If homosexuality were genetic, wouldn’t it die off each generation? Am I missing something?
“If homosexuality were genetic, wouldn’t it die off each generation? Am I missing something?”
Yes. You are.
I’ve come to the conclusion that most (not all) homosexuality — male homosexuality, as least — comes under the bounds of this rationale:
“A naturally-occurring aberration from the norm”.
I chose each word very carefully in that statement.
No, homosexuality is not and can never be “normal”.
Still, it exists, truly an “aberration” from the norm of heterosexuality.
And (again, for males), the _cause_ of that aberration occurs mainly in nature, not nurture or environment.
We see other types of naturally-occurring defects in humans, all sorts of them. A disease like muscular dystrophy is indeed “genetic”, so why does -it- not “die off” from one generation to the next?
I remember reading about dc generators that somehow become “mis-polarized” (i.e., polarized the wrong way), and thus “spun in reverse” when current was applied to them. Likewise a compass could get magnetized “the wrong way”, and its needle would be 180 degrees reversed.
I believe that embedded somewhere deep in the brain is a kind of “sexual compass” that directs what we (on the surface) call sexual “orientation”. This may not be based on any specific “gene” (hence, no proof that “a gene causes homosexuality”), but something exists there, and I believe that in time we will come to a clearer understanding of what it is.
And — if it’s there — there’s the possibility that early in life, probably in utero, this sexual compass gets “polarized” and the individual is forever “programmed” to behave sexually in a certain manner.
For the vast majority of males, the polarization is “correct”, and they are heterosexual.
For a minority, the polarization gets tangled and reversed, and they are drawn to other males.
But even this isn’t absolute. There may be “middle points” between the opposing poles of the compass — hence, those who are bisexual, others who are mainly heterosexual but can be “pulled towards” homosexuality, and, midway on “the other side”, those whose sexual consciousness began as homosexual but were able to “re-direct themselves” towards normal heterosexuality.
Women seem to be an entirely different story. I’ve come to the conclusion (as previously stated by a few others in this discussion) that the majority of lesbians _choose_ that behavior for some reason or other. Not all, though — there are some very “butch” females that seem to have been that way “early on”, suggesting innate characteristics that are not changeable. Just like the vast majority of males.
Having written all this, I realize that it is “the liberal argument” to argue that gays “are born that way”, and should not be discriminated against for that reason.
As a conservative, I see no reason to purposefully make the lives of homosexuals miserable.....
HOWEVER...
Go back to my original statement, that being, “a naturally-occuring ABERRATION from the norm”.
Because it -is- an aberration, it should not and should never be accepted as “the norm” by which society is constructed. Nor should we do anything to embrace it as normal.
To gays, I would say, “you are here, and you are different. We will not persecute you for being different, but, in return, you must not flaunt those differences in our faces, nor claim that what you are and what you do is ‘normal’ vis-a-vis the social constructs and mores of heterosexuality. Don’t try to rub our noses in your gayness, keep it amongst yourselves, and we’ll take a ‘live and let live’ approach towards you.”
“In short, we won’t deny you love, so long as that love dare not speak its name....”