![]()
The question this week; does it matter whether or not I'm
genetically pre-disposed to be attracted to members of the same
sex? Or to put it in the snappier Gagarian terms, was I 'Born this
Way'? Well, to look at the evidence it seems like something rather
homosexual was going on from an early age. My friends had Barbie
and Ken. I had action man and glimpses up Barbie's skirt.
Anecdotally at least, it seems I may have been destined for
queerdom.
But surely, it doesn't matter if I was born gay or not. I may
have been; you may not have been. The problem is the belief that it
matters. Whilst we dwell on the question of whether we are born or
become whatever our sexual preference is, we imply that somehow the
rights we demand as gay or bisexual are contingent upon our
DNA. Gay and bisexual people have the right to operate in
society with the same freedoms and restrictions as other citizens,
the over-riding question governing human relations should be 'is it
harmful' not 'what do their chromosomes look like?'
'It's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve'. Now this is a highly
sophisticated argument but if I've got it right, the sentiment
seems to be that on the basis of the prerequisites for procreation,
men and women are the natural sexual pairing. The further
implication is that we who deviate from this biblical blueprint are
in fact a 'right bunch of pervs'. Now side-stepping the obvious
points - that 'Adam and Eve' is not a colloquialism for the
primordial soup out of which all life actually evolved and that if
it was Adam and Eve then it was presumably at some point Eve and
Cain/Abel, and therefore the garden of Eden wasn't the microcosm of
good breeding practices that we've been led to believe - the most
important question is: why does biology accord some kind of moral
authority?
It could transpire that none of us are born with either a
genetic or psychological tendency towards our own sex and sexual
preference is definitively nurture not nature. Irrespective of this
apparent Worst Case Scenario, it should have no bearing on how our
sexual preference is regarded by wider society. A glance through a
typical medicine cabinet will confirm that something's natural
occurrence is no argument for its desirability. Having same-sex
inclinations can prove tricky enough without us defining ourselves
into obscurity.
If you took a cross-section of the lesbian and bisexual
community there would be huge diversity; women who have always
liked women, women who have just started to like women, women who
have had bad experiences with men and now want to be with women.
Surely we want to be open-handed enough to encompass all of them?
Being attracted to women, whether emotionally, physically or both,
is ultimately something we feel. To assume that those feelings have
the same origin in each of us is a dangerous over-simplification
which fails to acknowledge the internal diversity within the
community.
Perhaps some of us are Born Gay. The likelihood is that at least
some of us are not. Whilst we pin our calls for equality on the
former, we are entertaining the notion that our place in society
somehow hinges on something other than being decent, co-operative
human beings who deserve not to be interfered with on the basis of
sexual behaviour.
The idea of genetic pre-disposition may seem like the ultimate
vindication, but by resisting the debate, not only do we refuse to
become apologists for our legitimate lifestyle choices but we avoid
what could also be the ultimate pigeonhole.
