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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

Well, the test is simple - would you like to get Dawn chromosome yourself? Or may be have your children get it? I’m sure the answer is No.

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That is not a simple test. Ask any straight person if they’d want to turn gay, the vast majority would say no. My guess is they’d say no if you asked the same question about their children.

But I’m gay, and while there are pros and cons to it, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. And I don’t think just because someone else doesn’t want to be me is a reasonable bar for eradication.

To be clear, I’m not saying the two are equivalent, just pointing out that you need a better argument than “you don’t want this for yourself or your children, right?”.

Would you want your children to be gay? As a straight person, given the choice I would want my children to be straight, so they could have biological children with their partner and a dating pool of ~48% of the population rather than ~2%. Those are pretty clear objective advantages, even putting aside the issue of societal acceptance.

It's completely understandable to have an attachment to one's own identity, but at a certain point trying to impose that identity on one's children becomes ethically questionable. A good example is the deaf community - would it be appropriate for a deaf couple to withhold medical treatment from their child that would allow them to hear? I would argue no, but some people disagree.

They could always foster some gay kids.... obviously being gay they won't be having gay kids via sex.

It's a hypothetical question... But plenty of gay people have children through surrogacy, or they adopt prior to determining the child's sexuality.

"Would you want your children to be gay?"

It may be a corny answer, but i just would like to have them have a happy healthy life. So, i don't really mind or care if they'd be gay or not.

I wouldn’t want to impose that on my children either way. I’d prefer to let nature decide.

There’s no way in hell I’d want to select for straightness in my children. That is frankly insulting to me to even suggest.

Gideon’s Crossing:

“[A cochlear implant for my kid?] You think hearing people are better than deaf people?”

‘I’m saying it’s easier.’

“Would your life be easier if you were white?”

>But I’m gay, and while there are pros and cons to it, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Having Dawn syndrome is severe impairment.

Being gay isn't an impairment. At least nowadays in US. I'm not sure you would feel the same if you were gay in Chechnja ... where supposedly gays just don't exist, and when something like gay happens the family deals with him themselves (the rule there - either the family deals with their own member, or the society will deal with the whole family). Especially if it were about your children.

My comment makes it clear I’m not comparing the two, I’m just saying it’s not a good argument as it does not hold for other cases.

>I’m just saying it’s not a good argument as it does not hold for other cases.

No. It does hold for other cases where severe impairment is present.

>My comment makes it clear I’m not comparing the two

exactly. Because your case doesn't contain severe impairment. When such an impairment is added - like say making you a father of a gay child in Chechnja where you have to commit a "honor killing" of that child to save the rest of your family - the cases become much more comparable. I'm pretty sure that in Chechnja you'd choose DNA edit to remove gay gene from your child if you're given that choice.

>That is not a simple test. Ask any straight person if they’d want to turn gay, the vast majority would say no. My guess is they’d say no if you asked the same question about their children.

The way you can wildly change the answer to this by changing the age, gender and marital status of the subgroup of straight people you ask is a lot more interesting than the answer itself is.

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