Straight out of the creo handbook.
Yeah, that was the point.
Crank down the condescension a few notches, I was explaining how they would likely react. Taz just added a point I hadn't thought of... outright denial.
We have been using Drosophila for research for years and we've just found the GB gene.
Yeah, I used to help my ex prep them for her lab. I'm aware of their utility and extensive use.
That said, humans do have a much more complex brain and sophisticated behavior system than flies. While we may share similar conditional inputs (for example reactions to pheromones), that does not necessarily effect us as dramatically (directly) as flies. Pheromone studies with humans show just that.
I think "gay gene" is a misnomer, arising with modern hysteria over sexuality. There are genes which as part of their activity, result in predispositions for homosexual behavior. Its "purpose" is not to make people gay.
If we are addressing my own position, I believe that developmental environments during gestation effect sexuality more than genetics. And social situations can also effect how one's sexual feelings are manifested.
So you could choose to be gay if you wished?
No, and that would not be the anti-gay crowd's point either. Whether you are attracted to the same sex or not, you do have the ability to stop yourself from acting on those feelings. Flies generally don't have much self-awareness, analysis, or control. Humans have great amounts of self control.
That is what the rape analogy is supposed to highlight. Whether people are predisposed to wanting to rape, they do have the "choice" not to.
No more than any genetic variation is "aberrant". Are green eyed people "aberrant"?
They aren't aberrant to me in the sense that the anti-gay crowd would use it. Remember, I'm just saying how they would dismiss the study.
Let me see if I can Devil Advocate for them a little further on this point. Green eyes may be a variant, but humans are capable of determining which variations are harmful, or in some sense a malfunction of their actual purpose, and green eyes are clearly not that. That is color of eye does not change the function of the eye.
Color-blindness, or blindness itself on the other hand would be a malfunction, and detrimental. Thus it is not simply a variant, but aberrant. In such cases humans rightly try to correct those problems.
The purpose of sexuality is to reproduce, hence any condition (genetic or other) which directly effects an ability to reproduce according to their physical gender would be a malfunction, and hence aberrant. Why wouldn't it be important to fix that just the same?
Clearly according to the fruit fly model, humans wouldn't care once they were switched... and it would make everyone happy.
h
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." - Robert E. Howard