An astute observation in a comment:
"Two political sacred cows on a collision course. What happens when a woman's right to choose impacts gay rights? I.e., when a woman can know in advance whether or not her child will be gay and opts for abortion, will the LBGT proponents suddenly become ardently pro-life?"
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Breakthrough or a threat?: Research on genetics of same-sex behaviour ignites ethical debate
'Were we to avoid studying sexual preference or other such topics ... we would be leaving these important aspects of human diversity in the dark'
By Hannah Thomasy
Are sexual preferences genetic?
According to a recent paper in Science, the answer is at least partially yes. By screening close to 500,000 DNA samples, researchers identified five locations in the genome that were significantly associated with same-sex sexual behaviour.
“This work supports the notion that there is a biological component to sexual behavior,” wrote Benjamin Neale, one of the study’s lead authors and a member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “I am hopeful that these results will strengthen the argument for legal protections for LGBTQIA+ individuals and improve acceptance.”
Within weeks of publication, however, Neale was already calling out “a gross and dangerous mischaracterization of the work” — an app called “How Gay Are You?”
Posted on the website for GenePlaza, a consumer genetic testing company, the app claimed it could predict users’ sexual behaviour (or whether users were “Alphabet people,” as it referred to the LGBTQ community) based on lab results from a simple cheek swab.
The app was ultimately removed. But it validated ongoing concerns about the ethics of conducting genetic research related to sexual orientation — and who should be held accountable for misuse of the results.
The risks involved have been evident since 1993, when researchers first identified a potential location in the genome associated with homosexuality. The Daily Mail’s headline on the study: “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ findings.”
As Darrell Yates Rist of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said in an interview at the time, “Intellectually, what do we gain by finding out there’s a homosexual gene? Nothing, except an attempt to identify those people who have it and then open them up to all sorts of experimentation to change them.”
More than 25 years later, some fear that not much has has changed. Landon Getz is a PhD student at Dalhousie University and the founder of the group Queer Atlantic Canadian STEM. He says that from the beginning, the study undertaken by Neale and his team “was kind of a no-win situation.”
A strong genetic link could lead to discriminatory screening for sexual orientation, he says. No genetic connection might support the idea that same-sex preferences are a choice — or worse, provide justification for so-called “conversion therapy.”
But with so much genetic data available for research, Neale believes it was “inevitable” someone would use it to look at same-sex sexual behaviour. Taking part in research himself was a way “to ensure that a diverse set of scientific perspectives, personal experience, and expertise were represented,” he writes in a post on the study for the Broad Institute website. He notes that his team included “experts in genetics, statistics, sexual behaviour, and sociology,” as well as the input of LGBTQ allies and advocates.
The authors were also careful about the framing of their work. Their abstract explicitly refutes the notion of a single “gay gene.” “Same-sex sexual behaviour is influenced by not one or a few genes but many,” they state. Moreover, they write, “many uncertainties remain to be explored, including how sociocultural influences on sexual preference might interact with genetic influences.”
“Trying to head off” the misappropriation of their research only goes so far, though, says Jeremy Yoder, an evolutionary biologist at California State University and an LGBTQ advocate.
An astute observation in a comment"
"Two political sacred cows on a collision course. What happens when a woman's right to choose impacts gay rights? I.e., when a woman can know in advance whether or not her child will be gay and opts for abortion, will the LBGT proponents suddenly become ardently pro-life?"
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