Hemlock & Kaiso,

But that is not the question. You are dealing with what "is".

The question is "If all you had to do was get a few shots and you could be certain your child would be straight or gay, would you choose a) do nothing- let god/genes work it out b) make sure the child is gay or c) make sure the child is straight."

Oh and to the very, very young 24 year old non-breeder type... As an old crusty fart, I've known soooo many of you in my life. And in 99% of the cases, you just haven't a) gotten old enough or b) met a guy who you emotionally want to have a child with.

Also realize, you can decide every day to not have a child for 5, 10, 15, sometimes even 20 years... but it only takes one time of deciding to have a child. Or one random time of drug interaction that kills your birth control (and then you either have the child (keep/adopt) or face an abortion).

I'm sure right now, you think you will always feel the same about not having a child- but the odds are 10-1 against you keeping that opinion past your breeding age. And if you do succeed, that just means that your line/beliefs go when you die and the high breeder lady who has 6 kids replaces you and your values.

I don't buy that Eve. There are a million little things we would all change about ourselves. Who doesn't want to be just a few inches taller or a few pounds lighter or just a bit smarter or more athletic? If your parents could give you any of those small advantages in life would you really be upset because it isn't their decision to make? I doubt it. When you are struggling to order the salad instead of the pizza I know you wouldn't be thanking your parents for not giving you a faster betabolism.

Maxo, I thought the answer was clear: I would not interfere. I don't consider a homosexual orientation to be 'disordered', nor do I have some kind of bizarre need for my kid to be "gay like me".

Let me re-phrase:

Do str8 folks say, "I hope my kid is gay"? No, str8 folks do not say this, and it's understandable that they do not.

Our culture treats gay as something to be explained. When str8s aren't explaining it, the gay community is.

No one assumes str8 needs explaining. It's just the way things are. Or are supposed to be. Or whatever.

Str8 folks assume gays will happily celebrate their str8-ness by congratulating them on their marriages, on the birth of their children, etc. No consultation with gay folks prior to the events.

But gay folks have to ask str8 folks if it's OK to marry and have kids. Or to adopt kids.

In our culture, gay requires explaining. "Understanding" and "acceptance" and "celebration". And this means the gay community is continually seeking str8 folks' approval.

I'm gay. I don't have a theory about being gay anymore than a str8 person has a theory about being str8.

That's real freedom. I don't explain myself to people who don't explain themselves. But then no explanation is needed from EITHER of us.

Our culture will be better off when no str8 person assumes it's harder to be gay than it is to be str8.

It's hard to be human, period. The rest is commentary.

EveHallowsAll

Okay.. let's look at the two sides.

1) You are part of a subculture that experiences a high degree of prejudice from the main population. You are occasionally unhappy because you are gay and have to either hide who you are or be excluded from various social activities, church, possibly the military. While you are growing up in school if you show who you are, your life will probably be hell. So you stay silent and here very nasty jokes about who you are and various anti gay slurs that you pretend to go along with.

You find out your parents had a series of shots that made you gay.

2) You are part of mainstream society. You can do just about anything you want except take part in gay activities (and actually you can experiment and do that if you want to try it out). You are occasionally unhappy for random reasons but never "because" you are straight. You never suffer "anti -straight" prejudice or slurs.

(The closest parallel would be if you are a swinger type or a kinky type who has to closet your true sexual needs and has a tougher time finding a mate. OTH, so much kinky stuff has become "normal" now that it is not the issue it used to be. You really only have the fundamental challenge between the deep love/intense sex you can get committing to one person vs the tremendous wild hot sexual pleasure/variety of having multiple partners.)

So anyway, you find out your parents had a series of shots that made you straight.

In which case do you think it is more likely that the person is going to be pissed off at their parents? If it were me, in case #1, I'd say WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? I would feel betrayed and hold my parents responsible for all the hell i went through in high school if I found out that they chose for me to be an outsider who is in a tiny group of 1-3% of the population.

There is a difference between working with what you are dealt (Ah well, I'm randomly gay and I'm proud of it.)

Right on! If only there were a genetic cure for a**holes...sigh

Kaiso,

My personal answer is the same - tho probably for different reasons.

I would not interfere with the gestation process because who knows what other nasty ways you might mangle your child. It would have ruined me for life if I had crippled my child, or blinded them, or ruined their hormone system so I could be sure they were gay or straight.

I have a friend who is mad at his parents because they didn't make him taller. They chose not to pursue growth hormone therapy when he was 12 and he will always be stuck at 4'11" which he absolutely hates. He feels he would be much happier if he was even 5'1" much less 5'3".

---

Mostly my emotional heat on this comes from a lifetime of people lying to even themselves about what they will do (like the 24 year old who is not going to have kids-- I know several guys that married those girls and ended up with kids- in a couple cases when the 24 year old unilaterally changed her mind and secretly stopped taking their pills).

I don't give to diddlies about straight/gay. But I can see how gay people do suffer (and will always suffer). I see how people "group up" instinctively. It can be as simple as one group has blue eyes and the other brown. or one has brown skin while another has browner skin.

I've known gay men (in college) who hated being gay because of what they saw it costing them (meeting the perfect spouse, marrying, having kids, going to scouting, going to church, seeing all mainstream movies celebrating straightness, and seeing even pro-gay media usually celebrating young hot gays- not old gays). Tho I've met people who hate the opposite sex, they didn't hate being straight. Don't get me wrong- I've also known gay guys who were happy but they were rare.

Put it this way... in straight society, as people have kids- you basically lose them as friends. They are now in the "I have kids, do kid things, talk about my kids, and do not go partying/to conventions/to ski with my straight friends any more". It's usually a drop from 3-5 of 7 days a week hanging out to 1 of 30 days a month. A similar thing happens when people "couple up". They start doing couple things and cut out the uncoupled or try to couple them up.

With gay people they are cut out by the couples, by the breeders, and by straight friends who want to go do straight things (let's say as simple as going out to a straight club while the gay person goes to a gay club or goes on a gay themed vacation vs going with the "gang".).

It's just one more way gays get cut out of the pack. By the time people are 40, huge numbers of straights never knowingly deal with a gay person again. I think i'm down to one bi friend from my college days.

I think if my child was gay I would be devastated. I can say I would not want to be a part of that part of his/her life. I don’t think I would disown him or her, but the partner or their “family” would not be welcome.
If I knew my child would be gay would I alter him or her? It depends on the risks involved. It may be all PC on Slate to say you want gay kids but to prefer it? Yea, right. Gay kids means end of the line genetically speaking, especially for gay men. No grandkids. No greatgrandkids. Sure there is adoption, but it is not the same. It is a fact of evolution, propagation of the species. That is one thing gays can’t do.

Oh, and gay men have children - I live in a community with a very heavy gay population and almost all the men have children. Sorry if that stereotype of yours isn't true.

While I can't speak for the individual homosexual and this topic has not come up in conversations with my friends in the general, since this possibility is kind of new, I still get the impression by the way they raise their children and by how they have advised us on raising our children, that there is a certain indifference to what path their children take sexually. It just isn't that important to them.

Maybe in some places in the US, being homosexual has it's difficulties, but living in a Midwest city, I don't think homosexuality is much of a factor in how people treat you.

Maybe it is different where you come from.

When my wife and I were pregnant 18 and 17 years ago, we discussed just that topic. We knew our children were both going to be males early on, and my wife was curious as to what I thought of the possibility that one or both of my children might end up being gay.

Who cares?

I didn't say "I don't care if he is [fill in the blank] as long as he is gay", but I also didn't say "I don't care if he is [fill in the blank] as long as he is straight."

The only thing I wanted for my children from day one was that they both were able to fill their fullest capacity in life and that they would be at peace with those things they could not choose and would struggle to make the right choices concerning the things they could choose in life.

So far, I think I have gotten what I wanted.

I don't get that part....

There is a lot more I don't understand about your statements, but why just lesbians?

maxo:

Buggie

"The only reason"...

No, most straight parents want GRANDKIDS. They want their gene line to continue.

Heck, males (and increasingly females) want their surname to continue.

Gay men do not produce a lot of grandkids. I'm not sure about lesbians but I get the impression they have a lot less kids than straight women.

I realize the grandkids thing, but what, do you think setting your kid to be straight makes it more likely you'll have grandkids? maybe to some degree. but then instead of injecting them with a straight hormone they should inject them with a "wants to be parent" or a "will have no problem finding a mate" or a "will have a fully functional reproductive system" hormone. I'm straight, and my parents don't have grandkids, and there's a large chance they won't. We HAVE science to allow gay people to have children with their genes if they want to. so why don't we use THAT science instead if grandkids is the biggest concern?

People don't want gay kids, or stupid kids or ugly kids or fat kids or kids that can't hit a baseball because they haven't thought long and hard about what it means to be a parent.

People assume that they want to be parents because they want children that are just like them, or more pointedly, just like them only successfull. The reason you want your children to be just like you is because you have this distinct opinion that the world would be a lot better off if everyone was just like you.

Or maybe just like you but successful.

If you think about, the real reason to be parents is because there is this big wide open future in front of us and by putting children in that future, the possibilities of what happens next becomes all the more infinite, but only if the possibilities for those children are infinite.

As soon as you narrow those possibilities by narrowing the scope of your children, whether by hormonal treatments or by teaching them to think just like you and act just like you, you narrow that future.

But I certainly wouldn't take steps to alter the innate orientation of my children, regardless of whether it was s simple series of shots, a single pill, etc.

Trebuchet, spot on. you're right, people don't just want kids like them, they want them like them but better. (though my friend recently said she's hoping to get pregnant because she wants "a little version of me and my husband." Well my first thought-actually my second, after "that's pretty narcissistic"-was what if the kid ISN'T like you and your husband? I really agree that so many people don't consider these things)

They also want to dress them in cute little outfits and parade them around town. they have a whole little life plan for the kid before it's even born, filled with assumptions of banal conventionality.