Conservatives and the gay gene

...This gene has a devastating pleiotropic side effect—it's called sickle-cell anemia...

...But your book was the first thing I've read which gave me hope...

...Frank had given a lecture on animal endocrinology and the way hormones determine maleness and femaleness, "and a young woman came up afterwards and she was shocked, shocked that I would say such a thing...

...In the same vein, there are very good reasons to believe that criminality has a genetic component, and proof of that would not invalidate legal proscriptions against criminal behavior...

...Its philosophical leniency is an assault on society and on common sense...

...The implications of biology's findings have not escaped scientists...

...Men are different from women...

...And nothing—no Head Start program, no midnight basketball, no welfare check, no well-intentioned but misguided clemency from the bench—can modify that or make it better...

...The most carefully considered theory on how GAY-1 might operate posits that it is a defective gene, one that in 5 percent of the population fails to carry out the biochemical function for which natural selection chose it...

...The NIH team is now in the process of pinpointing the gene itself, which has already been registered by the name GAY-1...

...But to biologists, gender is as real as oxygen...

...Fallows observed piquantly and with some pleasure that the "lifestyle" argument "has always forced conservatism, a philosophy holding that the environment has little to do with outcomes—and that liberal programs meant to alter it are a waste of money—to make an inconvenient exception on homosexuality and argue, contradictorily, that young people can be pushed one way or another into profound aspects of their personalities by education and society...

...What makes this scenario possible is the discovery that sexual orientation is a biological trait, produced by a "gay gene...

...He flashed a slide on a screen...

...In its final chapter, I described some rather amazing work being done at two biotech companies: The first is trying to manufacture a computer chip out of human DNA to tell you exactly what genes you have, while the second is creating artificial viruses that can send new genetic material into your cells...

...One example: the gene that nature selects to protect us from malaria...

...The first was scientific: The research has demonstrated the biological nature of homosexuality...

...He will inject them into the lawyer's bloodstream and send him home...

...The first: "The religious position—to take a specific example, the Catholic position that homosexuality is an 'intrinsic disorder'—is empirically incorrect...

...Here is a brief summary of one trait profile: The trait shows up in the population as two "orientations...

...Huntington's disease is caused by a gene, and that makes Hunting-ton's neither "good" nor "acceptable...

...n addition to the bio-medical payoff, there is a more important reason to embrace gay-gene research—an ideological one...

...Position 1: Homosexuality is a chosen "lifestyle," like vegetarianism...

...This is the second long-term gain for conservatives...

...Ever since homosexuality became an issue in the United States 30 years ago or so, there have been three competing positions on it...

...The certainty of genetic studies is determined by their "significance," or "p value," .05 being the minimum needed for scientific acceptance...

...It is evidence for the most important assertion that conservatism makes about human nature: We are, in some ways, born different...

...It says: In fundamental ways, we are born with many important aspects of the way we are...

...Result...

...I'm happy in many aspects of my life, but for a variety of reasons homosexuality is not for me...

...He flicked to the next slide, taken six months later—the cancer had vanished...

...Through social or religious pressure you can force someone to alter the "behavior," that is, the external expression of this trait...

...And for those who find intolerable even the short-term gain that liberalism would get from a conservative conversion to the idea of a biological homosexual orientation, I would remind them that there is a way out—the final element of the conservative case for the gay gene...

...Conservatives who dislike homosexuality have always hated the concept of a gay gene and argued against it...

...But what the Right fails to comprehend is that a conservatism unremittingly hostile to homosexuality and truly committed to the resurgence of conservative thought with real impact on public policy can, and should, embrace the gay gene, which will bring conservatives two long-term gains...

...Which means that supporting Position 1 or 2—lifestyle or disease—will soon be as politically successful for the Republican party as supporting creationism...

...What does this mean for conservatives...

...Any first-year college genetics student could point out that anti-reproductive traits are "selected for" all the time...

...I would travel just about anywhere and would volunteer for 'guinea pig' status, assuming a sane level of risk...

...and answering it means defining the term "human life...

...Ninety-two percent of the population has the majority orientation...

...For every trait they study, clinicians and biologists routinely assemble a "trait profile," the sum total of all the data they have gathered clinically (from observation) about a trait...

...Science presents information, but judgment and values and morality must be applied to that information...

...Position 2: Homosexuality is a disease, like schizophrenia...

...But to religion, biology is immaterial...

...Frankly, I would like to be Chandler Burr, a writer living in Washington, D.C., is the author of A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation (Hyperion...

...If it turns out that the "gay gene" is simply another example of pleiotropy, this would suggest that homosexuality is, like sickle-cell disease, nothing more than a biochemical fluke...

...Journalist James Fallows, himself a liberal, put it to me this way: "Liberalism, which has for the past four hundred years ridden to triumph on science, is now at odds with science, which is showing deeper remnants of our animal past than liberals are comfortable with...

...Naturally, liberals and those who are pro-gay will combat this religious position with two arguments...

...I never entertained the hope of changing since everything I have read about changing through traditional psychotherapy suggests the chances are slim to none...

...Jeffrey Marsh, a physicist and orthodox Jew, reviewed my book for The Weekly Standard (August 5, 1996) and made two conclusive statements...

...I be more precise, homosexuality in males...

...It is the most obvious piece in the debate: religion...

...I am gay, and for personal reasons would like not to be...

...What was the "p value" of the NIH study...

...That may take a decade or more...

...Nature not only could easily select for a gay gene, but it can, and does, regularly select for genes that kill us...

...The fundamental battle between Right and Left since the modern era began is about one thing: Whose view of human nature is correct...

...Which is why, after the announcement of the gay gene's discovery, Immanuel Jakobovits, the former chief rabbi of Britain (and reputedly Margaret Thatcher's favorite religious leader), stated to the conservative Daily Mail: "Homosexuality is a disability, and if people wish to have it eliminated before they have children...

...Marsh, the physicist, framed the rabbi's idea more broadly and more trenchantly: "Fulfillment of [the human] potential [for holiness] depends on a continual struggle to overcome many perfectly natural human inclinations...

...He concluded: "It seems to me just extravagant stupidity to pretend devoutly that humans are totally cultural and environmental creatures...

...Science produces the ability to understand the mechanical functioning of genes, but it does not change the moral nature of the traits they produce...

...Their people can immediately adopt a strategy of, 'Okay, let's fix it, let's eliminate it.'" How this could be done is easily described...

...But the trait profile of handedness is astonishingly similar to the trait profile that geneticists are assembling of human sexual orientation...

...The liberalism that emerged from Locke and Rousseau holds that everyone is born tabula rasa, as a blank slate upon which society and environment write the adult that emerges...

...But say that science had concluded Position 3 was a matter of fact...

...The key question about abortion is, "When does human life begin...

...But there is one glaring difference between them...

...Twenty-five oncologists gasped in unison...

...First, religion is not subject to empirical verification...

...There is no question that conservatives would suffer a short-term loss...

...Robertson knows nothing about the subject...

...A much-discussed study done in 1993 by a team of geneticists at the National Institutes of Health found a spot on, sure enough, the X chromosome that they believe contains a gay gene...

...If you don't know of anyone currently doing research, how might I best keep myself informed of continuing developments...

...From the perspective of those who seek total proscription of homosexuality, it is certainly imperfect, but it is at the same time a way for conservatives to stop shrinking from science and accept the gay gene while nullifying its pro-gay political impact...

...The great majority of us never think about it, but every policy, every program, every law regulating everything from guns to homelessness to taxation is predicated on how its formulators see human nature...

...Now, this work was being done to fight cancer...

...it is always painful when you have committed yourself to a belief that is literally proved untrue, and enemies of conservatism would play "gotcha" for a while...

...If a study gets .05, it has statistically only a 5 percent chance of being wrong...

...The chapter is titled "How Genetic Surgery Can Change Homosexuality to Heterosexuality," and the other week I received the following letter about it from a 38-year-old lawyer...

...I've always experienced my homosexuality as immutable—something deeply a part of me...

...And one morning, maybe six months later, the lawyer will wake up—and his internal orientation, his instinctive romantic and sexual attraction, will be heterosexual...

...At a conference on molecular genetics while researching my book, I saw the future...

...For most pro-lifers, humanity has something to do with the soul, and the existence of the soul is not determinable by science...

...But the question about homosexuality and voli-tion—whether one chooses to be gay—is subject to empirical verification...

...A moral opposition to homosexuality will not prevent the short-term loss that an acknowledgment of the gay gene will cause, but it is the best response to it...

...The trait I have just described is . . . handedness...

...Frank sighed and said, "The observation that behaviors are biologically directed is scary to liberals because that means people aren't infinitely malleable...

...00001...

...Which is exactly what liberals have wanted them to admit...

...We know genetic surgery will require progress in a number of different scientific disciplines before it is practicable...

...I am gay, and for personal reasons would like not to be...

...Apply it to What's the study worth...

...The brand of liberalism that now dominates public policy is futile because it ignores human nature...

...Heterosexuality, the majority orientation, accounts for roughly 95 percent of us, while homosexuality, the minority orientation, accounts for 5 percent...

...Dump the internally illogical traditional position for a stance the liberal Fallows describes as "truly repellent to the liberal mind," and conservatism becomes stronger, not weaker...

...The conservative case for the gay gene will strike many as too pragmatic, somewhat equivalent to the case for pro-choice Republicanism...

...Secular conservatives tend to accept Position 1 and/or Position 2, which means that every new piece of lab research on the gay gene sets their teeth on edge...

...This is liberalism's most fundamental assumption, and in late-20th-century America it is the intrinsic and usually unstated justification for taxpayer-funded social programs...

...For this reason, like the lawyer who wrote me, I too would not be opposed to considering genetic surgery...

...After pinpointing the gene, the next step is to find out what the protein it codes for actually does...

...And the sexual orientation, like the handedness, of adopted children bears no relationship to that of adoptive parents (which means environment is not a factor...

...Through something called "pleiotropy," the fact that genes have side effects, as do drugs...

...Furthermore, genetic research may yet lead to the discovery that the gay gene is a disease gene...

...And the Biblical prohibition is on homosexual behavior, not homosexual orientation...

...Ultimately, a moral opposition to homosexuality is above debate, just as it is above bioassay and data set...

...For religion speaks with absolute authority on the morality of the myriad traits that genes and molecules create, including human sexual orientation...

...I would be very interested in making such a change...

...And the biotech industry is already developing a method that would allow doctors to insert a different version of that gene—what geneticists are now referring to as STRAIGHT-1—into human beings...

...It is heritable, as demonstrated by the fact that identical twins, who are natural clones, are far more likely to share the minority orientation than siblings who are not twins...

...There were 10 of the rats, cut open, their insides infested with rancid-yellow cancerous lesions...

...Research consistently reveals a clear male/female discrepancy...

...The science will show what it will show...

...It means they've won on an argument that is still only on the horizon today: changing it...

...the lawyer asked...

...the first on line the minute some form of treatment becomes available...

...The immediate and dispositive religious counter-response: "Who cares...

...The trait is non-pathological and unchosen, and the minority orientation runs in families with what geneticists call a "maternal effect" (meaning the gene is probably on the X chromosome, which men always get from their mothers...

...The religious counter-response: Like a principled opposition to abortion, the religious opposition to homosexuality rests on a moral stance that is translated into individual positions on policy...

...GAY-1 and STRAIGHT-1 probably affect only men...

...Homosexuality.^ Pat Robertson often claims that "obviously" there could not be a gay gene because nature only selects for genes that "increase reproduction...

...Eight percent has the minority orientation...

...GAY-1, and you have genetic surgery to eliminate homosexuality...

...I am a Colin Powell Republican and a gay person who is an ardent assimilationist...

...But the technology is applicable to any gene...

...In her view, "maleness" is just macho posturing "socially constructed" by society, "femaleness" a myth created by the Neanderthal patriarchy...

...Liberals will be faced for the first time with the fact that the "right to choose" might be used to target one of their own constituencies...

...A test like amniocentesis may soon be able to determine whether a fetus will become a gay adult—and given the fact that there is an almost unlimited right to abortion, parents will certainly be able to terminate the fetus on that basis alone...

...My thoughts on this don't come from a religious perspective, and I don't believe homosexuality is something to be ashamed of...

...Pass enough programs, spend enough on them, and we can equalize the sexes, equalize the races, level all professional playing fields, wipe out criminality, make the lazy industrious, the stupid smart, the violent pacific, and the poor rich...

...Role models, two-parent families, divorce, and other environmental influences can't "make you" have the minority orientation...

...Do you know of any research institutions that are currently studying the possibility of converting homosexual men to heterosex-uality...

...The second was religious and moral: This doesn't matter...

...A young, rather cocky biotech wizard told his audience of 25 senior oncologists how his lab had injected 20 rats with carcinogens...

...Neither orientation correlates with social environment, family structure, religion, or culture...

...The research on homosexuality says: No...

...Position 3: Homosexuality is like left-handedness, and is neither chosen nor pathological...

...The second liberal response: "The First Amendment separates church from state...

...If these two biotech companies are successful, the lawyer might find himself in a doctor's office within a decade or two...

...Some conservatives may find accepting the gay gene as repugnant as accepting choice on abortion...

...Right now, most conservatives are unaware of this, as they are also unaware of the clinical research—all but universally accepted among biologists—showing that homosexuality is a biological trait...

...Laurence Frank, a zoologist at Berkeley, exclaimed to me with disgust, "I can't even call myself a liberal anymore...

...But all the technology for selective abortion already exists...

...By showing man how those natural inclinations work, science can help him in that struggle...

...I would be very interested in making such a change...

...Both show a "maternal effect" pointing towards the X chromosome...

...And the possibility that abortion will be used as a form of sexual eugenics might make liberals who have long fought for the right to abortion in every circumstance think twice...

...Sometimes the violent need to be locked away...

...I am an assimilation-ist in part because I look at a homosexual orientation as a biological roll of the dice that has all the political importance of left-handedness, i.e., none at all...

...Then, said the biotech guy, they injected the 10 other rats with viruses they had engineered, viruses into which they had loaded an anti-cancer gene...

...Rapid advances in genetic research and biotechnology may well make it possible to take what the lawyer describes as "immutable" and change it...

...I admit the parallel...

...Right-handedness is the majority orientation, left-handedness, the minority...

...All we need is good will...

...In fact, the traditional conservative position on homosexuality—"lifestyle"—toes exactly this liberal line...

...So a .03 would be better, having only a 3 percent chance of being a false finding, and a .01 would be better still...

...The doctor will have a syringe loaded with millions of engineered viruses...

...The "10 percent gay" figure has always been a statistical concoction of the gay-rights movement...

...Many Biblically proscribed traits, Marsh noted, have quite natural biological components, from greed to adultery, theft to murder...

...Here is the first long-term gain...

...Even sooner than this scenario becomes possible, however, the gay gene may provide ammunition to conservatives in the debate over abortion...

...Clinical research shows that homosexuality is clearly heritable, like lefthandedness, and neither correlates with any environmental factors...

...I have gay friends, and I have been out to my family for 18 years...

...But this is because conservatives do not understand what its existence really implies: The gay gene is a remarkable vindication of conservative ideas about human nature and may offer one of the most devastating refutations of liberalism we have yet seen...

...One neuroanatomist I spoke with—a straight, pro-choice New York City liberal who favors total political acceptance of homosexuality—growled, "While [conservatives] can't win the disease argument, and they can't win the choice argument, admitting that [homosexuality is] biological and unchosen is their trump card...

...First, the short-term loss...

...It is unnecessary for religion to pronounce on molecular genetics not merely because (as in the case of Pat Robertson) it usually gets molecular genetics wrong, but because genetics are irrelevant to religion...

...This truth turns the politics of abortion upside down...

...And if it shows how biological traits such as homosexuality work, then this simply means that we can reply in the affirmative to someone like the lawyer who wrote me: "Do you know of any research institutions that are currently studying the possibility of converting homosexual men to heterosexuality...

...Intelligence is, to a certain degree, a given...

...But you cannot alter the internal orientation—the trait itself...

...And among researchers, this question is considered answered...

...It means you can't pass laws and do social engineering to change the nasty people, and liberals—and Marxists in the more extreme sense—are completely and totally committed to the notion that we can change anything...

...Conservatives need both to face this research and to understand how it works for them...

...The Bible," wrote Marsh, "does not forbid homosexual activity [emphasis mine] because it is 'unnatural,' but [because it is on] a long list of prohibited sexual relationships...

...there are about twice as many homosexual men (around 6 per 100) as homosexual women (around 3 per 100), and sexual orientation in women, researchers believe, may involve completely unrelated genes...

...Why, then, should conservatives cower before the idea of a gay gene...

...I do not see any moral objections to using genetic engineering to limit this particular trend...