The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

by Douglas Murray

they cannot help their behaviour then they are not to be blamed but rather to be regarded as victims of circumstance and to be understood as such. An unrelenting drunk may be a pain to everybody around them, but if he is said to have been born with a proclivity towards alcoholism – or better still to have an ‘alcoholic gene’ – he may be viewed in a very different light. Instead of some degree of criticism he may be regarded with varying degrees of sympathy. Were his alcoholism a learned behaviour then he may be regarded as weak or even bad. In general we modern people are more sympathetic to behaviour which cannot be changed, but we can still be critical or questioning of a lifestyle which we think is a matter of choice – especially if the behaviour is inconvenient for anyone else. Homosexuality could (from a reproductive angle, among others) be said to be inconvenient to society, and the question of what it actually is therefore presents a perfectly legitimate question for society to be engaged with. The single factor that has most clearly helped to change public opinion about homosexuality in the West has been the decision that homosexuality is in fact a ‘hardware’ rather than a ‘software’ issue. Some people – mainly religious conservatives – continue to try to smuggle in their contrary view on this matter. For instance some of them still like to describe homosexuality as a ‘lifestyle choice’ – a phrase insinuating that homosexuals have chosen their own programming.