It's nigh impossible to conduct a cold, rational, dispassionate discourse on homosexuality. It's not just the religious fundamentalists who seem hardwired for irrationality and emotionalism. Many homosexuals are also irredeemably intolerant, glandular and visceral, with scant respect for the canons of reason.

They have also taken to manipulating science in their propaganda war, making unsubstantiated claims which they pass off as gospel. They have been very successful as evidenced by the fact that a number of persons have softened their opposition to homosexuality, claiming matter-of-factly that 'homosexuals don't have a choice. They are born that way.' Now let's be clinical about this matter of choice.

I would grant that most homosexuals did not choose their sexuality the way they choose their careers, neighbourhoods and foods. They didn't decide that, "Hey, I think I want to be attracted to someone of my own gender rather than the opposite sex". And how many would do such a suicidal thing in a place like Jamaica?

As a boy, I did not choose to be attracted to girls. I found myself that way. Acknowledging that people don't 'choose' their orientation, however, is not the same as asserting that sexual orientation is purely genetic. (Some people, like most bisexuals, do choose, reflecting what Dr Norman Doidge calls "the plasticity of sexual desire" in his book The Brain That Changes Itself.)

It is now repeated as established scientific fact that people are born either gay or straight. Religious people and others who oppose homosexuality are derided as not just dangerous bigots and haters, but hopelessly ignorant. It's accepted mantra in the United States (US) National and Gay and Lesbian Task Force that gays don't really have a choice and, therefore, those who oppose homosexuality are oppressors, fools or both.

praised for article

One person praised me for my balanced article last week, but corrected me on one point: I should not refer to "the homosexual lifestyle" for that implies that it's a choice. In the person's view, it's just as fixed as race and gender. This is a view that is gaining currency, but it is misguided and unscientific.

A special issue of Scientific American Mind earlier this year dealing with 'your sexual brain' has an enlightening essay titled, 'Do gays have a choice?' It says in the sub-heading, "Science offers a clear and surprising answer to a controversial question." No one can question the bona fides of Scientific American Mind. Its articles are written almost exclusively by evolutionary scientists and non-theists. Scientific American Mind is one of the most respected scientific magazines published in America.

In this article, Robert Epstein notes that gay activists favour the 'born gay' view "in part because survey data show that people are more sympathetic to gay causes if they believe that sexual orientation is immutable". But the article shows no such thing. It quotes the important work of psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, the man responsible for lobbying the American Psychiatric Association to make the landmark decision in 1973 to drop homosexuality from its list of disorders in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This was a major victory for gay people in their quest for recognition and equal rights.

Spitzer has now earned the wrath of the glandular and intolerant gay lobby in the last few years after publication of a study with hundreds of gay men who have changed to a heterosexual lifestyle after many years of active homosexual life. Spitzer's work was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior (October 2003). Reporting on this study, Scientific American Mind says, "to his surprise most of his subjects not only reported living long term (more than 10 years) as heterosexuals, they also declared that they had experienced 'changes in sexual attraction, fantasy and desire' consistent with heterosexuality. The changes were clear for both sexes".

One of the men studied was Matt Avery who became sexually active in his teens and who worked at a gay bar in the 1980s, reportedly having sex with hundreds of men. Matt considered himself feminine. He is quoted as saying: "I was 140 pounds, had long fingernails, a blond ponytail and wore an earring. I was a sight to be seen." But he changed after his lover announced he had given up homosexuality.

genetics

Genes do play a part in homosexuality, but so does nurture. The magazine admits that most gays cannot switch their orientation comfortably. Experience actually confirms this. I have read too many heart-rending, tear-jerking testimonies of Christians struggling with same-sex attraction and impulses not to understand the extreme difficulty in changing.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and eight other organisations recently said sexual orientation falls along a continuum and therefore the rigid-straight classification does not capture all the complexities. Genes are involved but a lot has to do with socialisation, conditioning and self-will. What is clear is that heritability accounts for a very small factor in homosexuality, and this is why, scientifically, the general analogy by the gay lobby between homosexuality and race and gender is forced and illegitimate. It is scientific manipulation - indeed, scientific abuse and misrepresentation.

The 1991 study by Simon LaVay did not establish a defining homosexual gene nor did the 1993 study by Dean Hamer. His team did locate a chromosomal marker for lesbians and bisexuals. But while genetics does influence sexual orientation, it does not determine it. If that were so, there would be a host of things that people could not be criminally responsible for (Genes predispose some people toward criminal and other deviant behaviours, which all rational people agree they should be punished for; hence, they accept that that genetic influence does not absolve people from personal responsibility to regulate their impulses).

social construction

Neil and Briar Whitehead in their 1999 book My Genes Made Me Do It: A Scientific Look at Sexual Orientation says, "Science has not yet discovered any genetically-dictated behaviour in humans, for genetically-dictated behaviours of the one-gene-one-trait variety have been found only in simple organisms". The most comprehensive account of the social construction of homosexuality from the earliest times to the present has been done by David Greenberg. In his cross-cultural work, The Construction of Homosexuality he rejects the view that homosexuality is an unchangeable, purely genetic condition: "Where social definitions of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour are clear and consistent with positive sanctions for conformity and negative ones for nonconformity, virtually everyone will conform irrespective of genetic inheritance and to a considerable extent irrespective of personal psychodynamics".

This is one of the reasons why opponents of homosexuality say that the drive toward the normalisation and mainstreaming of homosexuality will result in more persons embracing that lifestyle. The more it is seen as a legitimate alternative lifestyle or something which is unchangeable, the more people will indulge their desires, either thinking it's just religious taboo which forbids it or scientific ignorance which makes it unacceptable.

Scientific American Mind admits after stating that studies by some scholars show that "the heritability of homosexuality is not much higher than that of left handedness - perhaps 0.25 per cent or 0.5 per cent or so for males and somewhat lower for females": "Although it is unlikely that half of us would end up gay, without societal pressure it is clear that a much larger proportion of the population would express homosexuality than we see now". This is precisely the point which has been made by such learned and intellectually compelling opponents of homosexuality like theologian Robert Gagnon.

But for religious people and other opponents of homosexuality to have any traction, they have to abandon the prejudicial, bigoted and foolish arguments against homosexuality and embrace a rigorous and commanding intellectualism which can withstand any intellectual onslaught from the powerful gay lobby.

Opponents of homosexuality must lay bare the facile arguments and assumptions of many gay people. Some hold what I call the "sovereignty of desire" view: That is, if people find themselves with certain sexual desires and impulses it is cruel, unreasonable and silly to expect them to live out their lives without fulfilling these desires. What must a young gay boy of 15 do when he finds that he desires boys rather than girls? Live out his three score and ten never having any sexual fulfilment? Oh, please. Perish that wicked, barbarous and fanatical thought, we are told.

paedophiles

But what if someone has exclusive attraction to children? Now you would say that's different because children can't morally choose their sexual partners so that's unquestionably wrong. But that misses the point: The point is that just as some persons are exclusively attracted to children (paedophiles) and would have to be counselled to control those desires for all their lives without any hope of fulfilling them, why is it inherently cruel for the homosexual to control his desires?

Perhaps you did not know that scientific studies show that some men have an orientation toward paedophilia. You thought it was just a choice that 'wicked, depraved and dirty' men exercise. No. They 'found themselves' with that desire which society happens to criminalise. (By the way, who says a 15 year old can't rationally choose to have sex with a thirty-five year old? Is that another taboo to be lifted soon by 'enlightened' people stripped of religious trappings? Is that the next revolution?)

South African Justice Albie Sachs, who came to Jamaica to convince our parliamentarians to include sexual orientation in our Charter of Rights, inveighs in the J-FLAG submission to Parliament against "the tainting of desire, the attribution of perversity and shame to spontaneous bodily affection". Then what about the "spontaneous bodily affection" of a man for his adult daughter or for his 60-year-old mother? Why discriminate against adult incestuous lovers who want to share 'bodily affection'? Why 'taint' that?

What about the married man who wants to have an affair with ten of his employees and five of his service clubs sisters? Why 'taint' him as being 'promiscuous'? What about a 50-year-old man who can't keep his hands off an academically gifted, very articulate, consenting 15-year-old? How can it be forbidden if it's love? You see where the gay logic can lead - logically?

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.