Lesbian tennis star Martina Navratilova is condemning hormone-altering experiments on sheep that have displayed what researchers claim are same-sex attractions, attempting to determine how to breed only "straight" sheep.

Researchers at Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Science University have in some papers on the subject referred to the sheep as "gay". The research is funded by taxpayers through the year 2008.

[...]

According to PETA, OHSU experimenter Charles Roselli is drugging pregnant sheep to prevent the actions of hormones in their fetuses' brains and cutting open the brains of rams he calls "male-oriented" -- homosexual -- in an attempt to find the hormonal mechanisms behind homosexual tendencies so that they can subsequently be changed. 

Roselli's cohort, Frederick Stormshak of OSU, has surgically installed an estrogen device in rams' bodies in an effort to alter "gay sheep's" sexual preferences and make them "heterosexual."

According PETA the grant applications say the experimenters plan to extrapolate the test results to humans -- with the insidious implication that homosexuality in people can be "cured."

Okay, granted that this comes from those PETA wack-os, but if there is ANY truth to this....

But, like I said, I didn't know Dr. Roselli -- so I asked him. I wrote, "Do you think homosexuality is something that can or should be 'cured'?" His reply: "No," he said. "And I find it appalling and offensive that PETA has suggested that I and my collaborators do."

If PETA can defend their claim that his intention is to cure homosexuality, I would like to see that. Because it is a damn nasty thing to say. And as far as I can tell, it is a bald-faced lie.

As the culture wars rage over gay rights, a flock of sheep at Oregon State University may help answer a key question behind the controversy: Is homosexuality a matter of choice or biology?

The Corvallis herd includes a group of rams that scientists delicately refer to as "male-oriented." These animals consistently ignore females and bestow all their amorous attentions on members of their own sex.

Researcher Charles Roselli says a decade of study suggests sexual orientation is largely hard-wired into the sheep's brains before birth. Now, he's trying to figure out how that happens, zeroing in on genes and hormones. In a bold test of his ideas, he hopes to engineer the birth of gay rams by altering conditions in the womb.

Roselli is waiting for a group of lambs born last spring to reach sexual maturity. Their mothers were dosed with drugs to block the action of male hormones in the fetuses. If Roselli's hypothesis is correct, rams born of this experiment will be disproportionately gay.

Before Friday, Siegert was best known for being arrested for driving under the influence after he and an ex-teammate stole a ram from an OSU research project on gay sheep after the 2004 season. Some called for his dismissal, as that escapade followed several other legal misadventures that put the program in a bad light.

Who knows -- if it's magical enough, maybe it could even cure homosexuality one day (not a choice, right?). So when they finally find and isolate the gay gene, they can look for it in developing embryos, weed those out, and use those for embryonic stem cell therapy.

How'd that be? A stem cell cure for homosexuality! If anyone is still gay after that, it's obviously a choice (tsk tsk!).

A piece considers the moral and political implications of gay babies. Fetal screening technology may soon let parents detect homosexuality, and scientists predict that within a decade parents will have the option of applying a hormone patch to set a gay fetus straight. But until such a "remedy" exists, pro-life conservatives and gay rights opponents "will have to ask themselves whether the public shame of having a gay child outweighs the private sin of terminating a pregnancy."

But until such a "remedy" exists, pro-life conservatives and gay rights opponents "will have to ask themselves whether the public shame of having a gay child outweighs the private sin of terminating a pregnancy."

If the Right can garner 80% of the vote in plebiscites over Equal Marriage (and they have), what sort of numbers do you suppose they could pull for a pre-natal Final Solultion of the Gay Problem?

Most people who defend homosexuality as a biological trait assume it can't be changed. Martina Navratilova, for example, is asking the universities to shut down the sheep research and spend the money instead on fostering "acceptance for people of all sexual preferences." What if the research destroys that assumption, too? What if it proves that sexual orientation is biologically based and that we don't have to accept it? What if science makes it possible to chemically reduce the prevalence of homosexuality without oppressing anyone?

That's the first reason not to squelch basic research. If you let it run its course, it might disabuse you of the assumptions that made you want to squelch it. The same can be true of technology. Looking back at the wretched history of hormone therapy for homosexuality, it's easy to say, "Never again." But the latest, albeit unsuccessful, interventions in sheep are at the fetal stage, when the brain is taking shape. If you don't regard the human fetus as a person—precisely because its brain hasn't fully formed—can you really say it was ever gay? Does your objection to medicating gay people still apply?

That's another reason to let research go forward: It might expose contradictions in your politics. You might find yourself in the odd position of pleading for acceptance of homosexuality as a natural condition while at the same time denouncing Catholic bishops who plead for acceptance of infertility as a natural condition. Is one kind of infertility more sacred than another?

The final reason to be wary of stifling research is that half-developed technology can be worse than the finished product. The sheep investigators have already identified brain markers that roughly correlate with homosexuality. What they deny doing—and PETA, in its efforts to stop the research, accuses them of doing—is trying to alter orientation in the womb. But if doctors learn to spot emerging gay brains and are unable to alter them, parents who are determined not to raise gay children will do what's already done to female fetuses in much of the world: abort them.

Science is scary. It can change your body and your mind. But smothering it can be just as dangerous. The wisest course is to keep an eye on its participants, their motives, and potential applications of their work, never letting one motive or application obscure others. Political attacks that blur these differences don't help.

we hear "extermination"

we hear "extermination

One of the nation's leading Southern Baptists has called for a policy that would support medical treatment, if it were to become available, to change the sexual orientation of a fetus inside its mother's womb from homosexual to heterosexual.

[...]

Acknowledging the strides that genetic science is making in identifying and isolating genetic abnormalities, defects and diseases, Mohler embraces this advance in medical science as yet another tool in the war to root out and cleanse sin.

[...]

Simply put, Mohler believes that homosexuality is one of God's ways of punishing us for original sin. And now science promises to provide a new means to root out sin and temptation even before birth.

"If a biological basis [for homosexuality] is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin," Mohler wrote in advice for Christians.

Mohler restates his opposition to aborting fetuses or embryos who "are identified as homosexual in orientation," but said advancement on determining a biological basis for such orientation should be used "for the greater glory of God."

After all, whenever a gay nation-state is discussed by more than a handful of people, the notion that it would (of course) be immediately attacked arises. [..] Just which all-powerful country is it that is going to sweep down and wipe some gay state off the globe? No one ever says, yet they are convinced of its inevitability.

Oh wait, isn't this what straight people are already doing all the time?

Is this not an established crime under international law? Is it not customary to prosecute such persons (or at least call for their prosecution)?

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

( a ) Killing members of the group;

( b ) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

( c ) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

( d ) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

( e ) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III

The following acts shall be punishable:

( a ) Genocide;

( b ) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

( c ) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

( d ) Attempt to commit genocide;

( e ) Complicity in genocide.

In a speech at University of California Santa Barbara this week, ex-gay leader Chad Thompson seemed to welcome the elimination of gay people if a gene that determined sexual orientation were discovered. This is quite ironic, considering Thompson wrote the book “Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would.”

“I think it would be cool if a gay gene were discovered. Then God would get more glory when people are changed,” Thompson said.

“Sounds like Thompson would ‘love’ gay people right out of existence if he had his way,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “If this is how ex-gays love, I’d be afraid to see them when they hate.”

...

Thompson runs the Iowa-based group Inqueery that works to get ex-gay speakers placed in public schools. Thompson also holds the odd belief that people become gay as punishment for the sins of dead relatives. He calls this malady a “generational curse.”

Radar, March/April 2007



Does anyone have easy access to the magazine? A copy of the article would be fine...

I believe this is exactly what you seek, and if it isn't, then I suspect it will interest you anyway.