I've Found My Candidate

I must admit that I was fairly ambivalent about the 2008 election to this point. I must admit that I voted for a republican candidate in the primaries because I am focused on moving this country towards the procurement of civil liberties. I must admit that I had no particular feeling for any of the candidates and had grown weary of political deceptiveness of a two-party system.

I've changed my mind. I have my candidate.

Please don't get me wrong. I am still firmly dedicated to the vision that government exists solely to transact the maximal safety and liberty of its citizens. I still think that a candidate working within the two-party system is inherently biased towards political device. Despite my VERY STUBBORN way of looking at politics, I recognize a great man when I see one.

I, as of today, support Obama for president of the United States of America.

Obama may not win the presidency. In fact, he is in close race with Clinton right now. When it may have benefited him to let a divisive comment about race relations fade away into the mulch of political battle, he made one of the most important speeches about modern politics that I may know while I am alive. President Bush can pose for as many pictures in front of rubble as he likes, but he will never make the impact on American culture as Obama did yesterday.

A speech like the one given today, and potentially the reasons for giving this speech, is what distinguishes a great man from a normal candidate.




I recognize my philosophy on leadership in his speech. I voted for someone else in the primary because, in the end, a president shouldn't be chosen because of his policy. A president shouldn't be chosen because he supports a detail of legislation, even if that detail excludes gay-rights. A president's job is not to create laws, but rather to lead the American people, whether this leadership is domestic or during times of war. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention before I cast my primary vote.

Obama is a leader. More important, I believe that Obama is capable of leading the American people in a time when some crucial decisions must be made.

I've found my candidate.

Civil Rights and the Gay Gene Debate

So, I've spent some time reading about Genetics. By "some time," I mean six hard, grueling years of absorbing an undergraduate degree and years of biomedical labwork. Add to this a preparation for studying the history of Genetics and evolutionary theory, and you have one disgruntled academic.

Anyway, this weekend I will be giving two workshops for Building Unity, a student conference for organizers. This is the first time I've ever been able to give two workshops at anything besides the LGBT Leadership Institute at UW - Madison. My new found ability to give more workshops comes from a new inspiration. I'll be teaching my little fraternity brother how to empower others. We will be co-presenting one of the workshops together.

While the extra help in research will be useful, I'll probably spend more time guiding him through his first workshop design than I would spend just finishing it myself. In the end, I think it's the fact that he wants to learn more about something important that's driving me to do more than I have before. I might not have presented at all if he wouldn't have the opportunity to attend this conference and get exposed to new ideas.

The people I have "taught" have gone on to do some amazing things. Someties, seeing them go on and really make a difference in the world is what keeps me going. You know who ya'll are, and I'm proud of each of you.

Well, this new found energy has sprurred me to present something I've never presented before: material on the Gay Gene Debate and its implications for civil rights.

Another generously borrowed picture from a anti-gay website

I've been doing so much research, the extra material has started to overflow from my brain. I had to put it somewhere.

So, first, quite a few publications will state that research into the biological origins of homosexuality began with the recent publication by geneticist Dean Hamer. This is incorrect and misleading, in a way. "Modern" Biology has observed homosexuality since the late 1700s, beginning with animals and how the origins of animal homosexuality might explain human homosexuality. While the methods and instruments may have changed, the basic search for homosexuality in Biology has not altered much since then.

Later, in the 1870s, behavioral evolution started to change our concepts of the origin of human habits. Not long after, doctors began the process of medicalizing certain sexual behaviors, including homosexuality. I'm currently doing research on one such doctor who wrote in the 1880s. Many physicians asserted, in the late 1800s, that homosexuality should no longer be viewed as a moral vice, but rather a disease that might be treated. Eventually, homosexuality was declared a mental illness and, after due time, removed from that same list of diseases.

Even before Hamer's publication on possible linkage to genetics and homosexuality, research in fruit fly genetics showed a very simple mechanism for controlling insect 'sexual orientation.' Kulber Gill reported this discovery at the 1963 American Society of Zoologists, eventually leading to the mapping and characterization of this mutation by Jeffery Hall in the late 1970s. Dean Hamer's acticle on X-linked human homosexuality gene, Xq28, was not published until 1993. Since the early 1990s, there has been an explosion of genetic research in human and animal sexuality. However, this explosion wasn't because the material was new.

So, what does this mean for social justice and civil rights?

Well, first-off, the search for biological origins in homosexuality is complex and double-edged at best. While the religious faction grapples with the question, "dear lord, what if God made gays the way they are and we've been wrongfully hating them all this time?," the implications for gay activists are a little more complex.

Psychological and biological definitions seem to have a comforting nature about them to people who use them to construct their identities. For instance, when Krafft-Ebing (~1880s) wrote about the sexual perversions of men loving men, some homosexuals wrote him to express their gratitude at having someone publish a book that to which they related. Suddenly, these people realized that they were not alone in the world and other people suffered from homosexuality like they did. Now, with homosexuality no longer a disease, gay men and women gravitate toward a sense of identification. The gay gene offers a type of ownership over their own identity. It offers a common language to describe who and what they are.

However, with this, the gay gene also challenges a more general assumption about sexual identity. Suddenly, a doctor can tell you that you are gay with a prick of your finger. This is important because we have also found out recently that some of the most beautiful women are actually genetically-male, even though they had never doubted their own femininity (to my knowledge.) This is a major change in the role of science in our personal lives. A portion of our identity can be changed by a quick examination under the microscope.

Also, with all this rhetoric and enthusiasm for utilizing scientific authority, have we fogotten the real issues at hand? I mean, originally, the gay gene was compelling because it meant that homosexuals could not be "cured." However, I'd like to think we've moved beyond this. I mean, nobody deserves to be murdered, psychologically tortured, or yes, even discriminated against based on what's hanging (or not hanging) between their loved-one's legs.

Even if they prove that homosexuality has no biological component whatsoever, which I doubt, we shouldn't lose any moral ground on our fight against discrimination and murder. People die; whether they are gay men crucified in Montana, straight people beaten to death for holding a blind man's hand, the numberless transpeople who are slaughtered, or the one-in-three gay teens that end their lives rather than live with the hatred people have towards them, it's not ok.

No gay gene or biological origin can give us back their lives. A fight for rights deserves more than biorhetoric.