Homosexuality — what to do about it, what not to about it, whether to pay it tribute — is the number-one domestic political issue in the United States today. It’s part of every campaign, courts play it out in elections, members of Congress resign over it if they’re Republicans, governors even in Red states resign over it if they’re crooks, too. It’s the obsession of one of the first, biggest and sometimes best bloggers; it’s a jealously guarded electoral interest group and a weapon against adversaries by the Democrats; it’s a bete noire for conservative Republicans; it’s danced around by moderate politicians; it turns city clerks into national figures. It’s on display in the park, demanding equal time for public displays of affection; it’s the washboard abs on the Abercrombie models; it’s teaching the straight guy how to dress and make his apartment fabulous.
It’s on everyone’s lips.
It’s a once and former sin turned by many churches into a very sacrament. It’s here, it’s queer, and we’ve got to get used to “it” — whatever exactly it means, however, is the debate.
I don’t have an overarching theory about why homosexuality (mainly male) has become the political obsession of the day. But it has. The number of homosexuality-related scandals in the political realm, counting from Jim McGreevey through the allegations (denied) that came out just yesterday against the Rev. Jim Haggard– which is politically significant — is astonishing, without precedent, and a phenomenon with which we are having a great deal of trouble coming to grips.
I don’t have any reason to assume there is “more homosexuality” about in our society today than there was 100 years ago. But is it possible that the obsession, the challenge, the moment comes about now because we have no idea, post-feminism, post-agricultural-society, post-industrial-era, post-sole-breadwinner, what manhood is any more, or even what right such a concept has to demand of us personally, as a society, or at all?
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Martin: Chimerism is a fascinating phenomenon. I wouldn’t call it a biological “error” so much as a biological miracle. Somehow two completely separate organisms mesh into one seemingly normal and perfectly healthy organism? The odds are staggeringly against it, so when it happens it’s amazing.
On the other hand, there’s some evidence that this may actually be an important driving factor in evolution, and may be one of those things that helps explain things that are otherwise hard to explain by traditional ideas about evolution. Lynn Margulis has written at length about how synergy between two separate organisms that eventually leads to them merging may be a significant force in evolution. And Peter Duesberg is convinced that cancer is, in fact, a new organism that comes about due to a replication error.
As for the pejorative connotations of the word “error,” I suggest to you that any alternative word you came up with could be equally interpreted as a negative, nasty thing. Misfire? Anomaly? Freak? Sport? Accident? Strange? Queer?
Name your term and someone will find some way to be offended.
It should be entirely obvious to most people that sex is in evolutionary terms primarily about reproduction, and secondarily about emotions and bonding. So people naturally inclined to non-reproductive sex are clearly a little odd, a little queer.
Not evil. Not disgusting. Not horrible. Just queer.
And by the way, would that make heterosexual couples who practice birth control methods in order to avoid pregnancy a little queer?
Well yes it would. In evolutionary terms anyway. They’re taking the driving force behind sex–the urge to reproduce–and channeling it into something that can’t possibly result in reproduction.
Would that make cunnilingus and fellatio between heterosexuals a little queer? Yeah. So what?
Clearly, someone determined to be offended will be offended. I know people who would call “normal” an offensive label.
But I think you can still look for minimal offense. A more clinical term is less offensive, I believe.
Errors are to be fixed.
Freaks, sports, and accidents are to be shunned or gawked at.
Strange or queer people are to be whispered about, or maybe giggled at.
Anomalies are to be studied. And while that’s still gonna offend some people, it’s less offensive than someone trying to fix you gawk at you, or giggle at you.
Of course, your comment was about the cause of the condition, not about the individual who embodies that condition. My eyes have an error, so I wear glasses. That doesn’t mean I’m an error, just that I have parts of me that function differently than designed.
But again, someone determined to be offended will be offended.
Martin: You make a good point. “Anomaly” may be the most clinically precise word. It is probably better than “error.”
But I maintain that if Laura Schlesinger had said “it’s a biological anomaly” she would still have been attacked as an evil, wicked woman who hated gay people.
And worse, it would have missed her overarching point: when she said it, she was trying to tell the parents of gay kids not to hate their kids or think they were perverse and evil and behaving improperly. “It’s just a biological error, don’t worry about it, it doesn’t make them or you bad people or failures somehow.”
She really didn’t deserve all the kicking around she got. On this topic anyway.
Is Andrew Sullivan gay?
I just thought all men from Big Cities acted and dressed that way.
That’s not what you said Dean. You said:
E-R-R-O-R
Dictionary.com: a deviation from accuracy or correctness; a mistake, as in action or speech
American Heritage Dictionary: An act, assertion, or belief that unintentionally deviates from what is correct, right, or true.
American Heritage Medical Dictionary: A defect or insufficiency in structure or function.
Michael, it is not an error. It is evolution.
The biological basis is profound and undeniable.
Check Dr. Cochran.
In fMRI there are morphological differences between male, female, AND homosexual brains.
The best explanation i ever read is in Cryptonomicon.
i paraphrase.
“…from when the first humans crawled up on a rock and began spamming the environment with copies of themselves. It made sense that through the grace of the largess of civilization some individuals could also be supported without the imperative of reproductive duty.”
He was talking about Alan Turing, homosexual and the father of computer science.
Evolution is four dimensional; genetic, epigentic, symbolic and behavioral. At 10% of homosapiens, there must be some evolutionary advantage, some fitness selection.
So, Michael, u r not erroneous.
u r evolved. =)
What an amazingly obtuse argument.
BR, pray explain significant morphological and functional differences across fMRI between men, women and homosexuals, then.
In parts of the world homosexuals are defined as the “third gender.”
there are stranger things under heaven and earth than are known in your philosophy, horatio. =)
How can anyone possibly doubt a biological basis for homosexuality will be discovered and mapped?
and…what is obtuse about it?
10% is too high a frequency for a competely deleterious phenotype (ie non-reproductive).
there must be selection advantage or linkage.
or else greg cochran’s gay germ theory is true. =)
“But there certainly functions and purposes in biology, and an organ or a behavior which fails at its biological function is a biological error.”
Nope. We JUDGE it to be an error, but nothing about biology says that organs have to work, that any particular end result is the “right” one. You think that
Dean: “I’m willing to state it bluntly: if your sexual chemistry makes you homosexual, then it’s an “error” at some level. If all the wiring in your system works right it’d be “if I’m a girl I like boys, and if I’m a boy I like girls.” ”
Right: because you have a preconcieved judgement about how things SHOULD be that homosexuality goes against. How else are you defining “works right”? Biology doesn’t judge work right. Survival and natural selection are happenstance, not purpose. It’s intelligent beings that JUDGE purpose, and hence consider things to be error or success at some intended goal.
How can anyone possibly doubt a biological basis for homosexuality will be discovered and mapped?
Its really easy. Firstly 1 % pr more homosexual in a teenager/formerly abused adult doesn’t mean 100 % homosexual identification even though the gay community may not like it.
If anything is true psychologists have had a good deal of success in sorting through underdeveloped sexual confusions particularly in the sexually abused wherein therapy. the abused person maturely realizes that he/she ain’t gay and never was.
So matoko, where do you come up with the obligatory 10 percent ?
matoko,
and…what is obtuse about it?
10% is too high a frequency for a competely deleterious phenotype (ie non-reproductive).
there must be selection advantage or linkage.
or else greg cochran’s gay germ theory is true. =)
that’s a really excellent observation, certainly one i hadn’t thought of before.
Dean,
I’m in agreement with Martin here. The connotation is off, but I would suggest something other than anomaly, too. perhaps in line with how matoko has phrased the discussion, “variation”? is that too PC?
if we assume that homosexuality is too common to occur by a simple genetic “mistake” or “error,” then we should accept it as simply a variant of the normal phenotype. different but still normal. indeed, as michael has pointed out, homosexuality present in many different corners of the animal kingdom. And while i’m loathe to really pay attention to anything vonnegut had to say, the data suggests that sex and reproduction (speaking evolutionarily across an entire species) probably is the result of many factors escaping our grasp at the moment. to label homosexuals then as being “in error,” is probably premature at the least.
matoko, you’re taking data that is somewhere between unverified and wholly fallacious, making a supposition without even a direct correlation to that data, supporting it with a social norm that defies elementary human biology, then proclaiming normal scientific skepticism to the specious argument untenable based on feeble and unsubstantiated intimidation.
How is this even remotely called “science”?
*sigh*
read my greg cochran link.
i can dig up refs at gnxp for err thing i said.
fMRI scans of male, female, and homosexual brains show morphological and functional differences, with homosexual brains being intermediate to male and female brains.
i can dish some good steve sailer linkage too.
its science dude.
juss that u don’t keep up.
welcome to the 21st century.
here, some reading 4 u. =)
took it from madigan. guess she could be wrong. often she is.
I think that there is the gross assumption that biology has a purpose. If you are a theist, then there is some purpose in biological principles. There are no errors in biology. People forget that we are merely using a set of observations from a very limited viewpoint of the natural world. People’s opinions make something natural or not. Nature is, of itself, not a producer of truths or lies, nature does what it has always done, worked. You can argue that survival depends on reproduction, but that is assuming that the purpose of nature is to survive. It is not the purpose of nature. So, in short, there are no errors in genetics, it is just a simple misunderstanding that humans have; nature can be what we want it to be. Someone with a condition is not queer or odd, they just are. They are only odd or queer when humans label them. Labels are the beginning of the bullshit that has thrust us into all of the problems humans have created for themselves. I’m a jew, muslim, christian…blah, blah, blah…
juss that u don’t keep up
And you were asking me why I said ‘obtuse’? If you choose to make an argument, it’s your responsibility to make it effectively.
Nature is, of itself, not a producer of truths or lies, nature does what it has always done, worked…
But what if it doesn’t work? What if the mutation kills the mutant, and/or prevents it from passing that mutation to a new generation? This is the whole basis for the theory of evolution – the fittest survive, and the failures die out.
If you are a theist, then there is some purpose in biological principles. There are no errors in biology… nature can be what we want it to be… Labels are the beginning of the bullshit that has thrust us into all of the problems humans have created for themselves. I’m a jew, muslim, christian…blah, blah, blah…
It seems to me that you’re the one injecting subjectivity into the discussion, by trying to overcompensate against what you perceive as theism through some rather rigid relativism.
Shouldn’t science be objective instead of relativistic? Whatever happened to the scientific method?
BR, im not doing evolution 101 for u.
other people got my argument without problem.
we talk about homosexuality alla time at gene expression.
thass why i offered u a reading list.
there are many theories presented for the high frequency of homosexuals in homospaiens, which are being tested with the scientific method and published in scientific journals.
but none of them involve theism.
for example, in the behavioral dimension of evolution, there is strong negative selection for homosexuality in some cultures.
still, homosexuality exists, arguing for the genetic or epigenetic component.
and, demmons, labels are part of behavioral or (my preffered)cultural evolution.
they are valid memetic evolution.
and, BR, there are other measures of fitness then reps.
kinship, both genetic and memetic, linkage with beneficial gene complexes, etc.
i think my argument would be less obtuse for u if yerr knowledge of evolution wasn’t so….impoverished. =)
Physics has no purpose. Biology has purpose.
The idea that biology has no purpose save that which intelligent life imputes to it is a self-contradiction, since intelligent life is part of biology.
Unless, of course, you see things from a theist perspective; and if you do, then that perspective also implies purpose.
oh, martin, u r another horatio, with an impoverished philosophy.
u should read susskind, the father of string theory, on The Landscape.
His book is an intro to the theory of darwinian evolution of universes.
=)
i think my argument would be less obtuse for u if yerr knowledge of evolution wasn’t so….impoverished.
All the more reason for you to answer my questions and add your worth to the discussion. To say that you have the answers, but it’s beneath your dignity to educate me, only serves to alienate “the impoverished” from your position. Do you really want to convince me you’re right, or do you only respond because you like to mock me?
no, BR, not beneath my dignity.
dont have the time right now.
other obligations.
peace out!
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