January 26, 2007--Fanaticism LXXXII--Silo and Roy Redux
About a year and a half ago, the world was astir about the end of an affair. Some saw it to be a good thing; others were sad.
It was late summer, before the leaves had even begun to change in New York’s Central Park, and lovers could still be spotted embracing on the Great Lawn. But all was not well in the Penguin House, where for seven years Silo and Roy had been a devoted couple with, how to put this, an active sex life. They had even contentedly raised a baby called Tango. But then, into their lives, came the legendary “other woman”; and Silo strayed, abandoning Roy, who was left to spend long nights alone, in the corner of their chilly world, staring at the wall.
There are of course a million stories of this kind in the Big Town, but what made this one so special was that Silo and Roy were both male and thus they had been engaged in a homosexual affair. What controversies this unleashed, in part because the penguin-keepers apparently played a matchmaker role, and thus in straightening Silo out.
Did this have implications for humans? Did this suggest that gayness is a choice rather than biologically determined? At a time when Americans were beginning to need to be distracted from bad war news, Silo and Roy’s plight was just what the doctor, or our government, ordered.
So it’s not surprising to note that, in even greater need of distraction, here we go again! This time we’re talking about sheep.
A researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University has been studying homosexuality among sheep and recently reported that up to 8 percent of rams have sex exclusively with other rams, eschewing ewes. This sort of thing has of course been observed in other species of animals, but it has not stifled the nature-nurture arguments. This is much contested territory and has proven to be a very effective political wedge-issue: since to be gay is to choose to be gay, Evangelicals contend, gays should either just stop it or, if they choose not to, give up on any idea of, for example, getting permission to marry.
Thus, the fact that Dr. Charles Roselli, the sheep researcher, appears to be saying, from an examination of the brains of the gay sheep he kills in order to do his research (more about that in a moment) that since there might be a way to determine, in vitro, which rams will turn out to be gay, then perhaps there might also be some way to surgically or medically “cure” them so that they’ll pop out straight and as a result be better breeders and barnyard citizens. (See linked NY Times article.)
This interest in producing more and better livestock may be what the good doctor is up to; but to gay rights folks there is concern that if you extrapolate his findings to humans it might encourage conservative, eugenics-minded people to want to support research to discover ways to do the same kind of thing to human fetuses—to the “unborn.”
And then the PETA folks, when Dr. Roselli’s findings were published, launched a massive email campaign directed at him and his university. Some called him “a worthless animal killer” who “should be shot”—which I suppose is a call for a form of worthwhile animal killing because he, after all, like his sheep, is also an animal.
It was late summer, before the leaves had even begun to change in New York’s Central Park, and lovers could still be spotted embracing on the Great Lawn. But all was not well in the Penguin House, where for seven years Silo and Roy had been a devoted couple with, how to put this, an active sex life. They had even contentedly raised a baby called Tango. But then, into their lives, came the legendary “other woman”; and Silo strayed, abandoning Roy, who was left to spend long nights alone, in the corner of their chilly world, staring at the wall.
There are of course a million stories of this kind in the Big Town, but what made this one so special was that Silo and Roy were both male and thus they had been engaged in a homosexual affair. What controversies this unleashed, in part because the penguin-keepers apparently played a matchmaker role, and thus in straightening Silo out.
Did this have implications for humans? Did this suggest that gayness is a choice rather than biologically determined? At a time when Americans were beginning to need to be distracted from bad war news, Silo and Roy’s plight was just what the doctor, or our government, ordered.
So it’s not surprising to note that, in even greater need of distraction, here we go again! This time we’re talking about sheep.
A researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University has been studying homosexuality among sheep and recently reported that up to 8 percent of rams have sex exclusively with other rams, eschewing ewes. This sort of thing has of course been observed in other species of animals, but it has not stifled the nature-nurture arguments. This is much contested territory and has proven to be a very effective political wedge-issue: since to be gay is to choose to be gay, Evangelicals contend, gays should either just stop it or, if they choose not to, give up on any idea of, for example, getting permission to marry.
Thus, the fact that Dr. Charles Roselli, the sheep researcher, appears to be saying, from an examination of the brains of the gay sheep he kills in order to do his research (more about that in a moment) that since there might be a way to determine, in vitro, which rams will turn out to be gay, then perhaps there might also be some way to surgically or medically “cure” them so that they’ll pop out straight and as a result be better breeders and barnyard citizens. (See linked NY Times article.)
This interest in producing more and better livestock may be what the good doctor is up to; but to gay rights folks there is concern that if you extrapolate his findings to humans it might encourage conservative, eugenics-minded people to want to support research to discover ways to do the same kind of thing to human fetuses—to the “unborn.”
And then the PETA folks, when Dr. Roselli’s findings were published, launched a massive email campaign directed at him and his university. Some called him “a worthless animal killer” who “should be shot”—which I suppose is a call for a form of worthwhile animal killing because he, after all, like his sheep, is also an animal.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
2:26 PM
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