Timely Treatise on Homosexuality May Change Minds
When was the last time you heard of anyone, anywhere in the political spectrum, actually changing his mind on an issue?
Well, a conservative Washington Times columnist teeters on the brink of doing just that, after reading what he termed “the disturbingly persuasive” cover story in the March Atlantic Monthly.
The article in question, by Chandler Burr, is a timely, intricate and fascinating look at science’s exploration of the nature of homosexuality.
As Burr reports, the first road of inquiry, taken by psychiatrists in the 19th Century, turned out to be a particularly bumpy dead end.
Misguided doctors ordered lesbians to have hysterectomies and estrogen injections; gay men got similar behavior-altering treatment including, in extreme cases, electroshock therapy, transorbital lobotomies and castration.
Finally, in 1973, psychiatry said “Never mind” and proclaimed that homosexuality is not a disease or disorder after all.
Which left scientists to ponder: What the heck is it?
Biologists working in the fields of neuroanatomy, psychoendocrinology and genetics are engaged in a more enlightened, and enlightening, examination, explains Burr.
At least in part, what it means to be gay is related to the problematic question of how genders differ.
In some research, which has not been easy to replicate, scientists found marked differences in the physical structure of male and female brains; other scientists, including Simon Le Vay of Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, have seen differences but concluded that they were related not just to gender but to sexual orientation.
There is also scientific suspicion, and some evidence, that hormonal activity in the womb may pattern the brain for same-sex attraction. One indication of this, points out Burr, who is gay, is the fact that studies have shown a clear link between gender-atypical play in children (boys playing with dolls or taking the role of the mother in playing house) and later homosexuality--behavior that can be influenced with hormone injections in laboratory animals.
If that link proves true, Burr says, “it is important, because it would be an example of a trait linked to sexual orientation which does not involve sexual behavior--suggesting how deeply rooted sexual orientation is.”
Even if it’s proven that hormones spur this orientation, though, it doesn’t explain what initially spurs the hormonal activity. That’s why, Burr says, some of the most intriguing research is in the area of genetics, which so far points rather convincingly toward familial links to sexual orientation.
Much of the research Burr explores is frustrating in its tentativeness. As he says, after watching fruit flies courting in a glass jar:
“How can we equate fly behavior with a vast something that in human beings generates aesthetic and intellectual perceptions--with something that encompasses emotional need and love and the pain of love?”
But the research is also hopeful in its potential to put scientists on track to understanding a matter that is integral to so many societal debates.
“The issue of gay people in American life did not arise in the laboratory,” Burr concludes. “The principles needed to resolve it will not arise there either.”
But as more and more evidence emerges to suggest that the term sexual “preference” is not only politically incorrect but also inaccurate, the debate is likely to elevate.
As columnist Ken Adelman wrote in Washington Times on Feb. 19, “my once-fixed views have been jarred.”
Although he seems to be waiting for more evidence before completely changing his mind, Adelman, who was devoutly opposed to full societal acceptance of gays, now admits a new possibility:
“Not chosen and not changeable, then homosexuality is a given--yes, like skin color and gender. Then integrating gays into the military would indeed be like integrating blacks into the military and women.”
Shredder Fodder
Forget the muddled argument Alex Ross makes in the March 1 issue of The New Republic against keeping the secret in “The Crying Game.” (And don’t read on if you haven’t seen the film and may want to.)
Falling into the all-too-common trap of seeing politics as a dominant partner in all art, Ross labels the film’s homosexual plot twist (is it really that, or is it transvestism or potential transsexuality?) “the terrible secret . . . the plot line that dare not speak its name.”
Ross blasts Hollywood, with justification, for its tendency to link homosexuality to crazy killer behavior.
“The Crying Game,” he says, rightly, “contains within it a far more challenging vision of gay sexuality.”
Then, however, he concludes that “the secrecy pact keeps it buried.”
Besides sexual orientation and gender roles, though, “The Crying Game” is about friendship and enmity, loyalty and betrayal.
It’s also startling and thought-provoking.
What it is not, thankfully, is what Ross apparently would like it to be: propaganda for some simpleton director’s cause du jour .
Required Reading
* For all its macho bluster about admitting gays, the U.S. military seems confused at best about its own sexuality.
As the March Spy magazine tells it, “in the Navy especially . . . homosexual innuendo is nearly a constant.”
Drag shows, Spy says, are “a big part of life at sea,” “playing grab-ass . . . was endemic” and, as author Randy Shilts tells reporter Larry Doyle, “the incidence of heterosexual gay sex, otherwise known as ‘facultative homosexuality,’ is quite high at sea. . . .”
“The big expression in the submarine service,” says Shilts, is “a submarine leaves with 120 sailors and comes back with 60 couples.”
Readers may suspect bias in this package, which relies heavily on accounts from gay military personnel who may have their own agenda, given the current debate.
Still, the discussion is compelling. The most eyebrow-raising article (complete with pictures, unfortunately) is “Queens for a Day,” which focuses on the initiation sailors undergo upon crossing the Equator for the first time.
“It’s an occasion for openly homoerotic horseplay and particularly brutal hazing of sailors believed to be homosexual,” William Poundstone writes.
Among the more peculiar rites the previously uninitiated “polliwogs” must endure: mock sodomy, floggings and--no joke--slurping oysters from the belly of King Neptune’s “royal baby,” usually an obese officer.
For instance, when young sailor Ross Perot crossed the Equator, the magazine reports, he “crawled through a garbage chute to King Neptune’s court, where he kissed the royal baby’s greased belly.”
Which makes one wonder if Perot’s aversion to gays in the military stems from a deep-seated fear that they’ll spoil all that good, clean, manly fun.
* The March 8 issue of The Nation drops what may be a low-megaton bombshell--a charge of perjury--on Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The article, by David Corn, points out that on June 19, 1987, Powell told Iran-Contra investigators, in sworn testimony, that former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger did not keep a diary.
On April 21, 1992, again in sworn testimony, Powell said twice that Weinberger indeed kept what Powell considered a private or personal diary.
