‘Brokeback’ science

Bobbie is the family vault for resources and ethics. His name is what automatically comes to mind when anyone in the clan is in need. "Might as well," others say, because Bobbie cannot have a "normal" family to support anyway so he should support those who do. He is often asked to decide on complex issues involving several competing interests because his track record in fairness is phenomenal. He has cultivated work that he loves and is passionate about with his most interesting and novel twist in looking at things. By all measures, he is a human being who tries with all that he is to cultivate some meaning in his life, a far cry from others who insist on riding their high horse of morality, even if they ride it facing backwards. Yet, an undercurrent brews among Bobbie’s relatives and society in general, that if only he were "normal," if only he would "straighten up and fly right," then everything about him would be as it should be. 

Bobbie’s story is a composite of many life stories of gay men. Recent studies on gayness in males, one in the Journal of Human Genetics and another in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, have recently reminded us that "as it should be" is something that the genes in our chromosomes would frown at if they had eyebrows. Genes only do what they do, that is, they get passed on from generation to generation, interacting with other genes, coding for proteins that are the building blocks of what we are biologically, with no regard for an "ideal" set-up that we humans are given to imagining and imposing on ourselves and others. That they (genes) would make for a gay Bobbie is not something the genes contemplate in deep meditative state; it is just how biological life moves on. Neither has science found some evil spirit, specifically trained at protein-coding, deliberately at work in our most intimate innerspaces, diverting our biology from the "ideal" male.

For years, research on the genetic basis of male homosexuality has focused on the X chromosome passed on from the mother – another thing that some have used to add to the running list in history of "Things That We Should Blame Women For." But now, we have studies like the one recently published in the Journal of Human Genetics that found that the genes that account for our sexuality are not just in our X chromosome but in other chromosomes, specifically 7, 8 passed on from both our parents and 10 which only has a link if it is the chromosome from your mother.

The nucleus in each of the trillions of cells in our bodies, except the egg, sperm and red blood cells, carries 22 chromosome pairs that we each inherited from both our parents and if you are a girl, have your 23rd chromosome pair as XX and if you are a boy, XY. The study I mentioned investigated the identical DNA regions that are found in gay siblings and found that the genes that account for sexuality are not found only in the X chromosome as previous researches have only focused on. This gives more evidence to what scientists have suspected all along – that there is no ONE gay gene. This also means that to those who think that gayness is a disease that can be fixed, they now have a much larger area to "cure." Now, they would have to carefully tease gayness out not just in one chromosome but in the other chromosomes that also contain a whole lot about what makes us human, and not just an aspect of it which is our sexuality.

The other study in the Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences was led by Professor Anthony Bogaert where he found that the more older brothers one had, the greater is the tendency for the younger brothers to be gay. Again, "tendency" and not a one hundred percent determination. He studied families with brothers who are not biologically related and those who were, that is, shared the same mother. He found out that only those brothers who were related biologically had a link with the probability of a younger brother being gay. He further said in a BBC online news interview last June 27, that "If rearing or social factors associated with older male siblings underlies the fraternal birth-order effect [the link between the number of older brothers and male homosexuality], then the number of non-biological older brothers should predict men’s sexual orientation, but they do not."

But that can’t be right, you say, it is not natural! Hello, what could be more natural than your chromosomes? Unless you can produce evidence that there is some fellow that is being bribed to implant these "gay" genes in these chromosomes, they cannot be unnatural. Just because you cannot or refuse to understand biology, does not exempt you from it. It is like gravity. Gravity does not give a hoot if Newton had an equation that measured it because it would still be there even if Newton, in all his crankiness, just decided to study say, clouds. What I think is unnatural is unyielding hypocrisy when the evidence, written in chromosomes X, 7, 8 and 10, cover an area the biological equivalent of a continent or two in terms of our biological make-up. This expanding space of scientific knowledge should in fact, enlarge our room for kindness and tolerance for those who are different from how we are or choose to be. What is unnatural is producing radioactivity that does not normally occur in everyday life like sex, through instruments that are used to treat cancer. But we never call that "bad" because it is unnatural. So is love, as "unnatural" as it is that we need great men and women dying from the beginning of time to teach us to practice it. Science has worked hard enough so that if you want to argue against homosexuality, you now have to do better than take out your "it-is-not-natural" card, unless you are ready to say that chromosomes are not natural and ready to strip naked to your genes and show us that you had chromosomes 7, 8, 10 and X delivered and implanted to your embryonic form by some scheming evil entity.

You cannot delight in the genes you believe make a good mathematician, physicist, beauty pageant material, dancer, or singer and yet scoff at the genes that could account for gayness. Aside from revealing your small intellectual budget being unable to accommodate evidence, it is also hypocritical to quote science only for the purposes that you are personally comfortable with. Science is gently reminding us that the high horse of morality may not be the best choice for your ride when you judge gayness. I suggest a more suitable animal – a donkey. Take it from Newton. The center of gravity is lower and your fall will not be as hard.

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