The Mystique of the Phantom "Gay Gene"
By Philip L. Bereano,
Seattle Times
| 02. 26. 1996
"If homosexuality is inherited, shouldn't it have died
out by now?"- two women talking in a New Yorker cartoon.
Last October 10th the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the
case of Romer v Evans, concerning Amendment 2 to the Colorado
Constitution, adopted by referendum, which would bar all state
and local laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination. The
courts in Colorado had thrown out the Amendment by claiming
that it infringed on the "fundamental right to participate
equally in the political process" by "fencing out
an independently identifiable class of persons" without
showing that the amendment "support(ed) a compelling state
interest" and was "narrowly tailored to meet that
interest."
In the proceedings in the lower Colorado courts, one of the
witnesses was a Federal scientist, Dean Hamer, who testified
that homosexuality was a genetically caused, rather than a cultural
or chosen, behavior. He was put on the stand by gay rights activists
trying to utilize language of an earlier Supreme Court case
which suggested that government's ability to protect a group
of people from discrimination might somehow be linked to...
Related Articles
By David Jensen, California Stem Cell Report | 02.10.2026
Touchy issues involving accusations that California’s $12 billion gene and stem cell research agency is pushing aside “good science” in favor of new priorities and preferences will be aired again in late March at a public meeting in Sacramento.
The...
By Lauren Hammer Breslow and Vanessa Smith, Bill of Health | 01.28.2026
On Jan. 24, 2026, the New York Times reported that DNA sequences contributed by children and families to support a federal effort to understand adolescent brain development were later co-opted by other researchers and used to publish “race science”...
By Arthur Lazarus, MedPage Today | 01.23.2026
A growing body of contemporary research and reporting exposes how old ideas can find new life when repurposed within modern systems of medicine, technology, and public policy. Over the last decade, several trends have converged:
- The rise of polygenic scoring...
By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience | 01.15.2026
Genetic variants believed to cause blindness in nearly everyone who carries them actually lead to vision loss less than 30% of the time, new research finds.
The study challenges the concept of Mendelian diseases, or diseases and disorders attributed to...