By BRIAN CLOWES
(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995.)
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The most powerful weapon in the homosexual special rights arsenal is the victim status. A close second is the allegation that homosexuals are “born that way.” If scientists can show that homosexuality is a genetic trait, then homosexuals may have a legitimate claim to being protected as a minority class under federal and state civil rights laws.
Whatever the outcome of scientific studies, the most important point that we can make is that the question over the genetic nature of homosexuality is completely irrelevant to the debate.
Nobody is perfect. God created all of us with physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual defects that take many different forms. This is a consequence of our fallen nature, and each of us must strive to overcome our flaws and weaknesses for His greater glory.
Even if homosexuals are “born that way,” this is absolutely no excuse to give in to their desires and endanger themselves and others. After all, alcoholism has been proven to be a genetic trait. But do we see organized activist alcoholics demanding the right to get roaring drunk every night, the right to drive while drunk, and the right to be protected from the consequences of their behavior when they are drunk?
Of course not!
Psychologist Harold Fishbein of the University of Cincinnati has suggested that there may be a genetic disposition toward racist behavior. If racism is proven to be a genetic trait, will we embrace groups of people who hate and discriminate against blacks, Jews, and immigrants?
Of course not!
If kleptomania is proven to be genetic, should we accept demands by organized kleptomaniacs to legalize and even honor their compulsive thievery?
Of course not!
Finally, if “homophobia” is proven to have a genetic component, will homosexual activists recognize and embrace their demands?
Of course not!
The Studies. The most effective tactic homosexual activists employ is to wrap their allegations in a veneer of science when talking about their sexual orientation. Members of the public automatically give heavy credence to any claim that originates with a professional medical organization or a prestigious journal, and homosexual theorists know this.
The first large study that claimed that homosexuals are “born that way” was performed by Alfred Kinsey, and culminated in his 1948 report entitled Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. The previous article showed why this research was grossly biased and therefore invalid.
The two studies quoted most often by those who believe homosexuality is inborn were both performed in 1991. These were Simon LaVey’s study of the human hypothalamus and J. Michael Bailey’s study of the sexual orientations of identical and fraternal twins. These studies are a cautionary tale to those who do not understand the scientific process and simply grab a hypothesis and present it as settled fact.
There have been several other major studies performed on sexual orientation over the past 25 years, but they do not claim any definitive conclusions. Many of these studies are near-duplicates of the LaVey and Bailey studies.
Simon LaVey, himself a homosexual, examined the brains of 35 male cadavers (16 heterosexuals and 19 homosexuals) to see if he could find any differences between the groups. He found that a cluster of brain neurons known as INAH3 was twice as large in heterosexual men as it was in homosexuals. Activists immediately seized upon this tidbit of information and alleged that it “proved” that homosexuality is a genetic condition; i.e., that homosexuals are “born that way.”
However, there were several obvious difficulties with LaVey’s study that the propagandists glossed over or ignored completely. To begin with, LaVey did not bother to verify that his 16 “non-homosexual” subjects were, in fact, heterosexual. This is significant in light of the fact that six of these 16 men died of AIDS. LaVey acknowledged that this was “a distinct shortcoming of my study.”
Additionally, three of the “heterosexual” brains had smaller node clusters than the average of the “homosexual” ones, and three of the “homosexual” brains had larger node clusters than the average of the “heterosexual” ones. Another fatal flaw was that LaVey’s sample population size was ridiculously small. What he would like us to believe is that an examination of 35 cadavers somehow “proves” that the sexual orientation of billions of human beings is genetic.
Finally, LaVey’s logic is obviously flawed because the brain node in question has not been proven as being either a cause or an effect of homosexuality. In other words, the brain node might be smaller because of homosexual activity instead of causing it, in the same way that various other parts of the brain expand or contract with more or less usage.
Perhaps the most serious difficulty of LaVey’s study is related to his painfully obvious conflict of interest. This study can best be debunked by comparing it to a situation in which a pathologist hired by the American Tobacco Institute performs autopsies on 35 men. Sixteen of these men had never touched tobacco in any form. The other 19 began smoking at a very young age and smoked two packs a day until they died. The pathologist removes and examines the lungs of the 35 men. He finds that the lungs of the nonsmokers are generally pink and healthy and the lungs of the smokers are obviously discolored and badly fouled by tar deposits.
Based upon the researcher’s data, the American Tobacco Institute announces that some babies are born with badly damaged and tarry lungs and that this trait causes them to become smokers. Conversely, those babies that are born with pink and healthy lungs will not become smokers. This line of reasoning makes no sense at all, of course, but the media accepted the identical grossly flawed “logic” of LaVey’s study without question.
Serious Shortcomings
The other major study relied upon by homosexual activists to advance their “born that way” agenda is the twins study by Dr. J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University and Dr. Richard Pillard of the Boston University School of Medicine. These two researchers published a study of twins raised in the same homes.
In sets of identical twins, where one brother was homosexual, they found that there was a 52 percent chance that the other twin was homosexual as well. This number was 22 percent for fraternal (non-identical) twins and only 9 percent for non-twin brothers.
The conclusion that the authors drew from these comparisons was this: That the incidence of homosexuality becomes higher as the genetic link between brothers becomes closer. Therefore, they concluded that homosexuality must have a genetic basis.
As with LaVey’s research, there were very serious shortcomings in the methodology of this study. To begin with, the advertising for volunteers for the study was done in a homosexual magazine. Therefore, it can be expected that the incidence of homosexuality among all respondents would be exceedingly high. After all, heterosexuals don’t often read sex-saturated homosexual literature.
Secondly, the fact that 48 percent of the identical twins of homosexual brothers in the study were not homosexuals themselves indicates that homosexuality is largely the result of environmental influences. After all, identical twins should be identical in all ways — including their sexual orientations. Bailey himself acknowledged that “there must be something in the environment to yield the discordant twins.”
In fact, previous research had shown an extremely strong correlation between incest and resultant homosexuality, but Bailey and Pillard dismissed the effects of incest as “insignificant.”
Brown University developmental biologist Anne Fausto put her finger on the study’s central flaw, which was its failure to separate environmental factors from genetic influences. She said that “in order for such a study to be at all meaningful, you’d have to look at twins raised apart. It’s such badly interpreted genetics.”
The Political Purpose of These Studies. It is obvious that the purpose of these studies was not to convert the hearts and minds of the people, because the average person does not read medical or scientific journals. Most Americans tend to have a good measure of common sense and instinctively realize that homosexuality and its associated practices are unhealthy for both individuals and societies in general.
The purpose of these studies was instead to convince the power structures (in particular, the court systems) that homosexuality is an innate characteristic.
After all, the homosexuals have used the court system to their great advantage on the way to fulfilling their many goals, just as others used the court system to enshrine abortion in the United States over the objections of most of the population.
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