A controversy erupts at regular intervals on the status of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) individuals in India and the world. Religions, constitutions, courts, ethical committees, and social organizations come together in a heady mix to create a confusing narrative. The result is that the LGBT community finds difficulty in social acceptance and normal interactions.
Evolution is blind, purposeless, and in mammals, the discovery of sex has enhanced genetic propagation. Carl Sagan in his wonderful book, ‘Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors,’ says that however, it has come at a great price called mortality. The trade-off between sex and mortality has been the hardest bargain by Nature. Sexual reproduction is responsible for our mortality. The asexual reproduction of bacteria makes them virtually immortal. Life’s definition is its imperative need to reproduce and sex is one of the strong evolutionary drivers. One cannot hence deny this imperative biological need to any mortal.
Sexual orientation and gender identity, however, has a slightly different connotation as free-will may well be an illusion. Genes, enzymes, proteins, and hormones drive biological behavior at the end of the day. Our behavior is the product of our biology. Our genes play a key role in deciding our character, which in turn is the outcome of billions of years of evolution. The exposure of toxins to the growing foetus in the womb, the early childhood experiences, the education, the environmental exposures, the balance of neurotransmitters in the brain, along with genes play a grand symphony as the final determinants of our behavior. Other factors may completely override the genetically defined gender.
Testosterone is a major driver of male behavior. The male behavior typical of mammals and primates, involving domination, sexual drive, and violence, is directly correlated to the testosterone levels. The female hormones likewise drive the gentler emotions of humans. Gender identity assumed by the mind may be in complete discordance of its genes and genital organs. An excessive exposure of testosterone to a foetal female brain might lead to a later assumption of a male identity. Science and medicine is coming to understand that gender identity is primarily in the brain and then works its way down. The traditional bottom-up paradigm with the primary determinant being the genes and the genitalia is perhaps wrong.
In an unfortunate medical condition called DSD (Disorders of Sexual Differentiation), individuals have a discordance at the five levels of sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity: genes, hormones, external genitalia, internal genitalia, and the mind. The consensus management of these patients has been overwhelmingly in favour of deciding the sexual identity as to what the individual wants irrespective of the story told by the genes and the genitalia. A female or a male genital organ appropriate to the mental decision of the patient is the surgical goal, irrespective of what the doctor may think as appropriate genital sex.
Knowing so much medically, one cannot attach criminality to sexual behavior between two consenting adults, and neither has the society any right to question what gender a person might want to live with. Any process in biology which does not make evolutionary sense entails a rejection. Homosexuality and its similar attitudes is a dead end from an evolutionary perspective but might take thousands or even millions of years (if we do not bomb ourselves out in the meantime). Carl Sagan says, ‘Ethnocentrism, xenophobia, homophobia, racism, sexism, territoriality, and surrendering to the will of the alpha (usually male) served the purpose of survival ten thousand generations back. Natural selection would take a long time to erase the differences perhaps, but for the present it is the responsibility of the human species to use the tools at its disposal, meaning intelligence mainly, to make the world a safer and a better place.’ This would include dealing with people whose sexual orientation and identity might not conform to the norms.
A progressive human intelligence ahead of evolutionary trends could well accept them for what they are. It is improper to attach blameworthiness and criminal intention, and then punish them for their biological built up. A progressive society where LGBT people do not need to shout themselves hoarse for acceptance, or heterosexuals not requiring to live in a perpetual discriminatory mode should be our aim. There has been an innumerable number of gifted individuals in society with different sexual orientations from a distant past to now. Their contribution to arts and science have changed the world radically into a better place to live in. The ill-founded fears concerning harmful and destructive behaviors is plain wrong. An open acceptance is the way forward but looks Utopian due to deep biases.
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