If a pharmaceutical can cause a baby who was originally going to be gay to become straight then a pharmaceutical can be made that causes the reverse reaction: a baby can be made to be gay. Can you imagine the culture wars that would result from this revelation?

The religious right would go an a jihad to make gay people extinct by trying to force every pregnant woman to take said drug that ensures heterosexuality.

Therefore, every lesbian couple and/or gay couple via surrogacy would feel TREMENDOUS pressure to take the reverse drug that would ensure homosexuality.

Of course, because of the current state of American culture the market forces would be much more favorable for the drug that turns babies straight. And the market forces would be very unfavorable for the drug that turns babies gay. The religious right would have an outrageous head start.

This also brings up some very disturbing philosophical questions about the true nature of "love". If whom you love is determined entirely by chemical physical processes that can be switched on and off with a pharmaceutical then how "honest"(or "real") is the emotion of love to begin with. Is it just another programmed "urge" the universe created in order to organize just another species of life and that "love" has no intrinsic meaning or value? This is all very Battlestar Galactica (especially from the Cylon point of view)

I'd be interested to hear more about the study,  how big the sample size was, if there were any people who were in between the two extremes, what the brains of self-identified bisexuals looked like, etc. Whether both "lipstick" and "butch" lesbians still have the same brain, and the same for girly vs. "dominant" straight women.

But it does throw up interesting questions. I remember the moment I read about studies going into these kind of things (back when it was still believed to be genetic) my thought was that just as people get excited that they are proving that it's not a choice, I bet that spontaneously the religious right would suddenly the first to promote abortion in cases of pre-identified homosexuality. 

It does throw up interesting philosophical questions. It has been said before that homophobia and misogyny often seem to go hand in hand, with a dislike of anything "girly" and "unmanly". Are women really this despicable and this worthless? Or do women brains have their own types of advantages? If men and women are truly worth equal then why should it matter whether somebody has a male or a female brain? Could there actually be some sort of "middlesex" advantages of having the body and physical strenght of a man and the brain of a woman? Or on the other hand to be a woman with a male brain for example in certain business areas where you have to deal with a lot of men? 

Even though pre-selection for example of the gender of a baby already exists so far it hasn't led to anybody storming to the clinics to ensure that they have only boys. Because as of now at least in our culture boys and girls are seen as roughly equally desirable, so some couples might want a boy and others might want a girl. So maybe the only way to sidestep eugenics would be to prove that being gay is just as equal, good and advantageous as being straight. 

What bothers me most about these studies on the origin of sexuality is that they always look at a black and white, A or B world; how do those of us who are bisexual fit into all this? I'll admit I haven't read the original article, only the coverage of it. Were we in there? I suppose that given the conclusions, too much of one hormone, too little of another, that bisexuality could result (as my mother said, if this is a matter of lop-sided brain development, does that mean that bisexuals or asexuals are more balanced, Goldilocks-perfect?) but are they researching that possiblity, or dismissing us as people who just can't make up our minds?

I wonder if this study examined the brain scans of twins where one was gay while the other was straight?

LolaRuns , I agree that sample size is extremely important. As for the issue of which sex is more desirable, there are many societies in the world that seem to value having a male child over a female child. Third world farming communities, for example, and any culture that places great importance on having male heirs.

 

I don't know why more people don't watch the Japh's Vlog. It's pretty good.

This particular episode sparked some very interesting questions.

just wanted to get that out of the way.

Very interesting vlog.  It does make you wonder what would happen if you could get hormonal therapy to your children to make them gay or straight.  The movie "Hard Pill" takes an interesting look at what a grown man faces with the choice of getting a gay antidote to turn him straight.  It is all VERY interesting to think about, whether the lifestyle, the love, the culture is dependent on the actual sexual desire or "act" if you will or is there something else at play....