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We always get quite a laugh when someone asks us if we "know" why we are gay. It's "amusing", but only because the questioner is asking a ridiculous question.
We respond, usually, in one of three ways:
Do you know why you are straight?" The question is ridiculous because nobody actually knows the answer to the question about why any people are any sexual orientation. No-one knows why some people are gay and no-one knows why most people are straight. Some confidently claim that "they" know - but they are either lying or delusional. Perhaps, in time, we all shall know. But that day has not yet arrived. What research work has established, as fact, is a list of some of the issues that do not cause someone to be gay. This apparent contradiction often confuses people. They will ask "You just said no-one knows why some people are gay, but you also just said such-and-such is not a cause. How can you be confident that is not a cause if you also say no-one knows what is the cause?"Ahhhhh, hmmmm, yes.... that's got to do with the question, and the way scientific knowledge is established. Let me explain. If someone was to ask "Does a domineering mother cause homosexuality?" that is a simple, bounded question. The answer can be "Yes" or "No". You can test that bounded question by comparing the backgrounds of gay men and women to straight men and women - and you'll arrive at either a "Yes" or "No" answer. Likewise if someone asks "Does having an absent father cause a boy to turn out gay?". That too is a simple, bounded question that can be fully answered with either "Yes" or "No". It too can be tested. But if someone asks the complex, unbounded question "What causes someone to be gay?" this needs an explanation and cannot be answered just by saying "Yes" or "No". Science arrives at theories not by absolutely "knowing" the answer to a complex and unbounded question but by slowly chipping away at ignorance by answering one simple, bounded question after another. Eventually enough of these questions are answered "Yes" or "No" to be able to make an accurate assumption about the answer to the complex question. » Bounded questions can be answered "Yes" or "No". » Unbounded questions must be answered with an explanation. We have all done this before as children when we played "Ask 20 Questions". You know, when one child poses "What sort of animal am I?" and everyone has to try and guess the answer by asking only yes-or-no questions: "What sort of animal am I?" "Do you have 4 legs?" What we did as children - without knowing it - was actually follow the very method by which even the most difficult of scientific questions are answered. The second child could have asked a complex, unbounded question such as "What sort of animal are you?" to which the first child would have answered with an explanatory answer - "I am an ostrich". When science asks unbounded questions on a topic about which nothing is known it is impossible to respond with anything except pure conjecture. Children, by setting up the rules of "Ask 20 Questions" as they do, are forcing their playmates to follow the same rules that scientists must follow at work. Kind of cute really to imagine that all those people in lab-coats out there are actually playing at nothing more than a really long and confusing game of "Ask 20 Questions"! And getting paid for it. Research science has only got so far along the list of questions they must answer before they can make an accurate stab at what the cause of any particular sexual orienatation is. It is as if they have only got to the "Are you smaller than a football?" question and still don't know the final answer - but they do have the answer to several sepecific questions. Because they have answers to some "Yes" and "No" questions it is possible to say that homosexuality is not caused by:
Actually, a considerable amount of time has been spent looking at these suggested environmental or "nurture" explanations - and it preceisely because they have all proven to be inadequate that expert opinion has swung in favour of a biological or "nature" answer. That area of research is new - particulalry in genetics where the tools have only recently been developed - and of themselves have opened up a whole range of new questions that need to be answered. But research to find that "final answer" looks most promising from a biological direction. The answers we listed above are established as fact, regardless of what anti-gay religious or political leaders want you to believe. Such people try to confuse the issue by saying "But science does not know what causes homosexuality" and infere therefore that any "theory" they care to throw-up is as equally valid as any other. They try to suggest that because expert opinion cannot answer the complex question as yet then any opinion about a "possible" answer from a non-expert is worth equal respect. Well... no it is not! Science has not got to the end of it's "20 Questions". But it has got part way through the game and already knows the answer to some things. Because of this it is possible to say that some old notions about the cause of homosexuality have been found wrong. We can state this confidently. We can be sure about this in the same way the child confidently knew some answers even though they were only half way through the game. At that point the child didn't know the final answer was "ostrich", but they did know the animal had two legs and that it had feathers. And that, in a nut-shell, is about where scientific research is in regard to the question: "What causes someone to be gay?"The final answer is not yet known - but many things have been answered. |
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URL: http://geocities.datacellar.net/WestHollywood/7378/ha_14steps.html This page posted 4 August 1999 |