Dr. Michael Murphy- “The Immorality of Coerced Sexuality: Lessons from the Biology of Intersex Conditions.”

Dr. Michael J. Murphy is a Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus from the Department of Natural Sciences at SUNY Cobleskill. His topic was “The Immorality of Coerced Sexuality: Lessons from the Biology of Intersex Conditions.”

Dr. Murphy’s key premise was that it is indeed immoral to interfere with formation of loving relationships, including those involving sexual intimacy, by rational adults. Thus his disapproval of efforts to stigmatize people on the basis of their sexuality, and/or to coerce people into behaviors they would not freely choose.

While such an attitude toward departures from conventional heterosexuality have heretofore come primarily from religious quarters, Dr. Murphy noted a fairly recent trend toward such activity by purportedly secular or scientific organizations. Figuring prominently in his talk was NARTH – the National Association for Research and Therapy for Homosexuality. While NARTH often tries to downplay this, a key aspect of its mission is “treatment” for homosexuals to make them heterosexual.

Some biological background: As explained by Dr. Murphy, an individual’s “sex” is a physical attribute determined in complex ways by genes, body chemistry, and other factors. “Gender” refers to how an individual perceives himself or herself or ___self (the English language does not accommodate the third situation, though it exists and is not even terribly rare). “Sexuality” (or “sexual orientation”) refers to the expression and experience of our sexual selves.

Dr. Murphy did focus particularly on that third situation of the intersex individual. Because fetal sex development is indeed so complex, there are lots of ways for it to produce results not conforming to the standard male/female either/or paradigm, with all sorts of variants of ambiguous or in-between genders. A prominent case in point recently was the South African runner Caster Semenya, whose femaleness was challenged. Murphy noted that while she does have female anatomical attributes, she also has some male ones, and in fact comes from a region wherein about half of all individuals are intersex.

The conclusion is that it’s simply incorrect to view the species as neatly divided between males and females; and it’s equally incorrect to posit that all males “should” be attracted only to females, and all females only to males. Nature is more complex. It has become clear that nonconforming sexualities are not perverse volitional choices but, rather, inborn and generally unalterable.

(Dr. Murphy mentioned Dr. George Rekers, a prominent NARTHite anti-gay polemicist, outed as hiring a “rentboy” during a European trip. Rekers denied any impropriety, claiming to have hired the boy to carry his luggage. But nude massages were apparently also involved; Rekers did resign from NARTH; and the Daily Show broadcast a photo showing Rekers with the boy – Rekers carrying his own luggage.)

Dr. Murphy asked audience members to think of the most attractive person they’d ever seen, and then to imagine an attempt to somehow persuade them that that person wasn’t attractive at all. That’s the absurdity of efforts to “treat” homosexuals. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it doesn’t work, and most people subjected to such treatments have been harmed by it, including some driven to suicide. [FSR: Alan Turing, the prophet/theorizer of artificial intelligence, comes to mind.]

Murphy held that good moral decisions are based on facts and reason, and stigmatizing sexual non-conformists or aiming to “cure” them falls afoul of this precept. It is based, again, on an incorrect understanding of biology. More specifically, such a coercive stance tends to involve specific moral transgressions: lying (misrepresenting scientific information); causing harm to people (both emotional and physical; people are not uncommonly killed due to such stigmatization); violating the autonomy of rational agents; and violating the concept of justice.