Comments on: I Want the World to Know

By: Carolos Obscuros

Carolos Obscuros — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 06:48:14 +0000

“Carolos actually made the claim, not that there was such a thing as homophobia, but that “most parents” would actually selectively abort potentially gay foetuses … ” No—what I said was that, other things being equal, parents prefer their children to be heterosexually oriented. If (thanks to medical progress) this orientation could be assured at a low cost (10$? 5$?), they would certainly do so. Abortion, however, isn’t a low-cost medical intervention and, besides, many parents consider it to be an abomination—unlike homosexuality, which most parents consider to be a misfortune (as do most gays, judging by their autobiographies).

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 19:44:01 +0000

Speaking as a former Miss World, it’s helluva easy to claim anything on the internet. (btw, note that Carolos actually made the claim, not that there was such a thing as homophobia, but that “most parents” would actually selectively abort potentially gay foetuses. Is it really so far “out of line” to suggest that this is plain nonsense?)

By: GBleudot

GBleudot — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 19:18:11 +0000

Speaking as a gay man, I agree with everything Carolos said. D2 and his/her supporters are way out of line. Admitting that homophobia exists, even among parents, is not homophobic. It is merely a statement of fact. Despite our progress in the past couple of decades, the picture from this side of the fence is not that rosy. I know my sister and her husband will love her daughters no matter what but I also know that they’ll regret having to watch them go through all the crap I had to go through.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 19:08:07 +0000

Carolos: by now, I’m pretty sure that you are a researcher working on the second edition of “The Dilbert Future”. So here’s something for you to think on; By the time “gaystop” is invented, extrapolating from present trends, people like me will rule the world. Since I am the person most like me, this means that it is quite likely that I will be the supreme autocrat. Since I am both horrendously puritannically politically correct and impervious to learning anything about the world, I daresay I will not be a benevolent dictator. Therefore I will throw you and Peter into jail for thirty years. While in jail, you and Peter will have the following choices: a) thirty years of abstinence b) masturbating into a bucket while pretending not to notice each other c) developing some form of homosexual relationship. I am afraid to tell you that penological evidence suggests that it is quite probable that you will choose c). And thus, despite the best efforts of scientists, the dread spectre of gayness will continue to stalk our land, until God Almighty (or possibly Allah, who is also not the best friend of Dorothy one might wish for) decides to call it a day on the whole show and turn us into pillars of salt.

By: cafl

cafl — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:12:46 +0000

Where jerks come from—I am reminded of a Far Side cartoon in which God stands at his work bench creating the earth, and reaches for a salt shaker labelled “Jerks”. Caption: “And just to make it interesting”

By: George

George — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:07:36 +0000

If anyone’s still reading this thread, see the following article from this morning’s SF Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/27/SPG4J8VD2M1.DTL I’m guessing very few of these parents would block homosexuality in their children, even if they had the chance.

By: mona

mona — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:10:18 +0000

Good lord, the crazy creepy paranoid stuff people can come up with when it’s about gays. Here’s a puzzle for the wannabe gay terminator: is being a jerk caused by a virus, a gene, or being seduced by another jerk in the bycicle shed? Is there prenatal screening for that kind of sick creepy idiocy? maybe there should be. Bloody hell. I only hope “carolos” is being very skillfully satirical. Anyhow. Michael from Oklahoma is going out with a very cute guy from LA who wants to move back there. Sounds like fair compensation for what he has to put up with.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 14:57:23 +0000

Perhaps you have to have a homosexual ‘gene’ plus fetal exposure to some kind of hormonal disorder or virus plus a Freudian mom and dad plus teenage seduction behind the bicycle shed to become a non-wavering gay. Pfizer’s ‘Gaystop’ or ‘Lesboblock’ you can bet your bottom dollar that (outside of Greenwich Village) they would be falling over one another to get a prescription That has nothing to do with ‘homophobia’. don’t want their children to suffer as a result of being gay. And because I don’t want my children to be dumb or ugly doesn’t mean I hate cognitively disadvantaged people or homely men and women. You can love somebody and yet consider them to be a cross to bear. OK, I'm convinced: dsquared was right. You are a homophobe, and a particularly clueless one at that.

By: Carolos Obscuros

Carolos Obscuros — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 12:27:50 +0000

OK, I’m no expert and I may be mistaken about homosexuality being mainly in the genes—- though that in fact is the claim that many gays seem to make (‘born that way’). Possibly homosexual orientation is caused by a combination of genetic factors, prenatal environmental factors and postnatal environmental factors. Perhaps you have to have a homosexual ‘gene’ plus fetal exposure to some kind of hormonal disorder or virus plus a Freudian mom and dad plus teenage seduction behind the bicycle shed to become a non-wavering gay. Don’t ask me. At any rate, sexual orientation has to have SOME cause or combination of causes. I’ll revise my claim. Let us perform a little thought experiment. Let us assume that scientists discover that homosexuality is not genetically determined at all but chiefly the result of a microbial infection of the pregnant mother (apparently the hypothesis is actually under investigation in the scientific community). Let us also assume that a vaccine to prevent this microbial infection has been developed by the pharmaceutical industry – one dose of Pfizer’s ‘Gaystop’ or ‘Lesboblock’ during the first six months of pregnancy and you can rest assured that your baby will be 100% heterosexually oriented – a child who will, in due course, want to perform potentially reproductive sexual acts, hence reproducing other children who, in due course … etc. etc. Darwin 101, Dawkins 101, Pinker 101. How would infected pregnant women react? To ask the question is to answer it: you can bet your bottom dollar that (outside of Greenwich Village) they would be falling over one another to get a prescription and to raid the local pharmacy while stocks last. That has nothing to do with ‘homophobia’. It’s just that most parents (a) want to have grandchildren and (b) don’t want their children to suffer as a result of being gay. For example, parents prefer their children to be of normal or over-average height – but that doesn’t mean their ‘nanophobes’. And because I don’t want my children to be dumb or ugly doesn’t mean I hate cognitively disadvantaged people or homely men and women. You can love somebody and yet regret that they are the way they are. You can love somebody and yet consider them to be a cross to bear. So I predict that, at least in Western society, partly as a result of medical progress, the percentage of homosexuals is likely to decline in future (other things being equal, of course).

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:24:08 +0000

“As for being a genetic dead end, apparently Carlos hasn’t heard of artificial insemination. ” It’s also a mistake to assume that homosexual men won’t father children in the ‘normal’ way. There’s an unfortunate presumption—unfortunate as it has some genuine real-world effects in terms of, for example, AIDS prevention among married women in India—that the standard ‘Western’ model of homosexuality is a historical or geographically universal one. The stereotypical ‘Western’ model i.e. men mostly with male-only sexual relationships, etc., isn’t really how it is in the rest of the world or indeed how it has historically been in the West. I write a little on these issues as they are at least peripherally involved in some of my thesis—I work on normative claims in medicine and there’s lots of contentious grist for the analytical mill here—and there are quite a few interesting papers tracing the very different social contexts in which men have sex with men in other societies. In many of these societies a strong sexual preference for male partners can go hand-in-hand with a strong role as head of a family, father of children, etc. Not just in the stereotypical Western sense (familiar to us all from novels and film) of ‘closeted’ men ‘concealing’ their ‘real’ preferences (lots of scare quotes here ;-] ) but in the sense of men who are sexually attracted to men but who see their role as fathers as essential to being men and their sexual preference being mostly incidental to this role as a father. Any relationship between a sexual preference for sex with other men and a lower likelihood of fatherhood is historically and socially contingent at best.

By: Randolph Fritz

Randolph Fritz — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 09:29:54 +0000

“How is it that twins having the same genetics, gestated in the same uterine environment, and reared in identical home environments, can wind up with different sexual orientations?” Each child experiences a different home environment, as I’m sure you know. And, at best, the genetics are probably a predisposition, rather than a certain destiny.

By: McDuff

McDuff — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 07:37:55 +0000

Just a data point: I know more than one person on the “left” who, far from ‘grinning and bearing’ the possibility that one of her children could be gay, has actually expressed a positive desire for at least one to be gay. But then, we on the left are an odd bunch like that. Also, can I express outrage at the classification of the entire human race as homophobic eugenicists? Thought so. outrage

By: NancyP

NancyP — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:18:51 +0000

Maybe Carolos is thinking about that play, Twilight of the Golds, that came out shortly after the Hamer Xq28 linkage paper. Premise was, woman who had battery of prenatal tests thinks about aborting gay fetus. Woman in question had a gay brother, and the play turned on family conflicts. There was a movie, and the play shows up every once in a while in amateur or college productions (the only interesting theater in my town). There may be some genetic contribution with low penetrance (technical genetic term meaning not everyone with genotype variant X gets the phenotype X – watch yr dirty minds), but it is likely to be multigenic and difficult to define, given the variation of behavior and of self-perceived “choice” vs. “born that way”. Rule number one of genetic research is to get a highly defined and uniform group for study, and that would seem difficult in this case. It isn’t a research problem I would care to address now, and I daresay the society will have more enlightened attitudes by the time any modestly accurate info about genetic components of homosexualities become available. As for being a genetic dead end, apparently Carolos hasn’t heard of artificial insemination. And heterosexual children may be infertile or just not want kids. And the parents may not care, as long as ONE of the children provides a grandchild or two. Yo – we aren’t prize Great Danes or Angus. I don’t remember much about it, but I do believe there was a genetic component to perfect pitch, which is a far cry from musicianship. The musical families train their children from toddlerhood. I know a family whose latest generation is the 7th generation of professional musicians. #1 generation played in princely Indian courts. BTW, an acquaintance from Tulsa says that the boy’s town is actually a ring suburb of Tulsa about 20 miles from downtown, ie, not a cornfield.

By: Alan K. Henderson

Alan K. Henderson — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:14:44 +0000

The fact that there are people out there who are genetically identical (i. e. monozygotic twins) but have different sexual orientations disproves the notion that all homosexuality is genetically determined. The kneejerk reaction to the twin studies (Bailey and Pillard being the most prominent) is “We’ve got to study identical twins reared apart.” The idea is to control for environment. Fine. But there is another glaring question that followup research must address: How is it that twins having the same genetics, gestated in the same uterine environment, and reared in identical home environments, can wind up with different sexual orientations?

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:13:39 +0000

If anyone’s a ‘troll’ in this discussion it’s dsquared, spying imaginary phobias without provocation and adding in foul language for good measure. Is this what the Left’s been reduced to? Screaming abuse at anyone who doesn’t pretend that the vast majority of parents have no preferences regarding their kids’ sexuality? I’d suggest he read into some of the basics of human nature, which ordinary human contact obviously hasn’t taught him, if it weren’t so plain that his mind is about as open to politically incorrect facts as an 18 year old middle class postmodernist. To turn one’s brain into a Fort Knox of PC, with no hope of any trace of reality entering, is pitiable in a political activist, but tragic – if not uncommon – in an academic.