18 —.OUT IN THE MOUNTAINS — SEPTEMBER 1999 I||lIEll'I'l|TI0ll III’ THE SPEBIES: ll lllllll AT THE IIESEIIIIGII SllIIIllIl|ll|l|lll:‘u ||0MIISEllIIlllI'|'Y What We Don’t Know Can’t Hurt Us, or Can It? BY LARRY RUDIGER most Friday evenings, I watch “Vermont This Week.” Seen it? Four journalists sit around and talk what’s happened since the preceding telecast. This past week, they reached consensus. According to these very in-the-know journalists’ opinions, our recent, unashamedly impolite Kansas visitors — the infamous Fred Phelps gang — precipitated the start of public discus- sion around the state Supreme Court’s pend- ing decision on mar- riage for pairs of like- gendered people. If most of us don’t already know the politi- cal arguments on this issue, we will soon. But there’s another argu- ment related to this, one that’s almost reached the level of basic assumption for many of us. It’s that age-old question we’ve all heard during the coming out process: how do we individually come to know —— to KNOW — that we are gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, straight, whatever? Are we born this way? Having an answer to this might prove useful in arguing the marital case. If there is something essentially gay about me (as I believe), then I can be myself most authentically when sexually active with other men. To marry a woman would be, for me, a lie that violated my basic sense of identity. Following this line of reasoning, it is discriminatory for the state to proscribe the gender of my spouse. Im a bit of local news junkie; 5“!39I|3M 9 lII|99ll K _ N For confidential H IV/AIDS Information Call B800-882-AIDS L J Nature or Nurture + Do We Care? Now how sexual identity develops is an interesting issue, one that has received consider- able attention from, among oth- ers, psychological researchers — the group whose work I hope to consider. But instead of looking at ‘self psychology,’ 1 want to first talk about a different approach to research that’s gain- ing influence in many areas: behavior genetics. Like all research techniques, behavior genetics operates under some assumptions. They are based on empirical evidence, but they are not perfect; people may disagree with them, often for sound reasons. Before you" con- clude that they must be a sham, though, remember that all research has this quality — it depends on a set of grounding principles, and those principles often have detractors. » What are these assumptions here? First, behavior genetics is somewhat deterministic. That means researchers believe human behavior can be explained through a careful description of causal influences. For a given class of behaviors, these researchers wonder to what degree variation results from genetic or environmental influ- ences. By examining how behav- ior varies among relatives, researchers use statistical meth- ods that can produce estimates for the relative importance of genetic and environmental effects on the behavior of interest. Further work often tries to speci- fy the relationship between a par- ticular gene and a corresponding behavior — in our case, we’re talking about the infamous ‘gay genef This is not unlike some famil- iar work with the relationship it (802) 586-7793 Maryanne Southam Doctor of Oriental Medecirte Licensed Acupuncturist (NM #496) Chinese Herbalist Licensed Massage Therapist (NM #384) between genes and disease. For this reason, I believe many peo- ple worry that this model would equate a genetic cause for sexual orientation to a genetic abnor- mality that produces, say, skin cancer or Downs’ Syndrome. If that’s the case, then a gay gene can be seen as a problem, a dis- ease that might eventually be eradicated. Fearing such an out- come, many have implored researchers to avoid the whole issue and never examine these relationships; they suggest that, because the outcome is inevitably bad for GLB people, these researchers must really want to see homosexuality disappear. Being even less of a philoso- pher than a politician, I will also evade this issue. Instead, I want to turn back to the psychological research and focus on how peo- ple’s understanding of this sort of research may influence their opinions. Knowledge As Power At a recent behavior genetics research conference, I admired a colleague’s intriguing results on the elusive gay gene (I’ll describe them in a later column). This con-‘ genial fellow reminded me of something said by Simon LeVay, one of the first to describe a dif- ference between gay and straight me_n’s brains. In Queer Science, Dr. LeVay pointed out that, gen- erally, people who believe sexual orientation is significantly influ- enced by genetic make-up are, in a variety of ways, more sympa- thetic to social and political equality than people who think we are ‘sick,’ that heterosexuality is not only common but normal and that anything else is literally perverse. This summary doesn’t really examine a more basic issue: which side is more correct? Is P.O. Box 52 Craftsbury, VT 05826 sexuality something we choose or a quality of temperament we cannot really influence much? Right now, we researchers don’t know; there is simply too little evidence, though I think there’s also little reason "to believe that sexuality has no genetic compo- nent’ at all. However, if we’re worried about how research results might influence public opinion, it seems we may be best served by emphasizing the ‘essentialist’ side of things, because its proponents tend to favor political equity. Of course, there are individual exceptions in both directions. Many of our most vocal critics consider the very urge for like- gender sex a disease; for them, the ‘gay gene’ needs fixing. Others strenuously assert that discrimination against some- body’s chosen status is as wrong as any other prejudice. Taken as a whole, however, l’ve yet to see any convincing evidence that we are ill served by a search for the genetic relationship to sexual identity. Rather, to the degree we might be concerned with public opinion, it might help us out a bit. Communicating it is perhaps a good strategy. What’s more, it’s also true that some people may never change their opinions. In this regard, thinking for a bit about like-gen- der marriage, we may actually be lucky ifin fact people in Vermont are largely undecided on the mat- ter. That likely means they’ve given it little thought, and people like that could potentially be our strongest allies. Why? Well, one of the para- doxical properties of forming an ‘opinion is that, as we are swayed one way or the other, we become less open to contradictory evi- dence. This tendency to ignore or discount what doesn’t fit with an emerging inclination only serves to direct our belief into, an unshakeable conviction. As many observed, there’s nochance of influencing the Fred Phelps type, so we gain some comfort from observing how few like him there are in these parts. If research on the genetics of sexuality is perhaps ‘our friend,’ then what does it say? Is there really much reason for confl- dence in studies that involve very few people? Why does there seem to be so much contradiction between different sets of results? I’d like to consider these ques- tions next time. V Larry Rudiger is a Research Fellow in the Division of Behavior Genetics, Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine at U VM His work there focuses on children and families. KAISER PERMANENTE Cnlnniiimry : H-.v.nu. 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