The Mystique of the Phantom "Gay Gene"

"If homosexuality is inherited, shouldn't it have died out by now?"- two women talking in a New Yorker cartoon.

Last October 10th the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Romer v Evans, concerning Amendment 2 to the Colorado Constitution, adopted by referendum, which would bar all state and local laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination. The courts in Colorado had thrown out the Amendment by claiming that it infringed on the "fundamental right to participate equally in the political process" by "fencing out an independently identifiable class of persons" without showing that the amendment "support(ed) a compelling state interest" and was "narrowly tailored to meet that interest."

In the proceedings in the lower Colorado courts, one of the witnesses was a Federal scientist, Dean Hamer, who testified that homosexuality was a genetically caused, rather than a cultural or chosen, behavior. He was put on the stand by gay rights activists trying to utilize language of an earlier Supreme Court case which suggested that government's ability to protect a group of people from discrimination might somehow be linked to...