BuggBlog

Enjoy your homosexuality while you can

Here are three frightening paragraphs to start your morning, courtesy of William Saletan as he delves into the implications of the latest research into the possible causes of homosexuality:

But the march of science into the gay brain hasn't stopped. It has continued, seeking to understand not just what doesn't cause homosexuality—playing with dolls, growing up with a strong mother, watching Will and Grace—but what does. And the more we understand these biological factors, the closer we get to being able to change them.

...

If the idea of chemically suppressing homosexuality in the womb horrifies you, I have bad news: You won't be in the room when it happens. Parents control medical decisions, and surveys indicate that the vast majority of them would be upset to learn that their child was gay. Already, millions are screening embryos and fetuses to eliminate those of the "wrong" sex. Do you think they won't screen for the "wrong" sexual orientation, too?

Liberals are slow to see what's coming. They're still fighting the culture war. 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 reduction of homosexuality to neurobiology doesn't mean your sexual orientation can't be controlled. It just means the person controlling it won't be you.

I don't think liberals or gay activists have been "slow to see what's coming" -- it's been a subtext to discussions about genetic and biological causes of homosexuality for a long time, and even spawned the ever-more-prescient The Twilight of the Golds -- but I do think they have been slow to accept the inevitability because of what it implies politically. Even if hormonal "treatment" for potentially gay fetuses is ineffective or deterred by unwanted side effects, there's always the abortion option. And it's not just parents who think homosexuality is an undesirable outcome like Down's Syndrome who will use it -- the educated and liberal Baby Einstein crowd who pipe Mozart into pregnant bellies and who are loathe to start their babies off with any perceived disadvantage would quietly, but certainly, abort a lot of "disadvantaged" fetuses.

Science moves ever faster, and it looks ever more likely that it will expose ethical and political fault lines within the gay and lesbian community -- do we try to limit, discourage or even ban selective abortion? Or does that remain anathema to gay politics? It's becoming clear that at some point, we're going to have to make that choice.

What goes around, comes around

So we've all been hearing about the gay outbreak of drug-resistant staph infections, same as we heard about multiple-drug resistant staph infections back in 2003. These kinds of infections have been a problem in medical settings for some time, but when a report comes out that attaches "gay" with "disease," everyone's certain to pay attention.

From the 2003 story I co-wrote for Metro Weekly [whoops -- here's the correct link]:

While much worry about staph infections has centered on gay men and possible sexual transmission -- and actual transmission routes for most of the cases have not been determined -- the larger concern would actually be one that doctors and medical professionals have been warning the public about for years now: the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, which leads to resistant strains of many disease causing bacteria. Many fear that the development of resistant bacteria may soon outpace the development of new antibiotics.

Think about that the next time you ask your doctor for some antibiotics because you got the sniffles.

Just a couple of things to keep in mind about the current Reuters story. Gay men in San Francisco are "13 times more likely to be infected than their heterosexual neighbors" -- well, it's scary depending on how likely their neighbors are to be infected. If those "neighbors" have only a slightly greater than non-zero risk, than the elevated risk of a subset of gay men isn't something to panic over. Pay attention to, yes, but not panic.

What's interesting is that 19,000 Americans died in 2005 from MSRA infections, mostly in hospitals, but it's when someone suspects it's spread through gay sex that the warnings go out. But I get really pissed when I read quotes like this from the doctor who led the study, Binh Diep: "Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable."

Um, sorry to point this out, but when 19,000 people are dying, mostly in hospitals, from staph infections and 95,000 cases of infection are showing up annually, it's already in the general population. It's not a question of gay men having sex or physical contact -- it's a question of the rampant misuse and over-prescription of antibiotics. But instead of facing up to those facts, what we'll have is another rash of stories like 2003, where local television stations send camera crews to gyms and talk ominously about the sexual behavior of gay men.

Since your basic bar of soap is an effective preventative measure, everyone should stay calm and take a shower. And don't take antibiotics unless you need them.