Lifestyle, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Choice

On 1/27/2012, an Associated Press article appeared on the Fox News web page with the following headline: 

"Actress' claim to be gay by choice riles activists" 

In the article, actress Cynthia Nixon says: 

"I understand that for many people it's not, but for me it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me," Nixon said while recounting some of the flak gay rights activists previously had given her for treading in similar territory. "A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it's a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn't matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not."

The agents of correct thinking would not allow such heresy to go unanswered.  Soon Ms. Nixon was assailed by some "friends" of the LGBT (1) cause and she had to publish a retraction.  This article appeared on 1/31/2012 on the Fox News web page: 

"Actress clarifies remark about being gay by choice"

After some gay rights activists complained that Nixon's remarks could be used to deny a biological basis for homosexuality, the actress on Monday released a statement to The Advocate magazine explaining she is technically bisexual, and not by choice.

Nixon told the magazine: "What I have 'chosen' is to be in a gay relationship."

Now ever since I was in medical school I have been aware of the disturbing character of the way science and medicine have dealt with the issue of homosexuality.  It is by now well known that American psychiatry, at a time when it was dominated by psychoanalytic Freudians, had pathologized homosexuality.  In other words, as far as psychiatrists were concerned, it was a disease, an aberration.  What is not as well known is that Freud himself, often detested by homosexuals for his perceived part in their oppression, in 1935 wrote this in a letter to a woman who had asked him to help her son: 

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you, why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest (2) of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too (3).  

So the Freudians had departed from Freud himself on the issue of homosexuality in American psychiatry, and they developed treatments they believed would alleviate this condition.  What is almost as deplorable, however, is that the American Psychiatric Association changed their collective mind in 1973 and removed the "diagnosis" only under the heat of political pressure, not the cool florescent light of reason.  My profession sports a well-deserved black eye over it to this day.   

Unfortunately, however, the politicization of science remains in full stride, not least of all on the question of homosexuality.  For it is clear to me that the scientific community does not want to learn why some people are homosexuals, they want to prove a genetic cause.   

True science cannot be conducted in this manner.  When a question is posed, hypotheses must be developed and tested without deference to external influences.  All relevant hypotheses must be permitted to compete in the laboratory of science, not just selected ones.  I read once, for example, a critique of an influential study.  In this case the hypothesis was proposed:  Drug A is superior to drug B in the treatment of condition X.  An experiment was designed and executed and according to the findings, drug A was in fact superior to drug B for the treatment of condition X.  The problem however, according to some of the critics of the study, was that to determine the truth, the authors should also have designed the study to test the opposite hypothesis, that drug B was superior to drug A.  Since until then no such study had been carried out, the full truth could not be determined about which medicine was better.  The pharmaceutical company had avoided asking a question they did not want to know the answer to.   

Besides the ongoing contamination of science with politics, however, the quest to prove homosexuality to be biologically determined has several logical problems.   

The first problem is within what I perceive to be the origin of the irreversibility concept.  Many people believe that in order to justify the notion that homosexuality is irreversible, it must be proven to have its origins exclusively in genetics.  It is not necessary to find a gene, however, to justify the belief that sexuality is not primarily a matter of choice.  There are critical times in neuropsychological development where the subject is at a crossroads, and once one commences down a certain path, there is no going back.  Let us say that a child is born to an American father and a French mother.  The parents decide that the child will learn only English.  When the child is eleven years old, they change their minds and decide to begin to expose the child to French.  Because learning a new language happens for this child at an age past ten years old, it is exceedingly unlikely that he will be able to speak French without an accent.  Had they started earlier, the child would have the capacity to speak French naturally and fluently, like a native.  As Margaret Mahler wrote, the process of the psychological birth of a human being starts at physical birth, it is not completed there.  Therefore many characteristics may be acquired in early childhood that later are not, strictly speaking, changeable.   

To me it seems that many homosexuals cling to the belief that should their sexual preferences ever be shown to be genetic, evangelical Christians will humbly ask for forgiveness and approve of the gay lifestyle.  That will not happen.  Remember that among the evangelicals are the Calvinists, who believe that God selects whom he shall save and deliver to eternal life, and that he does this without any action on the part of those who are among the "elect."  To many of these Christians financial success, attractiveness, and stable heterosexual marriages are evidence that one has been saved.  Your homosexuality, genetic or not, is simply evidence to them that God has chosen not to number you among his most beloved.   

What I like least about the "genetics alone" agenda is that it may smell faintly of internalized societal disapproval.  The need to believe that one has no choice in being homosexual conjures the implication that if one could in fact choose one's sexuality, one would then choose not to be gay (as Ms. Nixon noted above).  Is that the message homosexuals want to convey to their spouses and partners, that they have chosen their lovers only because they could not succeed at loving members of the opposite sex?     

The greatest problem for the advocates of a genetic causality for homosexuality, however, is that there has so far not been any complex behavior attributable to any specific gene.  As far as we know, every clinical entity is a complex interaction between genes and environment.  No particular gene has been found to be responsible for gregariousness, for example, and no gene has been found to be the cause of shyness.  In those cases where relationships between certain characteristics and certain genes are found, there are always those who have the gene and do not have the characteristic, and those who have the characteristic but do not have the gene.  And when a very strong relationship exists between a behavior and a genetic mutation, and these cases are rare indeed, the phenomenology of the affected individuals and the magnitude of the expression of the traits vary widely.  It was believed for many years that those males who by accident receive an extra Y chromosome (the so-called XYY males) were likely to become criminals; this hypothesis has not been borne out by observation.  Where is the gene for intelligence?  Where is the gene for creativity?   We cannot find them, because those characteristics like everything else (including sexuality) are products of complex interactions between various genes and impossibly diverse environmental stimuli.   

Of course there are influential political groups dedicated to advocacy for homosexuals and I have observed that most of the members of these groups are champions of the genetic determinism theory.  This is a frightening paradigm indeed.  Because like almost all other political organizations, these groups ultimately seek to increase the power of government to advance their interests at the expense of their opponents.  Gay groups want a powerful central government to force their will upon conservative Christians (4), and conservative Christians want a powerful central government to force their will upon gays.  Under the influence of these two and many other interests, power has been rapidly diffusing into the hands of a relatively few Americans, and soon it may be that political power will become so concentrated that ordinary individuals will have no ability to influence its views.  It is not inconceivable that a strong central authority may one day determine that because of dwindling birthrates, homosexuality will henceforth be punishable by involuntary psychiatric hospitalization, sentencing to prison "reeducation" camps, or extermination.  They may very well justify this tyranny on the grounds of the very genetic theory that is now being advanced by the gays themselves, citing it as evidence of a gene-based inferiority or "defect" that must be eliminated from the gene pool. Was not this the very same defectiveness concept used by the Nazis to round up and eliminate homosexuals?  And let us not for one moment forget that the Nazis came to power by the very same kind of  legal, democratic means employed by political factions in America today (5).   

Another nightmare scenario played itself out in Russia in the early 20th century.  Homosexual "liberals" saw in Communism an escape from the oppression of the Tsarist regime and they supported it with great enthusiasm.  When the leaders of the party became so powerful they were no longer accountable to ordinary citizens, however, they changed their minds and returned  homosexuality to the status of a criminal offense.  How bitter must have been the tears of the homosexuals sent to the gulags knowing that it was their very own political activities that ultimately contributed to their interminable suffering.  The very same political warhammer they had forged for use upon the skulls of their enemies had now been turned against them, as history tells us is always the case.   

A more poignant and perhaps more important truth, however, is that the LGBT community in America does not enjoy full legal franchise in spite of "democracy," but rather because of it.  For as Alex Jones has remarked, democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for supper, and Ayn Rand noted that "majority rule" is nothing more than "majority tyranny."  Gays and lesbians do not have the right to marry in most jurisdictions simply because the majority of Americans disagree with them having that right.  When the majority of Americans thought that blacks should not vote, they were not permitted to vote.  In many cases in history democracy has been used to subjugate and disenfranchise minorities; our blind devotion to the concept, branded onto our brains by our teachers in elementary school, makes invisible to us its implementation for the malevolent exercise of political force.   

Homosexuals, because they are a minority, will always be especially vulnerable to the malignant use of power.  Communism and Fascism will certainly not protect them!  And as we have seen, Democracy per se is invariably aligned with political expediency and tragically, this is only revealed to most people by a distant historical perspective.  History has been trying to teach us that there is only one road leading to a truly just society and that is the Constitutional Republic.  Built upon the foundation of a citizenry armed with education and an enlightened philosophy (and yes also guns I suppose), such a nation protects the rights of all of its people, not just certain individuals.  Our nation almost got there once, and even though we didn't quite make it, all the glory we have to this day unfurled is ultimately due to the willingness of our ancestors to put the banner of liberty before all others.   Neither compassion, a sense of justice, or wars of conquest have made us who we have become.  What made us great was the bedrock of belief that the individual has certain unalienable rights.  That right includes the right to do things not everyone approves of; no majority should ever be able to rule against it.   

To me, the view that homosexuality is biologically determined has to some extent the character of the tragic; it is evocative of a caste system in which gays represent the sexual Untouchables.  The view articulated by Cynthia Nixon (before she was shouted down of course), on the other hand, is that choice is sacred and that her lifestyle is therefore a sacred choice.  In a Classical Liberal society what choices one makes, as long as they do not damage the person or property of others, are above and beyond critical opinion, learned or idiotic.  And there are Classical Liberals among us today in the form of libertarians, struggling against Authority to create a society where unalienable rights include gun ownership, free speech, drinking and smoking, and marrying whomever one chooses.  We Classical Liberals believe that no matter whether we agree or disagree with homosexuality, or whether we believe it is simply no one else's business, having the choice is worth fighting for.  I will never understand why people, especially gays, would align themselves with any other political movement.   

Homosexuality, like every other sexuality, and like every other behavior, must necessarily exist on a spectrum.  There are certainly those for whom attraction to the opposite sex is completely lacking and cannot be cultivated; there must also be those for whom the attraction is primarily to the same sex but meaningful intimate relationships with opposite sex partners is possible.  Then there are those for whom the gender of the object of desire is immaterial.  We are, after all, talking about human beings who, despite every effort by thought police, cannot be defined in simple binary terms.  Since sexuality is on a continuum, so must also be the degree to which choice is an element.  Even if choice only represents a small part of sexuality, however, I would argue that a focus on a person's agency (6) as opposed to their biological programming is more humanistic, triumphant, and ultimately reflective of the fundamental equality of individuals in a free society.  Our ability and our right to choose the character of our lives raises us above the frogs and salamanders, whose lives are biologically determined.  It is this perspective on the issue of sexuality that, in my opinion, is suitable to a species that explores space, writes poetry, and builds breathtaking places of worship.

(1) Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual. 
(2) The term "arrest" in this passage is no doubt a source of irritation for many, but I would urge those who read these lines to consider the totality of what Freud is saying. 

(3) Kaplan and Saddock, Psychiatry, Ninth Edition.

(4) This may sound extreme, but when I have asked gay friends and acquaintances whether they would like to see the State use force to compel churches to ordain gay clergy and perform gay marriages, most of them have answered in the affirmative. 
(5) The most harmful and woefully misinformed prevalent belief in 21st Century America is that tyranny is not possible in the U.S.  We have only to look at our own past to see that our government is capable of dreadful misuse of power!  Because we believe it cannot happen here, we are utterly blind to the rapid pace at which we are hurtling in the direction of an all-powerful state.  The Patriot Act, NDAA, PIPA and SOPA are all legislative actions that have undermined or would if enacted further undermine the fundamental concepts of constitutional republicanism. 
(6) "Free will."

(c) Copyright 2012 Robert Albanese.