{"id":12556,"date":"2008-06-20T10:47:50","date_gmt":"2008-06-20T16:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=12556"},"modified":"2008-06-20T10:47:50","modified_gmt":"2008-06-20T16:47:50","slug":"the-rise-and-fall-of-homosexual-culture-could-science-and-judicial-activism-lead-to-the-eventually-eradication-of-homosexuality-2-follow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=12556","title":{"rendered":"The Rise and Fall of Homosexual Culture: could science and judicial activism lead to the eventual eradication of homosexuality, 2 (follow up)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lots of interesting discussion in yesterday’s post <\/a>on the (still debatable) cause or causes of homosexuality, but much of it has gotten away from the original premise. So I’ve decided to see if I can’t focus the discussion by reintroducing the question in a slightly different way:<\/p>\n

If it is determined that homosexuality is biologically determined, the proof for such a determination would have to reside in identifying the determinant factors in the biology beyond doubt, and to the comfort of scientific peer review. Which, to follow this (hypothetical) finding out to its logical extreme, would mean that, ultimately, were science to pursue it<\/i> (and that’s another question entirely: I imagine at that point gay rights groups, like the militant deaf groups before them, would become nishi’s BIOLUDDITES, and use political means to constrain the science), parents and — depending on the age at which “the cause” of the “homosexual turn” exerts itself — perhaps even children themselves, would have the choice to either embrace their biological anomaly (and I use “anomaly” here to suggest that the default and preferred evolutionary<\/em> course favors heterosexual desire for means of procreation, your basic selfish gene hypothesis), or else to “correct” it.<\/p>\n

Which means, ultimately, that this desire to privilege the determinism, as a scientific and social thesis for explaining homosexuality and conferring upon it certain rights, could be the very thing that leads to actual choice<\/i> in the matter, rather than the current hypothetical<\/em> battle between those who think homosexuality is innate and biological and those who think it a preference. And at that point, I suspect “correction” as a course of medical action (ranging from abortion to gene therapy) would win out — though doubtless there’d be people who embraced the anomalous biology, just as there are deaf people who embrace their deafness, because it provides them with a distinct identity<\/i> — and as such, they reject the cochlear implant as a means of “cultural genocide.”<\/p>\n

But at such a point — the political and identity politics arguments notwithstanding — I don’t think society would be under as much pressure to treat homosexuals as a protected class for the purposes of bestowing special dispensation, or granting the civil rights of a protected class, particularly if we can say that they have simply refused “treatment” to correct what is, as science has concluded, a biological anomaly with a workable correction.<\/p>\n

I’m not saying this is my position necessarily, understand. But that has been the gist of this discussion for me: do we, as a society, privilege biology or do we privilege culture?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, to put it more provocatively, how much is our embrace of the rainbow a result of seeing it as inevitable, rather than as a kind of willful social Raleigh scattering? <\/p>\n

****
\nnote<\/em><\/strong>: as I was typing this, it seems Dan found examples <\/a>that matched my predictions<\/a> in the comments of my earlier post, namely<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, my ears are burning, which means \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in addition to my being called a \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cracist\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d for my \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cwhitey\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d posts (my racism is akin to that of Sly and the Family Stone\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s, only most of them can\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t be racist, given that they\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2re black, so that\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s kinda cool for them and sucks for me) \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d there are doubtless lefty sites out there noting my HOMOPHOBIA.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To these people I say this: I won’t be bullied, and I think raising these kinds of hypotheticals helps to throw into sharp relief the very kinds of questions that we should expect to run into going forward, particularly as science advances (which has been an ongoing point of contention in the comments here on a number of posts — something about which the douches who’ve attacked me were no doubt ignorant).<\/p>\n

Trying to demonize those who raise the questions is as silly as demonizing someone for playing Devil’s Advocate, or for using the Socratic method. I don’t know whether homosexuality is biologically determined, culturally influenced, or some combination of the two. My post here is meant only to look at the consequences of the current movment to insist that homosexuality is attributable to the former.<\/p>\n

That some people would completely miss that point in their rush to attack me personally is, well, par for the course these days. Learning is hard; memorizing political dogma is easy, particularly if you can find a really cool collector’s set of bumperstickers from the American Prospect gift shop.<\/p>\n

As someone who has taught at the university level, I am accutely aware of how effective these kinds of thought experiments are in drawing out kernel assumptions of people’s positions, which can then be examined more closely for inherent strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n

This is an intellectual endeavor. Having it pecked at by anti-intellectual grubs who’ve bought in to the notion of “authenticity” as a precondition for entering into the debate concerns me only insofar as it shows that anti-intellectualism is ascendant among many identity groups.<\/p>\n

And it is precisely why these types of people will always be sheep, even as they (ludicrously) proclaim their liberation from the bourgeois traditionalists who represent the Establishment.<\/p>\n

They have become, in short, parodies of themselves. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lots of interesting discussion in yesterday’s post on the (still debatable) cause or causes of homosexuality, but much of it has gotten away from the original premise. So I’ve decided to see if I can’t focus the discussion by reintroducing the question in a slightly different way: If it is determined that homosexuality is biologically determined, the proof for such a determination would have to reside in identifying the determinant<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":9196393,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9196393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}