On December 11, 2006, I presented a speech at the Catholic University School of Law as a part of a symposium titled: What’s the Story? A multidisciplinary discussion of Same-Sex Marriage & Religious Liberty. It was a crowded day with many presentations, primarily relating to legal issues and same-sex marriage. Also on my part of the program was J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University.
I recently received the transcripts of the programs. They are lengthy so I am going to link to Dr. Bailey’s and then my program. My powerpoint is also on this site.
Presentations by:
One upshot of the day is an ongoing correspondence with Dr. Bailey. We hope to conduct brain imaging research with individuals who describe change in sexual attractions.
The gay community has argued for years that there isn’t such a thing as a “sexual preference”, primarily because it has been used by some in the media in place of sexual orientation. Bailey’s reintroduction of this terms with a new meaning is, to my way of thinking, irresponsible. It further confuses the language.
He knows, as we all know, that the distinction between sexual orientation and sexual preference is lost on most people. Had he used some other term, I might think favorably of the distinction. As it is, though he argues otherwise, I think he’s simply given fodder to those who argue that orientation is a choice.
Bailey does not directly say that people’s sexual behavior is due to their sexual preference rather than their sexual orientation, but that is the obvious implication of his comments. If sexual preference is not necessarily determined by sexual orientation, then clearly the whole issue of whether sexual orientation is biologically determined or not becomes less important.
Although Bailey seems not to have noticed this, when he tells us that a man can have a homosexual sexual orientation but a heterosexual sexual preference, the way is opened for someone to argue that gay people can indeed go straight, simply because one’s sexual orientation doesn’t determine one’s actual sexual preference. The only possible counter-argument would be that sexual preference is biologically determined and thus unchangeable, but where’s the proof of that?
The talk by Bailey is fascinating. His findings leave something for everyone to agree and disagree with. The weakness of his genital arousal work is that it is limited to, well, genital arousal–a pretty gross measure for something as complex as sexual orientation. This is my main concern regarding the female data. The fMRI work (showing relative activity in brain regions at particular times) feels more convincing although it is still limited to broadly defined brain functions to specific brain regions. The “hot colors” means only that there is activity in that region–more precise functional attribution will require further analysis. But taken together, the previous arousal studies with the fMRI data are laying out a fairly convincing story.
I hope that Drs. Throckmorton and Bailey do find a subject group to study who profess a sexual attraction (arousal?) change. Unfortunately, IRB risk management rules will probably preclude the Drs. from telling us how heterosexual Rev. Haggard really is. 🙂
The line of evidence with of individuals with cloacal exstrophy demonstrating an apparent immutability of sexual orientation is also a very interesting. He greatly understates the strength of this finding when he says that chance should show at least one adult reassigned in their sexual orientation. Pure chance would be half/half. Smells pretty hardwired to me.
What I take from that — if you can’t make a genetic male exclusively attracted to men by cutting off his penis, castrating him, and raising him as a girl, how likely is any social theory of male homosexuality? I say entirely implausible. To me, these data totally make the case that male sexual orientation is inborn.
Now there’s a huge leap in logic. How on earth could you possibly make some valid conclusion about a population at large based on a sample of 10 to 20 persons that have – by definition – vastly different social surroundings from their peers? How could you possibly eliminate the way that their parents and others familiar with their circumstances respond to them?
I agree that the anecdotes about cloacal exstrophy MTF children are interesting and should be presented as evidence of quite strong genetic predetermination of attraction direction, in no way do they prove that therefore social theories can be completely eliminated.
While I am inclined to agree with him that orientation is most likely determined pre-natally, I think Dr. Bailey is far too ready to leap at “evidence” that supports his notions. We saw that in his drag queen study.
And considering that he is one of few actually performing research in this area, I think that is very unfortunate.
What will this brain image scan look for exactly? Do we know where to look, and what to look for, i.e. what changes in the brain structure?
RAOT wrote:
Uh, Bailey wrote:
That reason could just as easily be that a person is following his biological (sexual) orientation and is usually more than likely is the reason behind sexual preference. Bailey made no statement such as you attribute to him. Indeed, he later showed that sexual orientation was indeed associated with sexual preference when he spoke about cloacal exstrophy and attempted socialization of genetic males as females.
All Bailey did was define the terms and point out that they relate to different aspects, he didn’t specify their relatedness directly. But certainly they are related.
There is a major and fairly obvious problem with Bailey’s reasoning in his presentation, and especially the distinction he tries to make between ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘sexual preference. If people’s actual sexual behaviour is due to their sexual preference rather than their sexual orientation, and there is no necessary link between preference and orientation, then it is irrelevant whether or not sexual orientation is biologically determined and therefore immutable.
I note that Bailey says sexual orientation can’t change. This might be big news if it had any relevance to what people actually do or even prefer to do sexually, but since by his own argument sexual orientation has no necessary connection with sexual preference and behaviour, it surely makes absolutely no difference. So Bailey wins his argument about sexual orientation being biologically determined only by making it of no importance to the real world – some victory.
Great summary of the research Dr. Throckmorton. I got a lot out of it.
Will you add Professor Wilcox’ presentation too?