Homosexuality may have a strong biological component.
The small amount of research done in the past 15 years suggests that there is a possibility that our genes be somewhat responsible for our sexual orientation.
That’s of course both a good and a bad thing.
We may take comfort that science is helping prove the point that you neither ‘choose’ to be gay nor can you ‘become’ gay, effectively putting homosexuality on a par with having blue eyes or being tall.
There is a fear though that such research, if validated, will launch some religious nuts into funding research to ‘cure homosexuality’, in effect finding a way to either modify ‘gay genes’ or conditions in the mother’s womb to affect the baby’s epigenetic markup by using hormonal treatments.
Yep, those same people against stem cell research, abortion and vilifying science would have no moral problem actually tempering with a perfectly healthy embryo to ensure he would not become gay.
Talk about cognitive dissonance.
So why would I be all for it?
Well, I’m not really, but here is a thought: religious belief is likely to have a genetic basis too.
All people, of all cultures, have this common brain wiring that makes them susceptible to faith and religious beliefs.
There is also a evidence to suggest that this is a by-product of our evolution, an adaptation of the brain that may have helped us develop complex social structures.
So in essence, that means that what sustains religion, our beliefs in the supernatural, is very likely to have a genetic component, which in turn probably means that there can be a ‘cure’ for it too!
So my proposition is simple: let us cure both homosexuality and religiosity together!
If you can do the first, why stop there?
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Update 23MAR2007.
I could not resist adding this funny video after seeing it:
