I was thinking this morning that yes, perhaps if my sexual preferences are determined by some sort of biological imbalance in my brain and that if yes, I could be "corrected" into preferring the opposite sex through the use of hormone therapy, that it should trouble all of us, gay or straight. It means that none of us is right, that we have no free will, that our thoughts and emotions really aren't are own; they are products of chemical synergies and hormones that maintain homeostatis in our body and produce "mind" and "individuality" as an result (perhaps unitended, perhaps not). Who you love as a heterosexual wasn't chosen by you. They were chosen by a combination of your genes and hormones seeking a preferrable "match" for you in order to propogate your genetic line. So next time you look into your John or your Sally's eyes and think of the wonderful romantic love you have for them, remember that it's all a lie. Happy belated Valentine's day.

You can take this same argument for lack of free will, of mind, using depression. Serotonin reuptake inhibitors, benzodiazepines, and the like can completely change your outlook on life by altering the chemical imbalances in your brain. If you were really in control of what you felt, if your convictions were really rock solid, would your mind be prisoner to some chemical imbalance? If course, this boils it down to the basics. Environment kind of muddies everything, like the abused child who winds up marrying an abusive spouse. Are their genes just saying, "yes, we're defective? Get us out of the gene pool immediately!" Then you get to that slippery slope about sterilization and the like. But it seems to me that our genes do all the thinking for us when we'd like to believe that we somehow are in control of whom we're attracted to.

It kind of makes the whole gay-straight marriage thing irrelevant at this point. You were either genetically determined to be a breeder or not be a breeder and serve as a population check. All that love and sex stuff is just your mind's fancy way of making life interesting. It doesn't mean anything. Or maybe it's just for nurturing young pups into full-grown adults, at which point their genes take over again.

All right, off to lunch. Hmm, do I really like Swiss cheese or do my genes?