Julian Sanchez muses on what would happen if we could change our sexual preference:
Hetracil, a drug that supposedly "cured" homosexuality, was an elaborate, clever joke. But apparently, researchers at the University of Illinois have discovered the real thing... at least for fruit flies. As John Tierney wryly notes, it will be interesting to see whether the Leon Kass types denounce such technology as "meddling with nature" or "playing God."Of course, the reaction of the gay community will be interesting to watch as well. For perhaps understandable reasons, gay activists have staked a lot on the notion that sexual orientation is—whether by genes or early environment—biologically hardwired, not the result of any conscious choice. But of course, this meant that someone might one day come up with a biological means to artificially produce either orientation. If something like this ever reaches the market—still, to be sure, a far-off hypothetical—I'm guessing we'll watch X-Men III play out, though (alas) with fewer mutant powers.
With respect to adults, this seems all to the good. If I were single, it might be interesting to try being gay for a few months. But children will present a difficult case. Doubtless there will be parents who—whether from homophobia, because they're eager for grandchildren, or because they fear the discrimination gay kids and teens face—decide to ensure their kids are straight. If their numbers are substantial, that obviously creates a series of both personal and political problems for the gay community.
We already have a test case: deaf children and cochlear implants. We've never spent any time quibbling about whether deafness is innate or chosen; the answer is obvious. Or, it was. Because now congenitally deaf children can be given a device that will transform them into hearing children. While they may never hear as well as I do, the cochlear implants pull them out of the deaf community: they acquire spoken language, go to hearing schools, and usually don't learn to sign. This is a choice that unfortunately must be excercised not by the children, but by the parents; unless kids get them early, their oral language acquisition will always be stunted.
Deaf activists are very, very against cochlear implants. For one thing, they imply that deafness is a disease that needs to be cured, which is a pretty unbearable way to view something as central to your identity as the language you speak. I sympathize though I ultimately disagree: if sign language can only be maintained through forcibly denying people oral language acquisition, I am against it, just as I would be against preserving the French language by forbidding anyone born in France to ever leave.
But another animating passion in the fight against cochlear implants is very relevant here: there are network effects in deviation from the norm. That's certainly apparent to me when I go shopping with female friends who are tall, but not that tall; while I can try on perhaps 5% of the clothing currently sold in American retail stores, they can try on nearly all of it.
If we can turn most deaf kids into hearing kids, the quality of life of the remaining deaf people will suffer dramatically. There will be fewer services available for deaf people, less research into products that can improve their lives. They will have a smaller pool of people from whom to choose friends and spouses. Less deaf culture will be produced--and it's fairly hard for them to consume most non-visual arts, particularly those who are illiterate. It's not crazy to worry that deaf culture and institutions would be crippled, leaving the few remaining deaf people stranded in an island of silence.
What's even more worrying is that this could lead a general drive to reduce variance even in areas where there is nothing inherently dangerous, restricting, or wrong with the underlying condition. Recently, someone who is himself average height, but who has a very tall daughter who is going through the particularly awful adolescence common to most women taller than six feet, asked me if it got better. "But in the end, you're glad you're tall, right?" he said, in the tone of someone who clearly wanted reassurance that his beloved daughter will be fine. "If you had to choose, you'd be this tall?"
Well, no. I like being tall because I like being me. But if I were responsible for my own development--if I was a parent who could choose their child's height--then no, I would not make my daughter 6'2. I would make her 5'8. Being that different from everyone else is mostly an enormous pain in the ass only partly mitigated by being able to see over crowds and fetch things off high shelves without a footstool.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. But having a minority sexual preference by definition has costs: a lot fewer potential partners to choose from, for starters. It also makes having children with a partner much more complicated, at least until technology enables us to fuse the DNA from two eggs or two sperm. A loving, non-homophobic parent could choose to turn the gay genes off simply in order to ease their child's life for reasons that have nothing to do with social stigma.
But of course, even aside from reinforcing (however implicitly) the idea that gayness is a problem, this is bad for other gay people. They suddenly have even fewer partners to choose from, even less political clout. Moreover, the more parents, or adults, who make that choice, the less attractive gayness becomes, which will tend to push marginal choosers into the "straight" camp. And the charge probably will be led by parents who make their children straight, not to avail them of the network benefits of a majority preference, but by parents who are simply repulsed by homosexuality. One imagines that the gay community will be somewhat resistant to letting those parents in effect make choices for them.
Moreover, reducing variance is bad genetic strategy. The less genetic variety you have, the more vulnerable you are to unforeseen circumstances; genetic variance is a reservoir of potential adaptations. Similarly, even if they were not worthwhile in themselves, the subcultures we now have the medical possibility of destroying are sources of dynamism in our society. We will all be poorer without them.
What are you talking about? Using chemical or mechanical means to make someone have hearing or be heterosexual won't change their genes.
The less genetic variety you have, the more vulnerable you are to unforeseen circumstances
Like the circumstance where homosexuality becomes the best reproductive strategy, putting majority straights at a severe disadvantage, and possibly resulting in extinction if we've gotten rid of all the gays?
You're right, that would qualify as "unforeseen."
"Similarly, even if they were not worthwhile in themselves, the subcultures we now have the medical possibility of destroying are sources of dynamism in our society."
Yes, it would be tragic to lose the interior-decorating gene.
What about gay parents who'd want to make their kids gay?
if we could simply force deaf parents to give their children hearing, everyone would probably be better off in the long run. everyone in any marginalized group would probably be better off as a member of the majority. should we try to eliminate minorities altogether?
To be frank, I'm rather offended at the idea that a person belongs - in the manner of a slave, rather than one who freely chooses - to any group. Because that is what this is about - that people shouldn't have the right to choose not to belong to a group, they shouldn't have the right to decide for themselves who they are, because somebody else needs or thinks they need them to be something else.
Or, to leave it in the words of a capable wordsmith:
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." - Ayn Rand
Any gay gene would probably be identified long before it could be altered, which would lead to 'gay abortion' becoming an issue.
Rob Lyman: if homosexuality is genetic, there may be reasons why it's adaptive. 99.9% of bees cannot reproduce; they work to allow their sisters to reproduce. This is an old and boring argument. The idea that there will be some unforeseen disastrous evolutionary consequences to "curing" the gays may be farfetched, but so is the idea that we can "cure" the gays, which is why I consider this kind of hypothetical a rather ludicrous exercise that tends to do little more than expose people's prejudices.
If homosexuality is genetic, then it probably won't be "curable" in childhood by medical interventions.
Besides which, the current state of society is not well matched to many of our genetic endowments anyway, because our way of life has evolved much faster than our genes can. So whatever advantages gayness might have had at one time might well be gone now.
I'm not going to worry about it either way.
It's hard to imagine any of this being 'curable', but I wonder about the consequences. If we could 'cure' autism in the sense of preventing the type of extreme/unusual brain in which it occurs, we'd also lose a lot of mathematicians and engineers. If we 'cure' homosexuality, we might lose some creativity at the other end of the spectrum (the 'interior decorating gene', as Phil put it).
Again, I doubt that it's even possible. But these variations seem correlated in systematic ways - isn't a mathematical genius far more likely to be autistic than gay? Getting rid of extremes could make us all poorer in many ways, even if we were willing to set aside the question of whether it's our place to try to decide this for others anyway.
Bottom Line: People who go through all the work of having and raising children want to get grandchildren out of the bargain. Having homosexual sons greatly decreases the likely number of grandchildren you will have. So, if a safe and effective preventative treatment for male homosexuality is available, it will be highly popular.
I agree completely with everything said in the post.
However, I think the great hammer of political correctness will come down very hard on the poor bastard who actually tries to develop a drug to reduce 'cure' homosexuality.
But ultimately, I must take the libertarian position - individuals should be free to pursue their own individual happiness, and the network effect, while important, is not sufficient cause to limit personal freedom.
And, may I add, the "reservoir of genetic variance", which is just a species-wide network effect, is also not sufficient cause to limit personal freedom.
"But ultimately, I must take the libertarian position - individuals should be free to pursue their own individual happiness, and the network effect, while important, is not sufficient cause to limit personal freedom."
This is the libertarian position? If we're talking about adults, fine. But the real issue here is genetic intervention in early childhood or, more likely, before conception. By definition, the individual who this affects has no choice in the matter whatsoever. We correctly put limits on what parents can do to their children (no beating or starving, mandatory education of some form) because parents don't "own" their children in the sense of property.
The question is whether children would be harmed by changing their genes to make them straight.
There's just no way to know, but we might look at the preferences of adults who grow up gay. I wouldn't change my genes and (almost) none of the gay men I asked would either.
Drew,
People aren't changing genes here, they are changing the chemical make-up of people, just like with depression, biopolar, etc. The mental diseases (depression, etc.) may have a genetic component, and taking zolof doesn't change your genetics, but it does change your brain's chemistry.
One aspect that this argument is taking is that biology shapes behavior and not the other way around. But behavior and environment does effect the formation of your brain, and our brains are far more complex than those of fruit flies and mice. And while it will be relatively to trigger sexual arousal, trigger sexual arousal towards objects that I find repulsive would be quite another feat. If a man finds women repulsive, no amount of treatment will make him straight.
If the "cure" is a drug rather than at the genetic level, then it would actually *increase* the prevalence of the "homosexual gene", as there would be more opportunities for that gene (or genes) to be passed on.
As long as its voluntary, I don't have a problem with it, but agree that losing dynamic sub-cultures would be a detriment to society - even if the society itself doesn't recognize the value of what it might like to destroy.
If we can turn most deaf kids into hearing kids, the quality of life of the remaining deaf people will suffer dramatically.
This is, of course, the argument for turning hearing kids into deaf ones.
As a scientifically literate homosexual I've thought a lot about this. I'm less worried than I used to be. Any intervention designed to be dispositive will need to be administered very early, probably in the womb (current research points to prenatal androgens as the likeliest cause of male homosexuality). Medical research has always treated pregnant women especially gingerly, so we can expect any "treatment" for homosexuality to undergo an exhaustive series of clinical trials before being approved. If such a treatment were discovered tomorrow, it wouldn't come to market for 15 years. The people currently discussing this issue will by and large not be having children 15 years from now -- that role will fall to our current 5-10 year olds, who will have grown up in a much more gay-friendly environment than the one we have today. The more years the discovery of the intervention is pushed back, the fewer women will choose the intervention when it becomes available, because society is in an accelerating process of reducing the costs associated with homosexuality.
While I acknowledge Steve Sailer's point about grandchildren (my own father, when I told him I was gay, said only "This seems like a terrible waste of good genes."), I'd point out that the gays I know who have good relationships with their aged parents almost always assume a caretaker role that their siblings with children find onerous. It's not all downside for would-be grandparents.
Milk for Free:
"the gays I know who have good relationships with their aged parents almost always assume a caretaker role that their siblings with children find onerous. It's not all downside for would-be grandparents."
That may be, but the question of who serves in the role of caretaker for these gay people (most of whom will not have children) is a question left for other generations.
And for shame to those children who will not care for a loving parent.
Seems like a good place to introduce the highly controversial pathogenic theory of male homosexuality. That really pisses people off.
The right has for a long time accused homsexuals of having "an agenda", a near-conspiratorial effort to increase their numbers. Your posting gives some logic to this agenda in terms of network effects. Misery loves company and so do certain disabilities.
If homosexuality is genetic, isn't social acceptance of homosexuality actually a bad thing for the continuance of those genes?
The closeted guy with a wife and 5 kids might be deeply unhappy, but he is propagating the gene, while the openly gay guy isn't.
Then isn't "fixing" homosexuals then the best way to ensure the continuing propagation of the gene, while open and warm acceptance of homosexuality cause the reverse?
Isn't there also a pathogenic theory for obesity as well?
If we were in a culture that wasn't so homophobic, I'd say the more medical experimentation the merrier, especially if this could be done at the adult stage.
Otherwise, no. This will be abused by parents who simply don't want a gay kid. Not because they honestly are worried about their offspring's life, but because they think Homosexuality is Evil.
Megan, what would your attitude be if scientists were to come up with a drug that would make women "contented with their lot", docile, willing to stay at home and take care of the house and kiddies?
Megan, what would your attitude be if scientists were to come up with a drug that would make women "contented with their lot", docile, willing to stay at home and take care of the house and kiddies?
You mean Paxil?
The idea of identity is too far gone for me. It negates that idea that people are free beings who might choose any particular course of action in the next moment of their lives. Cultures rise and fall. It's the way of the world. I don't think there is a hell of a lot of sense in saying that we are "better off" in a society, say, with a gay underground. The maximally tolerant claim (which I adhere to) merely states that we are not worse off with one. The issue of a "cure" for homosexuality is a complicated one, but I think a strong demarcation needs to be made between what the individual is permitted and what the perpetuation of a particular set of notions about identity requires. This sort of talk could lead to arguments like, "You should remain just the way you are, because your friends are counting on you." My understanding is that, for instance, interest groups associated with Down Syndrome aren't fans of the idea that advanced screening techniques and other genetic tricks might result in a world with far fewer children who have Down Syndrome. I couldn't imagine that the perpetuation of a genetic disease would be advanced by the very individuals who are most affected by the disease. It's a very strange kind of selfishness, and it puts the cart before the horse. The function of societies and cultures is to benefit the individuals who live in them-They are instruments only. It is a dangerous mistake to talk as if the reverse were the case, that individuals were instruments whose purpose was to advance some particular set of cultural notions.
The crazy part of this discussion is that it presumes sexuality is completely binary for everyone, or even most people.
Megan, what would your attitude be if scientists were to come up with a drug that would make women "contented with their lot", docile, willing to stay at home and take care of the house and kiddies?
grumpy realist, what would your attitude be if scientists were to come up with a drug that would make children "contented with their lot", docile, willing to go to school and take care of their schoolwork?
You've mentioned path dependence a couple of times lately. There is no path dependence. There are no network effects. There's what works best and what doesn't, and there are sunk costs.
Look into Margolis and Liebowitz book "Winners, Losers, and Microsoft" to get the story straight.
Like the circumstance where homosexuality becomes the best reproductive strategy, putting majority straights at a severe disadvantage, and possibly resulting in extinction if we've gotten rid of all the gays?
Oh, it's not that outlandish of an argument; you just have to take a larger view. People, gay, straight, or basically asexual, who don't put a lot of effort into reproduction but who use that energy and time into producing useful research that benefits society can pass on their genes by being that "rich uncle" that helps out other parts of their family. It's not completely illogical, though harder to demonstrate than even the "being heterozygous for sickle-cell is good for avoiding malaria, so that's why it persists" argument. (However, the persistence of homosexuality argues that there ought to be some reason, and this argument seems like one of the best.) Certainly devoting energy towards reproduction interferes with personal success in some ways-- that's part of what the debate about women in academia is about, since academia expects the prime proving grounds of research to overlap with prime reproductive periods.
this argument seems like one of the best
No, it's not. Work out the math. The gain in reproductive fitness from a "rich uncle" would have to be astonishingly high. We're talking about a "rich uncle" who took *such* good care of his brother or sister's children that he increased their survival/reproduction rates over and above having his own kids. That would be highly noticeable, with its own set of stereotypes.
Moreoever, the fraction of genes which are identical-by-descent between nephew/niece and uncle is (on average) 25%, whereas that between father and son is 50% (forget segmental uniparental disomies and similar pathologies for now). So it's hard to see any situation in which a gay male does better for his genes by boosting the fitness of his nephews/nieces than having tons of kids on his own.
Bottom line -- in terms of reproductive fitness, being gay is close to a death sentence for your genes. I've seen numbers indicating that gay males have kids at roughly 5% the rate of straights. There might be some kind of complex reproductive advantages which accrue to "carriers" (by analogy to fatal autosomal recessive Mendelian disorders which are advantageous in the heterozygous case), but it's definitely not as simple as a "rich uncle".
this argument seems like one of the best
No, it's not. Work out the math. The gain in reproductive fitness from a "rich uncle" would have to be astonishingly high. We're talking about a "rich uncle" who took *such* good care of his brother or sister's children that he increased their survival/reproduction rates over and above having his own kids. That would be highly noticeable, with its own set of stereotypes.
Moreoever, the fraction of genes which are identical-by-descent between nephew/niece and uncle is (on average) 25%, whereas that between father and son is 50% (forget segmental uniparental disomies and similar issues for now). So it's hard to see any situation in which a gay male does better for his genes by boosting the fitness of his nephews/nieces than having tons of kids on his own.
Bottom line -- in terms of reproductive fitness, being gay is close to a death sentence for your genes. I've seen numbers indicating that gay males have kids at roughly 5% the rate of straights. There might be some kind of complex reproductive advantages which accrue to "carriers" (by analogy to fatal autosomal recessive Mendelian disorders which are advantageous in the heterozygous case), but it's definitely not as simple as a "rich uncle".
Being gay is probably influences by genes, but I think that the idea that it is 100% genetic has been proven by the fact that in sets of identical twins where one twin is gay, the other is gay approximately 50% of the time. As they both have the same genes, obviously some other factor must be at work as well (although it would suggest that genes play some role).
The androgen and pathogenic theories both seem like good places to start looking if we want to figure out what causes homosexuality.
I don't see how modern academic life has influence the evolution of gayness. How useful were rich uncles and cancer researchers 100,000 years ago?
Steve Sailer - as a gay man with a biological son, I can absolutely say you are dead wrong. Whether my son chooses to have children is entirely his decision. Grandchildren or the possibility thereof never entered the equation.
The selfishness of such a proposition is something I usually observe in those that would do society a service by NOT propogating their genes.
"I don't see how modern academic life has influence the evolution of gayness. How useful were rich uncles and cancer researchers 100,000 years ago?'
How useful were extra hunters who turned their kill over to their brothers for their brother's children? As someone has already pointed out, there is a whole order of insects that has adopted this as their primary reproductive and evolutionary strategy - well, rich aunts instead of uncles - and it has been working very well for them for 100 milion years at least.
I'm now convinced I misunderstood John's comment. Sorry about that.
Our modern society might lose something if it were denied the reproductively uninterested, who certainly have more time for highly productive activities; I'm not sure, however, that the elimination of gayness would be a major factor there. Birth control remains widely available and widely used.
How useful were extra hunters who turned their kill over to their brothers for their brother's children?
Not very if we judge by the success of the "gay gene"; most cave families wouldn't have had a gay uncle to rely on.
All societies, without exception, operate according to the moral rules believed in by the majority. What is debated in any society, no matter how libertarian or dictatorial, is exactly how much dissension from the accepted majority morality is tolerable.
That's why the word 'homophobia' is so deceiving, it tries to cast all opposition to homosexuality as being based on an irrational fear, when it fact it's far more complex.
I doubt we'll see homosexuality being 'curable' any time soon. If we do, a majority view of the 'acceptability' or 'necessity' of its application will be arrived at and enforced, one way or another.
Okay, so a safe and effective "cure" for gayness is created. Which would lead to more happiness overall... a parent who believes that homosexuality is evil trying to raise a gay son or a parent who believes that homosexuality is evil raising a straight son? (Likewise a gay parent who hates breeders raising a straight son...)
Since babies and fetuses can't give consent, any medical procedure that must be done at such an early age must be decided by someone else.
And "doing nothing" when an option exists is not automatically the moral choice.
EI
The crazy part of this discussion is that it presumes sexuality is completely binary for everyone, or even most people.
Indeed! Where's the pill that will turn my wife bi?
The "rich uncle" doesn't really have any impact on the genetic heritage of his nieces and nephews, because they have the genetics they have.
However, apart from the genetics, it's an economic thing. And it really has nothing to do with sexual orientation, necessarily. My father's side of the family has a long tradition of high-achieving straight spinsters, and I am the one in this generation. Our role comes from our personal decision against marriage and family due to our other interests or independent streak. But we do very well economically and leave it to the siblings and nieces and nephews. Our role is to enrich the breeders after we're gone. It has helped the achievement level of our family immensely. Mom's side of the family has no such tradition and suffers for it--disadvantage in wealth accumulation and achievement.
So, non-breeders can play a very important role in the family but it's different than a purely genetic function.
The wrinkle in this plan is when the gay uncle squanders his wealth on his partners rather than keeping it in the family. The straight high achieving spinsters in my family never did that.
It requires family harmony (the spinster or "rich uncle" must love and feel loved by the family to want to keep the wealth in the family) and it assumes multiple children.
Family sizes are getting smaller over time so it can be assumed that parental tolerance for homosexuality would decrease if the parents plan on having only one or two children and want to be grandparents someday. Larger families have a greater margin of error, more siblings to make up for the gay/nonbreeder ones for those parents who want to be grandparents.
Here's another scenario, take some pregnant parents who have testing done and realize that their child tests gay. What if their options are to abort the child and try again, or to take the drugs to make their child straight? In that case, the drugs are lifesaving to that child. Unless you think it's better to be a dead gay fetus.