My Genes Made Me Do It!

Rating:
Summary: Finally, a scientific study disproving the rhetoric.
Review: The Whiteheads lay the burden of proof upon those who seem to have convinced the world that homosexuality is biologically driven. Clearly, such proof does not exist, according to this study. Science has yet to prove that homosexuality is anything more than one of the hundreds of choices each of us makes throughout life. Read this book if you are interested in the truth.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book About Homosexuality
Review: This book should be read by everybody. The authors argue that homosexuality is a very complex issue, not to be reduced to the simplistic explanation that "my genes made me do it." They point out (as have other authors) that while there could be a small genetic contribution, it is indeed small, and it would not predetermine a person's behavior. In fact, it's questionable if any behavior is predetermined at birth. Behavior, at least, is always ultimately a matter of choice. The Whiteheads argue that sexuality is shaped by all kinds of factors, not just biological. Particularly interesting was their survey of different cultures. Homosexuality has not been, in fact, cross-cultural. There are some cultures in which it's been virtually non-existent, and the current "western" model seems to be unprecedented. Even in those earlier cultures in which homosexual behavior did exist, it seemed to exist in very specific circumstances -- certain ages, certain classes, or in a ritualized fashion -- and not across the board. Even the modes of homosexual behavior have varied. In other words, sexuality can be very fluid, and behavior is often shaped by culture.I think that much of what the Whiteheads say will eventually be accepted (and has certainly been put forth by other authors previously), but this issue at this point is too driven by ideology and politics. This is really the kind of book that should have been published by a major publisher so it could get a wide audience.My one minor concern is that the book does reference Christianity a little bit, and that may take away some of its credibility for some readers who are not Christian. It shouldn't. Some of the best books about homosexuality -- books which are, for the most part, fair and balanced -- have been written from a religious perspective.

Rating:
Summary: A waste of time
Review: This is yet another of those books which seek to alter reality in order to make it more palatable to people with deep emotional investments in shallow religions. Because it doesn't seem reasonable that God would condemn people to Hell on the basis of congenital defects, the basic idea is to claim that homosexuality is something like alcoholism: a group of impulses which is imposed on the innocent human being from outside, which could be avoided with the appropriate safeguards.

The authors rightly criticise Kinsey and the early researchers, but reach their own conclusions by using very old 1950s studies ("proving" that Orthodox Jews are never gay, on the basis of their say-so) which are even more ridiculous. They ignore the masses of first-person testimony which would demonstrate the absurdity of the very idea of homosexuality as a vice, and make claims for the effectiveness of therapy which simply cannot be backed up. The fact remains that if heterosexuality could be achieved by will-power alone, there would be no homosexuals at all in a society which persecutes them so intensely.

Whether homosexuality is inborn or acquired matters little in the real world. Changing a given person's sexuality is NOT something which can reliably be done using current techniques and knowledge. To string people along by saying that it is possible is merely cruel, and to undermine the institution of marriage by encouraging gay people to enter feeble loveless "straight" relationships in order to save a bunch of selfish fools from feeling uncomfortable for ten seconds is evil.

Other notes:
The book, a copy of which was apparently sent to many university libraries by the author himself (in the hope of insinuating his claptrap into the groves of academe as quickly as possible) has the appearance of a vanity-publishing effort. It is amateurishly laid out, glued and bound and printed on cheap paper. The endpapers contain advertisements for other low-quality polemical books of a right-wing activist type, and the back cover carries a picture of the two heterosexual experts on homos who have been researching the subject for all of "eight years".

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book About Homosexuality
Review: Would have been nice if the Whiteheads were actually knowledgable about current research. This is a religious tract masquerading as science.

Should have zero stars but the system won't let me rate it that.

Rating:
Summary: When Science is Forgotten, Distorted, or Ignored
Review: Would have been nice if the Whiteheads were actually knowledgable about current research. This is a religious tract masquerading as science.

Should have zero stars but the system won't let me rate it that.