Marlene Zuk, author of RIDDLED WITH LIFE Opinion piece in LA Times

So a fruit fly goes to a bar ...
Pop a pill and be straight or gay? It's a lot more exciting, and complicated, than that.
By Marlene Zuk
LA Times, December 19, 2007


The news last week that scientists induced homosexual courtship in male fruit flies by changing levels of a neuro chemical was greeted with predictable headlines: "Scientists make fruit flies gay, then straight again." On science blogs, discussion raged about whether this meant that a drug altering sexual orientation would, or should, be developed by the demon Big Pharma. Others trotted out arguments about whether homosexuality was learned or genetic, and about its existence elsewhere in the animal kingdom, and then meandered into why places with large contingents of gays -- such as San Francisco and Boulder, Colo. -- are usually nice places to live.

As someone who studies animal behavior for a living, I've been at least as interested as anyone else in the emerging discoveries that many animals exhibit homosexual behavior. And, as it happens, I've become something of a go-to person on gay penguins (a subject for another day). But people seem to be missing the real reason the discovery is important, which has little or nothing to do with sexual orientation.


For the rest of the piece, click here.