Daedelus wrote:The worst part of this whole thing? This 'research' came from MSU (my school). It's embarrassing. I'd be willing to bet for every homosexual younger brother you find that has many biological older brothers, you'll find the oldest brother being homosexual in another family.
Sorry, just don't buy it.
You appear to have missed the point of the study. The research (and I don't know why you put it in quotation marks---you may disagree with the conclusions but unless you've seen the entire study and know of serious methodological or substantive errors, you should have a little more respect for the researchers themselves AND those that peer reviewed the research---particularly since one of the initial publishers comes from your own university) suggests a higher correlation between male homosexuality and the presence of older brothers. Your comment ignores the "why?/so what?" and jumps straight to the "but I think that you'd probably be able to find exceptions."
Like you, I have concerns about the reasoning communicated by this article. It appears to insinuate that the study demontrates that sexual preference is determined by environmental factors rather than by birth or biology (the old nurture/nature debate).
This conclusion concerns me becuase it's a throw-back to the old assumption that homosexuality is "un-natural." For centuries civilizations have cast norms in terms of "nature" as a way to reify difference. Europeans did so when they argued that Africans were "naturally" inferior to Europeans. And these bigoted perceptions have often been grounded in scientific research.
In the current political environment (remember, the Senate recently failed to pass a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage), this study could be used to demonstrate that homosexuality is the "fault" of parents or gay individuals themselves and could form the foundation for a variety of legal measures...from bans on gay marriage to guilt-campaigns against working moms.
That being said, newspapers have a tendency to simplify academic research beyond the point of recognition and, with deference to the researchers in question, I'd like to see the full study, including methodology.
