A few weeks (months?) ago, David kicked off an interesting discussion on gay culture and sexual orientation. From The Utne Reader, here’s a smart take on the political logic of presenting sexual preferences as biologically predetermined:
Forty years ago, gay activists had a similar view, taking their cues from radical lesbian feminists who believed that heterosexuality and homosexuality were products of culture, not nature. “In the absence of oppression and social control,” writes historian John D’Emilio, gay liberationists believed that “sexuality would be polymorphous”—fluid, in other words. Back then they talked about “sexual preference,” which implies choice, as opposed to “sexual orientation,” which does not.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that the mental health establishment and its gay allies put forth the view that homosexuality is a permanent psychological condition and debunked the notion that it was a mental illness in need of a cure. Then came the 1980s and 1990s and a slew of shoddy and inconclusive scientific research on the biological origins of gayness, reinforcing the belief that sexuality is predestined. Both psychological and medical discourses formed today’s dominant paradigm, which insists that sexuality is inborn and immutable.
The LGBT activists who have helped construct this sexual framework are neither lazy nor naive in their thinking, as D’Emilio points out in his essay “Born Gay?,” a crisp case against the politics of biological determinism. As a political strategy, it has helped reap enormous benefits, from antidiscrimination legislation to adoption rights in some states and civil unions in others.
Saying “I was born this way” isn’t necessarily an expression of shame or inferiority.
I was also born predisposed to be tall, green-eyed, intelligent, strong-chinned, and totally lacking (as far as I can tell) in food allergies. I wouldn’t say I’m ashamed of any of those things. Most of them I even like.
But I do think, at least for me, that the disposition toward being gay was inborn. At any rate, it was certainly unchosen. I know this because at one time in my life I would have taken the straight pill too.
But not anymore. It would wreck the life I’ve built and hurt the people around me tremendously. If there were a choice, I sure as hell wouldn’t choose it.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, So in the nature/nurture debate, do you fall somewhere in the middle (at least with respect to sexual preferences)?Report
@Will,
I think the jury is still out. All I have are my internal experiences to go on, and I know that that can’t possibly be enough to settle the scientific question (which may, after all, have different answers for different people). Still, my internal experiences are what I have to build a life out of, and I can’t wait for the science to come in. So I’ve built.Report
This was a really good piece. However, it still seems a bit disingenuous. The Kinsey scale seems intuitively correct to me. What’s the problem with sticking to it? Homosexuality may be a choice for many but for me (Jason or the author of the linked piece) it’s not. Sexuality, like religion, may be a choice or may feel like a divine directive. It doesn’t really matter and shouldn’t be subject to political pressure.Report
Even if we agree that sexuality is genetic, does that re-enforce or cancel out the notion that it’s a genetic deviation?Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, I don’t like “genetic deviation” because it seems to imply “deviancy”… which implies that it’s something that ought to be corrected.
Surely you don’t mean this.
If you mean, well, it will result in the person’s genes not being carried onto the next generation, would a tendency to see abortion as a viable option be genetically deviant? A tendency to get a vasectomy? A tendency to be a spinster?
Let’s say that we, all of us, agree that homosexuality is a genetic deviancy.
Now what?Report
@Jaybird, I don’t mean deviant at all. What I am saying is, most genetic traits get a baseline and then there are deviancies. For example, brown, blue and green eye colors might be considered a baseline. Having one green and one blue might be considered a genetic deviation.
So..is homosexuality part of the baseline, like a preference for blondes, or is a deviation?Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, given that people were bitching about homosexuality back in the days of Leviticus and that Greek plays included jokes about the number of homosexuals in the audience and that Aristophanes himself made a rousing defense of homosexuality being something that just happens…
I’d say that it’s obviously part of the baseline. They’ve been with us for as long as male pattern baldness.Report
@Jaybird, So has Down Syndrome and diabetes. Surely you don’t argue those are part of our genetic baseline?Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, it would certainly never occur to me to consider them unnatural.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick,
I continue to struggle with your use of the words “genetic baseline” and “genetic deviancies.” I frankly don’t see them doing any useful work. Instead, they seem to be saying one thing, then another, depending on which way you’d like to argue at the moment.
On the one hand, these terms may be considered as synonyms for commonness or rarity — some traits are common (baseline), and others are rare (deviant). If that’s all you mean, though, then there is no point to you asking about whether homosexuality is part of the “genetic baseline” — because obviously homosexuality is a minority trait. It’s not a terribly interesting question.
On the other hand, you seem also to be saying that the baseline is what’s “normal” — that is, ordinary, and therefore both expected, and, dare I say, good enough.
But in this sense, the genetic baseline really sucks in a lot of ways. Some traits would be incredibly useful, but no one has them — like the ability to synthesize vitamin C internally. Meanwhile, many common, even universal traits are obviously undesirable — like susceptibility to tetanus or the fact that we can’t ingest methyl alcohol safely.
I would urge you to separate as carefully as you can the commonality of a trait from its desirability. And to consider that “baseline” doesn’t really exist in either of these senses. The commonality of various genes is always changing over biological timespans. And their desirability is dependent on many, many factors, including but not limited to the feelings of the person possessing the genes.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, Jason – the complexity you point out is exactly my point, which is that trying to assign biological orign to all homosexuals is opening a can of worms. I think the legal arguments for SSM (and that’s what it’s all about these days) would be more productive if couched in language that doesn’t try to infer origin for said sexual preference and instead attempts to make it a protected class anyway, like religion.Report
@Jaybird,
Good point. I’d rather be gay than do a come over.Report
@Cascadian, some of us are born bald, some of us choose baldness, some of us have baldness thrust upon us.Report
There is no such thing as a genetic “deviation.” For there to be a deviation, we would have to know what the ideal human being was, from which the deviation deviates. We don’t know it, and we never will.
We certainly do know that some traits enhance or diminish the likelihood of bearing offspring, but this reflects not at all on the worthiness of the individuals carrying them. The purely reproductive standard would make Genghis Khan the most successful human in recorded history. Jesus, Elizabeth I, and George Washington would all be failures. An absurd result.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, Aren’t all deviations relative?Report
@North, Yes – and that’s why I think the genetic explanation for homosexuality is dangerous. I’d prefer to not dwell on what causes it and focus on how it fits into our cultural institutions. The problem is that the genetic explanation helps out SSM proponents the most.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, Mike, any explanation short of homosexuality being a pure conscious choice helps SSM proponents and SS-anything proponents. Social conservatives lost this argument somewhere between twenty and forty years ago. They’ve been playing rearguard action on it ever since and they most absolutely certainly have not been thinking about how to fit it into our cultural institutions. How to beat, stomp and pariah it back into the underground culture perhaps. How to drive it fleeing out of our cultural institutions definitely but fit it into our culture? All social conservatives have ever said on the subject of homosexuality is a bloody invocation for the gays to either vanish or turn straight. In circumstances when neither of those responses are advisable to express then they answer with thunderous icy silence.Report
@North, I can pretty much guarantee that if you polled social conservatives on how they would deal with homosexuals, ‘vanish or convert’ is not going to be the response. It’s a little more nuanced than that.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, there’s also “I wish they would just not be so in-your-face about it.”Report
@Jaybird, I consider that a child of the “Vanish” position.Report
@North, it’s “vanish”, but more nuanced.Report
@Jaybird, That’s probably more accurate.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, You’d never guess from what they write when it comes to policy. Maggie for instance is famous for her long diatribes against various issues relating to gays and then scuttling lightning quick away with a terse “I don’t know.” when asked what she proposes instead.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick,
We certainly know how one social conservative would deal with homosexuals.Report
What’s wrong with “Make love, not war”?Report
@Mike Schilling , “Carry luggage, not hate”Report
@North, What’s the matter with choice? Why does it lose?Report
@Cascadian, “If you don’t like how society treats you then stop choosing to be gay.” Cas.Report
@North, I suppose it all depends. In my neighborhood you’d get more respect being gay than a bible thumper. Today, it seems more acceptable to ask people to quit being religious fundamentalists than it is to ask someone to quit dressing well.Report
@North, That’s great Cas, but twas not always so.Report
@North, So, keep the arguments pertinent to the ’50s? Why?Report
@North, Well Cas, if it was true then, then it presumably is true now. And if it wasn’t true then, then it presumably isn’t true now. Since my personal experience involved nothing even remotely involving a choice to be gay and since none of the traditional social-con scapegoats (neglect, single parents, bad relationships with one parent or both, abuse) existed in my childhood my most reliable data suggests to me that same sex attraction is non-chosen.Report
@North, If you read above, I favor the Kinsey understanding. There’s nothing wrong with saying for some it’s not a choice and for others it is. There’s nothing wrong with it. For some, it can be a wonderful choice. Jay likes quoting Vonegut’s “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be” He claims it’s one of three things he knows, along with “when you’re dead, you’re dead”, and my favorite, “Make love when you can, It’s good for you.”Report
@North, Fair enough, I like Kinsey myself. I still think he was more right than he was wrong.Report
I wonder if the issue isn’t about love more than about sexuality. My own life experience has involved a good deal of “playing for both teams” as it were (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Anyway, that was the one thing, and the other thing was romantic love. Thus far, I only fall in love with girls. Hence, I’m straight as an arrow. Except for sex. Of course, the real mentality that gays are fighting against, I suspect, is that love doesn’t enter into the discussion at all.Report