Jihan Ryu ’12, Applied Sciences, 10W
Imagine a woman in her thirties, pregnant with her first child. After a pre-natal screening test at the urge of her husband, she is told that the baby has a 90 percent chance of being homosexual. She must now make a difficult moral choice whether to keep the baby, as the choice becomes coupled with a family crisis – her own gay brother whom she has always supported claims that aborting a fetus would be equivalent to killing him. Caught between preserving the tapestry of human characteristics of the baby and trying to give the best of herself as a parent so that the baby can grow up safe and happy, she falls into a deep emotional turmoil.
This is actually a plot of the film The Twilight of the Golds, released in 1997 at a time when both sexual orientation research and the Human Genome Project were reaching their peaks. However fictitious the above scenario may sound, it certainly has the potential to translate into reality and pose a significant societal and moral dilemma to humanity, particularly if the current speed of sexual orientation research continues to accelerate. Some might say abortion of a “gay fetus” is a typical bioethics question. In light of recent strides in the gay rights movement made by the LGBT community, however, such an application of science brings us back to a bigger question: what kind of repercussions can genetic research have on gay communities and our society? What is the value of pursuing a “gay gene” anyway, if one even exists?
Modern science has continually strived to find genetic markers of sexuality in DNA. However, it remains unclear whether sexuality is primarily determined by nature, as in genetic determinants found in DNA, or nurture, as in the environments in which children and adolescents develop.
In this essay, I will chronicle the traces of sexual orientation research done in the past century to recognize where we stand at present on this issue, and discuss some of the limitations that these efforts inherently have. I do not mean to categorically deny the nature of sexual orientation research. It is imperative, however, that we keep our political agendas in check and set our priorities straight before letting the rapid development of so-called “gay science” catch up with us and backfire.
“We do not even in the least know the final cause of sexuality. The whole subject is hidden in darkness,” Charles Darwin wrote in 1862 as he commented on the ambiguity of evolutionary accounts for sexuality (1). That sexual orientation is fundamentally inexplicable and private was the prevailing opinion before the rise of modern science, and not many targeted the human sexuality as a legitimate topic of scientific inquiry. Heterosexuality was a mere outcome of a normal psychological development of a human being, and everything else was probably not. Questioning this view of heterosexuality as a self-evident conclusion, Sigmund Freud insisted in 1905 that “heterosexuality is as much in need of explanation as homosexuality” (2). By opening up the venue of scientific discussions regarding sexual desire, Freud left an impression that all kinds of sexual interests including heteroeroticism and homoeroticism must be rooted in something that the power of science could elucidate.
A step towards more rigorous scientific study of sexuality was taken by Alfred Kinsey, a pioneering researcher at Indiana University in the field of human sexuality during the post-World War II era. Trained as a zoologist, Kinsey strongly believed in the scientific basis of sexual behaviors and actively sought to compile as many real cases of people’s sexual experiences as possible. Publication of the now famous “Kinsey Report” and “Kinsey Scale” demonstrated the existence of a broad spectrum of sexuality. His research contributed greatly to dispelling the wrong beliefs and stereotypes about such sexual activities as female masturbation and homosexuality, to name a few. Both Kinsey’s works and research methods constantly generated controversy, and his own sexual morality was called into question—at the time, normal human sexuality was still a taboo subject, not to mention “abnormal” sexual orientations. In fact, in 1952 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) classified homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance. This judgment lasted for about two decades until 1973, when the APA “accepted committee report recommending the declassification of homosexuality as necessarily a disorder of any kind” (2).
It was not until the 1990s that the investigation of homosexual orientation actually yielded some concrete scientific data. In 1991, neuroanatomist Simon LeVay published a study of the human brain that reported the size differentiation by sexual orientation in a certain neuron group. It turned out that the INAH3, a nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus, was on average three times smaller in homosexual men than in heterosexual men (3). Though some criticized this result as being merely probabilistic and correlational, a paper by Hamer et al. published in Science in 1993 showed that at least one subtype of male sexual orientation is genetically influenced, as indicated by the linkage of DNA markers on the X chromosome among gay males (4). Although this result did not mean that scientists had discovered a “gay gene” per se, (it only confirmed a linkage on the Xq28 segment of the X chromosome) the public was quick to raise the possibility of “sexual orientation therapy,” and the classic nature versus nurture debate became a heated issue again. During this decade, with the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, many have attempted to replicate Hamer’s results, albeit with only moderate success. Although sexual orientation research has been strengthened by a study on maternal hormonal effects in utero and has refined theories about how homosexuality can be passed down through generations, it still has a long way to go to reach a satisfactory conclusion of any sort.
Ever since modern science gained significant social prestige and the power of authority, the public has primarily reacted with trust to any article published in a prestigious scientific journal. For this reason, however, some are disquieted by the implications of sexual orientation research for the public’s view towards homosexuality. Edward Stein in The Mismeasure of Desire agrees that “Most studies in the emerging research program assume essentialism about sexual orientation [as a scientific premise],” despite many findings in the scientific community that the transmission of even the most genetically defined human trait such as eye color has, in fact, an environmental component (5). Once people start believing in this inevitability, what follows is the stigmatizing effect on non-heterosexuals by labeling them as “deviant.” After all, very little research is done to investigate why people are born straight.
Is providing the grounds for discrimination then the only outcome of sexual orientation research? Certainly not. Timothy Murphy argues in his book Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research that “even if the history of sexual inquiry is thus far replete with instances of substandard and morally suspect scientific efforts, there is nothing inherently unscientific about inquiry into the phylogenetic or ontogenetic emergence of human sexual orientation” (2). Indeed, if we lift a moral and religious layer from the subject of human sexuality, what we are left with is a genuine mystery as to why certain people have entrenched interests in the same sex and how those interests can be associated with behavioral traits. Historically speaking, curiosity alone has always been a big enough reason to validate efforts at scientific inquiry. In describing the goal of the research, Murphy goes on to say that science would provide a means to “an inclusive account of the general pathways of human psychosexual development” (2). Dean Hamer, the author of the paper that found a genetic linkage on the X chromosome, also remarks in his biography The Science of Desire that sex is the topic that “impinges on the very existence of our species that ought to be studied under the brightest light available,” and that all the misunderstandings on this secretive matter should be corrected (1).
As a matter of fact, if we appreciate the value of sexual orientation research in the sense that homoeroticism constitutes just a small portion of the human sexual truth, it has certainly left some legacies to benefit the gay community. It appears somehow more “natural” if homosexuality can be interpreted as an individual’s biological make-up rather than a volitional life style choice. Such an “immutable difference” argument has been favorably used by gay activists in court dealing with civil rights laws and equal protection rights. Even before the U.S. Supreme Court granted “special rights” to homosexuals in the Romer v. Evans case, Judge Jeffrey Bayless ruled in 1993 in Denver that the discriminatory Amendment 2 was unconstitutional with a reasoning that “the preponderance of credible evidence suggests that there is a biologic or genetic ‘component’ of sexual orientation” (1). In the United Kingdom, the controversial legislation Clause 28 that dictated “educational establishments must not promote homosexuality,” lost its grounds and was finally repealed in 2003 (6). If the “genetic component” of homosexuality can be further identified, all the other wasteful economic and psychological efforts that go into the “right” parenting and education to protect kids from homosexual influences will be minimized. By ridding the society of the still lingering idea that gays are environmental hazards bent on trying to convert straight people, we can also expect the general status of homosexuals will be neutralized with the advance of the “born gay” notion. In fact, the poll done in 1996 by The Advocate, a U.S. lesbian and gay news magazine, reported that 61 percent of its readers believed that “it would mostly help gay and lesbian rights if homosexuality were found to be biologically determined” as opposed to “chosen or learned” (7).
Despite seemingly promising starts, however, the very notion of “born gay” and “immutable difference” has serious limitations. The first consequence of this line of thinking is the separation of identity from practice. No matter how society can be tolerant of the essential difference between individuals’ sexual identities, it will not necessarily lead to equal judgment of the practice. In 1996, the decision in the Romer v. Evans case, for instance, held that while the court cannot deny homosexuals civil rights simply based on who they are, “homosexual conducts” still remained as legitimate grounds of arrest. Stein explains how this determinist version of the biological argument for the gay rights is logically deficient: “Even if my desire to have sex with other men was determined biologically, my decision to actually engage in sexual acts with other men would not be determined biologically; it would be a choice and thus would not be the basis for lesbian and gay rights or protection against discrimination” (5). It should be noted, as Jakobsen and Pellegrini argue in Love The Sin, that those who fervently advocate for lesbian and gay rights in the de-mystification of sexuality using the “born that way” argument often forget that “historically the naturalization of race and sex has hardly ended discrimination” (8). Without question, the knowledge of genetics has taught us that race is nothing but a phenotypical reflection of a different arrangement in a few DNA sequences. Yet, has that in itself cemented the idea that “we should treat them all equal” in our society? The authors of Love The Sin respond that “Tolerance doesn’t really fight the problem of hatred; it maintains the very structures of hierarchy and discrimination on which hatred is based” (8). Instead, those who see considerable limitations in the strategies based on “immutable difference” argue that “civil inclusion and protection from discrimination should not hinge on whether we were ‘born that way’—no matter who ‘we’ are.”
Another critical limitation of sexual orientation research lies in the grim possibility of science becoming political. We do not even have to look in the distant past to find examples of where this link has proven true. During the entire presidency of George W. Bush, human stem cell research was banned due to ethical concerns. The ban was repealed in March 2009, when President Barack Obama signed the stem cell executive order that promised sufficient federal funding for embryonic stem cell research through the National Institutes of Health (9). As science becomes more intertwined with our lives and makes direct impacts on society, the public opinion and political climate of the times definitely have more power to influence trends in scientific research. When it comes to homosexuality, an issue which has traditionally been delegated to the church rather than to a laboratory, the scientific endeavor itself can be vulnerable to the whim of moral and religious perspectives, the very forces that shape American political agendas. On a practical note, asking a scientific question is inherently associated with ques
tions about whose time and money will be spent investigating it. The budget of the National Institutes of Health, the largest biomedical research institution in the world, is funded by the government, which underscores the crucial relationship between science and politics from a different angle. Government or private foundations must first decide if specific scientific questions are worth asking at all. Weighing the value of a scientific question is precisely where subjectivity ingrained in the society’s cultural and moral views comes into play.
In the film Kinsey (2004) directed by Bill Condon, the power of politics in science manifests itself in the scene in which the Rockefeller Foundation, a private research institution that has been financially supporting Kinsey’s human sexuality research, announces it will cut funding when Senator McCarthy suspected the foundation to be an alleged “socialist” move to weaken the minds of American youth by aiding Kinsey’s research. In Indiana State, his controversial works were later labeled by politicians as “dirty science” that insulted American womanhood by openly talking about female orgasm and infiltrated the morality of the nation with male homosexual findings (10). In a similar way, the validity of sexual orientation research will likely be put under moral judgment in the 21st century if scientists work towards locating the genes that encode what many conservative politicians would regard as “unnatural.” Unless accompanied by the changes in societal attitudes towards homosexuality, the future of sexual orientation research might as well be at the mercy of American politics.
The final limitation of sexual orientation research worthy of discussion is the danger of misusing findings in research. To some, the localization of the “gay gene” on the X chromosome could mean the discovery of one more “genetic defect” of human beings. In fact, when the scientific efforts to account for homoeroticism were gaining momentum in the early 1990s, many gay communities expressed concerns that pathological views of homosexuality would subsequently spread among the population. Additionally, if there exists a demand in the market, the genetic therapy to “cure” homosexuality and pre-natal screening to identify gay and straight fetuses could be a formal possibility, just like the harrowing story of the 1997 film The Twilight of the Golds (11). In the worst scenario, sexual orientation therapy could really devolve into “the cosmetic surgery or liposuction of psychology and psychiatry,” fears Murphy (2). Scientists must be able to understand and assess the full implications of their research for society, given that science and technology can raise moral issues that endanger the normalcy of the human species. Hamer, taking personal responsibility of his discovery, ended his Science paper with the following paragraph:
We believe that it would be fundamentally unethical to use such information to try to assess or alter a person’s current or future sexual orientation, either heterosexual or homosexual, or other normal attributes of human behavior. Rather, scientists, educators, policy makers, and the public should work together to ensure that such research is used to benefit all members of society. (1)
Homosexuality has always been a controversial topic and is highly likely to remain so in the future. Its shift into the center of the scientific domain does not make it any less susceptible to the moral, social, and political voices that affect a discussion of this sort. As argued in the previous paragraphs, sexual orientation research has an inherent set of problems: the scientific confirmation of “immutable differences” will merely serve to divorce the identity from practice without actually helping to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation; conservative stances of the public and, ultimately, of the government towards homosexuality may interrupt the positive progress of such research itself; and misuse of genetic research in medical applications can threaten the fate of homosexuality. The underlying theme among these limitations is that science will only be used as a means to reinforce society’s political beliefs and moral grounds, unless the “social accommodation of homosexuality” happens first, or at least, concurrently with the research. As Jakobsen and Pellegrini conclude in their book, we need to “radically reorient our understandings and our practices of freedom, including sexual freedom” in such a way that the actions, not just identities, can be valued by the society (8).
At the same time, conscientious and socially responsible scientists must be encouraged to do research with more stringent protocols that maintain the integrity of science and prohibit any room for misuse and abuse of technology. The focus of sexual orientation research should also move away from necessarily finding the cause of homoeroticism, which can promote the pathological view of homosexuality, to inclusively explaining the general psychosocial development of human sexuality. By treating various sexual orientations as equally worthwhile topics of scientific inquiry, science can strategically become, not moral or immoral, but amoral and value-free.
The voluminous scientific study of psychology, genetics, and endocrinology is already teaching us more about the construction of sexual orientation than ever before. The goals of sexual orientation research are reasonable—it might answer our deep-seated questions about one of the biggest mysteries of human psychobiology, and it can clear away erroneous beliefs that have been hurting certain members of our society. In order for such research to have even better consequences, we must recognize the need to transform the political and social landscapes in which the science is taking place. After all, when it comes to sexuality, “we have far more to fear from ignorance than from knowledge” (1).
References
1. Dean Hamer, P.C., The Science of Desire. 1994, New York: Simon & Schuster.
2. Murphy, T.E., Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research. 1997: Columbia University Press.
3. Simon LeVay, e.a., A Difference in Hypothalamic Structure Between Heterosexual and Homosexual Men. Science, 1991(253:1034-1037).
4. Dean H. Hamer, e.a., A linkage between DNA markers on the X chromosome and male sexual orientation. Science, 1993(321-327).
5. Stein, E., The Mismeasure of Desire. 1999: Oxford University Press.
6. Rahman, G.W.a.Q., Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation. 2005: Peter Own Publishers.
7. Various, Advocate Poll Results, in The Advocate. 1996. p. pg 8.
8. Janet R. Jakobsen, A.P., Love The Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance. 2003: New York University Press.
9. Obama, P., Signing of Stem Cell Executive Order and Scientific Integrity Presidential Memorandum
O.o.t.P. Secretary, Editor. 2009: Washington, DC.
10. Condon, B., Kinsey. 2004, Fox Searchlight Pictures: USA. p. 118min.
11. Marks, R.K., The Twilight of the Golds 1997, Fox Lorber Films: USA. p. 92min.
Gene Picture:
The Xq28 segment of the X chromosome was the subject of a controversial study on gene linkage and male sexual behavior.
Image courtesy of the National Institutes of Health