PING!
Posted on 01/17/2007 8:09:19 PM PST by GMMAC
When feminism and gay rights butt heads
Barbara Kay, National Post
Published: Wednesday, January 17, 2007
It isn't very often that womens' rights and gay rights collide, but we may be on the brink of just such an interesting moment.
Reports suggest researchers at Oregon State University are having some success in "straightening" homosexual rams -- about 10% of which are "gay" -- by adjusting hormone balances in their brains, after which the ewe-eschewing males start paying their procreative dues in the traditional way.
Such a breakthrough could enormously benefit people in the sheep-breeding business. But further research along these lines might eventually lead to something as rudimentary as a hormonal patch for pregnant women that would reduce or eliminate the possibility of a homosexual child. The Oregon State professor leading the study, Charles Roselli, believes that potentially "the techniques could one day be adapted for human use, with doctors perhaps being able to offer parents prenatal tests to determine the likely sexuality of offspring or a hormonal treatment to change the orientation of the child."
The social fallout from such a discovery is presently incalculable, but imaginations in various ideological quarters are doubtless working overtime on the possibilities.
Take, for example, gay tennis legend Martina Navratilova, who immediately called for a halt to the research at Oregon State, citing "the right of sheep to be gay." She seems, absurdly, to be suggesting that homosexual rams are not driven by hormonal miscues, but rather enjoy some kind of Brokeback-style "relationship" with each other.
I have been anticipating exactly such a bio-genetic plot development for some time. If hormonal adjustments can end the tormenting symptoms of severely afflicted menopausal women (I can happily attest they do), it seemed to me only natural that one day the fetal hormonal chemistry in born homosexuals could be altered as well.
Gay and lesbian umbrage will neither stop nor slow research on this file. For although feminists and gay rights advocates usually march in lockstep on issues of sexual identity and gender equity, here they will divide: Paradoxically feminists' militant commitment to a "woman's right to choose" on reproductive issues has created the exact social and legal conditions under which traditional women's preferences for straight children must be permitted to trump gay exceptionalism.
Thus there is more than a little irony in the gay sheep's story coinciding with the public recommendation by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC) that all pregnant women, not just those over 35, henceforth be screened for genetic defects in order to widen the doorway to pregnancy terminations. It reminds us that abortion on demand, for any reason a woman deems worthy, is a settled issue amongst the elites of modern Western society (the parallel U.S. group made the same recommendation).
Technological advances and the problematic consequences in their wake from unfettered access to abortion have thus far not budged pro-choice ideologues. Abortion on demand coupled with sex forecasting, for example, has resulted in a virtual gendercide amongst some cultural communities, but feminists will not back down from their monolithic political stance.
How then can those who support a woman's unconditional right to kill her own healthy female fetus logically balk at a benign intervention that will optimize thechances of a living child having the sexual orientation preferred by the parents? Invoking state protection of a fetus's "right to be gay" -- as if the fetus itself had somehow chosen its own sexual identity -- would vitiate the very principle upon which abortion rights depend, namely, that women's wishes must always take precedence over fetal rights.
And so in a few generations, innate homosexuality may become a very rare thing. If a safe, simple and inexpensive method can be mass-produced to ensure heterosexuality in offspring, the vast majority of traditionally-minded parents will leap on it. Certainly fundamentalists of all religions will openly embrace the opportunity. Amongst progressives in the West, there may be an emotional debate, but an individual heterosexual woman's expressed compassion for gays in society doesn't mean she personally will opt for a gay over a heterosexual child.
In the politically correct public forum, sexual identity equity is de rigeur. But if and when it comes down to a personal choice, and more importantly, if that choice is guaranteed to be private (i.e. nobody but a woman's doctor would ever know) -- even most liberal parents will choose offspring who share their most fundamental human characteristic.
Bkay@videotron.ca
© National Post 2007
PING!
Steyn wrote a piece about this about a week or so ago.
Does the gay lobby suddenly become pro-life?
IMHO, if the hormone therapy experiments being done on the rams are successful, the gay lobby fears that their numbers will be reduced by gay men seeking the treatment so that they can become hetrosexual.
Of course, you have to wonder how many radical feminists out there would want to use their power of choice to inflict the child with homosexuality.
If hormone therapy can change an animal or human's sexual preference, then there is absolutely no way that sexual preference is genetic. But then I have been saying that sort of thing for 15 years. There are NO valid studies proving that there is a gay gene. None. It's just the PC crowd making everybody feel good about themselves no matter what they do and no matter how they behave.
More likely, it's testing for gayness in the womb, then using hormones to correct as needed. By the time you're grown, it's a little late.
The people horrified over genetic manipulation are at loggerheads with themselves, I imagine.
This is reminiscent of the deaf culture opting for their children to be deaf when there are remedies.
There's a reason carnivals don't have freak shows anymore. In Prozac Nation, dysfunction needn't be encouraged.
why do you think the hormone would be deficient, if not for the genes?
Hee! Barbara said "butt"
I would think it would be a malfunction of one of the endocrine glands. A malfunction not a genetic problem. Here's my quandary: I'm thinking that if it is purported to be genetic, why would heterosexual parents have gay children?
Unfortunately, this may reduce, but not eliminate homosexuality. Some will always do it to be different or simply because they can.
There. Fixed it ......
I always did like the song 'I Want a Hero'. Yes, a strong man who knows where he's going and loves the woman next to him for the journey.
If it is, is a malfunctioning endocrine gland a matter of choice?
As far as heritability, not every heritable trait is expressed that is passed down. Traits skip generations.
So for a heritable trait to be expressed do you not need it to be a dominant trait? And if the parents are heterosexual wouldn't that be their dominant trait for both?
You're right, she takes a different angle.
Steyn's was more humorous in tone.
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