My Gay Life

One of the arguments that many point to when they say that being gay is a choice is that science cannot point to a particular gene and say people with that gene are gay.  They want to do the ten baby test where you line up ten newborns, have doctors test them, and tell you which of the ten are gay.

This theory is fundamentally flawed and I believe is the result of a lack of basic understanding of biology.  There are many factors that contribute to what a person becomes.  Yes, there are genes.  But there are also hormones, diet, physical environment,  how active your lifestyle is, and many more things that contribute to you being you.  Many things are influenced by a variety of this list.

So where is science today on what makes a person gay?  Most credible science finds that attraction to the same sex is not a choice.  There is not a consensus on exactly what makes someone gay, but similarities among gay kids across cultures and several physical attributes that are generally but not always different between gay and straight people point that something in the physical and mental development process is different.

It is generally believed but not proven that it is a combination of hormones and genes that make a kid gay.  These genes may not be genes in the kid, but possibly genes in the mother too.  I am not going to go into the details of this beyond suggestion you read the book Gay, Straight, and the Reasons Why.

This is great and all that there is some limited understanding in the scientific community to what makes someone gay, but we are still years if not decades away from fully understanding this.  So how do we respond to the people today who want to point to the ten baby test?

Ideally the person would be willing to have an educated conversation where you could explain what is known today, and point them to some research that they could read on their own and have the information from an independent credible source.  However, most people who a going to ask for this test already have their mind made up and no matter how reasonable you are with them are not going to listen to anything you say.

Therefore, I subscribe to the make them take ten seconds and think.  It probably will not sow the seed of a question, but maybe 1 out of 100 times it will work.  When I am confronted with the ten baby test I very quickly figure out how likely that person is to listen.  If I know they will not listen I will respond, “Let me ask you one question in response.  You do not necessarily have to agree with me, and you are not going to change my mind.  But can you take ten babies, put them in front of a doctor and have the  doctor tell you exactly how tall they a going to be?”. Similarly when they do not bring up the ten baby test and instead say show me the gene I respond, “Can you show me the gene that causes cancer?  Since you cannot does that mean cancer is a choice?”

I don’t know if this is the best response, but I do know that launching into a spiel on the scientific evidence or your personal experience is generally not going to work.  I also think that everyone has already heard the “if being gay is a choice can you point me to the specific time in your life that you chose to be straight?” question and at this point is not going to change anyone’s minds.

Sitting on a plane right now writing this on my new iPad and realizing that I should have bought one of these a long time ago.  I don’t have Internet so I cannot post this at the moment, but it is small enough that even in these cramped seats with the person in front of me reclining back I am still able to type comfortably.

The battery life on these things is also awesome.  I have been working on it for the last 90 minutes or more and I still have only used 6% of my battery.  Maybe with this I will post more consistently as I no longer have to sit down at my computer and come up with a topic or try to type on my iPhone.  Now, whenever I get an idea I can quickly pull this out, and at least type a first draft in a few minutes ready to post whenever I am ready.

Also, many thanks to all who have clicked on the ads in the past week, it has really helped after two months of barely making a dollar off of them.  I do not run the ads to make money, I run the ads to help offset the costs of running this site.  Between the domain name and hosting it costs me $30-$50 a year to run this blog.  I know in the grand scheme of things it is not a lot, but I also have only made $23 off of the ads on this site  in the past seven months.  So please, if you are at all interested in an ad, click on it.  I do not run them to annoy you, I run them to help offset costs and it also motivates me to write when I see that I am making a few pennies off of your click.

Please only click on an ad if you are interested in it.

I have been reading the book Blind Sight by Meg Howrey and last night came across a paragraph that I have long believed and never been able to put into words in a way that made sense.

I know that some people – including people who are gay – think that you shouldn’t discriminate against gay people, because they can’t help being gay. “It’s how they were made,” they say, or, “I didn’t have a choice.”. This may be true, although, we don’t know whether it’s a gene, or prenatal hormones, or whether there are “gay” brains or “straight” brains. It’s a weird argument, though, because you shouldn’t discriminate against people at all; whether or not they chose or were chosen shouldn’t make a difference. We don’t say, “Hey, let’s not discriminate against African Americans because they can’t help being African American. — Luke in the novel Blind Sight by Meg Howrey

When I read this I immediately saw how true it was. A lot of people are trying to frame the gay rights debate around whether or not you have a choice, including me at times, but that does not matter. We should not use whether you have a choice to be the way you are as a reason not to discriminate, we simply should not discriminate.

That does not mean we necessarily have to like everyone for who they are. You can still say you do not like Christians, but they should still have the same rights you. You should not deny them housing, or physically attack them.

So why do we try to determine whether it is acceptable to discriminate against a person based on whether they have a choice to be who they are?

I think part of the problem is that we like things to be in black and white and if you take the theory of not discriminating against anyone and apply it against a lot of what ifs it falls apart. This is especially true when you take it and apply this question against criminals. Therefore people try to follow a two phased question. First do you find that person to be moral? Secondly if that person is not moral does that person choose to be that way?

I think that is where the big conundrum is. What is the threshold at which you should deny someone equal treatment? The only way to stop the discrimination is to raise a certain group of people above this threshold that people have set, and that threshold will vary for everybody.

With the passing of a day on the calendar it all of the sudden gets dark at 4:50 at night in Colorado Springs. In a month it will be dark at 4:30. That means in a month the sun will be behind the mountains by 4 PM.

I honestly wonder why we change our clocks and do a standard time and a daylight savings time. At least in Colorado it would be better just to follow Daylight Savings Time year round. In the dark days of December it would be light at 7:30 and dark at 5:30. Instead it gets light at 6:30 when everybody is still trying to rub sleep out of their eyes and is dark by the time you get off of work providing you very little opportunity to be outside and see the sun if you work from 8-5.

Instead we just go into the depressing season of never seeing the sun…

Well last night was trick or treating and I lit up this year’s pumpkins for the first time. They did their job well of letting me know kids were walking up to my door for me to give them candy. I could always tell they were here when I heard them exclaim “Wow!”.

Here are this year’s pumpkins…

E.T.

M&Ms

Koolaid Man

Woody, Mater, and Harry Potter are after the jump.
Read entire article.

As I said last Friday, I have decided to change jobs. Well today, my company sent me their exit survey. I started filling it out, and then ran across the questions “What are the three things you liked most about your job/employment?”. It was this one question that confirmed to me beyond a doubt that I made the right decision.

I looked at this question for 5 minutes and came up with nothing. So I skipped it and went on to the rest of the survey and came back to this question. I still could not come up with anything so I set it down and did other stuff for a while. After 3 hours I am writing this and still do not have an answer.

The best I have is I worked with some really great people and really enjoyed working with them, although I worked with some really bad people too. I really like the vacation/sick time policy as it provides significantly more time off than any other company I have ever heard of. And I still do not have a third.

This question made me realize that I really do not like my current job. I do not like several of the people I work with. I do not like the work environment. I do not like the products I am working with. I do not like the direction the company is going. All that I really likes is some of the people and the benefits.

I really wish someone asked me this question 2 weeks ago. Instead I have been nervous about this decision and wondering if I made the right move. Now I know.