Reprint: Love, Free Will, and What Is — and Isn’t — Written in the Genes

This post originally appeared in April 2007.

A couple of folks have emailed me this New York Times piece: Pas de Deux of Sexuality is Written in the Genes.

It begins:

Desire between the sexes is not a matter of choice. Straight men, it seems, have neural circuits that prompt them to seek out women; gay men have those prompting them to seek other men. Women’s brains may be organized to select men who seem likely to provide for them and their children. The deal is sealed with other neural programs that induce a burst of romantic love, followed by long-term attachment.

So much fuss, so intricate a dance, all to achieve success on the simple scale that is all evolution cares about, that of raisingthe greatest number of children to adulthood. Desire may seem the core of human sexual behavior, but it is just the central act in a long drama whose script is written quite substantially in the genes.

I don’t have a personal animus towards evolutionary biologists. I’m no scientist, after all. I honor the work these men and women do. But I always shudder nonetheless when I get one of these articles e-mailed to me. And I shudder because I know that the laypeople who read these articles frequently come to the conclusion that these “latest findings” prove that heredity trumps socialization, and that genetics trump free will.

The field of evolutionary biology is intensely politicized, less so by the scientists themselves and more by those of us who interpret the findings to fit our own agendas. The right-wing often contradicts itself. Many conservatives I know believe that homosexuality is a matter of personal sin, not the hard-wiring of the brain; they believe that gay-ness can be cured. And just as they proclaim that gays and lesbians can become “completely heterosexual” (Ted Haggard just set a world speed record in that regard), they often rely on science to make the case that men and women are so enormously different that rigid gender roles actually make good sense. Where homosexuality is concerned, they think free will trumps biology; where gender roles are concerned, they think the reverse.

Is the left guilty of the opposite? Frequently. Many in the GLBTQ community have welcomed the increasing scientific consensus that the “cause” of homosexuality is biological, and thus not an individual choice. But there are problems with this, problems that the recent New York Times article hints at. Male homosexuality seems to be more closely correlated with pre-natal biology than female homosexuality. If GLBTQ activists attach themselves too closely to the scientific community, we end up with some awkward conclusions to wrestle with, particularly the serious possibility that women’s sexuality is far more mutable in adulthood than men’s. If we suggest that gay and lesbian rights ought to be based on the reality that some folks “are born this way”, we end up with an argument that might be much more helpful to men than to women.

I’ve never liked the “argument from nature” as a defense of gay rights. My support for same-sex marriage, for example, is not rooted in a sense that gay and lesbian folks were born “that way.” My support for SSM is rooted in a conviction that marriage is a fundamental good, and that we all ought to be free to marry the person with whom we feel we have the best opportunity to build a life most excellent. (In my case, that means trying over and over again until hitting the jackpot.) Whether or not someone’s brain is different from his or her brother’s isn’t of interest to me; who he or she longs to be with is, regardless of whether that longing is rooted in environment or heredity.

Evolutionary biology can go a long way, I think, in explaining why it is we want what we want. But there’s a colossal difference between understanding the origin of our desires on the one hand, and assuming that we have no choice in how we express those desires on the other. (See my “Biology and Bladders” post from last summer.) To quote myself:

What I do question as a pro-feminist man is whether our “nature” is ever an excuse for poor behavior. It’s one thing to acknowledge the very real presence of physiological factors that influence our wants; another thing altogether to suggest that men have little or no control over how they respond to those influences! What I find so exasperating is that so many men confuse an explanation for an excuse, denying their own ability (or that of the “average man”) to resist and control those impulses.

Obviously, I think same-sex marriage is a social good. Equally passionately, I believe that we all are capable of restricting and channeling our desires, whether those desires are rooted in our DNA, our brain, or our dysfunctional upbringing. No desire is so strong that it cannot be shaped by free will. At the same time, in a healthy and just society, we should challenge people to curb only those desires that have great potential for harm if acted upon. For a variety of reasons, I see prostitution and certain types of pornography as profoundly harmful — and argue we should be wary about voluntarily participating in either industry. For a variety of reasons, I do not see cultural acceptance of homosexuality as profoundly harmful, and so I don’t see any reason to ask my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to transform themselves.

Mind you, I think our sexuality is highly mutable. Put another way, I do believe that if I wanted to be gay badly enough, and if I sought God’s help, I could not only be more sexually attracted to men than women, I might even be capable of falling in love with a man. I see no reason to do so, of course. But my belief in the power of the will, aided by grace, is pretty profound. And my frustration with most popular coverage of science grows, as people continue to be tempted to use biology and evolution as an excuse to accept things — in particular, bad male behavior — as natural, inevitable, and beyond the capacity of the individual human being to change.