as social acceptance makes it easier to do so. They won’t all be gay, of course, but to the extent it is a heritable trait, they will have more gay children on average than straight people will.
Second, there is some number of straight people like me (a number that, again, will grow with the increasing social acceptance of homosexuality), who think it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all if my three daughters were to come out of the closet in their teens. Much lower chance of inadvertant pregnancy, a much lower chance of contracting a sexually transmitted disease, and a much lower chance of beating abused by a lover. I really don’t see the downside.
[...] Kuznicki ponders the ramifications that a cure for homosexuality would [...]
This scenario is addressed perfectly in the movie X-Men.
I worry about the potential of “curing” babies in the womb (this creates so many potential disastrous consequences), and I know this could happen at some point in the future, possibly the near future. But I don’t know how much I trust William Saletan’s opinion on the matter. Some of his other writings, like the one saying Santorum turned out to be right about gay marriage leading to more acceptance of polygamy and incest, bothered me quite a bit and seemed to be stretched thin to make his point.
http://www.slate.us/id/2191504/pagenum/all/
I have a different perspective of the matter at hand.
By the time a technology that can determine and modify sexual orientation is developed, it would be very probable that similar technologies can redesign phenotypes, and genotypes in anyway possible, as well as enhancing the human condition via cybernetic means. Such technologies would eventually lead to a myriad of clades, each formed by a group that shares a common ideology or distinguished trait.
For instance, it’s quite possible that gay parents will want to raise gay children just like the current situation with deaf parents. Eventually, a group of gay families would form a clade with distinct attributes related to sexual orientation and reproduction. Also it’s even more probable that sexual orientation wouldn’t be the sole common attribute. Anyway, one major issue to such development is that such clades would probably biologically and culturally evolve dramatically, to the point of driving themselves apart from each other.
As for ‘curing’ blackness, this has already been discussed many times, especially by race supremacists.
I agree with the folks above who think you’re being too pessimistic. I have a three-year-old daughter and I would not be bothered in the least if she were a lesbian or bi.
I’d be a tiny bit worried about her future, but I would also worry about her future if she decided to become a mountain climber or an astronaut or…Basically, I’ll worry about her safety and her happiness no matter what she does! (What do you mean, I can’t wrap her in bubble wrap forever? I refuse to even admit she’ll ever drive a car.)
But there’s no way I would try to change her future sexual orientation. No way. And I know I’m not alone in this.
This is an interesting thought experiment, but I think that, leaving aside the technical difficulties, many or most people would balk at the idea of editing their child in such a way.
(Honestly, I’d punch the first person who suggested I do such a thing to my child.)
I don’t think homosexuality will be wiped out, even if there was a relatively cheap and easy method for making your baby straight. Instead, it’ll become like bad teeth: A brand that says “My family was poor”.
—
James Hanley,
I’m fairly confident even most gay couples would choose to make their children straight. I wonder if anyone’s ever done a survey on that?
The overall problem, as others have already pointed out here, is one of peer-pressure and conformity leading to excessive and dangerous monoculture. The more ability we have to engineer the specific characteristics of our offspring, the more pressure parents will face to “do the right thing” for their kids and take ALL available measures to ensure that their kids have ALL of the characteristics deemed “right” by the prevailing standards of the time. And if any circumstances arise to which such tailored kids can’t adapt, then all those kids will be screwed.
In the case of homosexuality, there are plenty of homophobes with LOTS of money, who will be perfectly happy to help spread their love to the poor, in order to ensure that no one is ever born with characteristics they find ungodly. They won’t want to feed or care for any of those kids after they’re born, but that’s another matter.
On the other hand, I think we’re talking about a “cure” for homosexuality because there’s a lot of talk recently about a “gay gene.” There are far more dangerous possibilities, however, such as a “cure” for rebelliousness, curiosity or disobedience. I think we should seriously consider a government-level regulation, if not outright prohibition, of any such modification. This is one of those issues where sticking to libertarian principles in the short run could lead to devastating loss of liberty in the long run.
I think we’re closer to achieving a viable zygote from the combination of the gametes of two males or two females than we are of a cure for gayness. Provided the technology for combining two sperm or two eggs to give rise to a person arrives first, I don’t see gayness becoming extinct.
After all, the same right that gives heterosexuals the chance to cure their offspring of gayness would give gays the right to induce gayness in their offspring, and as such I highly doubt homosexuality would die out at all.
Personally speaking though, I would very much like to be more bisexual rather than be completely straight or gay since it just provides that much more choice in determining one’s sex partners and one’s love interests. More choice is usually a good thing - so I wonder if they’ll come up with a bisexuality drug, or maybe a gay person can just take half the dose of the ’straightening’ drug and become bi, or vice versa for straights.
Fascinating discussion! The ethics of all this are indeed troubling, and I’m impressed by the thoughtfulness of the post & comments. (First time here, via link from Ed Brayton’s blog.
As a molecular biologist, however, I want to point out that scientifically, we are very far from being able to reliably predict who will be homosexual, much less do anything to alter that. (Well, anything other than what John Markley predicted.)
To whatever extent homosexuality is influenced by genetics, it’s quite clearly a very complex trait. Even if we knew the top ten genetic markers involved, I very strongly doubt that would be enough for reliable prediction. Tiny contributions from hundreds of genes almost certainly add up to a huge influence on the outcome. So even if genetics alone were sufficient to predict homosexuality, I think it would be many, many decades (at least) before we knew enought to make that prediction.
Of course, genetics is almost certainly not sufficient to determine or predict homosexuality, which only puts such testing farther in the future.
As for correcting it, Rob’s right. That won’t happen until we can manipulate our genomes to a vastly greater degree than we can now. For some context, consider the current state of gene therapy for even the simplest of genetic diseases. We’ve known the precise single genes responsible for hemophilia A & B, cystic fibrosis, huntingdon’s, X-linked SCID, and many others for decades already. Despite what the hype may claim, we are at least two decades away from reliably curing even these incredibly simple diseases. (I worked in human gene therapy for about 10 years, so I think I know whereof I speak.)
For better or worse, Derbyshire is way, way off base to think this could all happen routinely in 10 years.
A great discussion. If this ever comes to be, the world would experience a great loss.
Yeah, I was being mostly glib. But when you talk about “extinction,” it means there *are* no gay men seeking others for their happiness, by definition. So, your point is true during a “transitional” phase.
Something new on this topic tonight, here.
If homosexuality were a disability or a medical affliction then I would absolutely advocate a treatment for it, but as it is neither I see no reason to do that. Parents might overwhelmingly not want gay children, but that isn’t for the parents to decide is it?
The problem is not of the folks who accept being homosexual or even transgendered as a viable lifestyle or biological condition, or that there are psychological means of associating one to society (or even society to one). But the issue here is that there are parents who want nothing of their children to be “a gay.”
Some years ago, a high school student was harassed at school for being gay and attempting gay/straight outreach, especially on the subject of gays turning to drugs, sex, and alcohol as a means of either acting out or repressing their environmental conditions. The link is . Yes, this was a Bill O’Reilly bit, and I managed to watch it when it aired, and sent off aggressive (and unresponded-to) correspondence due to the attitude the student received by O’Reilly.
But one general attitude in particular struck me then, and still has sway now: Bill commented that if the student was being harassed, he can stop being gay to fit in. This comment did not go well in my own household, as my own parents agreed with it. it essentially runs that preferring to “be” gay is the fault of the queer or lesbian or whatever, and that anything that happens as a result of this attittude is that fag’s/dyke’s/freak’s fault. In this way, for example, Matthew Shepherd deserved what he got because he was acting like a gay man. Not for BEING gay, but for simply acting it.
There are parents who do feel protective for their children, although they are aggressively opposed to their sexuality or choice or lifestyle, who feel the choice — whether it lie in the psychosexual identity or the behavior (e.g., the “lisp”) — can be absolved with to make their child safer.
The problem with this, and I think it is obvious, is that repression and concealment are not in their way means to any end. We should all know by now that a repressed emotion still exists. So, even if there were no gay treatment, we have actually seen a “solution” enacted by parents not wanting their children to be gay, although not proactively or in vitro manipulation — i.e., retroactive treatment of dissuassive behavioral stimuli, aka, electroshock and chemical treatments.
Parents who choose to have children take on the responsibilty for that child’s actions, and that child’s well-being and care. It is obvious that “allowing” your child to “be” gay is adverse to his/her welfare in the current society, barring a more comfortable and accepting environment, is adverse to his health. Any well-meaning parent is commended in attempting to separate their child from that problem, and all the strife that gays/lesbians of ours and the last generation have had to deal with. But from there, the direction is ambiguous. What is the extent of well-meaning? What actions are eventually positive, and which negative? Can the parent separate his or her sociological or religious proclivities from the nature of the child having choice in his/her own life? Or is that child’s care, as it used to be, the product and responsibility of the neighborhood, and thus the child becomes what the neighborhood needs, even if this means repression of the “natural state.”
I just watched the news coverage of the Gay Pride parade in New York.
There wasn’t any of the old discomfort and embarassment at covering the story from the news anchors; they talked quite easily about the march, and one said that it had been a “long tough road” for gay people, and “what a difference” from 1969. Said, as far as I could tell, admiringly.
They showed gay families and gay cops and gays on stilts and George Takei, and the two guys from the Upper West Side who’ve been together for 51 years and hoped to marry soon. It was just like any other big summertime parade (well, with a couple of drag queens in there for fun).
Like, yawn. Been-there-done-that, and what’s the big deal? So the whole “they’re going to suffer so dreadfully” thing just isn’t going to fly much anymore, I don’t think. Gay people just aren’t pariahs anymore.
Who’d thunk it? Anyway, the only real objection anymore would be the one discussed above; they just don’t like it. But I don’t think homosexuality is going anywhere anyway; it’s too complicated and there are too many varieties, as far as I can tell.
George Takei has a great sense of humor. I wish him and Brad the best.
http://www.positiveliberty.com/2008/06/on-facing-the-extinction-of-my-kind.html
Jacob wrote:
Yet some of us who are disabled do not want to be “treated” for it. Often, something other than “treatment,” and certainly other than “prevention” that amounts to elimination of us from the gene pool, is indicated. I don’t want to be one of the last generations of my kind. I am heartened by the molecular biologist’s response: maybe there will be future generations of autistic people because it will take a long time to figure out how to get rid of us.
I try to counteract the “disease model” of autism with that hope in mind. I am not “diseased” although I do have some definite disabilities vis-à-vis the majority of people (sensory processing difficulties, commnuication difficulties, motor uncoordination, low interest in social events, intense interests that are more important to me than “hanging out” with people, etc.). Still, it’s not a reason to eliminate me or “my kind”.
As to treatments that attempt to make us “normal” like the rest of society, any treatments or “conditioning” that do not respect human dignity and cause the individual pain or anguish, whether at the time of intervention or later in life as a result of it, are not worthy of the name “treatment.” No one asks African American people to pass as white anymore, and no one should demand of me that I act, not to mention *become* neurologically “typical.”
Just to pre-empt the charge that we are a burden on society: I am a taxpayer, as are many autistic people. It is true that some of us do require more support from society. As a taxpayer I involuntarily support many things that I do not agree with, such as my involuntary support of corporate welfare, or the way the war in Iraq has been conducted, all of which cost *way* more than autism does. As an autistic taxpayer I would be glad to redirect some of my taxes to services and support for autistic people who need it.
I’m a little late, but:
“Think what a playwright or a novelist could do with it!”
IMDB plot summary of “The Twilight of the Golds”, a 1997 movie:
“When Suzanne Stein has a genetic analysis done on her unborn child, she discovers that although she has a healthy baby, the child will most likely be born gay, like her brother, David. She must decide whether to keep the child, or to have an abortion. Her family enters a crisis about love and acceptance as she makes this difficult choice.”
I doubt that will happen with gays.
The science into gay genetics is going slow because, since being gay isn’t an official disorder, it’s hard to get funding to study it.
Meanwhile, people are becoming steadily more tolerant.
So most likely, by the time we can screen for gayness (which will probably be long before we can ‘cure’ it), most people will be so accepting that only very few people would actually be opposed to having a gay kid.
However, with autism, which I have, it’s a different matter. Many people still don’t see a problem with calling autistic people ’soulless’ (Dr Kartzinel recently did this, and many people defended him when autistic rights activists got upset about it) much less trying to prevent having an autistic child.
And because autism is not only a ‘devastating disorder’ but also a very common and (supposedly) rising condition, there’s lots of research funding into autism genetics.
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