"Gay Gene" and the Tyranny of the Me

Years ago when talk first started about a “gay gene” I remember hearing many homosexual leaders and writers speak out against such studies saying, in essence, being homosexual had nothing to do with science and everything to do with choice. I didn’t think I’d be able to find any of this talk in the current day but I was wrong. It’s over at a site called queer by choice. While I disagree with the choice itself, it is refreshing to see such honesty. The site looks at many of the studies which purport to show that homosexuality is biologically driven and goes beyond the headlines and reads what the studies really say. For example:


To date, no researcher has claimed that genes can determine sexual orientation. At best, researchers believe that there may be a genetic component. No human behavior, let alone sexual behavior, has been connected to genetic markers to date.
—PFLAG (Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians And Gays), "Why Ask Why: Addressing the Research on Homosexuality," 1995

Because of problems with statistics and sampling, nearly every report of a 'behaviour gene' located in this way—including those supposedly associated with schizophrenia, manic depression, criminality and alcoholism—has been retracted or called into question when later investigators failed to replicate the results. A famous example is Dean Hamer's 'gay gene,' announced with much fanfare in 1993, when his group found an association in 40 families between a marker on the X chromosome and male homosexuality. Because of the high political stakes and levels of public interest, Hamer's results immediately hit the headlines, followed quickly by the publication of his popular book, The Science of Desire: The Search for the Gay Gene and the Biology of Behaviour. The expected uproar ensued: many gays rejoiced that homosexuality could no longer be seen as a sinful choice, and some conservatives spoke darkly of pre-emptive abortion. Since 1998, however, two independent research groups have failed to find any evidence for Hamer's gene, which now seems likely to be an artefact of sampling. Unsurprisingly, the press has largely ignored these later studies.
—Jerry Coyne, "Not an Inkling" (review of Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley), London Review of Books, Vol. 22 No. 9, April 27, 2000

Examples of such honesty can also be found in those gay writers who stand against the redefining of marriage (here)

And from those who stand up against the "hate" law currently before congress and call it what it is-

The real reason for hate crime laws is not the defense of human beings from crime. There are already laws against that - and Matthew Shepard's murderers were successfully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in a state with no hate crimes law at the time. The real reason for the invention of hate crimes was a hard-left critique of conventional liberal justice and the emergence of special interest groups which need boutique legislation to raise funds for their large staffs and luxurious buildings. Just imagine how many direct mail pieces have gone out explaining that without more money for HRC, more gay human beings will be crucified on fences. It's very, very powerful as a money-making tool - which may explain why the largely symbolic federal bill still hasn't passed (if it passes, however, I'll keep a close eye on whether it is ever used).(more)


Over and above the concern that professional associations such as the APA and journalists have in the past and continue to this day to slant the information they provide in response to pressure from homosexual lobby groups and thought police, is the damage done to our children.

In every child’s sexual development there is a time when pseudo-homosexual activities occur. About the time when the hormones kick in and the idea that the opposite sex is not as obnoxious as had been believed over preceding years but before that point of being really comfortable with the opposite sex, many young people experiment with varying degrees of sexual or pseudo-sexual activities with the opposite sex. In a normal world most quickly outgrow this phase. Some however, because of traumatic experiences or lack of parental example, or other unknown reasons, remain in this state of immature and retarded emotional/psychological growth. In some ways it makes sense as it is always easier to love one’s own reflection than to love someone who is completely “other.” But whatever the cause it is not “normal.”

In today’s twisted world, children are encouraged to go with these initial, fitful, misguided first experiments in sexuality and to declare themselves gay, bi-sexual, etc. A prime example of child abuse if ever there was one.

Lesbian/feminist writer Camille Paglia is a fine and refreshing example of intellectual honesty in this debate. Not only does she admit that there is nothing “normal” about homosexuality but rightfully is concerned about the impact that attempts to normalize such ideas have on our children. (From Americans's for Truth)

The psychological turmoil of adolescents at sexual awakening cannot be underestimated. Everything is in flux — impulses, fears, dreams, with simultaneous longings for independence and for protection by adults. What I dislike about the push of organized gay activism into high schools is that it imposes a rigid political paradigm on a stage of life that is in rapid, painful transition for everyone, gay or straight.

As an equity feminist, as well as an open lesbian, I oppose special protections for any group, including my own. Teachers and administrators should obviously not permit physical harassment of any kind on school property, but verbal epithets, however offensive or hurtful, have First Amendment protection. The PC thought police, having been defeated on college campuses after the court-ordered banning of the fascist speech codes, are now oozing their way into high schools. “Hate” cannot be stopped by authoritarian manipulation but by slow social change, which may take generations.

The Internet has been a boon to lonely gay teens in geographically remote areas — but, of course, computers still remain largely a white middle-class luxury. I find very suspicious the statistics about teen suicides with which gay activists badger the media. If gay teens are indeed attempting suicide at a higher rate than straight teens, perhaps more questions need to be asked about the genesis of homosexuality. The intolerable sense of isolation may precede the homosexuality, rather than vice versa.

I have written repeatedly about my theory that homosexuality is an adaptation, rather than an innate trait, and that it is reinforced by habit. With its cant terms of “oppression” and “bigotry,” gay activism, encouraged by the scientific illiteracy of academic postmodernism, wants to deny that there is a heterosexual norm. This is madness. We need more art and history and less politics in primary education. Art gives the young the psychological and spiritual tools for authentic self-discovery. And art is where sexual dissenters have contributed the most to the human record.

In short, I agree with your concern about the Trojan Horse of gay activism, which is being dragged into high schools under the false flag of compassion. Young people who oppose homosexuality for any reason have a constitutional right to express their views, in or out of the classroom. Whatever they may privately believe as individuals, educators have a professional obligation to remain ideologically neutral in their treatment of students. (more)


Perhaps in this discussion lies the seeds of the hostility of many in the homosexual movement toward religion (or at least any religion who speaks against their chosen way of living). For in Christianity at least, we love and worship a God who makes a claim on every aspect of our lives including our genitals. Though we know that we are made in his image, this God is wholly other.

But the tyranny of the me, taints us all as pointed out in two excellent articles over at MereComments:

Our problem is pseudogamy, false marriage, and it assumes many forms. Same-sex pseudogamy is but the latest and most flagrantly absurd, but it is not the first. We find the most fundamental form, from which other corruptions rise up like diseases, when a man and woman go through the ceremony and utter the traditional words "as long as you both shall live," while harboring the mental reservation, "as long, that is, as I am happy," or "as long as the marriage 'works,'" whatever that is supposed to mean. In other words, in the fundamental form of pseudogamy, we don't have people who are not married behaving as if they were, but people who are married (or who present themselves as having been married) behaving as if they were not.

Why should anyone care about the private mental reservations entertained by the couple next door? The obvious answer is that those reservations are not really private. They will inevitably be talked about, urged upon others, or acted upon, if not by the couple next door, then by the couple two doors down, and then their problems are also ours. We must live with their divorce. We must try to teach their addled children. We must get along in neighborhoods blasted by the instability and the chaos. We must help feed the sharks in the divorce industry....

...That's the obvious answer, but not the best one. The best answer examines what we in our culture of divorce have nearly forgotten, namely the high and adventurous calling that marriage truly is. "Should a man give the woman he is weary of a bill of divorce?" ask the scribes, and Jesus replies by reaching behind all human custom, and behind all of the Mosaic law's concessions to human weakness, by reminding us that it was not so from the beginning -- which is to say also that it is not so now, from the foundations of our beings. "What God has joined together," says Jesus, "let no man put asunder."...

...In love and only in love do we discover the beauty of another being, and only in love do we become ourselves, for he who would save his life will lose it, but he who would lose his live will save it, unto life everlasting. ... Christians should acknowledge the truth of this, but it is ready to be seen by anyone, regardless of faith. Marriage -- marriage such as Jesus defined it -- is the foundation of society not simply because it is the best environment for raising children, though it is. It is the foundation because in it man and woman commit themselves one to another, as if they were, so to speak, gods freely bestowing freedom upon what they create. They are like God Himself in that free and freedom-making relinquishment of themselves, and they find themselves in that greater thing they create, the one flesh, the love that embraces them and that stands as an example to all others of the beauty and grandeur of that complete gift....

...In other words, the mental reservation vitiates the marriage. To the extent that we entertain it, we lie. We say aloud, "I give myself to you," but whisper to ourselves, "I retain myself for me." We say, to paraphrase Augustine, "Lord, marry me to this woman, but not quite." We engage in a convoluted and expensive pretense, complete with band and wedding cake and ring and honeymoon in Cancun, when all along we are saying, in part, "I am for myself, and for this person here only insofar as this person is for me," rather than, "I now belong to my spouse, and in my belonging to my spouse I will become myself, because it is only in giving that we receive, and only in binding ourselves to the gift that we are set free."...

... The man and woman who bind themselves together with Elmer's glue do not really intend to bind themselves together. Wedding ring or no, they are passing off as marriage what is, at least in part, a pseudogamous relationship. And they are helping to build a pseudosocial culture, a culture of selfishness, division, chaos, and enmity. (read the whole article here) the second is here

The idol of this world is no golden calf but rather a mirror. It is unrestrained and unchecked appetite and instant, (and often impersonal) careless gratification. We are in love with our own reflection.