6.19.2008

21st century phrenology

I think it's all well and good to try and understand the biological basis of homosexuality for the same reasons it's well and good to understand the biological mechanisms of...well, basically everything.

But apropos of my earlier comments about overselling science, I worry about how studies like this can get twisted in the name of politics. The odds of a similar study producing different (or even opposite) results are actually pretty high here. The sample sizes are painfully small in this study, and I would definitely worry about selection biases. For example...how do you recruit a sample of gay males that are truly representative of the population as a whole? Certainly not by finding them through a geographically constrained social network (presumably everybody in the study was located conveniently to the study site.)

My point being that those concerned about gay rights ought not lean too hard on the science that sounds good to them when making an argument about policy, because this strategy is only one journal article away from biting you on the ass. Homosexual people don't deserve equal treatment under the law because they "can't help" their orientation...they deserve it because who you prefer to get your rocks off with is nobody's business but yours and your partner(s)', and has no bearing whatsoever on anything else.

1 comment:

chris said...

But your proposition doesn't give people the victim status that they're looking for. The issue here is not necessarily equal rights but most typically extra rights. I am not sure whether or not marriage is a right or more of a tradition established by the prevailing theological hegemony. In the eyes of the government, marriage is little more than a pact akin to a business partnership. In that line of reasoning, I do feel like gay couples should be able to sign a similar type of legally binding contract that heterosexual couples are allowed. I don't know if you necessarily should call it marriage in the traditional sense but it's a free country and they can call it whatever they want. At the end of the day, how does it affect what I do at work and at home? Oh yeah, it doesn't.