Gender bender sheep study generates PETA pets

NY Times:

Charles Roselli set out to discover what makes some sheep gay. Then the news media and the blogosphere got hold of the story.

Dr. Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, has searched for the past five years for physiological factors that might explain why about 8 percent of rams seek sex exclusively with other rams instead of ewes. The goal, he says, is to understand the fundamental mechanisms of sexual orientation in sheep. Other researchers might some day build on his findings to seek ways to determine which rams are likeliest to breed, he said.

But since last fall, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals started a campaign against the research, it has drawn a torrent of outrage from animal rights activists, gay advocates and ordinary citizens around the world — all of it based, Dr. Roselli and colleagues say, on a bizarre misinterpretation of what the work is about.

The story of the gay sheep became a textbook example of the distortion and vituperation that can result when science meets the global news cycle.

The news media storm reached its zenith last month, when The Sunday Times in London published an article under the headline “Science Told: Hands Off Gay Sheep.” It asserted, incorrectly, that Dr. Roselli had worked successfully to “cure” homosexual rams with hormone treatments, and added that “critics fear” that the research “could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.”

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There is more. PrairiePundit defended the study when it was first reported in the Sunday Times and I have seen nothing that changes my opinion. It is really bazaar that in an era where the city of New York is offering gender choice rest rooms and many people spend thousands on surgical procedures to change their sex, that there should be any objection to the "implications" of a study about sheep. Someone who raises sheep for a living should be entitled to maximize his production. That is his business. Perhaps those who follow this study may one day learn why sheep have a higher rate of homosexuality than other specie.