Reply #6: ROFL [View All]

MANAMBAJAMBA.

I can see how he got from point A to point B too. It's called flawed logic and one-sided thinking. This is also not his area of expertise. He doesn't study sexual behavior.

If you actually look at the work of scientists who have studied this (e.g., Dean Hamer or Eric Vilain, there are other examples but I can't think of them off the top of my head) they'll be the first to admit that there probably is no single "gay gene" and that sexuality is too complex to be tied down to an on/off switch.

The other thing is that (as I said in the letter) he was perpetrating a deception--trying to give people's personal prejudices an "objective" justification in science when really what he was doing was writing an opinion piece. To use the word "defective" is to make a normative judgment. When someone actually called him on it, he fell back on a false "it's just science" rationale and disclaimed any political interest in the subject.

I find this especially insidious after reading the New Yorker article on how the right wing is now massively distorting science from the inside.