The Toronto Star, like other papers, finds a neuroscientist who thinks the new study "should erode the moral judgments often made against homosexual preferences and rebut any argument that it is a mere a lifestyle choice." Well, yes. But then what?

The argument that homosexuality has to be accepted because it was biologically determined was always extremely shortsighted, exactly for this reason.

However, the article still sides with the idea that because homosexuality is biologically determined, it is not a choice and therefor has to be accepted by society. That's a strange viewpoint, and one that is at least as short-sighted. We already know that many psychological conditions are rooted in brain chemistry and/or genetics, such as ADHD, but that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not we - as a society - decide that it should be treated as a disease or not.

Shall we conclude that people genetically predisposed to get cancer should not receive treatment, 'cos it is not their decision to get cancer?

The yardstick for treating any deviation from "normalcy" remains whether the individual and the society around him or her suffer from the deviation. Whether or not the cause is personal choice, genetics or environment is absolutely irrelevant.

So deviations from the norm are to be understood as illnesses?

Would that include deviations in intelligence?

Are we back to the huge, stupid argument Saletan launched on eugenics a couple of months ago?

Also, a bonus question: for decades, it was thought to be "progress" to treat homosexuality as a disease. All sorts of medical horrors were visited on inadequately butch boys by their anxious/stupid parents, with the aid and collusion of august medical institutions like the Menninger Clinic. While the "lifestyle choice" business is also stupid and thus an irritant, at least it rescued us from the pseudoscientific abuses of a medicalized model of sexual deviance as illness.

Just in case you think I'm making all this up, a friend of mine who recently died was put through a cycle of insulin shock at age twelve by Menninger's in order to "treat" what his father perceived as a visible homosexual tendency.

While it's irritating to hear some snake-handler blathering about a "life style" he does not understand, in recent history the religious nuts haven't been as dangerous as the medical establishment.

Do you want us to go back to enforced shock treatment for thought-to-be gay teen-agers?

We used to bleed people to relieve fevers. I don't believe that's an argument against using modern medicine to treat a fever, though.

Which brings us back to the fundamental issue of morality.

One of the major problems with discussions of homosexuality is that they tend to involve rather simplistic interpretations of morality based on purely individual interactions.

To understand the issue, consider women bearing children. In a modern society, childbearing could - to a large extent - be considered a selfish act. A woman who chooses to have a child imposes costs on those around her purely for her own reasons. But we don't regard women having children as an antisocial act. Why?

Well, because everyone understands that society as a whole requires those children. And so what could be termed a 'selfish' act in Crowley-style "harm none" terms is actually a charitable act towards society at large.

Having consensual sex with a member of the same gender is not, by its nature, harmful to the two parties involved. However, this doesn't answer the question of whether homosexuality is harmful to society at large - a moral question that people seem desperate to avoid asking.

I don't know the answer, and I don't know that it's a question that can be easily answered. I do know that it's a question that cannot be answered by the biological sciences.

We don't answer the question of whether homosexuality is harmful to society at large for two reasons:

1.) there is no such thing as society at large, and
2.) sexual deviance from imaginary norms is not a threat to those norms. Being imaginary, they are immune to dangers posed by the behaviors of actual people.

I'm glad to have set your mind at rest on this matter. It seems to me that there's something else troubling you, though. Since you cite Aliester Crowley as some kind of moral authority, I have to assume you're a libertarian and most likely quite young. And if you ARE a libertarian, you aren't a very good one, because the answers to your "larger" questions about social harm are actually easily answered from a libertarian position: NOTHING people do consensually is as harmful to a society as the laws societies develop to manage and punish private consensual behavior.

You assume that some kind of "norm" gets to assign itself the title of "society at large." Why? This isn't like passing laws against dumping toxic waste in a public aquifer. It is exactly like punishing people for not being white, or not speaking french, or not practicing full-immersion baptism, or wearing a flag lapel, or any other silliness you want to use to construct a norm.

Whether these "norms" are partially or wholly genetic in predisposition is entirely beside the point. Loathe as I am to let "scientists" parse morals, i would rather do that than buy my morals off the rack from organized religion and other professional moralists.

And people don't just have kids for "selfish" reasons. All you demonstrate by mouthing that kind of cant is your ignorance of the differences between your ass and a ham sandwich.

I'd like to know why LOVE, and not JUST sex, is completely ruled out as a factor in homosexual attraction.

Two people love each other - they express themselves through physicality.

If that harms society, better place chastity belts on all babies in the womb, instead of trying to chemically alter them.

If your argument is that gays will lead to no babies in the womb - then I feel VERY sorry for all those straight couples who can't reproduce.

So deviations from the norm are to be understood as illnesses? Would that include deviations in intelligence?

Anything we consider "normal" is not an illness. Many things we can personally consider to be abnormal (like voting for Bush AFTER the Iraq debacle) is not something we look to treat - as a society. I'm just pointing out that whether or not something is genetically predetermined has no bearing on whether or not it is to be treated.

While it's irritating to hear some snake-handler blathering about a "life style" he does not understand, in recent history the religious nuts haven't been as dangerous as the medical establishment. Do you want us to go back to enforced shock treatment for thought-to-be gay teen-agers?

Not at all. I think that there is nothing in principle wrong with studying the extent to which genetics determine our lives. But I do think that this scientific study should be kept out of public debates on political, moral and sociological issues, as they generally have no bearing on them. Whether or not we treat homosexuality should be determined by considering whether homosexuality has a negative effect on society and the individual. I believe that no negative effect has ever been demonstrated, and that individuals only suffer because of the negative reactions of others to their sexual orientation.

Incidentally, I don't think that just because homosexuality is not "deviant" it is a good idea to flaunt it. B&D and S&M are not "deviant" either, but flaunting them in public is still a bad idea. I don't think some discretion is too much to ask for.

In case you think that paragraph IS asking to much, I'll just explain where I draw the line personally. I don't mind talking with my gay friends about their boyfriends/girlfriends per se, but I don't want to hear their bedside stories. That's the same standard for my hetero friends, by the way. I just don't need to know. I don't mind being asked to accept homosexuality, but I don't see why I should "celebrate" it. The latter was a specific request in a church I used to attend, and I refused. I don't celebrate heterosexuality either.

K.M., the point is generally limited to sex because loving someone of the same gender without expressing it physically has never been seen as an issue.

Nothing precludes homosexual relationships from being grounded in deep, intense feelings of love. Unfortunately, deep, loving homosexual relationships are rarely in the spotlight, and that hasn't help the gay rights movement.