What Are the Implications of Finding a Gay Gene?
Why a Genetic Cause For Homosexuality isn't a Win for Gay Rights
May 8, 2008
Homosexuality is largely accepted in Britain today, but as advancements in science continue, and the genetic code is slowly unravelled, the search for what determines sexual orientation, dubbed the "gay gene", may create difficult Human Rights questions the likes of which current British law is little prepared to deal with. For possibly the first time, the subjects of gay rights and abortion will have to be considered in the same bracket. This is why.
Ever since the Kinsey report of 1984 stipulated that homosexuality was a normal and widespread form of sexual orientation, there has been both detraction and debate leading to a great many more surveys and essays assessing the validity of the results and the implications to society as a whole.
One of the results of this is that gay activists have pushed for science to find the genetic link that proves that there is a predisposition to homosexuality, a "gay gene", and that homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice as some religious groups have claimed. The logic follows that if there is a predisposition to being gay, if it is, in that sense, proved to be natural, then there are less grounds to claim that homosexuality is immoral.
However, such a proof is not without its own inherent risks. If scientists were able to locate a genetic factor that created homosexuality, for instance a recessive gene that when paired with another of its kind during the fertilisation process created a homosexual child, there would follow an ability to predict the likelihood of having a gay child by searching for the gay gene.
Moral Implications of the Gay Gene Discovery
If the ability to predict a child’s sexual orientation pre-birth is found, then the moral issue of our responsibilities to that child are called into question. However, if one accepts that homosexuality is not a disease, as it was declassified from being a mental disorder in 1994 in Britain and earlier in America during 1973, there seems to be little to argue over.
If it is not a disorder like, for instance, Down’s Syndrome, it would seem that there would be no case for action either. However, under abortion laws the ‘therapeutic abortion’, which, as the Online Medical Dictionary defines as “An abortion induced because of the mother's physical or mental health”, presents us with a fundamental question of human rights: if a mother does not want a gay child and states that it would damage her mentally, for reasons that might relate to either a social stigma or a religious belief, should she be able to abort the foetus? And also, whose rights outweigh the other, child or mother?
Whilst it might be suggested that such a proposition is outrageous in the Developed World, one of the men who discovered DNA, Dr. James Watson, was quoted as saying, with possible reference to the gay gene: "[If] a woman decides she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her [abort the foetus]" - Catholic World News, News Brief 02/17/1997.
Precedent for Conscern Over Identifying the Gay Gene
Female infanticide and feoticide in countries such as China and India in the 1980s due to a woman’s low social status in those societies has been well documented. More over, the killings of gay men in places such as Iran and throughout Asia and into Africa continue to this day. This is done under the cover of charges for supposed kidnapping and rape. With the identification of the gay gene it would be even easier to carry out such blatant discrimination by terminating foetuses or even ‘curing’ the parents through selective gene therapy to prevent the child being born "evil" or "perverted".
This demonstrates that the discovery of the gay gene could, potentially, pose a significant threat to gay people and the existence of homosexuals across the globe, something that even the United Nations will have to take notice of in if such a thing as the "gay gene" were ever to be found.
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