Media Still Trying to Sell us on the ‘Gay Gene’ Myth
There’s a new study out that claims “gay” DNA may have been found. Not so fast.
“Nature News were among the first to break the story based on a press release issued by the conference organisers. Others quickly followed suit. ‘Have They Found The Gay Gene?’ said the front page of Metro, a London paper. . .”
According Ed Yong, writing in The Atlantic, the study is seriously flawed for a number of reasons. You can read Yong’s account of how bad the study is: “No, Scientists Have Not Found the ‘Gay Gene’: The media is hyping a study that doesn’t do what it says it does.”
Keep in mind that The Atlantic magazine is said to espouse a “moderate worldview,” but we know it’s mostly liberal,1 therefore, the science must really be bad for a publication like The Atlantic to attack it.
I’ve always said that finding a genetic marker for a behavior is not an indication of that behavior being either normal or moral character. Today’s matter-only scientists can only determine what “is,” not what should be.
Just because there’s a genetic cause for aggression, pedophilia, or a gambling addiction does not that these behaviors are normal or moral. For example:
- “Some of us, it seems, were just born to be bad. Scientists say they are on the verge of pinning down genetic and biochemical abnormalities that predispose their bearers to violence. An article in the journal Science . . . carried the headline EVIDENCE FOUND FOR POSSIBLE ‘AGGRESSION’ GENE.”2
- “Why do gamblers often bet more after a losing hand? Or investors throw good money after bad? The answer may lie in the science of the brain.”3
- “Is racism simply human nature or something learned from society? Neither, says a team of psychologists who, despite criticism, argue that racism represents an accidental side effect of evolution.”4
- A recent article published in The Sciences, a New York Academy of Science magazine, stated that “rape is a ‘natural, biological’ phenomenon, springing from men’s evolutionary urge to reproduce.”5
Why is it that only homosexuality is given a genetic pass? If rape is “natural” should the Supreme Court rule that people who engage in rape should not be prosecuted since they are only doing what is natural for them?
The same is true for pedophilia since pedophiles claim they were born that way. why not violence in the cases of mass shootings? “There is no one-to-one relationship between genetics and mental health or between mental health and violence,” read an editorial in Nature. “Something as simple as a DNA sequence cannot explain anything as complex as behaviour.” (H/T: National Geographic)
Furthermore, there are studies that show that behavior can affect DNA. We may learn from epigenetics that engaging in same-sex behavior is what modifies DNA. This would require a non-behavioral baseline established at birth to determine whether a certain DNA “switch” had been turned off because of homosexual behavior.
In the final analysis, we are left with a behavior that is unnatural and offers, in scientific terms, negative feedback in terms of disease and non-reproduction.
- James Douglas Bennet is the editor. Bennet’s father “was appointed as a political official in the Carter and Clinton administrations” and “served as the president of National Public Radio from 1983 to 1992 and as the president of Wesleyan University from 1995 to 2007.” [↩]
- Dennis Overbye, “Born to Raise Hell?,” Time (February 21, 1994), 76. [↩]
- Faye Flam, “Study: Reckless gambler, blame your brain,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (March 22, 2002), A18. [↩]
- Dan Vergano, “Racism may have evolutionary link,” USA Today (December 11, 2001), 11. [↩]
- Dan Vergano, “‘Natural, biological’ theory of rape creates instant storm,” USA Today (January 28, 2000), 8D. [↩]