We are all fruit

The Gleaner ran on July 11, 2014 an article written by the Roman Catholic deacon and sociologist Peter Espeut, wherein it appears that he attempted to educate another Gleaner contributor, Keiran King, on the fundamentals of logic, through an analysis of the oft-repeated mantra that "gays are born that way".

While Espeut attempts to garb himself in the mantle of pedagogy in his column, what he ultimately garbs himself in is ... something different. The position he adopts is both emblematic of antiquated understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality, while also - quite ironically - brilliantly illustrating what misinformed, poorly constructed logic looks like.

Espeut's ontology of the person (as opposed to a bare, biologic human qua animal) is essentially a repackaging of the familiar nature-nurture position; one aspect of a person derives from genes, the other from socialisation. This is a common view, albeit a problematic one. I will not directly address why that view is problematic here. However, through an analysis of Espeut's argument on its own terms, I will do so indirectly.

His premises are as follows:

1) Basic anatomy (race, skin colour, eye colour, height, sex, etc.) is a product of genes.

2) There has been no gay gene discovered by science.

3) If there is an aspect of a person that is not reducible to genes, it must descend from processes of socialisation.

4) [ergo] Homosexuality is a product of socialisation.

5) [ergo] Homosexuals are not born that way.

6) Gender is a product of socialisation.

7) Gender-conforming individuals 'feel like' members of the same sex.

8) Gender non-conforming persons don't 'feel like' members of the same sex.

9) Perceived opposites attract, so that gender-non-conforming persons will be attracted to persons of the same sex.

10) [ergo] Gender non-conformity = homosexuality.

While I intend to write more on these matters, what follows will largely be an analysis of premises 1-5. So, currently, I will restrict my remarks on 6-10 to just this assertion: The conflation of sex, gender, and sexual orientation is a leap in logical reasoning which fails to incorporate both the lived experience of human beings, as well as the dynamism of human identity.

superficial foundation

With respect to premises 1-2, it will suffice to say that socially constructed concepts (such as race, sexuality, intelligence, etc.) do not translate directly to specific genes. 'Race', especially, does not have any but a superficial foundation in our genes. Consider that in the United States, immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland, just to name a few, were not recognised as being 'white' or even 'Caucasian' until decades after their arrival ... . Indeed, 'Caucasian' means having come from the Caucasus mountains in Eurasia, which would naturally include those who are not genetically predisposed to a melanin deficiency (and thus, Caucasians could theoretically have any skin colour) yet it has been held that one is not Caucasian purely by virtue of that birth (see US v Bhagat Singh Thind); race is a fundamentally political, and not scientific, category. I contend that sexuality, once abstracted from the person and partitioned into separate 'types', is also a political category.

Given that such descriptors are not genetically translatable one-to-one, Espeut's presumed non-existence of a 'gay gene' is an essentially moot point - in all likelihood, there can be no gay gene, because our notions of sexual behaviour do not translate into specific genes, or generally even recognisable, complex epigenetic phenomena. But from the perspective of logic, an absence of proof is not a proof of absence, meaning that his argument is actually discredited by the time we reach his second premise. Yet notwithstanding the above, his assertion conspicuously assumes the existence of a 'straight gene', which might I add, 'straight scientists' have also not discovered.

Which leads us to conclude that Espeut's position, that being homosexuals are not born that way is, strictu sensu true, but only insofar as heterosexuals are not born that way either. The only way out from the position Espeut reasoned himself into is by inserting the unacknowledged presupposition that "homosexuality is not natural, period", which in the terms of logic would be a tautology, or circular reasoning.

Thus, on the basis of augmenting Espeut's argument with facts, we may conclude that heterosexuality is a product of socialisation, which as defined by Espeut is "the process of transmitting behaviour and beliefs from one generation to the next".

The inordinate emphasis placed on heterosexuality by many is indeed the product of a transmission of beliefs from one generation to the next; and the product of that product is unnecessary pain, suffering, bigotry and hatred suffered by the LGBT community, much like, as referred to by Keiran King, the travesties visited upon black Americans under Jim Crow laws.

It's about time we recognised contra Espeut that this isn't a matter of apples and oranges; that classing it in those terms can only ever divide us. Despite our superficial differences, we're all fruit!

Tripp Johnson is a researcher at Johnson Survey Research and student of social and political theory. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and wtg.tripp.johnson@gmail.com.