24 Jul 2008
Barrowman and his Brothers
There was an increasing air of desperation about John
Barrowman’s search for a biological reason for homosexuality in BBC’s The
Making of Me tonight, and it made for uncomfortable viewing.
When it was proven that the X chromosome John inherited from
his mother was exactly the same as the X chromosome his older, straight brother
inherited, the search for a biological marker descended into farce. Suddenly
Barrowman was listening intently to people who claim the length of your ‘ring’
finger in proportion to your index finger proves that you might have not
received maximum levels of testosterone in the womb. Unfortunately his fingers
said he was straight (even though earlier testes conclusively proved he was
gay), so then he visited some ‘scientist’ who believes that homosexuality is
determined by the number of older brothers you got. The more there are, the
more likely you’ll be born gay, the scientist proved with colourful bar charts.
“This could be my ticket!” Barrowman exclaimed and then
called his mother to see if the miscarriage she had before he was born was
male, thereby giving him two older brothers. “It IS my ticket!” Barrowman
whooped, when his mother replied in the affirmative and he ended the programme
in a kind of self-satisfied stupor.
I too have two older brothers, and I (along with my mother)
believe I was born gay. But hold on, I also have two straight younger brothers.
By the standards of that scientist’s bar-charts, shouldn’t they be gay too?
This kind of desperate primetime TV search for the gay gene,
or the biological cause of homosexuality, leaves gaping holes that bigots, who
desperately want to believe that we choose to be treated as second-class
citizens (eg. gay), to fill in.
The Barrowman show was not science, it was light
entertainment masking as science, and everybody just knows it. Expecting anyone
to take it seriously only makes the idea of being born gay more vulnerable to
attack.
Waiting for the gay gene to be identified is a bit like
waiting for Godot. Doesn’t the fact that almost every gay person on the planet
believes he or she was born gay mean anything? We can't all be wrong, and what's wrong with taking our word for it?