Gay baby

I read an AP article today that made me laugh, but also caused me to throw up a little bit in my mouth. Have you ever read something where you've become so angry that you thought your eyes could burn a hole through the page? If not, then you must read on.

The title of the article was, Furor over Baptist's gay-baby article. The first part is what made me laugh. The title sounds like something splashed on the front page of The National Inquisitor, or the Star tabloid, or one of the many other dime-a-dozen fake newspapers, where the writing is so bad that it gives "pulp" a bad name. Where even The Onion won't take it.

Dracula divorced! Castle in dispute as undead wench wants half!

But no, sadly, the title was a real news article, published by AP. Yes, the words "furor", "baptist", "gay", and "baby", were occupying the same headline. Sigh.

In summary, the article discusses recent outrage at Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of a leading Southern Baptist seminary regarding his recent comments about homosexuality and genetics. In light of recent studies identifying biological components contributing to the development of homosexual men and women, Mohler embraced the possibility of homosexuality as a little more complicated than "a choice". He then threw his full support behind scientific experimentation into prenatal treatments that could "reverse" a future of homosexuality for the embryo. This is the part where the page started to burn.

Let's start at the beginning. From square one, the very notion that one could even alter the human genome to account for a developmental curve that would in most cases take place over a decade after birth is ludicrous, at best. It's an ignorant and dangerous point of view. The human genome is an immensely complicated scientific landscape that researchers have begun to explore in the last ten years. Autism, a developmental disorder with well-documented, concrete symptoms, is not understood, and the discovery of a "cure" has not happened. The reason that a cure hasn't been found is most likely because autism is not purely a genetic disorder; it's likely a combination of several genetic and environmental factors at different critical periods during development.

Sexuality is easily as complex, if not more. With so much variation and differing expression, you could never pinpoint a "gay gene", even if you tried. It's not that simple. There very well may be an embryonic, genetic factor... but there is also a vast environment, social interactions, local culture, peers, family, and countless other factors that contribute to one's sexual orientation.

What's so creepy about the article is not the obvious lack of scientific understanding, but rather the implications that Mr. Mohler subscribes to without hesitation. From the article:

[Mohler said] he would endorse prenatal hormonal treatment — if such a technology were developed — to reverse homosexuality. He said this would no different, in moral terms, to using technology that would restore vision to a blind fetus.

That's the fucking scary part.

What's scary is the complete lack of knowledge on his part about the depths of gay culture, communities, cultural impact, social relations, and personal self-worth. In a sense, he has completely thrown them to the wayside. It is a disorder, as he says, that is in need of a cure.

What about people that aren't caucasian? They're clearly not like the "moral majority" so they should be cured too. And what about women, people who live in other countries, people who speak other languages, people who believe in other forms of government, people who choose alternative forms of education, athiests, agnostics, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims? They're not like "us".

When I wake up in the morning, I don't hate myself. I don't curse my genes or my parents about my being gay. I don't toil in depression every day, wishing I was straight. To the contrary, I'm the happiest with myself that I've ever been. Mr. Mohler seems to be the one having trouble sleeping at night.

It's bad enough that people like Ann Coulter, Gen. Peter Pace, Isaiah Washington, Tim Hardaway and George W. Bush routinely de-humanize gays, but to have an individual expressing interest in pseudo-science that could "fix" homosexuals is truly terrifying.

Some bloggers have compared Mr. Mohler with Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor notorious for subjecting prisoners of Auschwitz to torture and death-experiments during World War II. With no regard to the subject's humanity, Mengele tried vehemently to "cure" the genetic "imperfections" of the Jews, his tiny brain trying to translate the Nazi propoganda into a fucked up utopia.

I think it's a fair comparison.