I recently enjoyed reading Pam’s follow-up on the Equality Ride bus vandalism story. It gave me the chance to learn more about the Equality Ride itself. It sounds like a wonderful experience, and something I might have liked to participate in at one time. (Sadly, my life no longer would allow me the time or leisure for such a project.)

However, it also gave me a chance to learn more about the organization behind the Equality Ride, Soulforce. Soulforce is an organization consisting of spiritually minded people who work for “freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance.” Given my own struggles that resulted from my religious background, I find this a rather noble cause.

I particularly like the Soulforce Credo About My Adversary:

1. I believe that my adversary is also a child of the Creator, that we are both members of the same human family, that we are sisters and brothers in need of reconciliation.
2. I believe that my adversary is not my enemy, but a victim of misinformation as I have been.
3. I believe that my only task is to bring my adversary truth in love (nonviolence) relentlessly.
4. I believe that my adversary’s motives are as pure as mine and of no relevance to our discussion.
5. I believe that even my worst adversary has an amazing potential for positive change.
6. I believe that my adversary may have an insight into truth that I do not have.
7. I believe that one day my adversary and I will understand each other and that if we conduct our search for truth guided by the principles of love, we will find a new position to satisfy us both.

To me, this willingness to see one’s “adversary” as wholly human and worthy of respect, dignity, and even love despite differences is a marker of true spirituality. It shows a compassion and spiritual understanding that I often find missing when observing people mired in addressing such controversial topics where feelings run high.

Of course, I also have my qualms about some aspects of Soulforce’s proposed spirituality. For example, the Soulforce Credo About Spiritual Possessions seems to come a bit too close to ascetism and a “sackcloth and ashes” mentality for my tastes. While I’m certainly not in favor of unrestrained materialism and self-gratification, I’m not a minimist, either. All the same, I think I’ll continue to check the organization out and see how I might become involved.

Today, I ran across a small story about homophobic vandalism over at Pam’s. One thing ran across my mind as I looked at the photographs of the obscenities someone chose to paint on the bus in question. I’m amazed at just how juvenile the whole thing is. I find myself wondering if the “vandals” are any older than schoolyard boys I hung out with back in fifth grade. Quite frankly, these obscenities sound like the kinds of things my early classmates would’ve blurted out to show how “cool” and “knowledgeable” they were.

To be honest, I find myself hoping that the vandals in this incident were a bunch of fifth graders. Because the only other possibility — that they were a small gang of adults who think and behave like fifth graders — is just too disturbing for words. I’ve met some immature people in my life, but that would just beat all.

Of course, this whole incident also got me thinking back to the recent circus over Ann Coulter’s questionable remark about John Edwards. To me, this is another clear case of someone acting juvenile. In fact, I can almost hear those same schoolyard boys chuckling over the fact that using a word like “faggot” to describe someone is humorously insulting. I find myself wondering if there are any homophobes that somehow managed to develop emotionally past the onset of puberty.

To be honest, it’s hard to take such people seriously. It’s difficult to look at them as anything other than schoolyard children (and the worst kind of schoolyard children at that) who have not managed to grow up despite having grown older. And as I consider that, I realize that I actually pity them.

I recently discovered Seething Mom’s blog. I’ve enjoyed reading her thoughts, and particularly loved her testimony concerning how she found out her son was gay because of an essay he had written two years earlier. Their stories, both as individuals and as a family, are moving and easy to identify with.

However, this entry is actually inspired by another post Seething Mom wrote, this one about her reaction to hearing Rush Limbaugh point out that a test to determine if an unborn baby was gay might lead parents to have an abortion. Her reaction was quite powerful, heartfelt, and completely understandable. Indeed, the very idea fills me with similar feelings. I’ve even also considered that even many parents who choose to have the child might take this knowledge as an opportunity to get their child into reparative therapy as soon as possible to overcome their natural sexual orientation, a possibility that I find equally disturbing.

But as I thought about testing fetuses for sexual orientation, I considered a more hopeful possibility, too. I think it stems from spending the last ten (nearly eleven now) years thinking about the difficulties I went through when coming to terms with my sexual orientation and realizing how much of those difficulties were unnecessary, if only I or others around me had made different choices. Because of those thoughts, I find myself thinking of what a parent who is both loving and supportive could accomplish if they knew right from the start that their child would be gay. I find myself thinking of how they could prepare for those challenges that might come up, or even find ways to get around them.

I think of my own experiences when I first started learning about sex. In the time and place I grew up, there was no talk of including “alternative lifestyles” in the sex education curriculum. Sex education consisted of explaining the mechanice of vaginal intercourse and the process of sexual reproduction. That was it. So those of us who were gay were left out in the cold, wondering what we were supposed to do. Indeed, we had to first even learn that there was such a thing as being gay before we could even find out what it meant or what to do about it. Instead, we were left wondering what was wrong with us and why were weren’t “normal,” like the rest of our classmates.

This is the reason why some schools are updating their curriculum (or why some individuals and groups are trying to convince schools to do so) to at least mention about the other possibilities. But imagine if a child’s parent already knows their child will need to know about those alternatives? I can envision a conversation that goes something like this:

Johnny: We talked about sex in school today.

Mom: Really? What did they tell you?

Johnny: Well, they talked about how a boy sticks, well you know, into a girl to make a baby.

Mom: I see. And what do you think of that?

Johnny: Well, I don’t know….

Mom: It didn’t seem right to you, did it?

Johnny: Well, I don’t know. I just can’t imagine doing that. I mean, all the other guys seemed to be fascinated by it. But it seemed weird to me, like I wouldn’t want to do it.

Mom: Well, you know, not everyone likes that kind of sex.

Johnny: Really?

Mom: Really. Not all guys like to be with a woman. In fact, I think we need to talk more about this. There’s something I’ve been waiting to talk with you about…

Imagine the months or years of confusion and inner turmoil Johnny’s mother could spare him. Imagine how well equipped she would be to deal with those times when Johnny’s peers teased him for being gay. Rather than wondering why Johnny’s having such a hard time in school because he won’t tell her what’s really going on, her knowledge can prepare her so that already she has a good idea of what might be going on.

The possibilities of how a loving and supportive parent could make a gay child’s life that much easier simply by knowing about their child’s sexual orientation ahead of time are endless. And while I certainly wouldn’t change a thing about my past, even to go back and make them easier (after all, they made me the person I am today), I’m all for making the next kid’s journey through the coming out process easier than mine was.

I originally wrote this for Writers On The Loose. I decided to cross-post it here to my own blog.

Yesterday, Zjabs wrote a column in which he linked to an L.A. Times article about a study suggesting a link between birth order amongst males born to the same mother and the probability that each male would be gay. Given my own recent column on the origins of sexual orientation, I thought it appropriate to take a closer look at the study. To that effect, I did a Google search and found a reprint of the researcher’s own write-up on the study. I would encourage anyone who is interested in this topic at all to take the time to read this more scientific article, as it provides a lot more details and gives more clarity as to exactly what conclusions can and can not be reached from this study.

To that effect, I think that Ms. Kaplan, the author of the L.A. Times article, has done the study a great disservice. In the very first part of the article, she suggests, “A mother’s antibodies may change with each boy, raising chances the next will be homosexual.” In including this statement in her article at the outset, Ms. Kaplan gives the impression that this is the conclusion reached in Bogaert’s study. This is entirely untrue. While it is true that Bogaert mentions this possibility, he also makes it clear that this is merely speculation on one possible explanation behind the real conclusion of his study. Indeed, Bogaert indicates that there is no direct evidence at this time to support maternal antibodies as a contributing factor in sexual orientation. So in this sense, Ms. Kaplan has run out ahead of the scientists she is talking about.

To be clear, Bogaert’s study is simply a statistical analysis of data on four sample sets of men. The relevant data concerned ages of the participants’ mothers at the time of their birth, the number of older and younger siblings of each sex they had, and the amount of time they were reared with each sibling as children. The study also incidated whether each sibling was a “biological” sibling (birthed by the same mother) or a “non-biological” sibling. This data was run through a number of statistical analyses to see if there was any strong correlation between a number of factors and the sexual orientation of the men. The only strong correlation found was that, statistically speaking, men who had a large number of older biological brothers were more likely to be gay.

In order to further determine whether this correlation was due to prenatal factors involved in the birth order or some other factors (such as the number of brothers raised with), Bogaert included a number of other factors in his statistical analysis. Bogaert spends a good deal of time explaining the rationale he used in determing what factors to analyze in order to exclude post-natal explanations, and I would direct everyone to his write-up for that information rather than trying to reproduce it here. I will say, however, that I found his approach rather thorough.

It is important to understand that what Bogaert’s analysis shows is that (1) there is an apparent link between birth order amongst biological brothers and the probability that each of them will be gay and (2) that link appears to be related to pre-natal factors (such as the speculation about the mother’s antibodies during pregnancy) rather than post-natal ones (such as childrearing factors or the psychological effects of interractions between brothers). It in no way casts any light on the subject of what that pre-natal factor (or factors, as there’s no reason to assume there’s only one factor involved). Indeed, Bogaert indicates that this is an area of research for other people — most likely those in the fields of biology and chemistry — and even cites some research being done in that area.

Bogaert’s statistical analysis itself will need to be examined more closely and duplicated. Most likely, further such analyses will need to be done to expand this study and address any gaps or methodological errors in it. Indeed, this study itself is a follow-up study of a previous one Bogaert had done along the same lines. So any attempt to read this particular study as “final proof” would be a tragic misunderstanding of the research process. Nonetheless, this study is vital in that it strongly indicates a valuable area for further research.