The Science of Sexuality

By Greta Christina, Greta Christina's Blog. Posted April 25, 2008.

When I first came out into the gay community, one of the most common party lines going around was, "Gay parents aren't any more likely to have gay kids than straight parents." Some of the big political battles being fought at the time had to do with gay parenting, and the community was trying to reassure/ convince the straight world that it was "safe" for gay people to have and raise kids, that our kids wouldn't be any more likely to be gay than anyone else's. (Of course, many of us personally thought, "So what if our kids turn out gay? There's nothing wrong with being gay, so why does it matter?" But we knew the straight world didn't feel that way. Hence, the line.)

Not too long after that, I started hearing the party line, "Being gay isn't a choice -- we're born that way." Again, this was used in political discussions and debates, as a way of putting anti-gay discrimination in the same civil rights camp as racist or sexist discrimination ... and as a way of gaining sympathy. Now, this would seem to be in direct contradiction with the "Gay parents aren't any more likely to have gay kids" line. If people are born gay, doesn't that mean it's genetic, and doesn't that mean gay parents are more likely to have gay kids? But in fact, these two party lines overlapped. I heard them both at the same time for quite a while ... and I never heard a good explanation for why they weren't contradictory.

Then I started hearing the strict constructionist line. "Sexual orientation is a social construct," it said. "Our sexuality is formed by our culture. All that 'we're born that way' stuff -- that's biological determinism, rigid, limiting, a denial of the fluid nature of sexuality and sexual identity." (I am embarrassed to admit that I bought and sold this line myself for quite some time, in a pretty hard-line way ... solely because I liked the idea.)

And now ... well, now it's kind of a mess. Some in the queer community say, "it's genetic," and argue that this is a core foundation of our fight for acceptance. Others fear that the "genetic" argument will lead to eugenics, parents aborting their gay fetuses, the genocide of our community. The constructionist line about rigidity and determinism still gets a fair amount of play. And more and more I'm starting to hear the combination theory: sexual orientation is shaped partly by genetics, partly by environment, and may be shaped differently for different people.

And in all of these debates and party lines, here's what I never heard very much of: Evidence to support the theory.

Or, to be more precise: Solid evidence to support the theory. Carefully gathered evidence. Evidence that wasn't just anecdotal, that wasn't just personal experience.

The line of the day -- and the debates in our community surrounding it -- always seemed to be based primarily on personal feeling and political expedience. I'd occasionally hear mention of twin studies or gay sheep or something ... but that was the exception, not the rule. And the line has shifted around over the years, based not on new evidence, but on shifting political needs, and shifting ways that our community has defined itself.

I am profoundly disturbed by the ease with which many in the queer community are willing to dismiss the emerging science behind this question. Yes, of course, scientists are biased, and the research they do often reflects their biases. But flawed as it is, science is still the best method we have for getting at the truth of this question (and any other question about physical reality). Double-blinding, control groups, randomization of samples, replication of experiments, peer review: all of this has one purpose. The scientific method is deliberately designed to filter out bias and preconception, as much as is humanly possible.

It's far from perfect. No reputable scientist would tell you otherwise. Among other things, it often takes time for this filtering process to happen. And it completely sucks when the filtering process is happening on your back: when you're the one being put in a mental institution, for instance, because scientists haven't yet figured out that homosexuality isn't a mental illness. But when you look at the history of science over time, you see a consistent pattern of culturally biased science eventually being dropped in the face of a preponderance of evidence.

And if you're concerned about bias affecting science, I think it's important to remember that many of the scientists researching this question are themselves gay or gay-positive. We can no longer assume that scientists are "them," malevolent or ignorant straight people examining us like freakish specimens. Many of them are us ... and if they're not, they're our allies. Yes, science often reflects current cultural biases ... but right now, the current cultural biases are a lot more gay-positive than they used to be. And that's even more true among highly educated groups such as the scientific community.

But more to the point: What other options are being offered? How else do we propose to answer this question? Or any other question about the possible causes of human behavior? If answering it based on science is subject to bias, then isn't answering it based on our own feelings and instincts even more subject to bias? How can we accuse scientists of bias in their attempts to answer this question -- and use that accusation as a reason to dismiss the science -- when our own responses to the question have been so thinly based on evidence, and so heavily based on personal preference and political expedience?

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Read more of Greta Christina at her blog.

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