Yes vote on people’s veto will send right message

Columnist Erik Steele informs us (BDN, Aug. 30) that those who disagree with his “scientific evidence” about the genetic origins of homosexuality hold ideas that are “intellectual pestilence” and “moose dung.”

So we will not be confused about motives, Dr. Steele is careful to testify of his red-blooded, all-American interest in Julia Roberts. Similarly, he says that the adult homosexuals he knows would be insulted by any suggestion that they are not living out what they biologically programmed to be.

But, as we can see in any infomercial, testimony is not science, and Steele gives us no science. Recollections by an adult of how he or she felt at the age of 3 or 6 or 10, or even 14 can be unreliable and speak to nothing of the cause of the feeling. There is, however, no arguing rationally with passionate personal beliefs.

To look at the actual research on homosexuality is to be confused. Old research that concentrated on psychosocial and developmental causes has been politically if not scientifically reputed. Given the political climate in universities, research in the last 20 years has been done nearly exclusively by people who want to prove that homosexuality is biological, often for the overt political goal in including homosexuality as a special class in civil rights statutes.

Certainly no one could say that there is absolutely no genetic contribution to homosexuality. There is some genetic contribution in all behavior, but we haven’t begun to talk about extending civil rights laws to include smokers and those with alcoholism for which there is more genetic evidence than homosexuality.

While research on homosexuality gets tremendous attention in the popular media, these studies are usually small and unimpressive and the attention they receive seems distinctly out of proportion to their scientific importance. Together, however they have contributed to a vague feeling in society that viewing homosexuality as biological is scientific and modern and viewing it as something else is backward.

Most recently an article in the journal Cell reported that changing a gene in female fruit flies led to their being attracted to other females. Such a mutation would be lethal in one generation in a species that has a lifetime of weeks, and would tell us very little about things as complicated as human self-identity and sexual behavior. But that didn’t prevent The New York Times from putting a report of the study on its front page and TV newscasters to once again solemnly announce that there was now more evidence that homosexuality is genetic.

Science can’t tell us much about this question yet, but I think history can. The incidence of homosexuality has varied a lot from culture to culture, which is in itself evidence of non-biological factors. The highest incidence that we know of was 2,500 years ago in the ancient classical world were homosexuality was practiced by a majority, if not all of the adult upper-class male population. Anyone like Steele who says that social factors don’t contribute to the incidence of homosexuality, and that four percent of people are genetically homosexual, must explain away this historical fact.

There is no law in a free society against strongly held beliefs for which there is little scientific evidence. Currently there is a debate in some state about whether the government should intervene to mandate the teaching of a theory called intelligent design. We cannot vote on this issue but I suspect most people in Maine would want our science teachers to use their best professional judgement on what to teach and how to teach it.

However, we will have a chance to vote once again to overturn a law which would use the power of the state to mandate special class status for homosexuals. Many of us, including possibly some homosexuals who have been silent, view this as an unwarranted intrusion on a citizenry which has created a very society without further dividing up of people on the basis of a particular characteristic.

A yes vote on the people’s veto in November will tell the Legislature and the governor not to use unproven and unscientific social theories and passionate advocacy of personal beliefs as a basis for public policy.

Christopher Ritter, M.D., lives in Bangor and practices in Old Town.