When Science Looks at Homosexuality: Orientation research roils the moral and political waters 

For a number of years, researchers have been able to turn male fruit flies gay. Or at least that’s what it looks like when researchers manipulate these insects with various techniques. To study the insects’ sexual behavior, researchers have tinkered with heat, light, and genes. When they do, the male fruit flies turn away from females and train their sights on other males, courting them vigorously. They will even ignore virgin females while trying to copulate with other males. One study shows that genetic alterations will cause female fruit flies to initiate courtship rituals with other females and to reject sexual advances from males.

Long before they looked at erotic behavior in fruit flies, gulls, monkeys, and other animals, researchers first tried to explain homosexuality in human beings. That enterprise began in earnest in the late 1800s, with scientists like the British psychologist Havelock Ellis and the German psychologist Richard von Kraft-Ebing churning out case reports about homosexuality. Both these pioneering sex researchers thought that some homosexuality was rooted in biology, that it was not simply the result of psychological development.

More than a century later, biologists and psychologists are still interested in the origins of homosexuality. Lately, the biologists have been getting more attention than the psychologists, partly because they are using sophisticated techniques that were not previously available. Yet, all in all, when it comes to the biology of sexual orientation, more remains unknown than known. Even so, this science gets a very frosty reception from some gay rights activists who worry about how the research will affect homosexual men and women in the future.

Abortion of homosexual babies is usually among the first concerns brought forward when discussing the dangers of sexual orientation research. Some commentators worry that parents will select against pregnancies if they discover that a fetus might grow up to be a homosexual child. In Maine this year, one legislator tried to capitalize on exactly this fear in order to win gay people over to an anti-abortion agenda. The legislator drafted a bill that would make it illegal to abort a fetus on the basis of its having a "gay gene." That bill never went anywhere if only because there is no test that can make any such prediction. But the proposed bill does show the extent of social fear about the misuse of sexual science. Not far behind, worry about selective abortion is worry that science will produce "treatments" and revive theories that homosexual is a pathology to be cured.

Recent scientific studies
In the early 1990s, Simon LeVay examined microscopic brain structures that are known to influence sexual behavior, and he found they frequently—but not always—vary in size by sexual orientation. Other researchers have looked at hearing capacities, noting differences between homosexual and heterosexual women. One research team studied the way lesbians blink their eyes in response to startling sounds and found a pattern more typical of males than females. Yet other investigators have described an increased likelihood of left-handedness in homosexual men as well as patterns in finger length and finger skin ridges that vary according to sexual orientation. Even as they find patterns, these studies do not show any one-to-one correspondence between the trait in question and sexual orientation.

In an age of genetics, the chromosomes of homosexual men and women have come under scrutiny. In the early 1990s, psychologist J. Michael Bailey published findings that homosexual men and women shared their sexual orientation with their twins far more frequently than they had a common sexual orientation with their adoptive brothers and sisters, and this finding is consistent with a genetic influence. In 1993, Dean Hamer’s laboratory at the National Institutes of Health used a linkage study to identify a genetic region commonly shared by homosexual brothers. In 2005, that same lab reported the results of a scan of the entire genetic endowment of a group of homosexual men, something that had never been done before. This study also gave reason to think that genetics might be involved in sexual orientation in males, but—as with all studies to date—the results are not conclusive. At the present time, the National Institutes of Health currently supports Alan Sanders at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute as he continues this line of genetic research. Sanders is trying to identify shared genetic traits in gay brothers that might influence sexual orientation. (An informational website is at www.gaybros.com).

The studies so far are interesting because they all link sexual orientation to one biological trait or another. What the studies all have in common is that none of them is definitive. Every one of them has limitations, but this is frequently how science works: Most studies add a little bit to what we know and don’t settle matters once and for all. No one can tell in advance whether a particular line of research will come to a dead end. Furthermore, no study to date indicates exactly how sexual orientation emerges. For example, even if genes do influence sexual orientation, current research is entirely silent about how they do exactly that. As for some of the other studies, it might be that biological traits linked to sexual orientation have a common developmental root, rather than being the cause or consequence of one another.

What does science mean for gay and lesbian people?
There is no denying that the serious study of sexuality began in the 1800s in order to find ways to prevent and treat homosexuality and other deviant behavior. Until the 1970s and 1980s, major psychiatric and psychological associations in the United States and around the world bought into this way of seeing things. Given this history, it is no wonder that gay and lesbian people have lingering suspicions that researchers are not on their side and that the study of sexual orientation will do more harm than good.

But science has come to the aid of homosexuality as well. The world’s first gay activist, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), reached out to science in order to argue that homosexual men and women should be left alone precisely because of their biology. He thought that the science of his times showed that homosexual men and women had a distinctive biology, from which their sexuality flowed naturally. That science was inaccurate, but what matters is that he used science to outline social policy. For Ulrichs, homosexuality was not a choice, not a psychological disorder, but simply a biological variation. For this reason, Ulrichs, the activist, criticized criminal punishment for homosexuality and advocated same sex marriage, decades ahead of contemporary activism, at a time when it was far more dangerous to come forward with such an agenda than it is now.

Reliance on biological explanations of homosexuality remains with us today. Many homosexual men and women and their allies welcome the idea that sexual orientation is rooted in biology. As some people see it, biological explanations of sexual orientation override hostile views that homosexuality is a poorly made choice or a psychological disorder. As they see it, homosexuality—when it’s biological—is no more or less natural than heterosexuality. It’s also true that a little biology can go a long political way. To some extent, straight people seem more willing to accept homosexuality if they think it’s involuntary than if they think it’s a choice. By pointing to traits in anatomy and genetics, biology paves the way for greater social and moral acceptance of homosexual men and women.

Critics have not missed seeing the political advantage implicit in biological explanations. Some therapists worry that if sexual orientation is biological, they lose the right to treat and prevent homosexuality. In other words, if homosexuality is simply a biological variation—like red hair color, for example—then they have no good reason to try and prevent that sexuality.

The Traditional Values Coalition, a Christian political advocacy group, has called the idea that homosexuality is genetic an “urban myth.” Physicians and psychologists have expressed similar views. The Catholic Medical Association and the National Association for Reparative Therapy of Homosexuality have published detailed critiques of biological studies of homosexuality. To make their case, they point out the limitations of every study so far: small numbers of subjects, unrevealing methodologies, results that trade in probabilities. As they see it, without a definitive study showing that homosexuality is rooted in biology, the door to prevention and treatment is still open. These groups, therefore, invite homosexual men and women to turn to therapy and religious counsel, and they advise parents on how to avoid homosexuality in their children.

That’s exactly what gay activists worry about: programs of prevention and treatment. Won’t the scientific study of sexuality make things worse for a sexual minority still trying to secure equitable treatment across the board?

Tests, treatment, and abortion
Biological tests and treatments for homosexuality are speculative. There is no biological test that can distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual in any definitive way. There are no biological markers for sexual orientation. Neither does biological science have the ability to flip a switch and change anyone’s sexual orientation. Could there be such tests and treatments in the future? Maybe. But the fluidity of human sexuality has frustrated scientists and therapists so far, and these developments are not near at hand. If tests for sexual orientation were to come along, well established standards in bioethics and the law stand ready to protect people from unwanted testing and therapy. This is not to say that some parents and employers won’t try to test, but it is to say that testing and therapy should ordinarily be voluntary, unless there are socially important reasons to override individual consent. One way to evaluate the ethics of testing is to determine how, exactly, it benefits the people being tested. According to this standard, anyone wanting to test another person against his or her will to identify biological aspects of sexual orientation or to treat someone involuntarily has to meet a substantial burden of proof.

In the late 1990s, Jonathan Tolins used his play (and later the movie), Twilight of the Golds, to explore the question of ending a pregnancy in order to avoid a homosexual child. The Gold family had a gay son, and he seemed well enough accepted and loved. But what if his sister and brother-in-law chose to abort a pregnancy in order to avoid their own gay child? Faced with this prospect, the extended family was, to say the least, ambivalent. In the end, the pregnant sister made a choice that made sense to her, but which left other family members stung.

This drama explores morally controversial territory: abortions to avoid children with unwanted traits. What is especially controversial here is that what is at stake is not a child’s health but simply parents’ preferences for “designer babies.” We already know that in some countries, the preference for male children has led to extensive abortion of female fetuses and even infanticide. Political scientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer speculate in their book, Bare Branches, that a male-female imbalance can even sow the seeds of war.

Does the scientific study of sexual orientation foretell a doomsday scenario for gay people? Again, we run up a question that is more science fiction than anything else: No science to date offers any parent the ability to peer into the future sexual life of a fetus. Right now, parents are entitled to use the prenatal tests that are available and to do so according to their own preferences and values. If a prenatal test for sexual orientation ever did come along, it could be simply added to the tests parents already use according to their own best judgment. Respecting this domain of choice might mean that some people would use prenatal tests in order to avoid homosexual children, if they could. It might also mean that some people would use that testing in order to have the homosexual children they want to have. If we alter the status quo and try to limit the use of reproductive technologies, we will almost certainly end up with the problem that some homosexual children are born into families that do not want them and that will treat them badly. That’s surely a reason to be very cautious about allowing the state to intrude into very personal decisions about children.

Science and the future
Despite the way in which some commentators use biological research to shore up gay and lesbian identities, sexual orientation research continues to roil the moral and political waters. Biological research by itself does nothing to settle the question of how it is used: By themselves, biological facts are often beside the point. Surely we cannot settle questions about human sexuality by looking at the behavior of seagulls or penguins. But people tend to look to science for guidance anyway. That’s why a study about gay fruit flies gets national attention. Other thoroughly respectable researchers working with insects and rodents must look on with jealousy as their colleagues capture public attention through "gay animal" studies. We seem to believe that there is something about these studies that applies to us.

But it is also true that we increasingly suspect that a political agenda lies behind all "truth," and this suspicion extends even to reports in scientific journals. When it comes to studying the biology of homosexuality, we can ask: “Whose agenda is this, anyway?” Is the biological study of sexual orientation a pressing concern for homosexual men and women today, or is it this science shot through with ulterior motives that work against the interest of sexual minorities? That’s one way to ask the question, of course, but we can also ask whether worry about sexual orientation research is more symptom than substance. Gay and lesbian people aren’t entirely secure in the present when it comes to their health, lives, and relationships. Maybe that’s the issue that makes people uneasy about scientific research. In a world in which homosexual adults and adolescents felt entirely secure about their safety, relationships, and social well being, the scientific study of homosexuality might be perceived as no threat at all.

Science is littered with junk studies about the alleged differences between homosexual people and heterosexual people. The psychologist Havelock Ellis thought that homosexual men had a strong preference for the color green and that homosexual women were exceptional at whistling. Richard von Kraft-Ebing connected some homosexuality to a family’s degeneracy, measured by their involvement in crime. Most of these "findings" belong on the scrap heap of history, and it remains to be seen how much current research will stand the test of time.

For all the bad science that has occurred, it is not wrong for science to ask how genes, hormones, and environmental influences dispose people to one sexual orientation rather than another. There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that people’s experiences confirm and consolidate their sexual orientation—as they settle into habits, relationships, and fixed identities—but there might be, just might be biological reasons that influence people in one direction or the other.

No matter what research finds, some people will continue to think that biology shields homosexuality from criticism; others will continue to think that biological research will end in social catastrophe for homosexual men and women. People opposed to homosexuality will reject biological explanations because, if true, those explanations undercut their own status as authorities entitled to pass judgment on homosexuality. Is there no way past this conflict?

There’s a lot more to learn about human sexuality, and we should not hesitate to conduct this research so long as we don’t treat the discoveries of the sciences as moral truth itself. No set of biological facts can tell us how we should arrange society and conduct our lives. Ultimately, we should judge homosexuality the way we judge other behavior: whether it aids or stands in the way of meaningful life. The lives of plenty of men and women make clear that homosexuality is not an obstacle to human hope and happiness, and that is true no matter what researchers find as they look at the biology of sexual orientation.

Timothy F. Murphy, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy in the Biomedical Sciences at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago. He is the author of Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research and a consultant to Alan Sanders’s study of the genetics of male homosexuality.