Kieran Healy

Innately Flexible

Matthew Yglesias and Kevin Drum both comment on a survey that Republicans think, by a margin of 61-39, that homosexuality is caused by upbringing; whereas Democrats opt for genes by a margin of 66-34.

This confirms a throwaway comment I read a few years ago, I think in the context of the Bell Curve debate. Conservatives think that everything except being gay is determined by the genes and Liberals think nothing but being gay is caused by genes. There’s a moral there somewhere.

Update: MacDiva has some comments.

“There’s a moral there somewhere.”

How about ‘Even ideology has limits?’

Moe

Consider schizophrenia. It is clearly partly genetic (if 1 identical twin is schizophrenic, the other is about 50% likely to be), but partly environmental (since 50% is not 100%). So it is clear that a major mental condition can be some of both. Further binary arguments are silly. What is interesting is what molecular mechanisms affect behavior, what environmental influences, and how these interact.

And I’m not comparing homosexuality to a disease. I’m simply drawing on research on a subject that few people would now characterize as a “moral defect” (but they used to).

Conservatives focus on the act, and our actions are of course always a choice. The liberal focuses on the desire which never is.

As a gay man, I hope very much no physiological component can be found. I fear the attempts to cure me.

“Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” – William Blake

The cart before the horse! Why look for the cause of homosexuality when the cause of heterosexuality has yet to be found?

Never one to shy from a good controversy, I have a case for “Genes” for you all to pick apart (Creationists may want to skip this one).

From the perspective of evolutionary biology/psychology it would make perfect sense that a certain percentage of people are born with their molecular/biological gender triggers in reverse. Assuming that humans, as a species, have been around for anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 years it’s safe to say that for much of that time we existed in smaller hunter/gatherer communities. Assuming that there is a case to be made that gender identification has a role in whether a person is more inclined to take up the hunt (or become a warrior) or remain at camp and nurture the children, it would leave these smaller communities/groups too vulnerable to extinction if all the men went on the hunt (or off to battle) and all the women stayed at camp. Maybe the hunting party is killed, or the base camp is devastated by predators or disease, but either way it would be in the best interest of the community’s survival if some of the men were more inclined to stay at camp (even better if they had no sexual interest in the women, from the hunters perspective) and helpful if some number of the women were less interested in having children [sex with the men] and more inclined to join in the hunt. I would be of a nature go so far as to make a case that homosexuality played a significant role in the survival of the human race. It just doesn’t seem right that we should persecute them now because we’re [supposedly] a modern civilization. After 100’s of thousands of years of serving a purpose (survival), evolutionary biology simply hasn’t had the time to catch up yet.

One more point in support of my example above. In our armed forces women make up a much smaller percentage of the total numbers, yet of those people discharged for being Gay the numbers are overwhelmingly female.

One more point in support of my example above. In our armed forces women make up a much smaller percentage of the total numbers, yet of those people discharged for being Gay the numbers are overwhelmingly female.

Thumb, you’re being silly. Homosocial environments all have homosexual undertones. The Navy was the place to be for gay men in the 70’s. It was party central. Professional athletics has a higher percentage of homosexuals than the general population. What are you saying: All lesbians are diesel dykes and all gay men are fairies?
The existence of a ‘gay’ gene is questionable at best, though it would make things easier for some to believe it.
Absolute sexual exclusivity is nothing other than a social convention and when it becomes an ideology, the hypocrisy makes it dangerously reactionary: there is an obvious relation between mysogynistic homosocial environments, environments based on fear of outsiders, and fascism.
But all this gets tiring.
If you’re that worried, just take two people to bed and call me in the morning.

Whether homosexuality (or heterosexuality) is genetically or socially determined is arbitrary.

The DSM-IV (this enormous tome of legal pyschological conventions and definitions)abandoned ‘homosexuality as disease’ a couple of decades ago.

Robert Bolton has made an attribution error by confounding ‘physiology’ with ‘cure’ – my perfectly healthy eyes are part of my physiology but no one is going to ‘cure’ my sight.

Just because conservatives and liberals “think” that homosexuality is determined socially or genetically, respectively, does not make homosexuality any less real or legitimate. An elderly relative of mine “thinks” that his houseplants are capable of conversation.

Well it’s obviously the uniform that determines the proponderance of homosexuality in the Navy. Genet called the sailor’s outfit “the most erotic article of clothing every devised.” I thoroughly agree. Of all the branches of the service it’s been my pleasure to fuck, I rate the Navy Number Once.

Well it’s obviously the uniform that determines the proponderance of homosexuality in the Navy. Genet called the sailor’s outfit “the most erotic article of clothing every devised.” I thoroughly agree. Of all the branches of the service it’s been my pleasure to fuck, I rate the Navy Number Once.

I’ve picked up the ball and carried it a few yards at Mac-a-ro-nies. My goal was to consider nature v. nurture as a measure of people’s feelings about the status quo in regard to homosexuality and race.

What are you saying: All lesbians are diesel dykes and all gay men are fairies?

No, no, no. I try and avoid absolutes like “all” and “every” as much as possible, especially when talking about something as organic as human biological tendencies. I was just trying to make the supposition that for the health and well being of the gene pool over the millennia it would have been in our best survivalist interests if we didn’t fall neatly into Boy/Girl tendency absolutes. I just saw a random statistic a couple years back (unrelated to this topic) that said women made up a smaller percentage of inlistees yet made up a higher number of those removed from the military for being gay and threw it into my theory that whatever determines our gender tendencies, and the variances we see in effect today, could be there for survival purposes, evolutionarily speaking.

I’m a liberal who doesn’t care whether homosexuality is genetic.

Conservatives will sometimes argue “homosexuality is a choice, therefore it is OK to discriminate against homosexuals”.

The weak argument against this is “no, it’s not a choice”.

That’s garbage. The real point is that there’s nothing wrong with it. I don’t care if it’s a choice, or genetic, or environmental. For the purposes of politics and morality, it just doesn’t matter. It’s not wrong.

How do we explain homosexual behavior in animals other than humans?

There is a jargon laden book by Bruce Baglem that explains instances of non-human homosexuality. I read it last year. Honestly, I think the question is unfair. One might also ask, how do we explain asexual behavior in animals other than humans?

It’s all in the fingers:

Does a Short Index Finger Make You Gay?

No, THIS is what makes you gay.

“One more point in support of my example above. In our armed forces women make up a much smaller percentage of the total numbers, yet of those people discharged for being Gay the numbers are overwhelmingly female.”

-Posted by Thumb at April 10, 2003 04:02 PM

Perhaps a better explanation would be suspicion at those who violate gender rules. Just as male ballet dancers come under suspicion of being gay, because they’re doing a ‘feminine’ activity, female soldiers come under suspicion of being lesbians, because they’re doing a ‘masculine’ activity.

how does homosexuality being genetic provide a better argument for gay rights?

both the us constitution and (i think) the un charter for human rights provide for freedom of/from religion. is religion genetic?

so if a gov’t isn’t allowed to tell me what god(s) i can believe in, why is it allowed to tell me who i can love? if a gov’t protects me from discrimination because of what god(s) i believe in, why can’t they protect me from discrimination because of who i love?

I wonder if an unexpected result of this Iraqi “incident” will be the eventual loss of the “don’t ask, tell, persue” policy in the US armed forces. The Brits do not discharge service members & they’re fighting in Iraq. Sorta puts the lie to all the reasons listed for exclusion doesn’t?? Unless Bu$h told Tony-my toy poodle-Blair to exclude any non hetero soldiers.

I’m with Kevin Lyda. The whole issue is a freedom of religion issue. All the “moral” arguments about the evil of homosexuality come from religions so it is clearly a freedom of religion issue.

On the issue of ideological inconsistancy, I’ve emailed the following to Yglesias and Drum so I’ll post it here too:

We had a case here in Virginia a few years back you may have heard about – the lesbian mom with the live-in partner who lost custody of her baby to the baby’s grandmother – that is the lesbian’s mother.

The judge, obviously from the “upbringing” school of thought didn’t want that baby to be influenced by the mother’s lesbian lifestyle. My question was: “If the issue is upbringing, then why award the baby to the woman who has already raised a homosexual?”…thekeez

David: a sexual species that is obligate homosexual would die out in one generation, so that isn’t going to be observed (at least, not for very long). A sexual species that is dominately homosexual is going to be prone to subversion by the minority heterosexual individuals who will enjoy disproportionate reproductive success, so it is hard to see how that would be an evolutionary stable scenario.

All: I am convinced by decades of observation that sexuality, like other elements of temperment, is innate. I don’t know whether it’s genetic, but one is born with one’s desires and education and environment will do little or nothing to change the focus of those desires. In other words, I could fuck a young man, I suppose, but I couldn’t make myself want to.

JC

Why a young man, JC ?

Why not an old one ?

The knee-jerk by which sexualpleasure and romantic engagement are transformed into a Darwinian Gotterdamerung has always amused me.
Shouldn’t you breeders be out there casitgating one another over infertility?

Meanwhile in Newly-Freed Iraq, Our Fighting Men Show the Kurds What We’re made Of—SHEER FABULOUSNESS

As to military discharge rates being higher for gay women than for gay men, I recently heard this trend at least partially attributed to the fact that men tend to be more discreet, and take it “off base”, where women are more likely to have relationships “in the barracks” where it is more blatant, and thus more of a discipline or morale issue, (at least in the eyes of their superior officers),leading to a higher discharge rate.

As to the evolutionary question, I fail to see how having homosexual men staying home to nuture children, or having homosexual women go off to war or hunt, could contribute to the evolutionary survival of the tribe or culture, if they never at any point got involved in procreative activities, which would be obviously against their inclinations. What, only in a pinch?

So procreation is compulsory, then?
Obviously you breeders have to put your house in order on that score before moving on to us. Surely penalties of some sort should accrue to the “barren.”

As for women doing it “on base” as opposed to men—hah! A likely story!

Women—be they lesbian or not—are tossed out of the military for lesbianism largely because its defined by the woman in question’s disinclination to get fucked by males (of any rank) at their will.

David,

in one context, procreation is compulsory*. And, in this context, penalties most certainly do accrue to barren ‘breeders’.

The context is evolutionary biology, of course. And, in that context, the question whether homosexuality has some genetic basis is legitimate and important. (And, for the present anyway, unanswerable.)

In other contexts, the question is neither legitimate not important. I’d dearly love to know whether and to what extent there is a genetic component to homosexuality for the same reason I’d love to know the answers to other evolutionary questions. But for the purpose of deciding whether gay people should enjoy freedom from discrimination, full civil rights etc., I don’t need to know whether homosexuality is the result of (i) genes, (ii) environment, (iii) a mix of both, or (iv) orbital mind-control lasers. And what’s more, for this purpose I don’t care why people are gay.

As it happens, I believe very firmly that gay people should enjoy freedom from discrimination and full civil rights. But note that somebody believing the opposite could just as easily make the statements in the last two sentences of the preceding paragraph.

People are all too often predisposed to believe things they think support their positions. So I suppose it’s no surprise that anti-gay right-wingers would like to think homosexuality is a ‘choice’, while less bigoted people want to think it’s ‘genetic’. The former are more distasteful, but both are wrong, and for the same reason. Wrong, that is, in wanting to press an essentially scientific question into ideological service. Either one might happen to be right on that question; but outside a scientific context, why should anybody care why some people are gay? Some are, that’s all; just like some are left-handed (genetic) and some are Buddhists (choice). And gay people, left-handers and Buddhists (among others) shouldn’t face discrimination.

• But note that, to make the evolutionary ‘cut’, one doesn’t necessarily need to procreate personally. The reason for this should be clear enough if you give it a minute’s thought.

The trouble, Mrs.Tilton is that scientific questions aren’t so easily removed from ideological service. In your view asking whether same-sex relations has a genetic basis is a purely scientific one. It doesn’t occur to you that who gets to ask that question lies at the heart of the matter. For the questioner is obviously he or she operating from a position of power—in other words the question is asked by the status quo.

And the status quo is not the province of gays and lesbians.

Until very very recently (in my own lifetime in fact) the notion that gays and lesbians would stand up and speak for themselves rather than be spoken for by the culture was a highly radicalone.

And that is because after the invention of “homosexuality,” identified as a “perversion” of “heterosexuality,” at the close of the 19th century, medical and scientific”authorities” joined forces with those in political power to not only stigmatize “the homosexaul” but penalize, imprison, castrate and lobotomize said individuals for the supposed “good” of one and all. Those of us who fought in the gay rights movement haven’t forgotten that. Nor do we presume that it has been forgotten by those in power.

I have been informed by those working in health services pertaining to the AIDS epidemic that the Bush Junta expressly forbids the use of the word “gay” or the mention of condoms in any context whatsoever pertaining to AIDS.

David writes:

scientific questions aren’t so easily removed from ideological service.

Quite so. It’s all the more important, then, to point out when science is being abused, don’t you think? The alternative would be to suppress science (either directly, or through a radical subjectivism that would portray science as just so much institutionalised dead white protestant straight male prejudice). Babies and bathwater, David.

In your view asking whether same-sex relations has a genetic basis is a purely scientific one.

Well, almost. The question may be, and often is, asked for non-scientific reasons. As noted in the post we’re commenting on, it’s generally answered ‘yes’ by those who support equal rights for gay people, and ‘no’ by those who don’t. My view is that the question, however often asked and for whatever reasons, is a legitimate question in a scientific context, and not otherwise. (And, in that context, the only answer any honest scientist can currently give is a ringing ‘maybe’.)

It doesn’t occur to you that who gets to ask that question lies at the heart of the matter. For the questioner is obviously he or she operating from a position of power—in other words the question is asked by the status quo.

David, I’m not insensitive to the appalling treatment meted out to gay people in many societies. Even in ‘enlightened’ western society, though things have (recently) got better – no more castrations or lobotomies that I know of – we’re far from where we should be. So I can readily understand why seeing this question bandied about would set off alarm bells for you. That said, your last paragraph above is the worst sort of pomo twaddle. (Please do not misunderstand me – I am attacking the ideas that paragraph expresses, not you personally.)

When we are talking about scientific enquiry, the heart of the matter is that it doesn’t matter who asks the question. The question is not asked from a position of power, but expressly from a position of impotence – the impotence of ignorance. It is asked, because we don’t know the answer. If there is ‘power’ at play, then only in the power of a good explanation for the phenomenon. The whole purpose of the question is to achieve that power, which is not the sort of power you are talking about.

Some years ago, Robert Trivers was puzzled by homosexual behaviour (as it happens, in gulls rather than in humans; but the puzzle presented is the same for any species). The puzzle is this: same-sex pairs don’t reproduce; if there is a genetic factor that contributes to homosexuality, then we’d have to expect that factor to be culled in short order by natural selection. But there are clearly plenty of gay people, and plenty of animals that exhibit homosexual behaviour. Well then, perhaps there is simply no genetic basis for homosexuality (for natural selection can’t work on something that has no genetic basis). Plausible enough in humans, perhaps; less so in gulls. As an alternative, Trivers considered whether there was indeed a genetic factor, and whether the concept of inclusive fitness could explain how that factor was ‘adaptive’, i.e., likely to be passed on, despite the fact that the individual possessing that factor was unlikely to reproduce directly. He thought it could.

Now, Trivers’s findings hardly settle the issue. We still can’t say with any certainty whether there is a genetic factor to homosexuality. And, if there is, there are other explanations for that factor’s ability to survive than inclusive fitness. But what is important for our purposes here is that it doesn’t matter one bit whether Trivers is gay or straight, or whether he supports equal rights for homosexuals or is a homophobe. These points are irrelevant to his findings. As it happens, those findings can be marshalled to serve a gay-friendly argument and are rather inconvenient for right-wingers who would like to argue that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’. But as I said in my previous comment, I don’t think science should be coopted for ideological purposes, even for those I personally find congenial.*

I have no reason to think Trivers is a homophobe. But let’s imagine for a moment that he is. If so, his findings merely underscore the lack of any legitimate connection between scientific enquiry into homosexuality and the political issue of equal rights for homosexuals. It would be his prerogative, for example, to oppose anti-discrimination laws; but he of all people would be well aware that there would be no scientific basis for his opinion.

• Note that I think it perfectly legitimate to use a scientific argument to counter somebody else’s misuse of science. For example, if a right-winger is maintaining that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’ and ‘anti-evolutionary’ – and I have seen people make this argument – it’s quite right to let Trivers’s gulls peck at his eyes. But then one should also go on to point out that the answer to the scientific question ‘Why are some people homosexual?’ – assuming we can ever arrive at an answer, and whatever that answer might be – is of precisely zero relevance to the question ‘Should gays enjoy a life free of discrimination?’

“The question is not asked from a position of power, but expressly from a position of impotence – the impotence of ignorance. It is asked, because we don’t know the answer.”

With the clear implication that action should be taken once the “answer” is found.

“Some years ago, Robert Trivers was puzzled by homosexual behaviour (as it happens, in gulls rather than in humans; but the puzzle presented is the same for any species). The puzzle is this: same-sex pairs don’t reproduce; if there is a genetic factor that contributes to homosexuality, then we’d have to expect that factor to be culled in short order by natural selection.”

His “puzzlemennt” proceeds fromthe assumption that living is primarily about reproducing. Clearly these gay gulls were involved in something else. Is it going too far to suggest that some form of aviary satisfaction was involved?

Apparently as”science” has decided that everyhting revolves around reproduction. And that in turn means that any non-reproductive activity is “behavior” that “deviates” from the reproductive “Norm.”

The is nothing more than Heterosexual Ideology at its most absolute.

“But what is important for our purposes here is that it doesn’t matter one bit whether Trivers is gay or straight, or whether he supports equal rights for homosexuals or is a homophobe. These points are irrelevant to his findings.”

They’re entirely relevant—from your—point of view, to the question of the seriousness of his enterprise in making findings. He must be posited as neutral and above it all—like “science” itself.

But “science” is never neutral.

I highly reccomend that you get ahold of a video of John Grayson’s musical Zero Patience, in which a search for the “origin” of AIDS is undertaken by Sir Richard Burton.

Here’s the chorus to his bug number “Culture of Certianty”:

Let’s all be Empericists
Victors of the brain
Throught our wit and brilliance
We can know the world again
We’ll calssify and label
Fint the answers out
A culture of certainty
will banish every doubt

David,

context is everything. You’re correct to note that there’s much more to life than reproduction. In the context of evolutionary biology, though, reproduction is what it’s all about. That’s not heterosexual ideology; it’s just a fact. (It would be heterosexual ideology to say that, because homosexual behaviour is non-reproductive, it is therefore ‘unnatural’. But it isn’t evolutionary theory that says this.)

Evolutionary theory doesn’t say that non-reproductive behaviour is a departure from any ‘norm’. It is the norm for worker bees to refrain from reproduction, yet they have done very nicely, evolutionarily speaking. (Rather better, in fact, than they would if they did reproduce directly, thanks to bees’ haplodiploidy.)

I daresay Trivers assumed his gulls enjoyed what they were doing. From an evolutionary standpoint, though, their enjoyment is neither here nor there. The puzzle remains: if a behaviour that has a genetic component tends to reduce the incidence of reproduction, how can a gene contributing to that behaviour be inherited? (I.e., inherited at a sufficient rate that it is not supplanted by an allele that does not contribute to the behaviour. W.D. Hamilton showed how bees manage the feat; Trivers wondered whether the same mechanism might be at work in his gulls.) The answer is not important in most contexts, and I doubt it’s very important to the gulls. It is important, though, to an understanding of evolution.

You make an important point in your first paragraph, though:

the clear implication [is] that action should be taken once the “answer” is found.

Well, that’s certainly not my implication. But your worries aren’t unfounded. If it does turn out that there is a genetic component to homosexuality, I’m sure some ‘concerned’ persons would advocate ‘fixing the problem’. I don’t see it as a problem that needs fixing, and I’d be on guard against any such suggestion (and I hope all decent scientists would be too). But that sort of talk isn’t science. It’s politics (or, and here your accusation is correct, ‘heterosexual ideology’).

Thank you for your thoughtful reply (and please excuse the typos in my post which was written in haste on my way out the door to a screening.)

Still your insistence that “In the context of evolutionary biology, though, reproduction is what it’s all about. That’s not heterosexual ideology; it’s just a fact” is the heart of the matter, IMHO. If evolutionary biology is content merely to account for reproductive activity than it is little use in dealing with how people actualy live and why.

“I don’t see it as a problem that needs fixing, and I’d be on guard against any such suggestion (and I hope all decent scientists would be too). But that sort of talk isn’t science. It’s politics” Precisely. And while you insist on a divide between the two I have never known that to be the case.

I am currently reading Greag Palast’s The Best Democracy That Money Can Buy, and found this passage on page 186 relating to the World Trade Origanization’s TRIPS policy (“a penal system for countries caught importing or exporting in contravention of marketing plans that own coporate ideas.”)

“TRIPS seeks to protect and compensate manufacturers for their risky investments and inventiveness in creating medicines like AZT, Glaxo-Wellcome’s anti-AIDS drug, right?
Glaxo was inventive, all right, but not in discovering AZT. A Professor Jerome Horowitz synthetized the drug in 1964,under a grant from the U.S. governmnet’s National Institutes of Health (HIH). A Glaxo unit bought the formula to use on pet cats”

[Let us pause here for a moment to consider that salient fact. The first mdication offered to stave off HIV was cat medicine.]

“In 1984, an NIH lab discovered the HIV virus. The government lab urgently asked drug makers o send samples of every anti-retrovirus drug on thei shelves.NIH spent millions inventing a method to test these compounds. When the tests showed AZT killed the virus, the government asked Glaxo, as the compound’s owner, to conduct lab tests. Glaxo refused.”

There is, of course, a lot more to this story. But the alleged “purity” of of science plays no more part in it that it does in anything else.
For scientific “putirty” is nothing more than Public Relations.

More typos!

(sorry)

David,

If evolutionary biology is content merely to account for reproductive activity than it is little use in dealing with how people actualy live and why.

There’s debate about how much evolutionary theory can tell us about how people live and why, sure. (And a small amount of this debate is on my blog, and Scott Martens’s, and Kevin Drum’s; you might have to rummage through the archives.) But I think you’ve got an important point back to front, and it’s worth clearing up. It’s not that evolutionary theory tries to account only for reproductive behaviour. Rather, reproduction is the sine qua non for evolution to occur at all.

I should point out that, in an evolutionary context, reproduction is a much broader concept than ‘having sex in a way that makes babies’. It’s whatever it is that transmits genes from one bearer to a new bearer. The tiny green aphids that pester rosebushes reproduce (most of the time) without sex. In a very real sense, those worker bees reproduce without, emm, reproducing. By playing a supporting role to their mother the Queen, they pass along 75% of their genes rather than the 50% they’d manage if they had offspring directly. In this same sense, you can reproduce even if your sexual life is entirely non-reproductive (if you have fertile, reproductively active siblings, then congratulations dad: every one of their kids carries 25% of your genes).

So it’s all about reproduction, but not necessarily all about sex (even reproductive sex). Indeed, one of the most vexing questions in evolutionary theory is why there should be sex at all (‘sex’ here meaning any form of reproduction that combines the genes of the parents such that each passes only a portion of its genes on to the new organism). Think about it: if evolutionary success is passing the maximum amount of your genotype on to a new generation, why limit yourself to 50% at the outset, a proportion that will halve itself with every subsequent generation after that? And yet sexual reproduction continues to be a popular choice for all sorts of species. There are a number of competing theories as to why (some of them bearing wonderful names like ‘parasite red queen’). If you’re interested in this sort of thing, you might want to have a look at Olivia Judson’s Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation (if I’ve remembered the title correctly). Solid science and a laugh a minute, all in one slim volume. You’ll learn a lot about evolution and why sex is such a hard thing to explain; and I’d challenge anybody who has read the book to argue with a straight face that anything humans do with each other is ‘unnatural’.

As to the purity of science: admittedly it’s an ideal to be aimed for; we probably can’t successfully compartmentalise ourselves 100%. That doesn’t absolve us from the duty to try. The ‘genetic factor behind homosexuality’ is a perfect case in point. For the evolutionary biologist, it’s a legitimate and highly interesting question (though far beyond our powers to answer definitively right now). But, at the risk of repeating myself, its answer (whatever that might be) has shag-all to do with questions about gay rights. You’ve correctly identified the potential danger that an answer to the former question could be misused for anti-gay political ends (and for that matter it could be misused for gay-friendly political ends; that’s as much a misuse of science, even if it’s less personally repulsive to me). As I see it, the alternatives for neutralising dangers like this are: suppress science, or else be vigilant against science’s misuse. I opt for the latter.

As for Glaxo: I would point out that they are a profit-seeking corporation. Presumably, at the time you describe, Glaxo thought AZT wouldn’t make enough money to be interesting; and presumably it was thoughts of the nice margins to be made selling AZT that changed their minds. Morally repugnant to be sure; but I suspect what you are describing is less politics than business.

Business is politics, Mrs. Tilton.

And science too.

“As to the purity of science: admittedly it’s an ideal to be aimed for; we probably can’t successfully compartmentalise ourselves 100%. That doesn’t absolve us from the duty to try.”

But you clearly feel absolved from the duty of defending the Politics of Scientific Inquiry.

All questions regarding the “origin” of same-sexuality proceed from the assumption that the “origin” of heterosexuality need not be questioned. Evolutionary Biology is is therefore a convient dodge. Since male-female congress can —repeat can—result in offspring it ranks itself above everything else in that it’s primary function is claimed to be “the continuance of the species.”

If this is the case then every man and woman seeking sexual congress should be grilled as to their sincerity in taking on this weighty task.

Th same-sex oriented, in this sunny eugenics-minded scenario, have no role—and therefore must be justified in some way. Thus ceaseless questions about our “origin.”

Well I’ve had it.

This is a two-way street.

I demand to see your papers!

Why are you having sexual relations with Mr. Tilton? Have they resulted in offspring?

And most important of all, tell us about those occasions of sexual congress with Mr.Tilton in which offspring were neither producer or desired or even considered

Take as much time and space as you want.

Business is politics, Mrs. Tilton.

And science too.

“As to the purity of science: admittedly it’s an ideal to be aimed for; we probably can’t successfully compartmentalise ourselves 100%. That doesn’t absolve us from the duty to try.”

But you clearly feel absolved from the duty of defending the Politics of Scientific Inquiry.

All questions regarding the “origin” of same-sexuality proceed from the assumption that the “origin” of heterosexuality need not be questioned. Evolutionary Biology is is therefore a convient dodge. Since male-female congress can —repeat can—result in offspring it ranks itself above everything else in that it’s primary function is claimed to be “the continuance of the species.”

If this is the case then every man and woman seeking sexual congress should be grilled as to their sincerity in taking on this weighty task.

Th same-sex oriented, in this sunny eugenics-minded scenario, have no role—and therefore must be justified in some way. Thus ceaseless questions about our “origin.”

Well I’ve had it.

This is a two-way street.

I demand to see your papers!

Why are you having sexual relations with Mr. Tilton? Have they resulted in offspring?

And most important of all, tell us about those occasions of sexual congress with Mr.Tilton in which offspring were neither producer or desired or even considered

Take as much time and space as you want.

An interesting discussion….but I have always felt such discussions dont go far enough in the defining of homosexuality. Sexual practice is awfully varied and fluid…..people who have had one homosexual experience for instance…..probably wont be thought of as gay….but what about ten? OR fifty? Or one hundred….. Now if the person who had 100 homosexual encounters also had 300 heterosexual encounters…..would that person be gay? What if someone never had a homosexual encounter but had fantasies about it his/her whole life? My personal suspicion is that most people are bisexual….to some degree….depending on cultural conditioning (in prison, if you’ve served more than ten years, its assumed you will have sexual relations with other men, but nobody will call you anyting negative for it). To think there is a gene for sexual preference seems like bad science.

David –
All questions regarding the “origin” of same-sexuality proceed from the assumption that the “origin” of heterosexuality need not be questioned.

Emm, no. Did you read what I posted above? The origin of heterosexual sex cries out for explanation; the question is a major one for evolutionary biologists. My suspicion is that papers examining this question outnumber papers asking about the origin of homosexuality by a factor of hundreds if not thousands. Now I suppose you might complain that this disparity reflects an anti-homosexual agenda. Perhaps it does. But you can’t complain that it’s homophobic to enquire about a genetic component to homosexuality and that it’s homophobic to enquire so much more often about a genetic component to heterosexuality; not at the same time, anyway.

Since male-female congress can—repeat can—result in offspring it ranks itself above everything else in that it’s primary function is claimed to be “the continuance of the species.”

Male-female congress ranks above ‘everything else’ solely as a means of making babies. Few heterosexuals, I think, say as they are disporting themselves, ‘What I am doing ranks above everything else because I am continuing the species.’ I’ll answer your question in general terms, I think, rather than drag Mr Tilton into this, but I would say that heterosexuals (except when deliberately trying to conceive, and most of the time they are not) have sex for pretty much the same reasons homosexuals do. (And yes, I have children; we didn’t set out deliberately to make any of them.)

And any heterosexual who did claim to be working for the continuance of the species would be wrong. There’s still some argument over this, but the general consensus is that natural selection (the motor of evolution) operates primarily on the individual (and many go further, identifying the individual gene as the focus of selection). Most evolutionists would say that selection at the level of species (or higher groups), to the extent it occurs at all, is not a significant factor in evolution. In other words, reproduction is not about ‘continuing the species’. It’s about the continuation of individuals (i.e., continuation of elements of their genotype: the individuals themselves die, and their genotypes as a whole aren’t passed along unless they reproduce clonally, as some organisms do). And remember, from an evolutionist’s view point reproduction does not equal sex. You might never father a child yourself, but if you have a brother or sister with two children, you have reproduced as effectively as if you had. No evolutionist would claim that a person (or any animal) with a same-sex orientation ‘has no role’. (And how on earth does eugenics come into any of this? How often must I repeat to you that, if homosexuality does turn out to have some genetic component, then however interesting that might be in the context of evolutionary science, my reaction in any other context would be ‘So what?’. And if biologists can one day determine that it has no genetic component, then all talk of eugenics is irrelevant. But whatever the answer may be, do you think that I am suddenly going to start hating gay people if there isn’t a genetic factor, or that homophobes will suddenly stop if there is?)

I’m not sure what you mean by the ‘politics of scientific enquiry’, or why I should be defending it. I suppose what I’d defend, if you want to call it ‘politics’, would be this: the natural world is worth learning about. If there are things about we don’t know, try to find the answer. How about you? You don’t come right out and say it, but there is an implication in what you write that some lines of enquiry should be suppressed because others could misuse the findings for their political ends. I can’t agree with that. I couldn’t agree with it when the Roman Catholic church silenced Galileo (because it regarded his views as not merely false but also if true, dangerous), and I can’t agree with you now, if this is what you are saying.

John –
To think there is a gene for sexual preference seems like bad science.

That’s true. There are competing theories at present. Some think homosexuality has nothing to do with genetics. Some think there might be a genetic component. Right now, all anybody can say is that either view might be right. But most biologists, I think, would agree that it’s extraordinarily unlikely there is ‘a’ gene ‘for’ homosexuality (i.e., if you have it, you’re gay, and if not, not). First, most elements of our nature do not depend on a single gene but on complex networks of genes. Second, we become what we are through the interplay of genes and environment – the same genes could produce a different effect if operating under differing environmental variables. And most psychologists would agree that gay/straight is not a binary thing but a spectrum, with individuals occupying a place somewhere along the line. If there is a genetic factor contributing to homosexuality, then I’d expect this would mean that possessing certain genes would, all environmental variables being equal, make one more likely to occupy a spot on the spectrum closer to the ‘same-sex’ than to the ‘other-sex’ pole than would be the case if one possessed the alleles of those genes.

“You don’t come right out and say it, but there is an implication in what you write that some lines of enquiry should be suppressed because others could misuse the findings for their political ends.”

What I come out and say is that science should cease its pretense of ivory tower disinterest and admit that it is a weapon wielded by the culture that it serves.

“Misue findings” suggest that I’d get an answer I don’t want to hear. It’s the question that I object to in that it already contains an answer. Where there’s a “cause” there must be a “cure.” Get it?

“In other words, reproduction is not about ‘continuing the species’. It’s about the continuation of individuals (i.e., continuation of elements of their genotype: the individuals themselves die, and their genotypes as a whole aren’t passed along unless they reproduce clonally, as some organisms do). ”

Then it is nothing but narcissistic folly.

Individuals stop at death.

David,

What I come out and say is that science should cease its pretense of ivory tower disinterest and admit that it is a weapon wielded by the culture that it serves.

I see. Galileo’s science was a weapon wielded by a Roman Catholic culture that placed the earth at the centre of the universe; Darwin’s science a weapon wielded by a Victorian culture believing in divine order and a hierarchy of being. The weapon has a dangerous tendency to backfire, wouldn’t you say? Science that allows itself to be wielded as a cultural weapon is generally bad science; consider Lysenko.

It’s the question that I object to in that it already contains an answer. Where there’s a “cause” there must be a “cure.” Get it?

With all due respect, you are the one who is not getting it. The question doesn’t contain its own answer; it implies neither that there’s a ‘cure’, nor that there’s a disease that would require a cure in the first place.* You’re perfectly free to continue believing that scientific knowledge is a ‘weapon’, of course. And you seem to have found a pretty effective means of disarming yourself.

• In fact what I think you’re missing is that, for an evolutionist, the question of whether homosexuality has a genetic component is not interesting for what it can tell us about homosexual people (it can tell us nothing at all about that). It is interesting for what it can tell us about how evolution works.

Then [reproduction] is nothing but narcissistic folly. Individuals stop at death.

Of course they do. That was the point of the bit between the parentheses. Reproduction doesn’t recreate individuals. It recirculates the genomes of individuals: their entire genomes (bar mutations) for asexually reproducing organisms, parts of it combined with others for sexually reproducing organisms. Reproduction may well be folly; but (in a very literal sense) life goes on. Whether it is narcissistic is open to question; it certainly isn’t for the vast majority of organisms that, as far as we can tell, have no concept of ‘self’ to be narcissistic about.

“Galileo’s science was a weapon wielded by a Roman Catholic culture that placed the earth at the centre of the universe; Darwin’s science a weapon wielded by a Victorian culture believing in divine order and a hierarchy of being.”

And as well all know scientific history is rife with Galileos and Darwins. Why the Catholic church never recovered from Galileo’s discoveries. And as we all know Darwin is accepted today by one and all.

Except of course for those practitioners of “Scientific Creationism” who have the ear of the Drunken Fratboy Coward squatting in the oval office.

Bottom line: You are free to carry on with speculating as to how many genomes dance on the head of a pin. It’s very much beside the gay and lesbian point.

Here’s another “scientific” theory.

And by the way—I’m an only child!

David –
Bottom line: You are free to carry on with speculating as to how many genomes dance on the head of a pin. It’s very much beside the gay and lesbian point.

Agreed. As I’ve said, knowing whether there is (or isn’t) any genetic component to homosexuality will tell us precisely zero about gay and lesbian people. People aren’t who they are simply because of their genes; if somebody is gay, then that’s what they are, and that’s good enough for me. It’s not beside the evolutionary-biology point, though. If there is a genetic component to homosexuality, then I am very interested indeed to know whether, for example, that component increases inclusive fitness (as Trivers thought it might for his lesbian gulls), or whether there is some other mechanism at work.

And as we all know Darwin is accepted today by one and all.

He pretty much is, actually. Evolution (that is, Darwin’s theory of evolution as driven primarily by natural selection) is accepted virtually universally, even by the same Roman Catholic church that once put Galileo under house arrest. Creationism (‘scientific’ or otherwise) is an almost exclusively American phenomenon.

And by the way—I’m an only child!

Ah well. Still, unless you’re descended from a very long line of only children, there’s likely to be any number of David genes in circulation. (Haldane once very neatly summarised inclusive fitness by saying he’d lay down his life for two brothers, or four cousins.) And, if there’s a genetic component to making good photographs, I hope this is the case. (I’ve visited your website – which made me very much ashamed of my own low-tech efforts – and really like your portraits.)

Thanks. It’s just a hobby, but some of them turned out quite well.

What do you mean by “inclusive fitness”? Does this relate to genetic patterns?

‘Fitness’, in evolutionary terms, simply measures how much of your genome you manage to pass on. At first blush, you’d think this would be 1/2 the number of offspring (because each offspring of a sexually-reproducing organism carries half that organism’s genes). But this misses a big part of the picture. Each of the organism’s siblings also carries half its genes (and so, in genetic terms, is equivalent to its offspring). When a sibling reproduces, its offspring carry 1/4 the organism’s genes; more distant relatives carry smaller parts. In a given generation, the organism’s inclusive fitness is half its offspring, plus one quarter its siblings’ offspring, plus one eighth its first cousins’ offspring, and so on. So, the organism can still show evolutionary fitness without itself reproducing.

Worker bees are a dramatic example. Darwin and others were at a loss to explain these bees’ apparent selfless devotion; they suggested some vague group-selectionist altruism at work (‘for the good of the hive’, so to speak.) As it turns out, worker bees are (genetically speaking) very selfish indeed. W.D. Hamilton showed why. Bees and their relatives are haplodiploid. Drones (males) develop from unfertilised eggs, while females (workers, mostly, plus the occasional queen) develop from fertilised eggs. A worker bee’s siblings share more (75%) of its genes than would its own offspring. If you consider only individual fitness, the workers’ ‘altruism’ makes no sense. But their inclusive fitness is greater if they work to maximise the queen’s reproductive success than it would be if they themselves reproduced.

Humans (and most other animals) aren’t haplodiploid. But inclusive fitness can still be at work. An organism (it can be human if you like, but that doesn’t particularly matter) that for whatever reason cannot or does not wish to reproduce can still ‘reproduce’ indirectly, through its siblings, cousins etc. If the organism in some way helps the siblings etc. have greater reproductive success than they would without the organism’s assistance, the organism increases its own inclusive fitness.

This is where same-sex pairings enter the picture. An organism with an exclusively same-sex orientation is unlikely to reproduce personally (it happens, of course, though it’s likely to be at a much lower rate than in its opposite-sex-oriented relatives). If there is a genetic basis for the orientation (this doesn’t mean that genes rigidly determine the orientation, merely that there is some genetic factor to it), then if you didn’t know about inclusive fitness, you’d expect that genetic factor to disappear pretty quickly. But if that genetic factor also helped its bearer to increase its inclusive fitness, it wouldn’t disappear; it would be passed on through the offspring of close relatives, and, since it added to overall fitness, would keep expressing itself in individuals with the same-sex orientation. (Note that any single same-sex oriented individual with this factor wouldn’t necessarily have actually to act in a way that increased its inclusive fitness; what matters is the overall tendency among all individuals with this factor.)

So far, all this is just what evolutionists, in tribute to Kipling, call a ‘just-so story’ – a plausible explanation, but one you could come up with sitting in an armchair; it might have no connection at all with reality. (And I should note that inclusive fitness is not the only possible explanation of how a genetic factor for homosexuality, if there is one, would survive despite the apparent paradox, i.e., how could a tendency not to reproduce sexually be passed on to new generations?). To firm it up, you’d need to predict (for example) that non-breeding female gulls who form a lesbian relationship tend to get more of their genes passed on than non-breeding females who don’t; and then you’d have to go out to the field, band a bunch of gulls, and start counting.

It’s a lot easier to use this hypothesis to explain same-sex behaviour in gulls (and even more so in insects – yes, there are insects with same-sex sexual behaviours) than in humans. The behaviour of most animals, especially the so-called ‘lower’ animals, tends to be stereotypical. That of humans is much more plastic (and almost certainly determined by genes to a far smaller extent than in other animals). But there are ways to test the hypothesis that increased inclusive fitness helps explain the success of a genetic factor for human homosexuality (again, if there is one). Among some Native American groups, certain males would assume a female-like role, even to the point of marrying another male. Far from being despised, these individuals enjoyed high status, and raised the status of their immediate families. In most societies, high status has correlated with high reproductive success. Gathering and processing the data would be difficult (if possible at all), but if it could be shown that families that produced these individuals consistently tended to enjoy greater overall reproductive success than families that did not (after adjusting for any other factors that contribute to reproductive success), that would lend credence to the inclusive-fitness hypothesis.

You’ll probably have spotted one difficulty right away. These Native Americans had a same-sex orientation, but would they have defined themselves the same way that gay people do in modern western society? Who knows, but there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have. Perhaps they saw themselves as female, only with male genitals; perhaps they saw themselves as a third sex altogether. (However they understood their difference to other males, the difference was important; they were viewed by the whole tribe as endowed with sacred powers). Some women from the Nuer people in the Nile basin would marry another woman; the wife would bear her female husband children with the assistance of a helpful male (who had no role in the family thereafter). These women seem to have viewed themselves, and to have been viewed by others, as simply men with a woman’s body. (And yes, they did add to their extended family’s status – the children were legally their offspring, not the male proxy’s, and the birth of a son brought a dowry to the female husband’s family.) Ancient Greek males who enthusiastically formed same-sex pairs would also enthusiastically marry and have kids; the two categories seem to have been completely separate for them, and I doubt they’d have identified as gay in our modern sense. Same-sex oriented people have understood themselves in many different ways at different times and in different societies. Even if there is some genetic component to same-sex orientation, I don’t think that has anything to tell us about the lives, experiences or self-understanding of people who have that orientation. I really mean it when I say that the question (i.e., is there a genetic component or not) is of great interest in an evolutionary context, but of none whatever in any other context.

As interesting as this question may be for an evolutionist, your instinct is correct. The far bigger question is why there is any sex in the first place. The earliest organisms were asexual (and many still are). Sex had to evolve, and it’s an apparent paradox that it could do so. After all, it immediately halves the number of genes an organism passes on, and that number decreases by half in each generation thereafter. An asexual organism, by contrast, can go to its grave content that its descendants unto the nth generation will still bear (except for any mutations) 100% of the genes it carries itself. How could sex possibly compete with the stellar fitness rates of asexuality? Forget any hypothetical gene for homosexuality; a gene for sex at all should have disappeared in the blink of an evolutionary eye; yet it didn’t. Hamilton, probably the most important evolutionary theorist of the 20th century, spent most of the latter part of his career puzzling over this. His theory – called the ‘parasite red queen’, after the Red Queen in Alice who noted that one had to spend all one’s time running just to stay in the same place – was that sex represented a major new weapon in the eternal arms race between organisms and the organisms that parasitise them (‘parasites’ being understood in a broad sense, to include microbes etc., not merely ticks and the like). Despite the apparent vast drop-off in fitness caused by sex, Hamilton hypothesised that sexual organisms are, over the long term, far better able to adapt to parasite attack than are asexuals. It doesn’t matter that only half the sexual organism’s genes go forward in each offspring; half of a hundred is fitter than 100% of three. And there have been field studies suggesting Hamilton was right. This is immensely important for evolutionary theory; but really, it’s not the first thing on my mind when I am, emm, doing my bit against the parasites.

Well, I’d intended for this to be a brief response, and now look at what you’ve set off. Sorry; but evolutionary theory has an endless fascination for me, and my buttons are easily pushed. Do have a look at the Olivia Judson book if you have a chance. It tells some truly amazing stories and is immensely entertaining to boot. If you read it, you’ll see that we organisms – humans as well as our cousins the elephants, fish, spiders, tapeworms etc. – are stranger than anything a science fiction writer could dream up.

“Among some Native American groups, certain males would assume a female-like role, even to the point of marrying another male.”

I’ll never forget when I was called in by the draft board, and seeing that I had checked the Whoopie Box (“Do you have homosexual tendencies?”
Tendencies? Darling in Kindergarden I had tendencies. Now it’s a career ! ) The nice young man behind the desk asked me to move closer to him and inquired in hushed tones “Do you play the man or do you play the woman?”

Never having viewed my sexual life in such a rigidly binary way I replied “Both.”

So he sent me to the shrink, but there was an overflow crowd that day and they rubber-stamped me “4-F.”

Thus (being considered morally and psychologically unsound to assume the weighty task of being trained to kill perfect strangers) I escpaed death and/or seriously delibiltating mental or physical injury in the jungles of Vietnam!

A nice blog.

Being Gay

From Kieran Healy’s Weblog: Innately Flexible Conservatives think that everything but being gay is determined by the genes and Liberals think everything except being gay is caused by the environment.

Blogospherics: Foreseeing the gay unions controversy

Liberals, as reflected in the poll, tend to think homosexuality is genetically determined.

Blogospherics: Foreseeing the gay unions controversy

Liberals, as reflected in the poll, tend to think homosexuality is genetically determined.

Foreseeing the gay unions controversy

Liberals, as reflected in the poll, tend to think homosexuality is genetically determined.