If you recall my last post on this whole gay sheep controversy, I wasn’t too pleased about it. And I’m peeved again after I spotted a Review article in today’s Straits Times.

It’s all a question about whether homosexuality is nature or nurture, genes or learned behaviour.

I had quite interesting comments for the post by the way:

Comment from emptypockets | [e]
Date: 7 January, 2007, 12:40 am

If it sounds too insane to be true… maybe it is.

I looked into this story in detail. Basically, (1) the scientists aren’t trying to cure gayness, (2) they haven’t been able to change sexual preference in sheep, (3) this is part of a large field of research trying to understand the biological basis of behavior that the article ignores, (4) this research is months to years old, and (5) the article also got the details of the experiments wrong (they didn’t inject hormones into brains or use electronic sensors). I interviewed the researchers themselves and read their papers.

What’s weird is that the Times knew all this was false when they printed it.

Comment from udo schuklenk | [e]
Date: 7 January, 2007, 7:14 pm

‘emptypockets’, whoever you might be, busily defending this research again (any chance you might be involved in it yourself?). In any case, taking your points 2 and 3, it seems clear that this is research trying to understand the (if any?) biological basis of sexual preference (3), and it is trying to change it (2). QED

Anyway, have a look at some quotes I extracted.

” …if you figure out how to make sheep gay, maybe you could figure out how to make them straight.”

“Science will gradually convince us that sexual orientation is innate, more like skin colour than character.”

“We may come to view homosexuality as we do infertility — as a disability”

If you really advocate that homosexuality is an inherent quality of humans and animals alike, why the hell are you even conducting experiments to try and change nature? How can you call it a disability when it doesn’t affect our normal everyday activities? Shouldn’t you be spending more time, effort, and money on the other “disabilities” of our society such as the disabled to improve their quality of life instead of harping on this “innate” characteristics that is simply part of human nature as you so claim?