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One Small Step for Gay Science, One Giant Step Back for Gay Rights?
Scientists recently determined how to make gay fruit flies straight, and vice versa. The findings published in Nature Neuroscience this week conjure up disturbing images of big pharma manufacturing drugs that erase homosexual desire while the religious right markets them.
This discovery makes Gary Greenberg's "Gay By Choice?" published in Mother Jones in September/October 2007 all the more relevant. The gay rights movement has been hoping science would vindicate it for far too long. But what if science proves that gayness is not an immutable trait, or worse, finds a way to "cure" it? Isn't it time, as Greenberg argues, "to find reasons other than medical science to insist that people ought to be able to love whom they love"?
—Celia Perry
"Isn't it time, as Greenberg argues, 'to find reasons other than medical science to insist that people ought to be able to love whom they love'?"
YES! I cringe when my fellow gay brothers and sisters use that line to try for acceptance. Religion is a choice and it is protected, just as my right to love whom I want should be.
Oh no, quite the opposite of a "cure" for gayness, this opens up the possibility of drugs to make the straight people gay!
Imagine, a little blue pill that swaps your sexual orientation for as long as you take it! Give it five years, you'll be able to get a prescription for "biagra" from any doctor in the land.
Everybody picks the person they want to be with (sometimes it is even mutual). That is the only real choice we make.
What pushes our buttons or moves us to a point of sexual desire is a bit more complex than just gay or straight. I have never met anyone that would accept a potential mate using gender as the only qualifier.
Sexual attraction and motivation is a process not an end-point.
No pill or type of treatment can ever address the broad spectrum of sexual proclivities and interests.
We all want tolerance and acceptance both socially and personally so that is all we should give others.
Nicely said, capt.
In truth, if this were to develop into a 'pill' I'm sure the break down of users would be not unlike the world is today. For every person checking themselves into an x-gay ministry, you'd have a person taking this x-gay pill.
The pharmaceutical industry would love it because they think of money over social well being all the time.
Having said that, I think people are so complex and varied that the void between fruit fly sexuality and human sexuality might be pretty vast.
X-Men 3: An inoculation invented to suppress the mutant x gene. 1/2 the mutants rush to be injected while the government and fearful civilians cheer, the other 1/2 revolt supported by those who understand that our strengths lie in our differences.
Not the greatest movie and Magneto takes it to an extreme (rightfully so?) but myself - I've always wanted to be on the side of the mutants.
This is good news for Chinese. If we can know what the gay gene is, then we can do family planning accordingly.
Maybe this explains why they have no gay people in Iran. They have not been working on nukes, just fruit fly research.
In today's politically correct world, one would think that they would have selected another type of fly when doing gay research than a "fruit" fly.
Joe - that deserves a chuckle. It went right over my head before your comment and I am a fruit.
When did the gay people leave Iran?
I read this a week ago or two on drudge and they found -two- ways to mute the gay behavior, one by altering genes, another by something thats not in DNA, I want to say it was smell. I think only half of the findings are being shown on this site, and I urge you guys to check it out elsewhere as well.
Why say "The pharmaceutical industry would love it because they think of money over social well being all the time." For some their sexuality is a burden and torments them. Some never accept it. It's not up to us to apply our standards and values to them and assume our experiences or equal. What about there social well being and their self determination ? It's our duty to get out of their way and let them have freedom of choice to alter their sexuality if that is their CHOICE. That is assuming such a technique is ever possible on humans. Yes i realize this applies both ways Choice to be gay , and choice to become straight.
The gay people that i know are either happy with themselves or not based on the "acceptance" they experienced. I love it that people don't get the connection between the "tortured" gay person and they way society treats them.
Amen, Linda. Rafe doesn't get it. But this sounds like PFOX rhetoric to me anyway. What well adjusted person would be TORTURED by their sexuality? I can't even wrap my head around that. And as a gay person I can say there is nothing inherently TORTUROUS about being gay, so that feeling would come from a tragic buy-in to some advertisers image of normalcy - i.e. pretty lady and handsome man stroll the beach hand in hand, cut to their sparkling new SUV that got them there.
There are some who haven't disclosed their sexuality. You dont' know them because they fell shamed and do not want to identify as gay. The people you talk about linda, are out and happy or atleast out to you. These people will not likely choose to shift their sexuality with this hypothetical therapy. These are not the people i'm referring to. Their sexuality is not a burden to them. There is a spectrum of sexuality and these people who would seek a treatment would lie in the center and not at the far edges. I apologize for not making myself clearer and i understand your confusion and never at any moment would i endorse forcing this treatment on somebody who identifies as gay and is happy with it.
May i ask if you guys would support denial of this treatment to people who wanted it? Assuming its' ever developed ?
It wouldn't be my specific place to deny anyone a drug [I'd hardly call it therapy], but ethically I think a lot of people's issues could be resolved with introspection, iconaclasm and personal candor - without having to take pills. We live in a country where people want even their personal growth to be made in capsule form. However, I think deadening your natural sexual desire to avoid growing past your fear of social rejection is NOT growth at all.
If society can become truly tolerant and accepting the required declaration about who we think we are will matter less than what we do.
The names we all use (Gay, straight, etc.) are holdover labels from an older time when people thought it necessary to divide the tribe along those lines.
Because of long held convention most people understand and accept wide variations within the "straight" or hetero label. Everything from A to Z really.
My point is, you can tell any of my lesbian friends that they shouldn't like women with the same success that you could tell a straight pal that he shouldn't get turned on by _______ (fill in the blank). If anybody can tell you what shouldn't turn you on they can also tell you what should turn you on - and that is ridiculous on its face.
Sexuality is more than just a biological imperative, it is an issue of general interest and real freedom demands everybody has the right to their interests without anybody else sitting in judgment.
We are growing and learning. Heck mixed race marriage has been legal here in the USA since 1967 - although the SCOTUS had to declare 36 states that had laws against it unconstitutional. Imagine 36 states had laws that decided you couldn't marry outside of your "race".
Sounds crazy.
The drug and other health related companies could spend less time on how to turn on or off a gay gene marker, but much more on insuring 47 million lacking any health coverage Americans.
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