On the gay front

Widespread reporting today of one study indicating similarities between gay brains and those of the opposite sex. One part that surprised me:

The researchers said that the study cannot say whether the differences in brain shape are inherited or due to to exposure to hormones such as testosterone in the womb and if they are responsible for sexual orientation.

But this is something they plan to look at in a further study of newborn babies to see if it can help predict future sexual orientation.

Would such a study be ethical? Are PET scans completely without risk, and just how important is it for science to pin down when such brain changes (if this study is correct) are formed?

As other people have argued before, it's not even certain that it is helpful for the gay lobby to encourage a belief that it is innate. On the one hand, they can argue against discrimination because it is not something they can choose (a cultural idea that has widespread currency already in the West;) on the other hand, it can still be taken that they are, in a sense, a biological mistake. If it is clear that babies are born that way, would a course of the right hormones be able to "cure" them?

And how would such studies also make sense of the (apparent) widespread bisexuality of Ancient Greece? The question of what exactly was going on in Greece, and a couple of other ancient civilisations, is perhaps a little difficult to be sure of from this point in time; but still, given that their neighbours at the time even thought they were strange indicates that they probably were.

On a related matter, the New York Times last week ran an article on how gay marriage is panning out in Massachusetts. I think it has been found in all places allowing it that there is an initial rush to the registry by couples who have been together for years anyway, followed by rapidly dwindling numbers. In Massachusetts:

Of the more than 10,500 same-sex couples married here since May 17, 2004, 6,121 wed in the first six months. There were 2,060 weddings in 2005; 1,442 in 2006; and 867 in the first eight months of 2007, the most recent data show.

More figures of interest:

The Census Bureau recorded 23,655 same-sex households in Massachusetts in 2006.

Nearly two-thirds of the weddings have been lesbian marriages, including one between two women named Melissa McCarthy. And while nearly half of straight people marrying are under 30, more same-sex married couples of both sexes are older — nearly a third are in their 40s.

So it sounds like about half of gay couples living together there are married now, but with the diminishing numbers who are getting married annually, will that really continue to be the case?

As for the view of the meaning of marriage that some gay males have:

Eric Erbelding and his husband, Michael Peck, both 44, see each other only every other weekend because Mr. Peck works in Pittsburgh. So, Mr. Erbelding said, “Our rule is you can play around because, you know, you have to be practical.”

Mr. Erbelding, a decorative painter in Boston, said: “I think men view sex very differently than women. Men are pigs, they know that each other are pigs, so they can operate accordingly. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Still, Mr. Erbelding said, most married gay couples he knows are “for the most part monogamous, but for maybe a casual three-way.”

Well, I'm glad we overturned millennia of humanity's understanding of marriage so that some gay men who want to continue to openly play the field can still get the financial benefits of having a favourite boyfriend. (Yes, I know, we don't criticise heterosexual marriage as an institution because some - very, very, few I suspect- enter into "open" marriages. But if such attitudes are widespread amongst married gay men, I think it does mean they don't treat marriage seriously, and it weakens the case as to why they should be accommodated.)

It also makes a bit of a joke of the "conservative case" for gay marriage, which I have heard Justice Michael Kirby (amongst others) argue. Let them marry, they say, and it will encourage monogamous relationships and stable families and that is a good thing as far as conservatives are concerned.

Sounds nice in principle, but really, it doesn't realistically take into account nature. As a rule, men (both gay and straight) find sex without commitment easy, and evolutionary biology plausibly explains why. Even with modern young women willing to have purely recreational sex, it still carries more risk of emotional or procreative complications compared to 2 men who meet purely for sex. Making gay marriage available is not somehow going to suddenly make the great majority of them think that they would be better off getting into monogamous relationships any time soon.

Gay women, on the other hand, still seem to have the nesting instinct even when their partner is another woman. Not much of a surprise there. They didn't need any encouragement to "settle down".

But worse than all of this, as far as I am concerned, is the procreative interests of gay couples. That lesbians use artificial insemination to have babies seems to me far more offensive to the conservative viewpoint than the nature of the relationship between the adults. That argument, however, seems to be lost in the West, at least for now.

UPDATE: a reasonably well argued conservative commentary on the topic is at American Spectator.