In the end. who cares? What difference does it make? One is what one is. So what?
No, it makes a huge difference to how homosexuality is regarded. If it is biological, whether genetic or not, then people will see that it is unreasonable to expect someone to just "choose" not be homosexual. On the other hand, once homosexuality has at least one clearly identified cause, then people may start to talk about a "treatment" or a "cure" and we will have this discussion all over again. Suppose starting tomorrow you could really take a pill and change your sexual orientation. What would that do to the political question?
There has been a similar development regarding mental illness in the last fifty years. Fifty years ago, a person who had depression was either regarded as sane, in which case they were supposed to just "snap out of it", or they were so bad they were regarded as insane, which was really scary because nobody knew how people went insane or how to fix it, and the insane were just locked away.
Gradually, as we have learned more about the working of the brain, the model has shifted from inexplicable "moods" or "insanity" to the model of brain disease. Conversely, as working anti-depressants have been developed, people are now expected to just take some Prozac or whatever and fix the problem. It ain't always that simple, of course. |
