I really have no idea what I’m talking about.
Not long ago I ended up in a discussion on the biological origin of teh gays, in which I was expected to express a belief. Or to put it less stiffly, everyone seemed to hold a strong opinion while simultaneously knowing nearly nothing about, you know, biology. Me, I have no idea. I’ve heard a lot of arguments here and there, I hazily recall reading an issue of SEED magazine mostly on gay animals, but at the end of the day I know enough biology to know that I am utterly ignorant about biology.
What I mostly took away from the discussion was an interest in our collective interest in the question WHY? Not so much why we ask why, but why we seem to need to know why. Why it is so pressing to have an answer to why. Of course I don’t know why, I’m just musing about it.
§ I suppose one could say religion, science, and all that are expressions of our need to have an answer, even if it isn’t a very good answer.
§ More mundanely when people voice their opinions, they frequently need a reason why other people do not hold the same opinion. This reason is generally because that person is stupid or evil. It is simply unfathomable that someone could hold a different opinion for reasons you don’t know. Maybe they know something you don’t, or you know something they don’t, or maybe you are the stupid/evil person.
§ The need to answer the question w.r.t identity seems to be more pressing, especially for those who are different in some meaningful way (what is a meaningful way? I don’t know.). It suddenly becomes relevant to know where homosexuality came from when you are one, or to know why you are fat if you are fat, or where your fatal disease comes from if you have it. Maybe you are a nerd because you (think you have) Aspergers, or because everyone else is dumber than you. Whatever the case people need a reason.
I suppose lumping medical conditions into this category is unfair, as one might say a medical condition is some outside agent that takes an otherwise “normal” person and afflicts them with some abnormality. But then where does one draw the line? Are gays gay because of a gay gene, or just because that’s how they choose to be? If it’s the former then they are innocent victims afflicted by something they cannot control, if it’s the latter then it is a personal choice open to public scrutiy. Maybe the distinction is utterly irrelevant.
§ Working my way back to the original question, in a way, the answer is more about how society should frame its response than about any actual need to find an answer. I suppose the idea of a genetic origin to homosexuality is seen as being important to hold back those who would “de-gay” the gays, which is itself a hold-over from the time when the biological origin of homosexuality was some mental disorder (taking the hard-core materialist stance that psychological disorders are fundamentally problems of squishy brain bits). This latter response, I suppose, is better than imprisonment or execution — assuming homosexuality is a personal choice, which is itself a sin for poorly explained reasons.
Then again we (supposedly) live in an enlightened society in which personal choices are respected. So if we were to go full-circle: if homosexuality was a choice, should it not be respected in the same way that (say) religion or personal philosophy is respected? (i.e. religion is a choice, and it is vigorously defended)
Or to take a less clear-cut example: are my love-handles a reflection of a personal choice to not work-out enough, eat the right food, etc., or do I secretly have the love-handles gene, passed on from my rotund ancestors past? Should I blame my parents for this, or just shrug and say to myself “my actions have consequences, and if it comes down to chocolate cake or washboard abs, I chose cake”? For that matter why is it acceptable for society to judge my love of cake harshly, but not my possesion of genes that give me a fat belley (for example)?
§ Lastly, were people always so bent on such answers? Is our inability to live with ignorance a by-product of our modern age of abundant information? Maybe we have answers to so many questions that we have no patience for unanswered ones.
Maybe we want an answer to why because we have always been given one. Or maybe we judge people’s intelligence by their ability to answer why, and thus we all need to have an answer, just to prove to ourselves that we too are intelligent.
§ Feel free to ask why I wrote this post, though I may not give you a good answer.
