One person, apparently a devout church-going Protestant, wrote and asked me
(in part) privately the following. I'm going to respond publicly:

> do you have some sources for this information that this condition is
> biological?

> Basically it comes down to the only people who are being persecuted here,
> are the "right-minded" Christians, who want to put a stop to this
> tolerance of the gay life style.
>
> Being the parent of a gay son, I don't like hearing that it is either my
> bad parenting, or out right abuse that caused my son to make
> this "choice".

Clearly this subject remains controversial, especially in regards to human
biology, but personally I believe that the data is overwhelming that for a
certain percentage of the human population, "gayness" is deeply inborn condition,
no more changeable for the people who are gay than the color of their eyes.

Alfred Kinsey, the biologist who first investigated human sexuality in the
1940's, estimated the percentage of homosexuals at 3% of the human population.
The gay community argues that it's more like 10%, but they have a political
agenda to serve in raising the number that high, thus I tend to discount their
estimates. Nevertheless, if Kinsey is right at only 3%, when multiplied by the
number of people in the United States alone, that still represents a truly
sizable population of human beings.

Having a gay son puts you in good company -- and it has nothing to do with
political leanings or religious affliations or your parenting failures. Both
Dick Cheney and Dick Gephardt have openly lesbian daughters. But most people are
not able to discern who is and who is not gay if they weren't told. The
American military is one of the last bastions of anti-gay discrimination, but they
are also very good at determining who and who will not achieve the rank of
general or admiral, but even they can't recognize straights from gays. I've
included an article from yesterday's NY Times below concerning several ex-American
generals and admirals who only announced their gayness after they left the
service. Similarly, in that regard, Harry Sterling was by far and away the best
General Manager that CSY ever had in my opinion, but he too is gay.

To be defined as a mammalian male, you must only have inherited the Y
chromosome, but there is very little information resident on the Y. It is a
degenerate chromosome, and of the information that remains there, the most important
gene is called SRY ("sex-determining region on the Y"). The signals that emanate
from the SRY gene's translated protein engage the remainder of the autosomal
set of chromosomes, turning on and off specific regions in order to create the
characteristic physiologies and behaviors of a male animal in the developing
embryo.

Maleness is a quality built on a female platform in mammals. Mammals are
female by default. In that regard, the Book of Genesis has it exactly backwards.
But the persistent question in biology has been why do males exist at all? They
represent an enormous cost to all mammalian species; parthenogenetic
reproduction seems a far more preferable and efficient means of reproduction.

This is a question that has interested me for some time now. I have argued
that the principal purpose that the presence of males imbue into an evolving
phyletic lineage is informational: pugnacious, combative males act as an
outboard, sacrificial sexual caste to the primary line of descent, where the primary
purpose of their prolonged combats is that of a genetic defect filter prior
their admission into the breeding deme. See, e.g.:

     http://aics-research.com/research/males1.html

While the presence or not of the Y chromosome is an absolute, gender is not.
The extent of maleness or femaleness is determined primarily during
embryogenesis, during the time that the embryo is bathed in androgens and estrogens.
Birth order in a litter will make a great deal of difference in the exhibited
behaviors of an individual. If a male is surrounded by sisters, he will be less
of an exaggerated male than if he had been surrounded by brothers.

We now know how to manipulate the gender of an embryo. If you wish references
on this subject, as good an introductory page as any is:

     http://www.psy.plym.ac.uk/year1/SEXDIFF.HTM

Much of our sexuality resides in the brain, not our genitalia, and quite
frequently people are born into the wrong body. The sexual brain is mismatched
with the body that it finds itself in. One of the most well-known transgendered
individuals nowadays is Joan Roughgarden.

I finished my doctoral work in 1976 and began teaching graduate classes in
both evolutionary biology and electrical engineering almost immediately. I chose
Roughgarden's book on population genetics as the basis for one of the classes
I taught, although he was Jonathan Roughgarden at the time.

One of students that took the graduate class from me was Steve Judd, who is
just a few years younger than I am. Nonetheless, that difference in age was
sufficient for me to have served on his doctoral committee. In the early 1980's,
after Steve finished, he and I went to the Evolution meetings that were held
in Tucson that year. By chance, during dinner we were seated with Jonathan
Roughgarden -- and because we were both relatively newly minted scientists -- we
were significantly intimidated. As a result, we were both chastised by
Roughgarden for not contributing enough to the conversation.

Roughgarden is taller than both of us, perhaps 6'3", and he seemed every bit
as aggressive a male as anyone else we know, thus we were flabbergasted when
he announced that he had undergone a sex reversal operation a few years ago.
Neither one of us would have ever suspected the mismatch in his appearance with
his true sexuality.

Roughgarden and I work on similar aspects of biology; we're both obsessed
with sex -- and what the phenomenon means to a species. To say that she has an
agenda in her current research is perhaps not unfair, but most scientists work
on what deeply interests them and I do implicitly trust Roughgarden's
intellectual honesty and rigor. However, that doesn't mean that I agree with her
conclusions. In fact my level of disagreement is quite substantial on many points of
argument. Nonetheless, she is someone who is worth reading. A first good
introduction to Roughgarden's current work appears in this short report about her
new book:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/2003/february19/aaassocialselect
ion219.html

Wirt Atmar

========================================

December 10, 2003
Gay Ex-Officers Say 'Don't Ask' Doesn't Work
By JOHN FILES

ASHINGTON, Dec. 9 -- Three retired military officers, two generals and an
admiral who have been among the most senior uniformed officers to criticize the
"don't ask, don't tell" policy for homosexuals in the military, disclosed on
Tuesday that they are gay.

The three, Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr and Brig. Gen. Virgil A. Richard, both of
the Army, and Rear Adm. Alan M. Steinman of the Coast Guard, said the policy
had been ineffective and undermined the military's core values: truth, honor,
dignity, respect and integrity.

They said they had been forced to lie to their friends, family and colleagues
to serve their country. In doing so, they said, they had to evade and deceive
others about a natural part of their identity.

The officers said that they were the first generals and admiral to come out
publicly and that they hoped that others would follow.

They are the highest-ranking military officers to acknowledge that they are
gay. Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer was discharged from the Washington State
National Guard in 1992 for being a lesbian. She was later reinstated.

Ten years after the Clinton administration instituted the policy of "don't
ask, don't tell," it remains contentious and has fallen far short of President
Bill Clinton's vow to allow gays to serve openly. The officers hope to spur a
dialogue, in Washington and in the military, about changing the policy.

Nearly 10,000 service members have been discharged for being gay under the
policy, which was signed into law by Mr. Clinton on Nov. 30, 1993, according to
the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a gay rights group that monitors
military justice. The group made the officers available to The New York Times as
part of a campaign to mark the anniversary of the policy's official inception.

"Don't ask, don't tell" was a compromise to permit gay men and lesbians to
serve without fear of harassment or expulsion as long as they kept their sexual
orientation to themselves. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said the
Bush administration will not revisit the policy.

Senior military leaders have argued that openly gay service members would
disrupt unit cohesion and morale. "We remain committed to treating all service
members with dignity and respect, while fairly enforcing those provisions of the
law that mandate the separation of those who choose to violate the policy,"
the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

When the policy was created, military officials argued that most Americans --
and, thus, most soldiers -- did not approve of or tolerate homosexuality. And
while gay service members are believed to make up only a small fraction of a
military of more than one million men and women, commanders have said they are
concerned that forcing heterosexual members to live, and fight, side by side
with gays will undermine the military's mission to win the nation's wars.

"Because gays and lesbians are required to serve in silence and in celibacy,"
Admiral Steinman said, "the policy is almost impossible to follow. It has
been effectively a ban." The Coast Guard is not under the authority of the
Pentagon, but follows the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The officers were reluctant to discuss their personal relationships, in part,
they said, for fear of the consequences to themselves and loved ones. "I was
denied the opportunity to share my life with a loved one, to have a family, to
do all the things that heterosexual Americans take for granted," Admiral
Steinman said. "That's the sacrifice I made to serve my country."

He added, "I didn't even tell my family I was gay until after I retired from
the military."

General Richard, who retired from the Army in 1991 after 32 years of service,
including assignments in Vietnam and at the Pentagon, said, "No one knew I
was gay when I was in the military."

"I suppressed my desires, and didn't allow myself to be who I am because
there was too much at stake," he said.

Admiral Steinman, who was the surgeon general of the Coast Guard before he
retired in 1997, recalled that earlier in his career, when he was a flight
surgeon, a young air crewman came to see him with a health problem.

"I had to stop him, when it became clear that he was going to tell me he was
gay," Admiral Steinman said. "I would have been required to report him to
command for discharge."

General Kerr, who retired from the California State Military Reserves in 1995
after 31 years in the Army and the Reserves, primarily with intelligence
groups, said it had taken a long time for him to decide to come out. "The culture
of the military is that you go along and conform," he said. "And you keep your
private life to yourself."

The officers said that the Defense Department and White House had not
adequately addressed the problem of harassment.

"It is important that they engage the harassment issue," Admiral Steinman,
who lives in Dupont, Wash., said. "It needs to be tackled more forcefully. And
the president could set the tone."

General Kerr agreed. "The president seems reluctant to emphasize the
antiharassment part of the `don't ask, don't tell' policy," he said in an interview
from his home in Santa Rosa, Calif. "He just doesn't feel this is a serious
issue."

General Richard said he thought the policy had damaged military readiness and
recruitment and retention of soldiers. "There are gays and lesbians who want
to serve honorably and with integrity, but have been forced to compromise," he
said in an interview from his home in Austin, Tex. "It is a matter of honor
and integrity."

========================================

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