September 25, 2013
Ring the bells of freedom
My colleague Brian Earp blogs on Slate about What if Technology Made "Gay Conversion Therapy" Work?, based on an upcoming paper by us.
I have always been concerned when people defend gay rights based on sexual essentialism: that our preferences are unyielding and unchangeable. The claim is not really well supported empirically. One does not need to buy into wishy-washy relativism or tabula-rasa ideas to conclude that at least some aspects of sexual preferences are plastic and can be changed by ourselves or our conditions. So while "born this way" makes a good rhetorical club, it is not necessarily a good argument against discrimination.
A much better argument is that what two (or more) consenting adults do in private is their own business. This is independent of what the actual neuropsychosociology of sexual preference is - and covers far more ethical cases.
Posted by Anders3 at September 25, 2013 11:50 PM