Fallacies: An FGB Update

Related to the Mike Huckabee/Jon Stewart video I posted yesterday, this post by Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic:

The case for/against gay marriage is hung-up on this idea of choice--i.e. we should frown on gay marriage because it's a deviant lifestyle. Or we shouldn't frown on it because it isn't a lifestyle, it's a biological fact. This is where the comparisons with race come in. But I always hated this argument. Whenever people say, "You should not discriminate against people because they didn't chose to be black," I hear the mild tones of wild liberal condescension.

The comparison with race makes sense on the level that Coates is dealing with, i.e., the assumption that there is a more desirable "norm." Of course, the comparison with religion, which Stewart makes in the video, is much more apt: you can't get more choicier than that.

And of course, the "evolutionary" argument comes up in the comments:

From ja, this statement

For those of us who believe in Darwin and evolution, I think there has to be acknowledgement of the mechanics of reproduction. So when talking about Darwin and survival versus homosexuality and inability to procreate, I think (like it or not) heterosexuality wins out in the evolutionary game.

First off, this is an extraordinarily simplistic take on evolution and the way it works. The mechanics of reproduction are just that -- the mechanics. The fallacy here is equating same-sex orientation with sterility, and it's a pretty obvious mistake that anti-gay advocates seem to make again and again: we're gay, we're not sterile. We're not unable to procreate, as we've proven time and time again. We may or may not choose to do so.

In point of fact, Edward O. Wilson, in his discussions of the genetic economics of altruism in Sociobiology, made quite a convincing argument for the evolutionary advantages of non-procreative individuals and behaviors through the mechanism of kin selection, which ties in with the research that another commenter, jordan, noted, that found increased fertility in the siblings of those with same-sex orientations.

So, next time you get the "choice" argument from some wingnut, ask them about current research to find the fundamentalist Christian gene.