Liberals tend to believe that sexual orientation is determined by
genetics but that gender-difference in behavior is not, whereas
conservatives tend to believe the reverse.
That’s Matt Yglesias.
Very good sentences
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And people who believe in natural selection tend to do things that will stop it, while people of faith seem more inclined to favor “survival of the fittest”.
More importantly (by far): what do scientists believe, who have actually studied these questions?
The truth is not always found equidistant between two opposing opinions. Sometimes one side is just plain wrong.
Yeah, this has been around for a while.
Science is always going to come down on the side of determinism, because understanding deterministic mechanisms is what science is all about. What would scientific evidence that some observed phenomenon represents a choice even look like? At most, a scientist could say that the mechanism behind an observed phenomemon is not yet understood.
But the morality of some behavior (or its enforcement) is an entirely seperate question from the deterministic mechanisms underlying it. Even if the sexes have biologically determined predelictions toward different professions, it’s wrong to legally enforce that segregation. And if homosexual acts are abominations in the eyes of God — I don’t believe they are, but that’s a perfectly consistent belief for someone to have — then the fact that some people are geneticly predisposed to homosexual behavior doesn’t make it right. Almost certainly, predelictions toward violent criminal behavior are inborn — we even know some of the genes. The existence of that deterministic mechanism doesn’t make violent criminal behavior acceptable.
Glibness and clever wordplay may make a good sentence, but they don’t necessarily yield any insight or truth. This one certainly doesn’t.
Tyler left out “except conservatives with gay children”.
In the present state of Constitutional interpretation, an argument based on choice (what I do in private with consenting adults is my own business) has significantly more mileage than one based on innate difference (I really am different, and you must accommodate my difference). It is mildly surprising that the latter argument is much more popular among those to whom it matters the most.
Gay brains structured like those of the opposite sex.
Liberals tend to believe that sexual orientation is often determined by genetics but that gender-difference in behavior is sometimes not, whereas conservatives tend to believe that love is a sin if it involves someone of the same gender, or hasn’t been rubber stamped by a pedophile in a dress, imaginary people in the sky watch while you poop, that a serial killer who’s sorry will receive eternal bliss, while the billions of innocent souls who never knew of the existence of god, will spend an eternity in damnation, and that stronger nuclear armament is in keeping with the teachings of Jesus.
My version is almost as annoying, but has a lot more truth in it.
Hey kevin, great email address you have there:
kissmyberkeleyliberal@ssyouracistwingnuts.net
However, if you are trying to inflame conservatives you need to make your comments more prominent.
Do libertarians believe that genetics have an effect on both sexual orientation AND gender-different behavior (cuz I do)?
1) Realists tend to believe that many observed sex differences, orientation differences, and race differences are all inborn to some extent, for various related and unrelated reasons.
2) Scientists who research one of these categories and believe it is inborn, largely tend to believe the other two are as well. They either start as or become Realists. Most Realists are scientists researching these topics or are nonscientists that are actively interested in what science has to say about these topics. (and therefore more readily sense where the weight of evidence falls in that field of study)
3) The scientists that believe their research category is inborn have the most fruitful and persuasive research paradigms in their respective category (with e.g. longer bibliographies). This could be because their beliefs are more correct, or simply because these beliefs are more conducive to “normal science” (see David Wright’s comment above).
4) Realists tend to be hated by both liberals and conservatives.
5) Realist beliefs usually do not predict party affiliation.
Generally speaking, gay men prefer the idea that homosexuality is biologically determined, while lesbians prefer social constructionist explanations for homosexuality.
As I wrote in National Review in 1994:
“The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and the newsweeklies have been trumpeting, despite the highly preliminary nature of the findings, evidence that homosexuality has biological roots. Generally overlooked, however, is that most of the research was performed on gay male subjects by gay male scientists and then hyped by gay male publicists. Going largely unreported is the lesbian population’s profound ambivalence about this half-scientific, half-political crusade. (For example, an attack on the theory that lesbianism has biological causes is one of the main themes of Lillian Faderman’s fine history of American lesbians, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers.) This media reticence is noteworthy, considering that the press otherwise so assiduously keeps us informed of the views of the lesbian-dominated National Organization for Women’s on child-rearing, marriage, beauty, men and, of course, What the Women of America Want — subjects upon which lesbians might be presumed to have rather less expertise to offer than on the question of why they are lesbians.
“Many lesbian-feminists deny that their sexual orientation is biologically rooted, attributing it instead to what they perceive as our culture’s decision to socialize males to be domineering. They may claim this simply to avoid contradicting feminist theory, which is, well, “biophobic.” (Yes, I know that this trendy practice of insinuating that those who disagree with you politically must suffer from a mental disorder is reminiscent of the imprisoning of Soviet dissidents in psychiatric hospitals, but, hey, once you get the hang of it, it’s kind of fun.) On the other hand, the lesbian-feminists might be right and the gay researcher/activists wrong about the nature of homosexuality. Or, homosexuality might not have a single nature: at minimum, there could be a fundamental difference between lesbians and gays.
“We would all profit from hearing this question openly hashed out.”
http://www.isteve.com/lesvsgay.htm
…before the first homophobe declared bisexuality to be a myth
Why would a homophobe think bisexuality is a myth? This isn’t what the study concluded by the way:
“Male bisexuality appears primarily to represent a style of interpreting or reporting sexual arousal rather than a distinct pattern of genital sexual arousal.”
the entire argument is based on a response pattern from just 15 guys.
No it isn’t. Read a review (such as the one I linked above). It’s based on and builds on other evidence, and larger theory. That’s how paradigmatic science works.
The methodology is also intrinsically flawed. Genital response is a flawed mechanism for any study of homosexuality
There are references to the contrary supporting the validity of these methods in papers that use them.
I wish people would stop grabbing onto that study as gospel and treat it with the skepticism it deserves.
I wish more people understood how paradigmatic science works, and would generate their own research to the contrary instead of having hissy fits about how the existing data and small minority of data collectors – who should be revered for actually trying to explore these issues – aren’t living up to their effete armchair standards.
If I’m another researcher trying to understand homosexuality, a paper published in Psychological Science is going to mean infinitely more to my investigation than your random bit of blog outrage that someone dared to do a modest experiment and others dared to be swayed toward a belief paradigm with the advantage of evidence.
I actually don’t believe feminists and believers in gay rights should be troubled by the nature/nurture data, however the results tend, so long as they reject the superstition that “evolved” traits are better.
If it turns out that women are biologically predisposed to be worse at math than men, for instance, that’s not some sort of ideological catastrophe. We just have to ensure that the flukes who are good at math (I’m a female mathematician) are not treated as abnormal, and that women are encouraged to persevere in math anyway. People can choose to overcome innate disadvantages. The same holds true if we find evidence that boys are less verbally adept than girls: they should be encouraged to excel at language despite the disadvantage of their gender.
Problems only come up when people assume that “evolved” or “natural” traits are the best. Natural selection has made most people heterosexual, or most women nurturing, and therefore (so says the assumption) other traits are subnormal. But we are a fabricating species; we often choose to improve on nature. If natural selection were a good judge of value, we’d save our highest regard for people whose bodies were the most efficient at storing fat.
“Do libertarians believe that genetics have an effect on both sexual orientation AND gender-different behavior”
Libertarians generally don’t care about such insights, but that it incites traffic to their blogs.
I agree with David Wright’s sentiment at 6:08 PM. Personally, I don’t see how it makes any difference to anything anyone should find important, except that it’s fodder to trick the weak-minded politically. It’s fine to waste your time how you see fit on political propaganda, but it’s not fine to pretend it’s anything more than.
It only becomes difficult for religions which believe we are born equal, without special burdens. Or put another way, it may not change what is “wrong” but it may change what is “evil.”
Personally I think a genetic crapshoot is a harsh setup for a Deity’s world.
A superb sentence. It also encapsulates the differences between British and American use of the words “conservative” and “liberal”. In Britain, the sentence is elegant nonsense.
Maybe it’s a protestant thing. The Catholic Church recognizes that homossexual desire could be natural but, since it’s a catholic dogma that sex should be praticed only with reproductive ends, catholic gays are not allowed to have sex.
Read, for example, what the actual Pope wrote 33 years ago:
“A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
[...]
But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality[...]This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.”
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19751229_persona-humana_en.html
I invented the “rocket scientist” moniker for Greg a decade ago.
It’s mostly a joke, but he did in the 1980s work on the crucial navigation system for the Trident sub-launched ICBM, which made it possible in nuclear war game theory for our invulnerable sub-based deterrent to respond to a Soviet strike on our land-based missiles with a counterstrike on their remaining land-based missiles (i.e., not wiping out their civilians). Before that breakthrough, our sub missile were only accurate enough to respond to a Soviet first strike on our land missiles with a strike on Soviet cities, which would presumably bring about a Soviet counterstrike on our cities. So, we wouldn’t want to do that, but if we didn’t, that made a first strike on our North Dakota missiles more likely. Thus, the arrival of the new Trident guidance system in the later 1980s was seen as filling a glaring theoretical hole in Mutual Assured Destruction and stabilizing the Cold War.
Surely economists should be in favour of homosexuality as the market asymmetries between sexual partners are greatly lessened, leading to more pleasure created at lower cost.
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