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mofo said:
then science may well be able to reverse it one day.  The question is, should it?

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The "if" belies the hypothetical nature of the question.

I don't think "science," which is actually a group of people, scientists, should be involved with anything to do with ethics.  Why?  Because science cannot decide ethical questions.  The domain of the scientist has to do with descriptive truth, not prescriptive truth.  Science can tell you what something is; it cannot tell you if it is good.

We have philosophers for that. 

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Mr. Mushrooms said:
You have a question by me in the patterns thread.

Aren't people categorized by their acts?

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Qubit said:
If having a right to your own body means you have the right to destroy a fetus, then I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to alter a fetus with whatever genetic engineering you want.

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Lion said:

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Mr. Mushrooms said:
You have a question by me in the patterns thread.

Aren't people categorized by their acts?

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The question is vague.  People are categorized by their acts by other people, but these categories are illusory.  There is no creator of categories, concepts, and meaning apart from the mind.

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deimya said:
Yes, but mostly as a linguistic trick I would say. The problem stems from when language screws you over and one starts to associate certain "mental state" or "state of being" to what first qualifies as an intention, or will (� la Schopenhauer, rather then � la "free will") to experience one's own sexuality. By using language games like "state of", and by extension by applying strong labels to people engaging in sexual activities outside of one's comfort zone, one may be unwittingly bundling too many concepts together. By using "state of", one starts to think of homosexuality as homosexuals, as something you can move people in and out of, like marbles and boxes.

Should we seek the genetic underpinning of homosexuality in those who had 1% of all their sexual activities with people of the same sex ? 2% ? 10 % ? 50 % ? Whether there is a genetic predisposition or not to homosexual practices, I think it really comes down how comfortable one feels with it, and there lies the problem of moral and ethic, since one's comfort is more often then not directly related to one's social environment; how should one live, and how should one let others live.

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Mr. Mushrooms said:

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Lion said:

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Mr. Mushrooms said:
You have a question by me in the patterns thread.

Aren't people categorized by their acts?

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The question is vague.  People are categorized by their acts by other people, but these categories are illusory.  There is no creator of categories, concepts, and meaning apart from the mind.

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If the mind creates a category or concept how is it not real?  Without concepts we are just dumb beasts.  Technology, based on concepts, evidences differently.

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xFrockx said:
I was expecting the question "Then how is it a reproductive advantage to be passed on to later generations, or how is it passed on at all?"

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"Homosexuality Is Not Hardwired," Concludes Dr. Francis S. Collins, Head Of The Human Genome Project

By A. Dean Byrd, Ph.D, MBA, MPH

April 4, 2007 - Dr. Francis S. Collins, one of the world's leading scientists who works at the cutting edge of DNA, concluded that "there is an inescapable component of heritability to many human behavioral traits. For virtually none of them is heredity ever close to predictive."


Dr. Francis S. Collins
In reviewing the heritability (influence of genetic factors) of personality traits, Dr. Collins referenced the estimates of the percentage of various human personality traits that can be ascribed to heredity from the Bochard and McGue research.

The heritability estimates for personality traits were varied: General Cognitive Ability (50%), Extroversion (54%), Agreeableness (42%), Conscientiousness (49%), Neuroticism (48%), Openness (57%), Aggression (38%) and Traditionalism (54%).

Kirk et al. (2000) in their research using a community-based cohort of Australian twins reported a heritability estimate of 30% for homosexuality. Whitehead (1999, 2006) in his extensive review of the research cites 30% as the estimate of heritability for homosexuality as well, though he views the estimate as a maximum.

Estimates of heritability are based upon careful analyses of studies conducted with identical twins. Such studies are important and lead to the conclusion that heredity is important in many of these traits. It is important however, to note that even in such studies with identical twins, that heritability is not to be confused as inevitability.

As Dr. Collins would agree, environment can influence gene expression, and free will determines the response to whatever predispositions might be present.

Dr. Collins succinctly reviewed the research on homosexuality and offers the following: "An area of particularly strong public interest is the genetic basis of homosexuality. Evidence from twin studies does in fact support the conclusion that heritable factors play a role in male homosexuality. However, the likelihood that the identical twin of a homosexual male will also be gay is about 20% (compared with 2-4 percent of males in the general population), indicating that sexual orientation is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations."

Dr. Collins noted that environment, particularly childhood experiences as well as the role of free will choices affect all of us in profound ways. As researchers discover increasing levels of molecular detail about inherited factors that underlie our personalities, it's critical that such data be used to illuminate, not provide support to idealogues.

Citing such dangers, Dr. Collins referred to the book written by activist Dean Hamer who declared the discovery of the God Gene (this same author also is associated with "discovering the gay gene").

Dr. Collins noted that the "evidence" in Hamer's book "grabbed headlines," but was "wildly overstated."

A reviewer in Scientific American suggested that Hamer's book on the God Gene should have been titled, "A Gene That Accounts for Less than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study."

Unfortunately, much of the research in areas such as homosexuality, has been not only misrepresented in the media but by the scientists themselves through the tendency to overestimate the quantitative contribution of their findings.

Perhaps the best example of this media misrepresentation was the two studies conducted by J. Michael Bailey. In Bailey's first study, he reported a concordance rate of 52%. In a second study, Bailey reported a concordance of 20-37.5%, depending on how loosely you define homosexuality. The first study received a great deal of press. The second study received almost no media attention.

Bailey himself acknowledged probable selection bias in his first study---he recruited in venues where "participants considered the sexual orientation of their co-twins before agreeing to participate." The second study, using the Australian Twin Registry with its anonymous response format, made such bias unlikely.

Regarding the contributions of genetics to areas such as homosexuality, Dr. Collins concluded, "Yes, we have all been dealt a particular set of cards, and the cards will eventually be revealed. But how we play the hand is up to us." *


Bailey, Michael J., Michael P. Dunne and Nicholas G. Martin (2000). Genetic and environmental influences on sexual orientation and its correlates in an Australian twin sample. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 3, 524-536.

Collins, Francis S. (2006). The language of god, a scientist presents evidence for belief, New York: Free Press.

Kirk, K. M., J. M. Bailey, M. P. Dunne and N. G. Martin (2000). Measurement models for sexual orientation in a community twin sample. Behavior Genetics, 30, 4, 2000, 345-356.

Whitehead, Neil and Briar (1999). My Genes Made Me Do It! A Scientific Look at Sexual Orientation. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Press.

Whitehead, Neil (2006). "What do first ages of SSA or OSA tell us about their origins?" In NARTH Collected Papers.


* Dr. Steve Simon (in an email correspondence) noted quite appropriately that heritability is a measure of the ratio of two variances and is not a simple proportion. A heritability index and a proportion are calculated on different scales. In this case, however, both the data from the heritability index and the proportion support the conclusion that homosexuality is not hardwired (or simply biologically fated). Though Dr. Collins offered a 20% concordance for monozygotic twins, it should be noted that this figure is the proband concordance. This is mathematically correct. However, Dr. Neil Whitehead offered a correct pairwise concordance of 11%. For the lay audience, it should be understood that different answers will emerge with different models. However, the conclusion is the same: current data provides little evidence to support the conclusion that homosexuality is hardwired.




Updated: 8 February 2008

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the part about choice was my opinion, and you quoted it out of context.

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I didn't quote anything?

Yes, I agree that the environment plays a key factor in the predisposition of homosexuality. But that doesn't make it a choice.

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that doesn't make it a choice.

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Trepiodos said:
Why on earth should anyone try to reverse it?

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Visionary Tools said:


And, if gayness can be bred out, what about ginger people, black people? Asians? Let's just have the master race!

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zouden said:
So is blonde hair

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Disappearing blonde gene is a hoax that has periodically surfaced in the media since 1865,[1] with the most recent version starting in 2002. According to this hoax, the World Health Organization, or other experts, published a report claiming that people with blond hair "will become extinct by 2202."

The report was a hoax. Neither the WHO, nor any reputable expert has issued such a report.

The extinction claim is based on an interpretation of recessiveness in genetics. However unless blondness is positively selected against, it cannot become extinct, and the blond gene, or alleles for the trait cannot disappear by simple breeding.

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Qubit said:

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zouden said:
So is blonde hair

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Is that true?  I thought that UN study was a myth, or at least an exaggeration.

I mean, yea it makes sense - but Im skeptical if the data supports it.

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mofo said:
then science may well be able to reverse it one day.  The question is, should it?

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but... if homosexuality were genetic, then how would homosexuals be conceived?
That would imply all homosexuals being born from artificial insemination, and you would always have to find a lesbian willing to donate ovules, but this already contradicts what happens nowadays.
Most homosexuals are born from heterosexual couples, who got here with their family practicing heterosexuality,

I think that has no logic you're sexual choice is about what turns you on, or would you say a kinky heterosexual is differenced of a non-kinky heterosexual by genetics??