So Long, Corky

It was a fleeting happiness, reading a random article about the decrease in children born with Down's syndrome. In a three second span of naivete, I thought to myself, "Interesting. How have they done it? Gene therapy in the womb? A new class of drugs?"

No, we're simply aborting them.

So it goes with a recent article in the Washington Post, a chilling display of Brave New World language with full-on Gattacan sensibility. Read the sub-headline. Women are not aborting children with disabilities, they simply "make decisions."

As a gay man, I exist in a class of people who arguably possess the least stake in the abortion debate. As a result, I tend to steer clear of the issue, considering myself mildly pro-choice, but drawing the line at infanticide. Leave the scissors for arts and crafts, people.

However, as science, genetics, and early fetal detection methods are developed and perfected, we find ourselves on the outer rim of a future world where homosexual activists will find themselves waking up one day and asking, "My god, what did we just do?"

Down's syndrome, for those who don't know, is a chromosomal disorder resulting in mental retardation, certain physical abnormalities most recognizable in the face, and various developmental disorders. While raising such children is oftentimes difficult, advances in medicine and nutrition are increasing life expectancy and quality of life. Most people with the disorder learn to read and write, and more often than not go on to lead happy, productive lives.

In the quest for a normal child, nearly 80-90% of pregnancies where Down's syndrome has been detected end in abortion. These are not cases of a horrific genetic abnormality or disease where the child looks forward to an extremely abbreviated life and/or one filled with intense physical suffering. By all accounts, children with DS are eminently capable of possessing lives as valuable and fulfilling as yours or mine.

And yet, in the world of elective abortion, we increasingly find ourselves, as a society, in a morally vacuous position where we have begun to skim the gene pool of abnormalities we find repellent to our middle class, "conformity is good" sensibilities. As of today, 2005, science and society are cheerfully plunging down the slippery slope of eugenics with nary a voice in protest. There will be a time in the not so distant future where every genetic characteristic, feature, and predisposition can be screened for, altered, and electively eliminated in the name of "choice."

Including homosexuality.

It goes without saying that the over-whelming majority of prospective parents fervently hope their children will be healthy, happy, and - most importantly - normal. While gay rights have made significant advances in the past thirty years, we still live, and will continue to for some time, in a society where being a homosexual brings enormous difficulties in the form of prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination. Even among out and proud gay men and women, it is very common to hear sentiments such as, "I'm happy with who I am, but I wish I weren't gay." Parents who love their gay children and support them in every way still say, "I didn't want them to be gay, because I didn't want them to have a life made so difficult by society." And this doesn't even include the bigots and hate-mongers who would rather sever a limb rather than unleash another brood of sodomites into the world.

Should we ever discover a gene or collection of genes that either cause homosexuality or assign a certain percentage of probability ("Your child has a 75% chance of being gay"), we are going to be faced with a very tricky, heated, and genuinely frightening debate over the merits of eugenics.

Which is why I find gay activists' almost pathological willingness to carry water for organizations such as NARAL so mystifying. These are radical organizations that do not want abortion restricted for any reason. Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood with the eugenic purpose of increasing abortions among the African-American community. There is precedent for these attitudes.

NARAL's almost certain defense of homosexual eugenics almost writes itself: The woman has absolute choice. If we outlaw abortion based on sexual orientation, women who don't want gay children will be in the back alleys with coat hangers. This is simply another attack on Roe v Wade. And on and on and on.

Certain homosexuals who are wedding themselves to the abortion movement need to have a deep, serious think about what they are doing. If 80-90% of prospective parents can rationalize eliminating a pregnancy for something like Down's syndrome, we are not terribly far from the Gattacan hinterlands of a world where fetal detection and abortion are utilized to conceive and birth the most "normal" children humanly possible.

Already, the questions of homosexual eugenics are being asked in literature and movies. While we morally dither and agonize over the abortion issue, not wishing to judge, nor interfere, etc., people will simply go out and do it.

Do we, as a community, want to encourage this? Do we really want to ally ourselves with the very organizations who will seek not only to make it possible, but probable?

It would be one of the great ironies of human history if the gay rights movement found itself ultimately victorious in an age where homosexuals no longer exist thanks to their own political efforts to aid the very ideologies and organizations that made it possible to eliminate them.

Comments

[AGJ]

That sound you hear is my own personal one-man standing ovation for this excellent posting of yours. Good job Robbie, I couldn't agree more!

[Malcontent]

Robbie, I agree with essentially every single point you made.

Yet were I faced with such a terrible choice (ay, there's that word!), I doubt sincerely that I would be able to take such a noble path. Which is basically at the heart of most reasonable pro-choice Americans' arguments anyway.

[Queer Conservative]

Excellent. I'm afraid the argument will fall on deaf ears, unfortunately.

[mary]

Great post, Robbie. While I am certainly pro-choice, the most compelling arguments against abortion are, for me, those which reference the troubling historical connections between birth control abortion and eugenics. (Dorothy Roberts tackles this very well in "Killing the Black Body," in which she addresses this sordid past, but still argues for reproductive freedom.)

And on a side note, sometimes I wonder how much technology is too much technology...

[mary]

Eh, can I edit comments here? That should be:

...those which reference the troubling historical connections between birth control, abortion, and eugenics.

[Jeff]

From the Left, I'd have to agree with you Robbie. Any liberal worth their salt substitute knows not to mess with Brother Nature.

[MT]

As a gay men we also exist in a class of people who would probably also be aborted along with all the Down Syndrome babies if the less enlightened portion of America had it's way.

[Aatom]

Amazing post, Robbie. You have a knack for laying out arguments about well-worn topics in a clear and compelling way. And as usual, I agree pretty wholeheartedly with you. The only reality check I would point out is that while it's important for society to have these conversations, the impulse to limit or at least pace technological advances in the name of ethical considerations (a classic conservative impulse) is becoming less and less a matter of "choice". The next 50-100 years will see exponential leaps in information technology, medical technology and space travel. It will be a lot to adapt to, and it will have to happen very quickly. The chance for conflict and ethical travesties is very high. Cross your fingers, kids.

I think in the end, American voters are famously ambivalent about abortion because they understand the relative futility of attempting to regulate medical technology too much. I don't think anyone actually thinks abortion is ever an easy thing for a woman to go through, or a flippant decision to make. But instead of turning the entire enterprise into a Drug War-style prohibitionist debacle, liberals tend to choose to err on the side of safety and allow them to happen in the proper environment with trained professionals. While conservatives can't seem to get past the religious/ick factor inherent in deliberately ending the life of a fetus. But both sides seem to understand that we're never going to veer too far in either direction as a country. Hopefully, this type of moral detente will remain in place for the issues raised above as well as for cloning, which is just around the corner as well.

But as to the immediate point about gay/pro-choice activists, I completely concur. It is the same political paradox/suicide that led liberals down the wild path of postmodernist moral relativism, which is now being wielded rather cleverly against them by the Intelligent Design crowd.

[torrentprime]

Brace yourselves; I'm about to speak a name not often spoken of well on a gay blog...
Rush Limbaugh said once {paraphrasing]: If technology ever progresses to the point where they can detect gay/lesbian kids in the womb, gay men and women will become pro-life like that. [snap of the fingers]
I think he's right, to a point. If every mom could choose to get rid of a gay kid, don't you think a lot of them would?

[Aatom]

that's why i've always said that the key to gay civil rights isn't convincing people that we are genetically doomed to homosexuality, but that we actually LOVE being gay and WOULD choose it if we could. There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not thankful that I don't have to go to straight bars. Trapping ourselves on the 'nature' side of the debate is just as potentially damaging as hitching ourselves too closely to the pro-choice crowd.

of course, the reality of genetics as it relates to sexuality will probably not be as black and white as everyone hopes it is. you can map every gene we have and still not crack the mystery of sexual attraction, I'm betting.

[North Dallas Thirty]

Nicely done, Robbie. I always thought this was the reason that The Island did so poorly at the box office; it asked a question that Americans instinctively know will be thrust upon us in a few years, and no one is prepared to deal with it.

Of course, as I've already blogged, you know why gays must support abortion rights......

[North Dallas Thirty]

It would be one of the great ironies of human history if the gay rights movement found itself ultimately victorious in an age where homosexuals no longer exist thanks to their own political efforts to aid the very ideologies and organizations that made it possible to eliminate them.

Actually, if you think about it, Robbie, what has allowed homosexuality's genetic component to be perpetuated over the millenia is the fact that gay rights were the rarity, not the norm. The fewer of us that are being forced by societal pressures to conform, the fewer of us that are practicing heterosexuality -- and thus the fewer "gay genes" being thrown into the pool.

Obviously, homosexuality is never going to be eliminated completely as a trait (or predisposition). However, it will be interesting and ironic if the increased acceptance of gays leads to a decrease in the numbers of us.

[ThatGayConservative]

The liberals will have their perfect master race yet.

[champaignken]

Another excellent commentary. I consider myself mostly pro-life. My start in the pro-life camp came from a talk with my first boyfriend. He was adopted and we started to talk about abortion. He said his birth mother had thought about having an abortion, but had decided to have him and put him up for adoption. I was struck by the impact this woman's decision would have had on Todd's life and mine. Her choice touched many others’ lives.

I am very afraid of the intersection of genetic research and on-demand abortion. The human genome project will give us answers to the roots of disease as well as to the questions of behaviors. The Supreme Court has ruled that there can be no limits on abortion - there must be an exception to any regulations on abortion for the health of a woman. This exception has included mental health issues and it is foreseeable that a woman could claim that a gay fetus would cause mental anguish for her.

I can see a day where genetic screening for "gay genes" would be as common as screening for Down's syndrome. I also can see a day where abortions on demand would eliminate our gay brothers and sisters.

Gay men need to realize the radical abortion lobby does not have our best interests at heart.

[Jack Malebranche]

Of course, it doesn't really matter whom homo activists support. No parent really wants a kid who will never be able to function as a normal human. For all of the soft focus talk about how sweet and noble people with Downs' Syndrome, they are essentially a drain on society and their parents, and I think abortion would be the smart choice for any mother. (In the interest of disclosure, I *usually* think abortion is the smart choice for any mother.) My point is that the demand for this information and the ability to act on it is high enough to outweigh any ethical concerns. That's pretty much the way everything works, isn't it? No amount of ethical hand-wringing will change the fact that human cloning will become commonplace, either.

As for the 'gay gene,' well, I don't really think there's much to worry about, there. There's a possibility that a combination of factors might be able to indicate a probability or possibility...as you mentioned...but a simple on/off switch has always been a far-fetched idea dearest to people looking for personal validation. I'm no scientist, but that's always seemed like an insult to objective reason. Even Sykes' mitochondrial sabotage suggestion in his book "Adam's Curse" seems a little far fetched.

As long as commerce and the market influence what is acceptable...that "Gattaca" world is coming. It's really only a question of when. No use getting all worried about it.

It is silly, though, for homo rights activists to be 'carrying water' for unrelated causes. It certainly doesn't make them more effective.

[Robbie]

Mary - I've read that book, and the history laid out is absolutely apalling. I had never heard anything like it in high school or college. In a political culture that rightly draws attention to past racial abuses such as the Tuskegee experiments, I'm truly puzzled by the silence and knowledge gap involved in Planned Parenthood's origins. Well, perhaps not puzzled, as I know why some don't want to deal with that unpleasantness. Perhaps disappointed and angry at the hypocrites is nearer the word.

Aatom - I agree. I actually appreciate the abortion debate, even though most people would be perfectly happy if we never had to hear about it again. Some people slink from the word, because they know no side will ever be truly victorious - it will simply drag on forever. However, I think it's useful for society to be in such contention, as it keeps moral issues such as these at the forefront, when it's almost too easy to lapse into indifference as ethics slowly crumble beneath our communal radar.

NDT - That's a good point. If there is a genetic component (I'm not so convinced, but I'm open to the possibility), and if we're no longer being channeled into heterosexual relations, will it lead to ultimately fewer homosexuals? It's worth a think.

CKen - I'm adopted as well, and it truly is a bit of a mind fuck to realize you were a simple decision away from ever being born. I'd like to say it doesn't color my perspective, but it certainly does. As for genetic screening, if you've never seen the movie Gattaca, you should. It's eery in that you can see society going down precisely that road in the not so distant future.

Jack - I'm not convinced homosexuality is purely genetic, and I agree, it's an idea most tightly held by those who, deep down, feel there is something wrong with themselves and need a kind of "I can't help it," defense against their own rationalizations. Saying "I am who I am, so be it," would be a far better, more honest attitude.

But still, I think we all know on some level the Gattacan world is approaching. We'll not be able to stop it, but hopefully we can minimize the ethical and moral damage that will accompany it by getting people to truly think about what it is they're doing.

Side note - I'm so surprised people responded to this. Usually no one reads my long, rambling tracts. Very grateful and pleased people found it interesting =)

[Jack Malebranche]

"But still, I think we all know on some level the Gattacan world is approaching. We'll not be able to stop it, but hopefully we can minimize the ethical and moral damage that will accompany it by getting people to truly think about what it is they're doing."

Well...I think it's possible to stall this damage (one man's damage is another man's 'progress,' eh?)...but not prevent it. It's like putting toothpaste back in the tube. Or trying to stop people from having sex (of any kind) for their own good. When you battle the nature of the beast, you generally lose.

People don't truly think about what it is they are doing, for the most part. They really don't, and they don't want to. That's why we have TV. But I agree that gay rights organizations aren't doing themselves any favors by supporting abortion.

"Saying "I am who I am, so be it," would be a far better, more honest attitude."

I like where your head is at, there. Thanks for the response, by the way.

[Jockey]

People with DS can lead productive lives, and most can hold jobs. If there were less stigma attached to retardation, they'd be working even more. Unfortunately, the more DS babies are aborted, the more mothers are going to have falsehoods lead them to choose to abort.

[alexana]

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