Wayne Besen

Anything But Straight

It turns out that Focus on the Family has been right all along, but in a way the group had not anticipated. This week marks the world’s first documented success stories showing sexual orientation can be changed. But in a twist of sweet irony, the subjects did not go from gay to straight, but from heterosexual to homosexual.

Let me explain.

Scientists at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna , turned female heterosexual fruit flies into winged lesbians, simply by splicing in a variant of a male gene.

“We have shown that a single gene in the fruit fly is sufficient to determine all aspects of the flies’ sexual orientation and behavior,” said the author of the paper, Dr. Barry Dickson, which appeared in the prestigious journal Cell. “What this tells us is that instinctive behaviors can be specified by genetic programs, just like the morphologic development of an organ or a nose.”

As the all-important and highly politicized nature vs. nurture debate reaches a fevered pitch, the implications of this study are already reverberating throughout America ’s culture war.

“Hopefully this will take the discussion about sexual preferences out of the realm of morality and put it into the realm of science,” Dr. Michael Weiss, chairman of the department of biochemistry at Case Western University, told The New York Times.

The right extremists, of course, will cling to Dr. Dickson’s assertion that behavior may play a small role. He suggests the possibility that frequently rejected straight male fruit flies, over time, become less aggressive in their mating behavior. But, for the right to capitalize on this point in the debate over human sexuality, they would have to prove that people turn gay because they can’t find opposite sex mates. Yeah right, Rock Hudson, actor Rupert Everett and former Mr. Universe Bob Paris turned out gay because they couldn’t get dates.

This research comes on the heels of a new Swedish study that shows that the portion of the brain that helps regulate sexuality, the hypothalamus, reacted the same way in straight women and gay men when exposed to male pheromones, which are chemicals designed to provoke a behavior, such as sexual arousal. The same area of the brain only became stimulated in heterosexual men when introduced to female pheromones.

Tragically, not even the birth of this enlightening data has stopped Neo-Puritan groups from trying to trick people into believing that homosexuality is not inborn. Focus on The Family is shipping in Nancy Heche, mother of erstwhile lesbian actress Anne Heche, to speak at the group’s June 25th Love Won Out conference in Seattle.

It is absolutely nuts that Focus on The Family is showcasing Nancy, a wretched mother, who Anne accused of literally driving her insane.

“My mother loves Jesus, so I wanted to become Jesus Christ,” Anne once said. “I wanted to save the world to get her love.”

It is ironic that Nancy is headlining a conference that encourages gay men to marry, when her own husband, Don Heche, was a closeted gay man who died of AIDS. Fortunately, her daughter understands that the closet is not a cure.

“I put a very high premium on honesty,” Anne told Cosmopolitan Magazine. “What I learned from [my father’s] death is that if you don’t accept your sexuality, it will kill you.”

Anne also accused her father of repeatedly molesting her as a little girl. She eventually confronted her mother by phone about his alleged pedophilia. In the ultimate act of betrayal, Nancy hung up the receiver, and Anne says at that moment her personality split.

“Anne, this girl who had just confronted her mother, shrunk and out came Celestia [a future-telling space alien], where I was thrown to the ground...and heard the voice of God. I thought I was absolutely insane...I was existing as two people.”

What a wonderful role model and stellar example of family values to present at Love Won Out! The dysfunctional Nancy and the diabolical Focus on the Family clearly deserve each other. But while they will attack us “fruits” in Seattle , the new research undeniably shows their outdated “nurture” theories simply don’t fly. These studies have exposed Focus on the Family founder, James Dobson, for the Scripture-spitting, simple-minded, superstitious savage he truly is.

Wayne Besen is a columnist and author of the book "Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth."