The nature/nurture debate over human sexual orientation has been raging for many years now. Some, particularly religious individuals, insist being gay is a choice and it’s a sin. Some say it’s an inherent part of who we are. Others are somewhere in between.
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Most geneticists consider sexual orientation a phenotype — namely, an observable set of properties that varies among individuals. Although physical phenotypes like height and weight are easier to quantify, behavioral phenotypes are intensely studied in animals and humans. Research from many directions leads to a strong conclusion: Human sexual orientation has deep biological roots.
Moreover, the empirical evidence for the role of genetics in human sexual orientation has been quietly but steadily mounting over the last 15 years. Studies of twins — the mainstay of quantitative human genetics — have been conducted on large populations in three countries. The results unambiguously demonstrate that heritability plays a major role in sexual orientation and far outweighs shared environmental factors such as education or parenting.
During the early 1990s, there was an unfortunate flurry of less-than-convincing findings on specific genes and sometimes over-hyped media announcements. Indeed, critics of sexual orientation inheritance are fond of pointing out that there is no single identified “gay gene.” However, they fail to mention that the same is true for height, skin color, handedness, frequency of heart disease and many other traits that have a large inherited component but no dominant gene. In other words, sexual orientation is complex, i.e., many genes contribute to the phenotype.
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All of these findings demand the conclusion that most gay people no more choose their sexual orientation than most heterosexuals. (”Most” is used here to indicate that — like almost everything biological — these are statistical data and do not apply uniformly.) This conclusion is also consonant with our memories: Most of us were stunned as unsuspecting adolescents to discover our sexual orientation — heterosexuals and homosexuals alike.
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That being said, whether sexual orientation is inborn (and I firmly believe it is) or chosen really doesn’t matter when it comes to civil rights. Some like to claim that people choose to be gay, and as such we don’t deserve any “special rights” because we could choose to be straight (and why reward “sin” yadda yadda). However people choose to be religious. People also can and do change churches, religious denominations, and even which god(s) they believe in, or don’t believe in. Nonetheless they have full protection of their Religious Freedom under the US Constitution. Surely if something as mutable as religion/faith garners such stringent protection, sexual orientation should as well–whether or not it’s entirely inborn.
They’re being particularly efficient and lethal with their proposed bill, despite claims to the contrary. They want to fully isolate gay people by ensuring nobody will wish to associate with them (who would, when the penalty is death?). And of course this will lead to an all-out witch-hunt to weed out gay people and gay-sympathizers. In the process countless people who aren’t either will fall prey to this heinous law. But as I’ve said before, no amount of collateral damage is too much for the anti-gay bigots who want to exterminate us in order to sate their own hatred.
Of course they’re already being held up as martyrs, as were their MA counterparts before them. But the plain fact is that Catholic Charities chose to end its foster care program in DC, just as CC in MA chose to cease adoption services in MA, because they didn’t want to obey laws every other agency is subject to. Nobody “forced” them to do anything.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has ended its 80-year-old foster-care program in the District rather than license same-sex couples, the first fallout from a bitter debate over the city’s move to legalize same-sex marriage.
Catholic Charities, which runs more than 20 social service programs for the District, transferred its entire foster-care program — 43 children, 35 families and seven staff members — to another provider, the National Center for Children and Families. Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), the D.C. Council member who chairs the Committee on Human Services, said he didn’t know of any problems with the transfer, which happened Feb. 1.
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So that’s that. Despite former threats that children would be left wandering the streets and DC would implode because of Teh Gays, the entire caseload is already being served by another agency. Granted it’s another “faith based” provider, but I suppose I can’t expect perfection. At the very least they show no overt signs of being as bigoted as their CC counterparts.
Edward Orzechowski, president and chief executive of Catholic Charities, the archdiocese’s social service arm, said the group is optimistic that it will find a way to structure its benefits packages in other social service programs so that it can remain in partnership with the city without recognizing same-sex marriage.
Asked if that meant looking at ways to avoid paying benefits to same-sex partners or ways to write benefits plans so as not to characterize same-sex couples as “married,” Orzechowski said “both, and.”
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Translation: Catholic Charities wants to flaunt the law and still keep taking taxpayer dollars–including those of the people whose rights they’re directly violating. So much for the “moral values” instilled by religion.
Our current SCOTUS doesn’t like transparency. Without giving a reason they temporarily blocked the YouTube transmissions of the Proposition 8 trial.
The U.S. Supreme Court, acting on an appeal from conservative defenders of California’s ban on same-sex marriage, overruled a federal judge in San Francisco today and blocked video coverage of the trial on YouTube.
In a brief order, the justices said they were halting the move by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker “permitting real-time streaming” of the trial, “except as it permits streaming to other rooms within the confines of the courthouse in which the trial is to be held.”
“Any additional order permitting broadcast of the proceedings is also stayed pending further order of this court,” the justices said. They added that the temporary order “will remain in effect until Wednesday, Jan. 13.”
The high court did not explain its reasoning.
Only Justice Stephen G. Breyer, a San Francisco native, dissented. “In my view, the court’s standard for granting a stay is not met” in this case, he wrote. “In particular, the papers filed, in my view, do not show a likelihood of ‘irreparable harm.’ ” …
While that is quite disappointing you can still catch liveblogging of the courtroom proceedings:
This is good news. Not all of the bigots will be unmasked, but it’s an excellent start.
(01-06) 16:17 PST SAN FRANCISCO — Next week’s trial in San Francisco of a lawsuit challenging the initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California won’t be televised live, but it will be videotaped for delayed Internet release on YouTube, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
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Walker will have the power to order that individual witnesses’ faces be concealed or their voices muted on the YouTube uploads.
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“I’ve always thought that if the public could see how the judicial process works, they would take a somewhat different view of it,” the judge said.
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Lawyers for the couples supported video coverage. “What happens in the courtroom is public property,” attorney Theodore Boutrous told Walker.
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Walker’s order, subject to final approval by the appeals court’s chief judge, allows live video feeds to public areas of federal appeals courthouses in San Francisco, Pasadena, Seattle and Portland, Ore., and to a federal court in Chicago that has requested it.
The videotape will be posted on a YouTube site as soon as possible, which might be later the same day or the next morning, said Buz Rico, the court’s technical adviser.
Judge Vaughn Walker is considering whether or not to allow television cameras in the courtroom for the upcoming Proposition 8 trial. The anti-gay faction, who originally complained that marriage equality came about via “backroom deals” with “activist judges”, is now demanding they be shielded from the light of scrutiny. What is needed is for their bigotry, which is the only basis for Proposition 8 and other bans on marriage equality, to be exposed to the nation, in hopes that we can end this vicious trend of anti-gay legislation once and for all.
If you agree, please sign the petition encouraging Judge Walker to allow the proceedings to be televised. The deadline is 9am PST Friday.
This is what every state needs to do, and should have done, when faced with those hateful, bigoted, ballot initiatives seeking to eradicate civil rights for LGBT individuals. Needless to say the RRRWers are having the vapors over it. (Story taken from RRRW source; scare quotes are theirs.)
The Board of Elections and Ethics in Washington D.C. ruled Tuesday that allowing a same-sex ‘marriage’ ban on the ballot would violate the city’s Human Rights Act of 1977. On Wednesday, the organization, Stand4MarriageDC filed a lawsuit against the board saying it is denying D.C. citizens the right to vote on the definition of marriage.
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Board of Elections Chairman Errol R. Arthur said in a statement on Tuesday that “laws of the District of Columbia preclude us from allowing this initiative to move forward” and that the initiative “would authorize discrimination prohibited under the [District’s] Human Rights Act.”
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Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America, also weighed in on the situation. “The D.C. Council reeks of rank hypocrisy. For years they have demanded that D.C. citizens should have the right to vote for congressional representation, which is in direct contradiction to the Constitution. Yet now they are denying D.C. citizens the right to vote on marriage, an institution so fundamental to America’s well-being that territories were not allowed to become states unless they kept marriage between one man and one woman,” she said in a press release on Nov 18.
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I know, Wendy, voting on the human rights of others is a time honored American tradition. That’s why you’ve offered yours up for the next election, right?
If only the rest of the nation would learn from D.C. millions of dollars would be saved, and many millions of families would protected.
U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker recently ruled that the backers of Proposition 8 must turn over certain internal records, stating it was not proven that doing so would inhibit the activities of same-sex marriage opponents or lead to their harassment.
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The judge agreed with lawyers for two unmarried same-sex couples who have sued to strike down the ban, known as Proposition 8, that confidential communications between the campaign’s leaders and professional consultants could reveal a rationale for denying gays the right to wed that is relevant to the case.
The lawsuit argues that the measure was motivated by hostility toward gays and as such must be struck down as inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equality.
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What other reason is there for denying us the rights others, including convicted serial killers on death row, take for granted? All this “defending traditional marriage” babble is pure nonsense. It’s all about intolerance toward gay people.
“Giving the losing side of a campaign this level of information will discourage anyone from ever attempting to use the initiative process in the future, knowing that sensitive strategies will likely all become public if they prevail,” Pugno said. “It just seems like Alice in Wonderland for me, that we would get to a place that a consequence of winning an election is that you would have to open your play book.”
It might discourage hateful bigots from using the initiative process to eradicate the fundamental civil rights of others? Is that a promise? Please say yes, please say yes! (At the very least can I hope it might make people more honest in their activities?)
“What was decided not to be said in a political campaign may cast light on what was actually said,” Walker said.
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“Their argument that documents about campaign strategy and rejected campaign messages being irrelevant, simply because they weren’t sent to voters at large, is an argument he rejected,” he said.
An example of the kind of information the plaintiffs are seeking is discussions showing that the campaign decided against running ads stating that marriage must be reserved to a man and a woman to foster responsible parenting since that is an argument Protect Marriage’s lawyers are making now to uphold Proposition 8, Dusseault said.
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It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out.
Do I have high hopes for this? No, I don’t. Nonetheless I’m pleased it’s being proposed.
When Mark McNealy was laid off from his job in April, he lost his employer-provided health insurance. He could still pay a reduced rate for insurance through COBRA for 18 months, but his partner, Robert Meredith, a cancer survivor, could not. Because the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” (”DOMA”) discriminates against same-sex couples by denying them federal respect for their lawful marriages, federal programs such as COBRA don’t cover same-sex spouses. Meredith’s own job doesn’t provide coverage, so right now he has no health insurance. If his cancer returns, Meredith and McNealy could face a catastrophe.
Yesterday, with impressive support from more than 90 initial co-sponsors, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would end such government acts of discrimination by repealing “DOMA.” Congress’s passage of the new bill, appropriately named the Respect for Marriage Act, and a signature by a president who has repeatedly pledged support for full repeal of “DOMA,” will get the federal government back to treating marriages with respect, rather than destabilizing them. We can give our country the chance to remove the unfair and immoral “gay exception” from federal law.
The Respect for Marriage Act repeals “DOMA” in its entirety. It doesn’t tell states what marriages they must celebrate or how to treat marriages, but provides that the federal responsibilities and protections accorded marriages will remain stable and predictable no matter where a couple lives, works, or travels, and no matter whether that couple is gay or non-gay. The Respect for Marriage Act doesn’t require any person, religious organization, locality, or state to celebrate or license the marriage of a same-sex couple. The First Amendment protects the right of churches and religious bodies to determine the qualifications for religious marriage, and the Respect for Marriage Act cannot and will not upset that longstanding protection.
The Respect for Marriage Act would fix a grievous wrong that plays out every day in concrete injuries. Because of “DOMA,” a person married to someone of the same sex can’t receive the same spousal health benefits that employers routinely provide to heterosexual spouses without paying additional taxes that different-sex spouses don’t have to pay. Nor can a same-sex spouse take unpaid leave to care for a sick or injured husband or wife; receive spousal benefits under Social Security even after a lifetime of paying into the program; or use the safe harbor provisions in bankruptcy law, Medicaid rules and other federal statutes that protect families from financial ruin. These are just a few of the more than 1,000 responsibilities and rights the federal government denies to same-sex couples and their children. Government has no business putting obstacles in the path of people seeking to care for their loved ones, especially in times of economic uncertainty and challenge. The Respect for Marriage Act will get the federal government back on the right track.
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In an ultimate bid to eradicate the rights of women to control their reproductive systems and their lives, a group called Personhood Florida, Inc. has proposed the following amendment to the Florida constitution:
The words “person” and “natural person” apply to all human beings, irrespective of age, race, health, function, condition of physical and/or mental dependency and/or disability, or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.
Last year, Colorado voters rejected a proposal which would have defined a fertilized human egg as a person. Similarly, voters in Montana, Oregon, Georgia and Mississippi had rejected like proposals. This year in Montana and Colorado, like in Florida, backers are instead pushing a proposal that refers to “the beginning of the biological development of that human being.” The result would be the same. All abortions would be barred because, under that definition, the “beginning of the biological development” would include fetus, embryo and zygote. While this is the position of the Catholic Church and others, it is no means that of most others. Also to be banned, according to Personhood Florida and the American Life league would be all forms of stem-cell research and in vitro fertilization clinics because of the failure of the latter to bring each fertilized egg to actual birth.
So who is going to pay the medical bills for all of the women who become pregnant if they can no longer get birth control pills? (And what of the women for whom pregnancy is a health risk, even potentially deadly? Why are they less of a “person” than a blastocyst?) Who is going to shoulder the increased costs for social service programs when scores of poor women who would have otherwise had abortions instead have children? Are all these “personhood” advocates going to do what is necessary for the millions of actual persons that result from their efforts? Or are they, as usual, going to stop caring once fetus becomes a born human and begins costing society precious tax dollars?
I suspect it’s the latter, and I need only look to the search queries in my server logs for the evidence: “if medicaid covers abortion why do so many welfare mothers keep having kids”
They don’t care one whit about people. They care only about controlling them. This “pro-life” save the babies nonsense is just another smokescreen they use as a means of doing so.
The nature/nurture debate over human sexual orientation has been raging for many years now. Some, particularly religious individuals, insist being gay is a choice and it’s a sin. Some say it’s an inherent part of who we are. Others are somewhere in between. 
