Being gay is natural argument form philosophy

Your research suggests that there is often a familial pattern in homosexuality. What was your motivation? Pillard and Bailey examined identical and fraternal twin brothers—as well as nonrelated brothers who had been adopted—in an effort to see if there was a genetic explanation for homosexuality.

The identical twins were far more similar than the fraternal twins. Those most concerned with homosexuality, positively or negatively, are also those most engaged, with natural law theorists arguing for gays and lesbians having a reduced legal status, and queer theorists engaged in critique and deconstruction of what they see as a heterosexist regime.

But nobody knows for sure what causes a person to be either gay or straight. It was the s and the School of Medicine professor of psychiatry was at the University of Rochester. There have been numerous studies designed to determine whether or not homosexuality has a genetic cause.

The first psychological test undertaken to determine whether there was a biological explanation for homosexuality was in With a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health , Karen Hooker studied the relationship between homosexuality and psychological development and illness.

And the theory is if a particular trait is genetic, the identical twins would be more alike than the fraternal twins. Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry is a book by the philosopher Michael Ruse, in which the author discusses different theories of homosexuality, evaluates the moral status of homosexual behavior, and argues in favor of gay rights.

It seems to us that being gay runs in families much more frequently than you would expect by chance alone. This chapter argues that Sullivan’s critique of natural law thinking about homosexuality and other questions of sexual morality ignores a distinc. Hooker studied both homosexuals and heterosexuals—matched for age, intelligence, and education level.

Because of the similar scores, she concluded that sexuality is not based on environmental factors. They found that if one identical twin was gay, 52 percent of the time the other was also; the figure was 22 percent for fraternal twins, and only 5 percent for nonrelated adopted brothers.

Is there evidence that life experiences play a role in sexual orientation? Homosexuality was considered a mental illness when Richard Pillard was in medical school. What made you decide on this research? It just seemed like a logical thing to do. At the time that I was searching for a problem, that popped out.

And that could be easily falsified. Pillard: I think so. And how do you know the mother really was overprotective—you have to depend on what the subject in your study is remembering about his early years. The natural law argument against same-sex behaviour (as I understand it) is that homosexual acts contravene the telos of the human sexual faculty since they don’t lead to procreation and are therefore immoral.

Hooker found no major differences in the answers given by the two groups. And the answer is: not a lot. At the time, the American Psychological Association still listed homosexuality as a disorder and psychologists and psychiatrists were trained on ways to treat it. The results were that they were more alike.

Among the most notable were a series of studies Pillard and J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, conducted in the early s that found that homosexuality is largely biologically determined, not environmentally influenced. I think that the future of this kind of research belongs to people who are geneticists, people who are expert in gene mapping.

Pillard is quick to point out that much about how sexual orientation is determined remains a mystery. Well, because there are so many gay people in my family, including me. BU Today : Has your research found that sexual orientation is biologically determined?

What we did was to recruit groups of twins, identical and fraternal twins.