JV PhiloBlog

A philosophy student raised this question:

I was always wandering, in philosophy their needs to reasoning to for science and religion. Can you been born with homosexuality or is it something more of science with an additional chromosone that can conflict with the human nature of a person devlopment? Can Philosophy determin a understanding of this issue?

A very good question. Mythos or logos? I decided to write a short essay in response. Here it is.

Whether a phenotype (an observable trait like blue eyes, big nose, a tendency to develop a given disease, timidity or being easily startled) is or is not caused by a genotype (in the egg and sperm, the DNA code) is entirely a matter for the science of genetics, in our terms logos. We posses excellent means for determining how physical and some psychological conditions correlate with genetics.

For example, it is now known that in general criminals, including non-violent offenders, tend to arouse very slowly. Their bodies do not respond to stimuli in the same way most other bodies do. This seems to be an inherited and not a learned response. (How else could a burglar stand calmly by your bed deciding what to take while you sleep two feet away?)

As for sexual preference--it is more complicated because we are speaking of a behavior and not a physical thing like eye-color. (Even there genetics cannot DETERMINE eye color by itself. It is not a sufficient cause; it is the necessary cause. You need exposure to the actual sun to get your actual eye color as an adult.)

I just read the claim that boys adopted by gay males are more likely to experiment with gay sex than boys not raised by gay men. If accurate, that is empirical data. We can measure and count. But what does it mean? Would this data prove that something in the experience caused the behavior? Or consider that heterosexual men will perform gay acts when women are unavailable. Do they have the "gay gene"? As often happens, the data points in a couple of directions.

Here is my hypothesis: like eye-color, sexual orientations of many sorts (foot fetishism, fixation with various body parts, etc.) will turn out to have some sort of genetic component. But experience in life, especially early experience, will turn out to be a factor too.

On the simplest level, how could homosexuality be a mere choice? How easy would it be for you to choose the other orientation, if you even think you could do it? So the idea of punishing a person for a given sexual proclivity (top? bottom? legs? breasts? spanking? older? younger?) seems inconsistent with the current state of science to me, not mention downright arrogant. (Naturally, should the behavior harm others, then different moral codes would come into play. Thus, if a behavior like divorce (often thought as a purely private matter these days) is shown to cause great harm to children, then the moral code of not causing harm would come into play. Same with pornography. Same with prostitution. Same with hooking-up.)

I think, then, that the causes of and influences upon sexual behaviors are questions for genetics and psychology and maybe sociology--what we call Science. But the morality of sexual behavior will always be an issue for Religion and Philosophy, partly because sexual behavior has such enormous consequences, both for the person and the community at large.