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The new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, is an Evangelical Christian that has positions and stances on homosexuality that I do not share (I confess, I remain a Millennial lib that has no problem with gay people doing gay things). Nonetheless, this CNN video where they discuss his positions on homosexuality and conversion therapy just seems so bizarre to me. In it, they refer to the idea of someone going from gay to straight as "debunked", quote Johnson saying, "there's freedom to change if you want to", and "homosexual behavior is something you do, not who you are".
Despite my own inclination to completely accept gay people qua gay people, I find nothing objectionable about Johnson's statements and see them as a much more accurate model of reality than what the CNN crew is expressing. I have zero doubt that sexual preferences and predilections can be substantially altered through a combination of conditioning, cognitive therapy, and repetition. I'm agnostic on whether this could allow someone who has a natural inclination towards homosexuality (or heterosexuality) to groom attraction for the sex that they didn't initially prefer, but it's not obvious to me, and I don't think there's good reason to say that it's deboonked as though this is just a common stylized fact. Likewise, even if it proves impossible to change one's underlying preference, it certainly remains true that one can elect to follow a different pattern of behavior than their natural tendency. I might have a natural tendency to hook up with a flirtatious woman at the bar while I'm on a work trip, but Mrs. O'Dim wouldn't appreciate this and I value her so much more than some stupid hookup. Were I a religious man, I might be inclined to view my religious obligations through the same sort of lens.
But really, the thing that keeps hitting me with dissonance isn't even the above points, which I can at least countenance reasonable counterarguments to, but the incongruity with the belief that gender itself is a mere social construct that is fully malleable to an individual's stated preference. A man attracted to other men cannot become a straight man, but he can become a straight woman. Do the people articulating this view not notice that this is at least a difficult pair of propositions to adhere to? Do they see no conflict? Do they understand the conflict, but believe that it's a question that's been solved by The Science, so better to just trust The Science and move on? Cynically, I think it's mostly that expressing the opposite view will get you bullied and fired.
As @07mk said below, you have absolutely thought about this at least an order of magnitude more in one paragraph than anyone on CNN has in all their lives put together. Society didn't come to their beliefs on this subject via rational scientific exploration and explanation. They did so through pure cultural power and intimidation. "You don't want to be an X-ophobe? Then mouth these words and make sure not to think about them too much." Two examples come to mind.
First, I was in grad school at the time. Hung out with a bunch of other overly-educated folks, but at least we're mostly all technical people who value rigor and stuff, not like those fru-frus on the other side of campus. Anyway, I had been taking some neuroscience classes, and so I'd been thinking a lot about how good arguments are constructed in this space and had seen a variety of examples. So, when the topic of sexuality comes up at the bar, I ever so gently and ever so carefully express the slightest of possible concerns that I've been seeing all this really interesting work in neuroscience, and I'm just not quite sure I've really actually personally seen all that much conclusive work on sexuality that entirely supports Dogmatic Position. You know, so, surely it's out there, and someone can probably link me to it or something.
I was expecting, or I guess at least just hoping for, some kind of rational response that either brought to light some form of evidence or argument that was relevant. Maybe a, "Huh, I'll have to actually go through the literature, and see what I can find before I make up my mind." Nah. You get stared at like you're an alien. Like they can't possibly believe that you'd even entertain the idea... not even the idea that Dogmatic Position isn't true... but that you'd even entertain the idea that Dogmatic Position isn't trivially true and needs no evidence and why would you even think about trying to gather evidence on this topic.
The second example is the APA's brief in Obergefell. Here, we had the most prestigious group of experts with the opportunity to make the absolute best scientific case for Dogmatic Position. If it were so abundantly clear from mounds of literature, surely they could at least start us down the path of understanding how the argument/evidence works. You know what they brought? An opinion poll. I shit you not. They also took a review that said, "Research into conversion therapy is shit-tier and tells us basically nothing," and converted it into a form of, "Conversion therapy doesn't seem to work," but otherwise that was it. An opinion poll and research that we think is so bad that we can't really get anything out of it. That's their best scientific evidence for Dogmatic Position.
Moving forward to the Year of Our Lord 2023, very few people actually bother defending Dogmatic Position anymore. Fewer still even attempt to bring actual scientific evidence. The vast vast majority still view Dogmatic Position as just unquestionable first truth, and if you're questioning it, it must be because you have evil right wing political ends.
So before any of those people pounce on my comment, I'll leave you with a third example. I also took a queer theory course back when. I was seeing the beginnings of the woke thing, but didn't know what it was about, wondered if there was some real academic core to it, figured I'd have the best chance of finding some interesting academic core if I just went straight to the academics. In any event, when it came to the question of "biological determinism", my prof said flatly that she was agnostic. So, if you're about to rush to accuse me of evil right wing political ends, please instead formulate your comment as accusing her of having evil right wing political ends.
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