AUGUST 2, 1996 GAY PEOPle's ChronICLE 11
SPEAK OUT
Are we headed for a brave new world without gays?
by Hastings Wyman, Jr.
The next generation of lesbians and gay men are likely to face an issue more basic than any we're facing today, surpassing even the AIDS crisis in its impact on our community: The right to exist.
A new book by Chandler Burr, a gay Washington, D.C. writer whose work on similar topics appears in such publications as the Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times Magazine, shows that the science and technology to discover and eliminate homosexuality-at first by abortion, later by genetic engineering-may not be a science fiction scenario, but a soon-to-be fact of life.
For his book, A Separate Creation, published in June by Hyperion (New York), a Disney company, Burr interviewed leading scientists in the fast-growing and muchfunded field of genetic research. He concludes that establishing the heritability of homosexuality in both men and women is pretty much a done deal, leaving only the task of finding the "gay gene"-or more accurately, the gay genes, since there's probably more than one way human beings develop into gays and lesbians.
Simply put, humans' “default gender" is female; i.e., the fetus is female unless certain things happen which turn it into a male. Many scientists believe that this geneticallycontrolled process sometimes operates so that only part of the changeover takes place. For example, testosterone secretions can change the genitals into a penis and testicles, creating a biological male, while the secretions don't occur that change the brain so that the person will be sexually aroused by females. Or the genitals remain female, but the brain changes so that the person will be attracted to females.
Once the identity and location of the ge-
netic coding that directs this process has been established-something that could come in the next several years"There will be a test for it. That is a fact," says one scientist in the field who wouldn't let Burr attribute the quote to her. And as for whether pregnant women will use the test to determine if the child is gay, "the only thing that matters is what the women who bear children think," says Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin.
That means women
who do not wish to give birth to a gay baby have only to take the test and
It
obtain an abortion. doesn't take a neuroscientist to figure out what that could do to the size of the gay and lesbian population in this and
to those who study this issue that whether we become homosexual because of a gene or early environmental influences, we don't "choose" to be attracted to someone of the same gender. Finding the gay gene will eliminate this area of doubt exploited by the homophobes. Perhaps more
importantly, the genetic concept sheds light on many aspects of our lives: why twice as many
Genetic research will soon produce a test for 'gay genes,' and ways to change them. Our right to exist is at stake.
other industrialized nations. For those with objections to abortion, it's just a matter of time-about thirty years, claims one Harvard geneticist-before prenatal surgery will be able to change the sexual orientation of a fetus.
"You find a gene that makes some difference in your physiology," says Harvard's Lewontin, "but nobody ever said you couldn't change people's physiology." Even adult homosexuals may be able to "change”—not by futile hours on the psychiatrist's couch, but by injection of a virus that locates and changes a few sequences in a person's DNA.
Despite these pessimistic possibilities, genetic research does have much to offer gay people. It undercuts the homophobe's argument that gays and lesbians "choose" homosexuality. While for some bisexuals-mainly women-choice is a factor, for virtually all gay men and most lesbians, it has been clear
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men as women are
homosexual-an estimated 4 percent or 5 percent of men, 2 percent or 2.5 percent of women; why many gay people have "cross-gender" interests-
the arts for gay men, athletics for lesbians; why a significant number of women move in and out of being straight, bisexual or lesbian, while men usually stay put; why lesbians have fewer sexual partners than straight single women and why gay men have more than anybody; why identical twins share sexual orientation more than other siblings—but
often don't; how gay men and lesbians differ from transsexuals (an estimated one in every 50,000 men).
In addition, genetic research, like most human knowledge, can bring great benefits— curing cancer with a couple of shots in the doctor's office, eliminating mental retardation by replacing a few genes, warding off some heart ailments. The list is endless.
Given the speed with which knowledge is developing in this field, now is not at all too soon for gay people to begin thinking about the implications of these findings and what we can do about them. History suggests that political pressure to halt this research, conducted in large part by gay scientists, would be futile the Luddites in 19th-century England who destroyed textile machinery to preserve their jobs did not prevent the Industrial Revolution. And even if we stopped genetic inquiry here, research would still go forward in Europe, Japan and elsewhere.
In any case, we need a new sense of urgency in our movement for full participation in human society-more openness and communication with non-gay people, more civic and political involvement, and a newly strengthened resolve that what lesbian and gay people bring to the world is too valuable to be lost.
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