The search for the gay gene

Another study from Dean Hamer's laboratory at the US National Institutes of Health indicates that genes may influence homosexuality in males (Human Genetics 2005;116: 272-8). The study involved a complete genome scan, the first ever conducted for the study of sexual orientation. Like the others before it, this study is far from conclusive, but it adds to the growing sense that genes play a role in male sexual orientation. The evidence for a genetic contribution to female homosexuality is less well developed, but the case is hardly closed. Social opinion in the back-ground of this research remains divided about its meaning and value.

Some commentators worry that finding genetic aspects to sexual orientation will make things worse for gay men and women around the world. They worry that people will be tested against their will and that clinicians will even test embryos and fetuses. Reacting to the latest genetic study, one Maine legislator proposed an act to protect against such discrimination (http://magic-city-news.com/article_3173.shtml). The proposed law would make it a crime to terminate a pregnancy if tests showed that the fetus carried “the homosexual gene.” It is very unlikely that this bill has the political traction to become law. Even if it happened at the state level, the law would founder as a constitutional matter. It would be idiosyncratic under federal law to say that of all the reasons women might have an abortion, only this one is not permitted. Nevertheless, the proposed law expresses some of the social anxieties associated with research into sexual orientation.

Genetic research might further normalise homosexuality

For all the concern that sexual orientation research provokes, there is no single master narrative about what finding a “gay gene” would mean. There is no shared consensus that sexual orientation research must end in social catastrophe for gay men and women. On the contrary, many gay men and women welcome the idea that their orientation is rooted in biology.

In the 19th century, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, history's first pioneering gay rights activist, believed that homosexual people had a unique biological make up, and he called on society to accommodate this difference. In our own day, many gay men and women share this view for similar reasons. As some people see it, biological explanations of sexual orientation override hostile views that homosexuality is a reversible choice or a psychological maladaptation. On this interpretation, homosexuality is no more nor less natural than heterosexuality.

Of course, not everyone welcomes the biological study of sexual orientation. For example, in the United States the Catholic Medical Association and the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality have taken pains to criticise the research linking sexual orientation and biology. These groups seem to believe that they lose the right to object to homosexuality on moral and psychological grounds if sexual orientation is hardwired in human biology.

Strictly speaking, of course, finding a biological reason for a trait does not mean the trait is moral. That conceptual slippage involves the naturalistic fallacy. A biological impulse to kill indiscriminately is not morally defensible simply because it may have a biological basis. As a moral matter, homosexuality stands or falls only if it is compatible with key human values and social goods, not simply because it is biological. That's the same test that applies to all sexual matters.

In one sense, though, critics of homosexuality have it right when they worry that genetic studies undercut their authority. Many people already believe that homosexuality is biological and—for that reason—deserves social tolerance. If this trend continues, genetic research might further normalise homosexuality by enfolding more and more people under its narrative, in effect creating a community of shared biological identity. Greater social accommodation of homosexual men and women might well be the political effect of sexual orientation research.

Behavioural genetics will undoubtedly disturb the status quo on many fronts, and this is no less true when it comes to social beliefs about homosexuality. Many ill considered views of sexuality have their roots in ignorance, and research has already demystified homosexuality in many important ways. This is not to say that biological research must work only to the advantage of the homosexual men and women it studies. It is to say that, all things considered, it is better to approach human sexuality in full knowledge of its nature (so far as we can know it) than to presume that we already know enough, or that we already do enough, to protect men, women, and children from social mistreatment rooted in scientific half truths.