[whiteperil] Sean: Excising the fabulousness gene

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Posted by Sean:
Excising the fabulousness gene
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1167802890.shtml


   Oh, come on. [1]Michael and [2]Henry Lewis are having a spaz over
   [3]this statement by James Joyner:

     Is being gay tantamount to being deaf? My instinct is that it is
     not, since it impacts a much more narrow range of the human
     experience. At the same time, would I choose for my kids to be gay?
     Absolutely not. There are plenty of disadvantages that come with it
     and no obvious upside. If they turned out to be gay, though, they
     would continue to have my love and support.

   Michael and Henry both say the only downside to being gay stems from
   other people's narrow-mindedness. Is that the case for everyone,
   though? I've known a fair number of gay couples who regret that they
   can't have a child together. Is it really possible to believe that
   social pressure alone accounts for the desire to see their combined
   genetic heritage reflected in their child? You don't have to be one of
   those mean-spirited people who think of adopted children as somehow
   not "real" or who assume every childless person lives a pathetic,
   unhappy life to recognize the human instinct to procreate and to
   concede that responding to it is "valid."
   From a different angle, parents do all sorts of things to ensure
   happiness by their own definition for their children. The line between
   encouraging a child to rise to high standards and tamping down his
   personality isn't always clear. Still, it's not uncommon for parents
   to foist piano lessons on their children, or to pressure them into
   going to parochial school, or to refuse to pay for college if it's not
   Ivy, when the children's native aptitudes and interests clearly run in
   different directions. There's an obvious and direct way in which
   rejecting an existing child's core self and trying to substitute
   another of the parents' own choosing causes unhappiness.
   Would manipulating genes have a comparable effect? It doesn't seem to
   me that it would, though I can only speculate, of course. A child
   might feel a bit odd if told that Mom underwent some kind of drug
   regimen to incline him toward engineering rather than painting, but
   since the only life he would know would (presumably) be that of an
   inclination toward engineering, I can't imagine that he'd be haunted
   by not having been able to live as his "natural" self. Anyway, it's
   already natural for people, when they're feeling down, to wonder
   whether people living different lives are happy or more productive or
   what have you.
   And that's always struck me as what this debate is really about for a
   lot of gay people: they seem to think that accepting that some people
   might not want themselves or their children to be gay somehow reflects
   badly on us. Hence the indignant declarations that we are too happy
   and that prejudice from hetero-meanies is all that keeps us from being
   more so. I don't see why that stance is necessary. Life is about
   trade-offs for everyone, and part of living in a free society is
   respecting people who prioritize things differently. Those of us who
   are out homosexuals should be more aware of that than anyone.

References

   1. http://gayorbit.net/?p=6293
   2. http://www.henrylewis.org/blog/archives/2006/12/31-week/index.html#008935
   3. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2006/12/curing_gay_sheep_/