One Small Step for Gay Science, One Giant Step Back for Gay Rights?

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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

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Owned by no one—except you.

We just keep seeing it happen: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.

Not here. We’re not owned by anyone. We’re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. We’ve spoken up and spoken out while other newsrooms changed their stories—or cut them altogether—to keep the C suite happy.

Our mission is to find the truth and amplify it. That’s why we’re independent, nonprofit, and, crucially, funded by readers. The investigations on our website will always be free to read, watch, and listen to, but our newsroom is powered by readers who pitch in what they can so we can keep asking the hard questions.

Can you chip in today?

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