The Arbitrary Gene Defense

As a reader of the occasional scientific and politically progressive article I've noticed that discussion of homosexuality has found its way into a strange place.

On the one side you have conservatives who feel that homosexuality is wrong because it is a life-style decision, and on the other side there are gay-rights advocates saying that there is a biological basis for homosexuality and therefore it is acceptable.

I find it distressing that the enlightened view is basing an advocacy of liberty around the fact that there appears to be a genetic basis for homosexuality, because this implies that it would be unacceptable if homosexuality was simply a life-style decision. 

The justification of human rights and personal liberty is not a matter of genetics. 

While geneticists have proposed a gene that seems to be related to male homosexuality, some experiments have indicated that the gene is only partially related, while other tests have found no correlation between male homosexuality and the gene.  As far as I know there is no evidence of a gene that ‘causes’ female homosexuality. 

The danger of basing a liberty argument on something as arbitrary as finding a gene that you think contributes to a certain behaviour is that it’s possible that the gene theory should be critiqued.  Diverting to an argument about gene-theory is not a step forwards, and if the theory is found to be incorrect, advocates of gay-rights will take an unnecessarily heavy set-back.

Personally I think that homosexuality is at least as socially constructed as it is biological, and I find it annoying that this opinion is seen to imply that homosexuality is illegitimate.

There are basic areas of the human brain inherited from reptile origins that advocate an entirely antisocial lifestyle of killing, raping, stealing etc.  That fact doesn’t make crime acceptable.

Similarly it would be ridiculous to dismiss a person’s achievements as merely a fatalistic product of their genes.  I also don’t hear anyone arguing that a life of pure altruism is wrong because it doesn’t have a direct biological basis. 

People have a right to a personal liberty of behaviour that does not impinge on the freedom of others.  If you start dishing out liberty based on genetic determinism you go to a weird, confusing and face-palmingly annoying place.