That said, I’ll add just one more thing.

People (all of us, even we “enlightened” ones) make decisions based on emotion first, then we select the facts we need to support our decisions.

If people have decided that gays are sinful and just plain icky, they will reach for whatever reasons they can find, true or not, to support their decision. “There’s no gay gene” is a prime example. It’s a clever sound bite and a message that sticks. It’s word candy for a fact-free diet. People who toss this around don’t want to be bothered to actually learn the facts presented in this excellent article, or have their belief tested by the many logical constructs offered in these comments.

If they were to finally be disabused of this notion, of if one day a gay gene is really discovered, they would most likely reach for the next “factoid” they could find to support their emotionally-based decision rather than actually change their viewpoint.

Your post was rather overheated, Ryan, and it makes me think of a boxer who’s swinging wildly.

I have little time right now, but I’ll do the best I can:

Being “born this way” isn’t the only way people could conceivably be immutably bisexual, lesbian or gay. When I was a young adult, in the late 1970s, the prevalent theory, at least among sane, intelligent people (meaning non-homophobes who were at least somewhat informed) was that sexuality becomes set in early childhood, but that it’s not known why it does, and there is no conceivable way anyone could intentionally or even accidentally influence that.

But then the next decade came, the one where you spent your childhood, and America got REAGAN. The country went backwards in a number of ways then, and then I believe is when people started talking in earnest of “the dumbing down of America”. It was the time to get stoooooopid, in SO many ways.

That was also the time I started hearing the “born this way” talk. It’s conceptually a lot simpler than the theory that I described two paragraphs up, easier for people who don’t want to think as much, and who don’t want to have to deal with all the possible attacks against that theory that “change”-pushing bigots might try to launch — though I still don’t know how you’re supposed to make sure someone is going to grow up straight by the age of 4, the earliest age I hear again and again that LGB people say they realized that they were what they would later understand to be bisexual or gay.

So anyway, I accept that older theory, and not the “born this way” notion.

So, I am NOT saying that I believe that many LGB people are saying that their sexuality is IMMUTABLE out of a deep emotional need to prove to some nebulous homophobe supposedly not in their own heads that they are “okay”. I think the immutability of sexuality is simply a fact, and I believe this is the concensus position in the relevant social sciences. And that people who recognize their own sexuality’s immutability are simply self-aware.

I was speaking against the “born this way” notion.

Which I know can be controversial nowadays.

As to that crudball Ann Coulter, the ONLY thing that I said that was at all similar to what she says is that if there’s a set of genes discovered that predispose their holder to bisexuality or exclusive homosexuality, then there would be liberals, including many “pro-gay” ones, who would be aborting fetuses with those genes.

But you chose to ignore the rest of the sentence where I had expressed the above. There, i ALSO said that anti-abortion conservatives, the hard core who oppose abortion in the cases of rape or incest, would be aborting those fetuses too.

My guess is that you left out any mention of that because it inconveniently cripples your attack on me as a follower of Coulter’s homophobia. Can you, or anyone here, imagine Coulter, who ALWAYS plays up to the most rabid conservatives, EVER saying what I said in the previous paragraph about anti-abortion conservatives? I like to think I have some flexibility of mind, but that one is beyond me.

In fact, this may be have been the majority view (!). The pedophilia smear has to be the worst accusation consistently leveled against gays. That’s why it became so important for many of us to say, “Look, either you’re gay or you’re not. It isn’t a choice and there’s no recruitment.”

And that gave importance to the question of a gay gene, way before questions of scrutiny and suspect classes came to the fore.

Donny it has to do with the long and not entirely consistent way in which the Supreme Court has developed its Equal Protection doctrine and the concept of judicial “scrutiny.”

The “immutability” thing, yeah, I already know about that. But I don’t think that’s all or even most of the reason so many LGB people feel it’s important homosexuality be genetically determined.

I remember the big fuss decades ago in the LGB community when there was all that talk about “the gay gene”. But back then there wasn’t the big flurry of LGB-related court cases, nor nearly the same degree of understanding of the underlying legal issues that you see among grassroots LGB people now. The need for a “gay gene” preceded all that.

And given how those LGBs who want it to be true talk about it now, I think we’re talking about a deeper emotional need. It’s as though they feel it will justify their existence, somehow make them “okay” as LGB people.

It’s especially relevant right now because a big part of the coming battle before the Court involves what level of “scrutiny” the Court should use in examining laws that affect gays and lesbians.

From a philosophical perspective, you can argue that genetic factors should be irrelevant, but within the American legal system they matter quite a bit.

(I put “scrutiny” in quotes because it has a legal definition that is not necessarily the same as its popular-definition.)

For more, Google: scrutiny suspect class

There are plenty of other disorders of the mind and body we can all do without. Homosexuality, isn’t one at all.

We can be sure, though, that if a group of genes were discovered that predisposed their holder to homosexuality, many fetuses with those genes would be aborted, including by liberal, “pro-gay” parents, and by parents who oppose abortion even in the case of rape or incest.

I truly do not understand why so many LGB people think discovery of genes predisposing people to homosexuality would be good for us.

Scientists are still working to find out how much of being gay is genetic versus other factors early in a child’s development process, such as how they are cooked in a mother’s womb. The answer will be interesting, but any conceivable answer will be irrelevant to deciding if discrimination against sexual orientation should be legal.