Genetics and sexuality

Genetics and sexuality

By Daisy Kiriakidis

MELBOURNE — Experiments to seek out a "gay gene" were the topic of a public meeting organised here by the Democratic Socialist Party on September 24. About 60 people discussed contributions by Ian Malkin and Lisa Sarmis, law lecturers at Melbourne University, Udo Schuklenk from Monash University's Centre for Human Bioethics and Elle Morrell from the DSP.

Malkin said it was unlikely that the researchers could determine a genetic cause of sexuality, but if they did find a "gay gene", the next step would be to "cure" or eradicate it. He disagreed with some of the gay and lesbian press, such as the Melbourne Star Observer, which have supported this research, even claiming that the discovery of a "gay gene" might be the key to gay and lesbian liberation.

Sarmis said that biological determinism was reactionary, and the quest to prove that being gay or lesbian was "normal" because it is genetically determined, reinforced the idea that people with other differences were abnormal.

Schuklenk warned that many of the people involved in research into homosexuality were anti-homosexual. Morrell said that the establishment media promoted the idea of a genetic cause of sexuality because they wanted to hide the fact that oppression of gays and lesbians is a social ill arising from capitalism's need to reinforce family ideology.

From GLW issue 117