A Separate Creation

A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation

Cover of the first edition
Author Chandler Burr
Country United States
Language English
Subject Sexual orientation
Published 1996 (Hyperion)
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 354
ISBN 978-0786882403

A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation is a 1996 book about the development of sexual orientation by journalist[1] Chandler Burr.[2] The book received a mixture of praise and criticism from reviewers.

Summary

Expanding on his 1993 Atlantic article "Homosexuality and Biology",[3] Burr discusses the work of researchers such as Simon LeVay, Laura A. Allen, Roger Gorski, and Dean Hamer,[4] and compares the clinical profiles of sexual orientation and handedness, arguing that the best analogy for homosexuality is left-handedness.[5]

Burr describes the different views that researchers have expressed of sexual orientation, observing that while some believe that sexual orientations are distributed across a population in a way that could be mapped onto a bell curve between poles of heterosexuality and homosexuality, with most people having some measure of bisexuality, others believe that sexual orientation is bimodally distributed, with most people being either heterosexual or homosexual and few being bisexual. Some researchers, including an anonymous colleague of Hamer who would not let Burr identify him, think that erotic interests divide neatly into sex-specific types. Burr also discusses the various ways in which same-sex behavior among animals is and is not similar to human homosexuality.[6][7]

In his account of LeVay's research, Burr claims that LeVay's 1991 neuroanatomical report was the first major biological investigation of sexual orientation. Burr describes some of the limitations of LeVay's study. Neurobiologist and psychiatrist William Byne, as Burr notes, pointed out that testosterone effects, medications being used by subjects with AIDS, and disease effects may have had an effect on the comparative size of INAH 3 (the area of the brain LeVay studied), and that measuring these tiny cell groups is difficult. Regarding attempts to change people's sexual orientations through therapy, Burr cites Byne's view that the literature on the subject shows that very few people have been able to successfully achieve such change, and that sexual orientation is largely immutable. Burr mentions the concern of some commentators that current sexual orientation research has the potential to reinvigorate pathological interpretations of homosexuality. He quotes biologist Richard Lewontin's assertion that researchers need to show why the origins of homosexuality is an important question, and describes the views of clinical geneticist Philip Reilly, who believes that women should have the right to abort a fetus predisposed to become gay.[8][9]

Reception

The book was praised by feminist Germaine Greer, who described it as a "good commentary",[10] and Professor of Biology Marlene Zuk, who described it as an, "Excellent discussion of the various findings about the biological basis of sexual orientation."[11] Others expressed more critical views.[12][13][3] Philosopher Timothy F. Murphy writes that Burr is incorrect in claiming that LeVay's 1991 neuroanatomical report was the first major biological investigation of sexual orientation, observing that scientific study of the determinants of sexual orientation dates to the 19th century and many investigations of the possible biological basis of homosexuality preceded LeVay's work.[8] Philosopher Edward Stein, writing in his The Mismeasure of Desire (1999), called A Separate Creation "unsophisticated", commenting that Burr fails to discuss social constructionist views of sexual orientation and uncritically accepts claims about the factors that cause homosexuality in fruit flies, including the discovery of a single gene that supposedly controls courtship behavior between male flies. Stein believes that such animal research is guilty of anthropomorphism and is irrelevant to understanding sexual orientation in humans.[14]

Historian Roy Porter, who believes that researchers into sexual orientation have made exaggerated claims based on limited and sometimes flawed evidence, found the book "dispiriting...for what it reveals about the state of science."[15] Retired Psychology Professor Louis A. Berman described Burr's evaluation of the biological evidence as optimistic. Berman, who believes that writers supportive of gay rights have ignored professional literature dealing with efforts to change sexual orientation, noted in this connexion that though Burr conducted a two-hour interview with psychoanalyst Charles Socarides, Burr does not mention this either in "Homosexuality and Biology" or in A Separate Creation.[3]

A Separate Creation was published by Hyperion, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, and according to Burr his argument that sexual orientation is inborn prompted a call by Southern Baptists to boycott Disney films and theme parks.[16]

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Stein 1999. p. 166.
  2. ↑ Burr 1996. p. iv.
  3. 1 2 3 Berman 2003. p. 511.
  4. ↑ Berman 2003. p. 498.
  5. ↑ Burr 1996. pp. 14-15.
  6. ↑ Murphy 1997. pp. 14, 232-233.
  7. ↑ Burr 1996. pp. 4, 232, 243-247.
  8. 1 2 Murphy 1997. pp. 4, 29, 62-63, 235, 238, 240, 247, 253.
  9. ↑ Burr 1996. pp. 3, 43-44, 81, 163-181, 273, 278.
  10. ↑ Greer 1999. p. 344.
  11. ↑ Zuk 2002. p. 218.
  12. ↑ Stein 1999. p. 350.
  13. ↑ Porter 1996.
  14. ↑ Stein 1999. pp. 166, 350.
  15. ↑ Porter 1996.
  16. ↑ Burr 2013.

Bibliography

Books
  • Berman, Louis A. (2003). The Puzzle: Exploring the Evolutionary Puzzle of Male Homosexuality. Wilmette, Illinois: Godot Press. ISBN 0-9723013-1-3. 
  • Burr, Chandler (1996). A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 0-78-68-6081-2. 
  • Greer, Germaine (1999). The Whole Women. London: Transworld Publishers. ISBN 0-385-60016-X. 
  • Murphy, Timothy F. (1997). Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10849-4. 
  • Stein, Edward (1999). The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory, and Ethics of Sexual Orientation. Berkeley: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514244-6. 
  • Zuk, Marlene (2002). Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn About Sex from Animals. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21974-0. 
Online articles
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