GunnerJ

(I wrote this letter in response to an article in my college's conservative news magazine. I'd appriciate any comments or suggestions on how to make it claerer or more effective.)

An Open Letter to [Name removed]

I read your recent article analyzing the reasons for the veracity of homosexual stereotypes with a great deal of interest. Your argument, while factually and logically deficient, is intriguing if for no other reason that it is uncommon; your essay is the first place I have seen such an argument advanced, and I've had an extensive history debating with people who share your viewpoint on homosexuality.

I would like to preface my letter with some information about myself and my aims in writing this. I am a straight man who does not consider homosexuality to be a moral wrong. I do not have any religious convictions which sway my sense of morality, although the general principle upon which I base my morals may be familiar to you: the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or love your neighbors as yourself, a principle advanced in many places and by many people throughout history. Another thing I'd like you to be aware of is that I will not, at any time, accuse you of bigotry. I have no idea whether you hate gays and lesbians or not. All I can deduce form your article is that you believe homosexuality to be immoral, and I logically know that this is not tantamount to hatred.

This letter will, hopefully, accomplish two things: one, it will make you aware of the deficiencies in your argument, and two, it will convince you that your position on homosexuality is wrong. High hopes, I know, but I've never been one to back down forma challenge. To these ends, I will first look at specific factual claims you make, which form the basis of your argument, and debunk them. Then, I will look at the overall argument, and use various logical deconstructive techniques to show its flaws.

The first issue I would like to address is an emotional one: throughout the article, a tone of disgust is maintained, as if to impress upon the reader how revolting you find the idea of homosexuality. While this would not be a problem in itself, at times this theme or background of disgust is elevated to assumptions about the readership, and even made into an argument in and of itself. The most striking example of this is the line, "...they [homosexuals] are in fact what you hoped for the sake of humanity they weren't." Well, *you* may hope this for the sake of humanity! Maybe I'm just a heartless, soulless liberal with no moral compass, but I'm not kept up in the night in a cold sweat, unable to sleep, by the knowledge that somewhere in the world, perhaps in many places, people are having sex with members of their own gender. I'll admit, the idea of two men having sex is not one I'd like to dwell on, but this does not inform my opinion of the morality of such an act. It's worthwhile to note that making explicit your revulsion for homosexual acts will not will you any converts, and can only serve as preaching to the choir; in other words, it is sensationalist rhetoric.

The first factual argument I will address is one that I feel especially comfortable confronting. You say that homosexuality could not be genetically caused because "...Darwin's 'Survival of the Fittest' model would very quickly make them [homosexuals] extinct..." This is not, strictly speaking, accurate. Natural selection only tends to weed out genes that harm a population's inability to reproduce, usually this involves genes that cause harmful biological structures, sometimes this means merely favoring a better function. But if, for example, homosexuality was the result of a mutation, then natural selection would never be able to get rid of it, natural selection can only retroactively remove non-advantageous genes form a population. It cannot prevent mutation. Secondly, though, the argument presents a very simplistic view of genetics, that each "trait" of a living thing is governed by one "gene," or more accurately, one allele. This is not the case. Eye color, for example, is determined by two alleles, brown eyes caused by the presence of at least one dominant allele, blue only possible if both the alleles are recessive. Now, brown eyed parents can have blue-eyed children if both the parents' eye color genes are composed of a dominant-recessive allele pair. I'm sure you can tell where this is going: homosexuality, if genetic, could be the result of many recessive traits, which will only show themselves if all the traits are combined. Otherwise, the homosexual alleles will remain dormant, and the person carrying them heterosexual. Thus, while you are correct that a homosexual person will probably not pass their own genes to the next generation directly, the genes for homosexuality my be transferred through a sibling, or a cousin. Thus, a gene which provides a severe reproductive handicap and which would be selected out if dominant will nonetheless remain in the gene pool because it is carried in recessive form in other members of the population.

Next we come to your claim that homosexuality is not a genetic (or non-chosen) trait because the "gay pride unions are beginning to recruit." I have two responses to this: first, many pro-gay organizations have a "straight allies" program, where they get straight people who sympathize with the gay and lesbian cause to help the organization out. This may be an alternate reason for the recruitment programs of gay pride unions. Second, not all gay people may be a part of gay pride organizations, and it is to these people that the recruitment is aimed. Saying that homosexuality is a chosen behavior because gay organizations are recruiting people, therefore, is analogous to saying that being black is not chosen because black political groups recruit black people.

There is, however, one more point to be made in defense of the position that homosexuality is not a chosen behavior. It involves, unfortunately, making the argument very personal, so I hope that you will forgive me for asking a very personal question. Can you, Mr. [removed], make your penis erect at the thought of a naked man? I assure you, there is a point to this question, so bear with me; can you make yourself aroused at the thought of having sex with another man? I doubt so; you're straight, after all. But, if it is your contention that gay people are choosing to be gay, you must answer two questions. First, how are they making this choice? Your article is an attempt at answering this, and I will come back to this point. Secondly, *why*? Homosexuality does not offer any specific sexual advantages over heterosexuality; a woman cannot do anything with another woman that cannot be done with a man, and men lose the ability to perform one orgasm-inducing sex act, vaginal sex, by being gay. Not only that, but homosexuality comes with a huge stigma. It is not as severe in our culture, but in other times and places, it could result in death. So, your contention is that people are choosing to overcome a huge hurdle of willpower in order to engage in sex acts no better than what they could have with members of the opposite sex and which carries a negative social stigma. This is very bizarre behavior, and can be explained only in two ways: first, homosexuality is genetic, and second, an idea you bring up, homosexuality is the result of a mental disorder.

This is an excellent "bridge" into the next section: your claims about homosexuality’s status in the eyes of the APA. While you offer no concrete evidence that the APA did, in fact, drop its labeling of homosexuality as a disease because of harassment from the gay community, your background in psychology puts you in a position of authority on the subject which I cannot match. But, ironically, there is something that calls into question either your knowledge of psychology or the consistency of your argument. This is the fact that you claim, on the one hand, that homosexuality is a chosen behavior, and on the other, that homosexuality is a mental illness. But I ask you, and you may draw upon your knowledge of psychology to answer this, how can someone choose to have a mental disorder? We acquit murderers who show clear signs of mental illness because they had no control over their actions because of a psychological disorder, so how is it that homosexuality can both be a disease and a chosen behavior?

Furthermore, how can we logically call homosexuality a disease? You claim that homosexuality is a life-destroying problem, but how is this actually the case? You offer no evidence of this. Who is harmed by homosexuality? How does gay sex between two willing and contemporary partners constitute a harmful act? You may answer this by mentioning the increased chance of STDs, and AIDS in particular, but this is a very weak argument. STDs risk is increased whenever someone has intensely promiscuous sex without some attempts at protection; gay sex is no worse than heterosexual sex in this regard. In addition, AIDS is only a problem for half of all homosexuals; I often comment that is AIDS is a punishment form God, the lesbians are God's chosen people. So, since you have not provided any evidence that homosexuality is harmful to anyone, I stand unconvinced of your argument that homosexuality is a mental disease.

On this note, it should be noted that the issue of choice is really something of a red herring. While I am of the opinion that while homosexuality may have social influences, it is caused mostly by genetics, it is not an important issue for me when determining if homosexuality is immoral. Even if it were a choice, I would still believe that homosexuality is not immoral for the above cited reasons: it is harmful neither to the participants nor to society at large. Given this, what moral argument can be brought against homosexuality? Usually, it is some variation on the command theory of morality; that God, or more accurately men claiming to speak for God and books claiming God's authorship, has said that homosexuality is wrong. Usually it is combined with some threat about how angry allowing homosexuality to continue makes God. This amounts to little more than morality by superstition: the person advancing this argument asks that we consider a homosexuality immoral and shun homosexuals because he or she is afraid that God will punish everyone; that we must follow the instructions in this book, or bad things will follow, sort of like they're supposed to follow the breaking of a mirror. Since, however, you do not advance this argument, I will not dwell on it further.

I come now to the meat of your argument: that the tendency for homosexuals to act like members of the opposite gender is as a sort of "gateway" to make it easier for someone to adapt to having sex with a member of the same gender when one is naturally inclined to have sex with the opposite gender. It is an answer to the question of how someone chooses to become gay, a hypothesis posed to explain how the difficulties of choosing to be gay are overcome. There is something right off the bat that makes this argument suspicious: in order for it to be effective, it must assume that homosexuals interested in attracting "new" homosexuals at one point or another act like members of the opposite gender, and that a "new" homosexual's first gay experience was with a person acting this way. Since I find it unlikely that this is the case, and since you have offered no evidence that this is so, I cannot take this argument seriously. But even if we could conclude that the above mentioned assumption is true, your hypothesis would not win out by default. There is another possible explanation for tendency of homosexuals to act like members of the opposite sex, and ironically, it comes from your claim that gays and lesbians are "confused about their sexual identity." Suppose that homosexuality is, in fact, caused by an ingrained psychological confusion about one's gender, perhaps, somewhere in the homosexual's mind, they think they're a member of the opposite sex. A gay man, thus, has a psychological mix-up causing some part of him to identify himself as a woman, and thus, he feels attracted to men, and tries to emulate the norms of womanhood and femininity in his society. This would adequately explain the tendency among gays and lesbians for opposite-sex emulation without making any statements about whether homosexuality is chosen or not.

Finally, even if we are to assume that you are correct, that homosexuals act like members of the opposite sex to make their choice easier, we must deal with the moral issue. The last two paragraphs of you article dwell on saying that homosexuality is a problem that should be eliminated, that it is shameful and immoral. This implies that if you've established homosexuality as a choice, we must jump to the conclusion that it is wrong. As I have demonstrated, this is not the case, the issue of choice and the issue of morality are not connected, and even if you successfully establish that homosexuality is chosen, we have no reason to assume that it is wrong.

I hope that this article has been helpful and informative to you. My intention was not to bash you personally for your opinions, and I hope my tone and word choice has reflected this. It is my hope that you will consider the arguments I have advanced in the future when considering the morality of homosexual behavior.

Sincerely, Jordan Helin

Sunfair

I don't see how you could make it more effective than it already is. Your logic is excellent.

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

I hope you let us know what kind of response you get.

DMB

I hope it's not too late; I have done some proof-reading for you. I hope I've got my paragraph numbers right!

should be: Your argument, while factually and logically deficient, is intriguing if for no other reason than that it is uncommon.

should be: to back down from a challenge

should be: your revulsion for homosexual acts will not win you any converts

should be: brown-eyed parents can have blue-eyed children

should be: being black is chosen because black political groups recruit black people.

should be: sex acts no better than what they could have with members of the opposite sex and which carry

should be: I often comment that if AIDS is a punishment form God, then lesbians are God's chosen people

I think from your argument that this should be: I stand unconvinced of your argument that homosexuality is a disease.

should be: command theory of morality:

should be: Either we consider homosexuality immoral Or we consider a homosexual immoral

This is just a fairly quick trawl through it. There may be errors I haven't picked up. I think it's an excellent argument.

BTW, I think there is another possible explanation that has been touted for homosexuality, and that is that it can be caused by the environment experienced by the foetus in the womb. So then we would get back to the old idea: blame the mother!

[Edited because I always screw up with UBB]

[ November 14, 2002: Message edited by: DMB ]</p>

Vesica

Nice!! I only see two minor issues:

First Argument: Darwin yada yada yada:

The author of the original article seems to have fallen into a common error when dealing with Darwin's theory. It applies to the species not the individual level. By Darwin's theory homosexuals can not become extinct; however humans could if we all favored only homosexual unions (and ignored the wealth of reproductive technology available to us). Unless the author was trying to argue that homosexuality consitutes a separate species?! Anyway, I thought a sentance about this species not individual issue might fit in before you talk about genetics (which was well done; concise and clear).

Pyschologists and Homosexuality:

As someone with a degree in pyschology I am here to free you from the 'while I have no experience bit' - Get rid of that!! Here is a link to the APA's resolutions on homosexuality.

<a href="http://www.apa.org/pi/reslgbc.html" target="_blank">APA SITE</a>

I think the key here is The conditions listed above are the same for every mental disorder. Treatment and medications etc. are not considered approproiate unless the disorder/symptoms are resulting in (to quote my Abnormal Pysch text) 'resulting in an inability to live and function in everyday life'. In essence, no one cares if I see pink bunnies, or wash my hands a lot or like girls as long as the quality of my life is not affected. The APA and thier 'bible' the DSM (currently the DSM-IV) is not a tool for 'normalizing' the whole world. It is to be used to identify problem areas for indivudals who are unable to function in society. How can the author argue that changes were due to an agenda or pressure when the APA rejected homosexuality as a disorder using the same criteria they applied to every other named mental disorder/condition???

Hope this helps....Walk boldly...It sounds good!

[ November 14, 2002: Message edited by: Vesica ]</p>

GunnerJ

Thanks for the replies. DMB, I was not planning to send this out until I had gotten feedback on it, and your proofreading is well appriciated, as I have little to no skill in it at all!

Vesica, the info you provided will be invaluable. I originally planned a small explanation of how natural selection really works, but I felt it bogged down the text. But it would have been clear form reading his article that his comment on homosexuals "going extinct" was meant only to imply that the gene would never have propagated as long as it obviously had.

Thank you so much for the link to the APA info, as well.

Splat

I think it's brilliant, rimstalker. A couple of picky things though:

Use active voice. "a tone of disgust is maintained" is wimpy. "you maintain a tone of disgust" puts the ownership where it belongs.

"Natural selection only tends to weed out genes that harm a population's inability to reproduce" should be "ability".

The genetic vs. not genetic dichotomy ignores the possibility (and I think there is some evidence for this) that sexual orientation may be teratogenic, influenced by mom's hormones en utero. Worth looking into, since it eliminates the entire evolutionary argument. And if it is genetic, no better way to keep those genes alive than forcing homosexuals to pretend to be hetero and to have kids (I think that's bullshit, but it's an argument for tolerance he can't easily refute).

"a woman cannot do anything with another woman that cannot be done with a man"

This isn't true at all (need we go into details?), so it significantly weakens your argument and provides an uneccessary distraction. I know what you mean, but you need to clarify it.

"can someone choose to have a mental disorder?"
That's really good. It does potentially get into some thorny issues about the social construction of illness, but odds are, your conservatives aren't going to go there.

"is AIDS is a punishment form God" should be "if...from You might also point out that AIDS in Africa is a heterosexual STD; homosexuality is extremely rare in subsaharan Africa.

Finally, I don't know if it would be useful at all, but you might point out somewhere that homosexuality is rampant in the animal kingdom. (I dimly recall hearning something about a recent book pointing this out. SOmebody in E/C or S&S might be able to give you a title.)

mfaber

Most people are under the impression that inheritance of eye color, hair color and height are simple single gene traits (2 alleles, dominant vs recessive), but they are not. Here is a website that goes into your trait specifically.

<a href="http://www.athro.com/evo/inherit.html" target="_blank">Inheriting Eye Color</a>

If the person you are writing to knows this (I doubt it), he can use it to claim you don't know what you are talking about (cast doubt on the rest). Other than that, I was impressed with your letter!

[ November 14, 2002: Message edited by: mfaber ]</p>

GunnerJ

Splat, thank you as well!

Well, the point was they don't gain the ability to to any other sexual acts they didn't already have, and in fact both gay men and women lose one oprion. So, perhaps if I sais they can't do anyhting MORE?

This would be more useful if he said that homosexuality is unnatural, but since he didn't, I really don't feel it fits anywhere.

mfaber, more thanks.

My point wasn't to educate on eye-color heredity, but to give an example of how ressecive genes work. I was concerned about different eye colors, actually, but felt that a simpler picture was the better one for demonstration purposes. It would be better, though, if i mentioned that this was just a classic example, and that even here there are factual deficiencies.

But then again, you're right that he probably won't call me on it... I had to educate him on genetics, remember!

GunnerJ

I'm planning on finishing this up by midnight tonight, so if there are any other comments....

Arrowman

Rimstalker, it is an excellent piece! I note your midnight deadline - not sure if I'm in time but here's my bit:

I particularly like the way you focus on the factual and logical deficiencies in the original article, and avoid coming across in some sort of "homosexual rights activist" kind of way. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter approach but it doesn't work when you're trying to get points of fact and logic across to a conservative audience.

(Oh, btw - it's a very long letter - are you comfortable you will get it published without heavy editing? It's the kind of letter that would be very difficult for the magazine to edit without destroying its flow...)

Perhaps "Then, I will look at the overall argument, and deconstruct your logic to show its flaws." This is a little less "wordy" and easier to follow. It also directs the critique directly at the author "your logic".

I like this bit! But the opening first sentence comes across perhaps a little out of place with the tone of the rest of the letter. This is not about whether you are a "heartless, soulless, liberal" but about the fact that one's opinion of (revulsion for) a particular physical act does not, as you rightly say, "inform your opinion of the morality..." You might like to reconsider the opening words of this bit to be a little less sarcastic.

and later

Both of these passages introduce a level of explicit detail on anatomy and sexual activities that is not necessary to make your point, and may distract your audience from the point you are trying to make.

To illustrate what I mean by this - I imagine myself discussing this subject with my mother - a conservative woman who doesn't like homosexuality but harbours no particular moral / political animosity towards them. She would very likely understand most of the points you are making, but as soon as we start talking about penises, vaginas, and orgasms, she's going to get all uncomfortable and lose focus! And the argument, the point, goes missing.

I suggest you drop the reference to erect penises and simply say "Can you make yourself aroused at the thought of having sex with another man? I doubt it; you're straight, after all. Bear with me; there is a point to this - ...." etc. Also, in the second piece, just re-word it so the point can be made without having to itemise the various sexual possibilities so explicitly.

Once again, an excellent letter and I wish you success in having it published.