Episode 11 – Falsifying Science: Homosexuality as an Example

Falsifying Science: Homosexuality as an Example

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Peace be upon you. As we explained in the previous episode, atheists gave innate phenomena unsupported materialist and genetic explanations. But they did not stop there. They also attributed actions that depart from the fitrah to genes and used this as one pretext for justifying them as natural phenomena.

A striking example is their treatment of same-sex sexual behavior. They do not call it deviance but homosexuality, because “deviance” implies a repugnant behavior contrary to human nature, which they do not acknowledge.

The Relationship Between Homosexuality and Irreligion

There is a relationship between homosexuality and irreligion. A 2013 survey of the LGBT community in the United States showed that about half of gay Americans had no religious affiliation, compared with 20% of the rest of American society.

The Western scientific community, in which atheism and Darwinism are widespread, has published studies about homosexuality’s relationship to heredity and genes and about related social phenomena. For example, if a same-sex couple adopts a child, what effect does that upbringing have upon the child? We have the right to ask whether such studies were conducted scientifically and impartially.

This leads us to the larger and more important question: is scientific research with doctrinal and moral applications, produced under the dominance of Western liberalism, truly neutral, or can it sometimes become a politicized tool? If such research produces results that conflict with Islamic values, is the rational response to doubt Islamic values or to doubt the soundness of those studies?

When an atheist tells you, “I believe science,” is that really so? Or does he believe a mistaken interpretation of false science and fall into compound ignorance? This is the main and most important objective of our episode. Homosexuality is only an example through which we examine the reliability of this Western science.

Road Map for the Episode

Our road map will be as follows. Brothers, please concentrate so that we do not become distracted. The episode is highly beneficial and filled with important evidence and facts, so we need focus to understand the sequence of its elements.

First, we will analyze what is meant by the proposed statement, “Homosexuality has a genetic cause.” We will then mention what leading Western references currently state about homosexuality’s relationship to genes and heredity. We will then return to the most important question: must what Western references and studies say about such moral matters necessarily be trustworthy?

We will answer this question by examining three matters:

1. The environment in which the research is conducted: does it encourage free inquiry, or does it contain legal intimidation?
2. Are the researchers trustworthy, or is there evidence that some sometimes lie or display bias?
3. Who funds this research, and how does that affect its results? We will then examine how the media handles research results and whether it does so honestly.

First: The Vague Claim That “Homosexuality Has a Genetic Cause”

What exactly does this mean? Does it mean that a gay person has genes that drive him involuntarily to same-sex sexual acts, just as a person involuntarily closes his eye when a fragment approaches it or pulls his hand away from a hot object? Of course not.

Does it mean, then, that a gay person has genes that give him a psychological attraction toward members of the same sex? Upon examination, this is what their statement means. We begin by asking: even assuming such genes exist, by what right do you treat them as a justification for same-sex behavior and exempt the person from blame and punishment? This is a crucial point. If a person has a distorted or harmful feeling, does that justify acting upon it?

If a man has an excessive sexual desire for women, does that justify rape, or is he required to restrain himself, control his desire, and confine it to what is lawful? Why, then, do you use headlines such as “Homosexuality Is Governed by Hereditary Genes” in a way that suggests a gay person is forced into his acts and subjected to his genes?

Are you prepared to apply the same logic when dealing with political and intellectual opponents whose actions might also have genetic causes? Suppose we told you that a man who marries multiple wives may have genes driving him toward polygyny, and a woman who accepts a married husband may have genes driving her to do so. Why did same-sex marriage become legal in all fifty American states through the Supreme Court’s decision of 26/6/2015, while polygyny remained forbidden in all fifty states up to July 2017? Why is the claim of a genetic relationship used specifically to generate sympathy for gay people?

Second: What Leading Western References Currently State

After all this, are there really genes that cause same-sex attraction? Brothers, this brings us to the second topic: what leading Western references currently state.

One of the best-known American health organizations, the American Psychological Association, concluded that no genetic basis for homosexuality had been established up to the date of this episode in July 2017, even though the association strongly defends what it regards as gay rights.

Many specialist books on sexual behavior describe the research as inconclusive: it has reached no conclusion, and no gene related to homosexuality has been identified.

One of the best books in this field is Dr. Neil Whitehead’s My Genes Made Me Do It! Homosexuality and the Scientific Evidence. It challenges the claimed relationship between homosexuality and heredity on theoretical, foundational, and logical grounds. It also examines identical-twin studies, many of which showed no hereditary relationship, and identifies major scientific errors in twin studies claiming such a relationship. We will mention some of this in the comments. The book is scientifically rewarding for anyone grounded in research methodology.

Critiquing the Darwinian Explanation of Homosexuality

Brothers, notice an important foundational issue. Atheists say that we emerged through mutations and the natural selection of traits that aid survival, while carriers of traits that do not aid survival die out. Does homosexuality aid survival? Of course not. Two males or two females do not reproduce together and therefore do not pass hereditary traits to later generations. Natural selection should therefore have eliminated homosexuality because it does not aid survival, yet homosexuality exists. Notice how the beginning of the materialist Darwinian explanation contradicts its conclusion.

Returning to the findings of the American Psychological Association and specialist books, notice that we have not followed the unscientific practice of selecting any study that agrees with one’s desires and ignoring studies that do not serve one’s position. We cite the conclusions of major health organizations and specialist works, which summarize large bodies of research.

Even so, someone will say that other studies indicate a relationship between homosexuality and heredity. Another may ask whether, if the leading references changed their position one day, we would then acknowledge such a relationship.

Third: The Reliability of Western Research on Moral Questions

This brings us to the third and most important topic: is scientific research whose results are employed to serve Western liberal values truly neutral, or is it a politicized tool?

1. The Environment in Which Research Is Conducted

First is the environment in which this research is conducted. Brothers, Western civilization has causes it regards as sacred: it promotes their slogans and criminalizes and fights anyone who challenges them. The influential lobby supporting gay causes succeeded in including what it calls “gay rights” among these sacred causes. Just as those opposing Western domination are described as terrorists and those opposing Jews as antisemitic, opposition to homosexuality was labeled “homophobia.” Homosexuality is thus declared a natural phenomenon and a human right, while its opponent is treated as suffering from a phobia. Yet in their view, this supposedly ill person is not excused but criminalized.

Just as Western civilization raises slogans of “fighting terrorism” and “fighting antisemitism,” it also raises the slogan of “fighting homophobia.” The United Nations adopted this cause, launched campaigns, issued conventions signed by many countries, and appointed a special international monitor to protect gay people.

In this environment of campaigns and surveillance, can experimental science realistically produce truly neutral findings about homosexuality?

The Story of Professor Spitzer

One scientific scandal answering this question is the story of Professor Robert Spitzer, described as the father of modern psychiatry. He published a study of a non-pharmaceutical treatment intended to help gay people change their orientation, calling it reparative therapy because it sought to correct an individual’s sexual orientation. The study reported successfully changing the sexual orientation of 200 gay men and women.

Health organizations erupted and attacked his study. Spitzer himself supported what he regarded as gay rights and had helped remove homosexuality from the American list of psychiatric disorders, but this did not protect him within the scientific community. In 2012, Spitzer apologized for his study, and the media published the story under the headline “Psychiatry Giant Apologizes for Supporting Gay Therapy.” At the end of his apology, in humility and submission, he said: “I believe I owe the gay community an apology.”

You can imagine the pressure Spitzer faced when you learn that two of the world’s largest health organizations attacked his therapy: the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). On 17/5/2012, they issued a report titled “Therapies to Change Sexual Orientation Lack Medical Justification and Threaten Health.”

How does this non-pharmaceutical therapy, based upon talking with a gay man or woman, threaten health? The report claimed that therapies suppressing homosexual orientation cause guilt, shame, depression, anxiety, and even suicide.

The report concluded with recommendations for fighting homophobia. I ask you, the viewer, to hear these recommendations and tell me what they remind you of. The five recommendations say:

• Clinics and therapies that seek to change homosexual orientation must be condemned and subjected to appropriate legal accountability.
• Institutions training health professionals must focus on teaching them to accept gay people and combat rejection, hatred, or treatment of them as ill.
• Any intervention seeking to change any person’s sexual orientation must be prohibited.
• Homophobia “must be exposed”: whatever its form and whoever expresses it must be exposed by the media as a problem threatening public health, human dignity, and human rights.
• Civil-society organizations must develop suitable mechanisms to increase social vigilance toward any violation of gay rights and report it to the authorities.

What do these recommendations remind you of? They correspond exactly to recommendations for fighting terrorism, do they not? Another dogma is imposed upon the scientific community. It strongly recalls the film Expelled, which describes how scientists who reject Darwinian evolution are excluded—an intimidation reminiscent of the Inquisition and the scientific authoritarianism practiced by the medieval Church. After this, it is laughable to imagine that scientific research concerning homosexuality takes place in a free and neutral environment.

2. The Reliability of Researchers

The second matter in discussing the reliability of Western research about homosexuality is whether the researchers are trustworthy or whether evidence suggests that some lie or display bias. We will mention several examples.

Dean Hamer’s Research

First is the research still celebrated by atheists and gay advocates: Dean Hamer’s 1993 claim of a possible link between the genetic marker XQ28 and homosexuality, published in the well-known journal Science.

Brothers, let us first recall that this same Dean Hamer claimed that a God gene existed and wrote a book about it without evidence or a published study. Geneticists did not accept his claim, as we explained in the previous episode.

Let us examine this other claim by Hamer. One scientific rule is that research results must be reproducible before they acquire credibility: if other researchers repeat the same experiment, the same results must appear. Otherwise, any researcher could claim whatever he wished and become a great discoverer through false assertions.

Many researchers repeated Hamer and his team’s experiment with larger samples of gay participants, and none obtained similar results. This led them to imply that Hamer and his alleged gene were wrong. One example is a study by Dr. George Rice and his team, also published in Science, which stated: “It is unclear why our results differ completely from Hamer’s original study. Since our study was larger than Hamer’s, we certainly had sufficient power to detect a genetic effect of the size reported in that study. Nevertheless, our data do not support the existence of any gene with a major effect on sexual orientation at the Xq28 genetic marker.” Put simply, this contradicts Hamer, whose God-gene claim was likewise contradicted.

For about 25 years, researchers attempted to repeat Hamer’s results without reproducing his alleged findings. Added to this is the basic issue mentioned in the previous episode: modern genetics contradicts the claim that one particular gene produces one particular behavioral trait. A study published in the well-known journal Nature in 2008 showed that, after the genetic code was decoded, even generally simple physical traits proved too complex to link to one gene or even a specific group of genes. How much more complex are behavioral traits? Hamer’s gene is theoretically untenable in light of the Nature study and empirically contradicted by the Science study, two of the best-known natural-science journals. It is also contradicted by a quarter-century of studies that attempted and failed to reproduce his results.

Studies of Gay Parenting

Another example bearing upon researcher reliability comes from examining those who study so-called gay parenting. In a growing number of American states, two married men or two married women have been legally permitted to adopt and raise a child who sees their same-sex relationship morning and evening. When permission for such adoption is debated, scientific studies are invoked concerning its effects upon children.

The writer David Benkof reviewed dozens of studies concerning gay parenting and published his findings in a fact-supported article titled “Every Gay Parenting Study Is Wrong.” Benkof reported that at least 60% of researchers whose results support such parenting are themselves gay, while the status of 25% of the remainder is unknown, meaning some of them may also be gay. He lists names and incidents supporting this claim and says that sufficient evidence of their lack of neutrality is their failure to disclose this fact under “conflict of interest,” the section of scientific papers where researchers state factors that may weaken a study’s neutrality.

A physician naturally cannot publish research questioning the validity of these researchers’ studies on the grounds that their sexuality biases them. He would be labeled homophobic and targeted by campaigns against homophobia. It is therefore unsurprising that many studies conclude gay adoption has no negative effect upon children. A study by Dr. Gartrell, herself a lesbian married to a woman, even concludes that children raised by gay men or lesbians become socially better adjusted than children raised by a father and mother—“scientific” studies published in “scientific” journals and welcomed by “scientists” in “scientific” circles.

What would you expect from these circles if they produced research about polygyny, for example? Would its results be trustworthy and neutral, especially since polygyny is legally criminalized there? Other research, including a study published in a journal affiliated with the well-known University of Cambridge, indicates that children raised by gay people themselves acquire same-sex behavior at a significant rate.

How do gay people have children? A person may be attracted to both sexes and conceive a child through marriage or fornication in addition to same-sex behavior. Or the child may result from fornication between a man and woman who abandon it, leaving a foundling later adopted by two men or two women. Such is liberal civilization.

We repeat that research indicates children raised by gay people acquire same-sex behavior at a significant rate. Gay researchers do not consider this a problem at all. Atheists consider parents merely telling their child that God created the world to be a dreadful exploitation of childhood innocence, as Dawkins says in The God Delusion. Yet atheism sees no problem in raising children upon homosexuality and does not regard that as dreadful exploitation of childhood.

We may ask whether Western culture truly produces personal freedom. Imagine a child born through fornication, abandoned, and adopted by two men who practice homosexuality before him. He also grows up gay, then feels that this condition conflicts with his human nature—feeling disgusted with himself, as the expression goes—and wishes to change his psychological orientation so that he can enjoy sound mental health concerning sexuality. Health organizations then tell him, as in the 2012 report already mentioned, “Any intervention seeking to change any person’s sexual orientation must be prohibited.” Treatment cannot be provided; he must remain as he is. Is this freedom or compulsion toward corruption?

Professor J. Michael Bailey

Another example concerning researcher reliability is Professor J. Michael Bailey, who receives United States government funding for research measuring arousal in gay men and women by exposing them to homosexual pornography through methods one is ashamed even to mention. His research was criticized in The Washington Times as excessively sexualized and a waste of American taxpayers’ money.

In Islam, knowledge and reports are received from a just and trustworthy person. In this alleged Western science, however, there is no moral or reliability requirement governing the person from whom knowledge is received; he may even be among the lowest people in character. He may be an atheist who recognizes no absolute foundation for morality, as we explained earlier, and for whom cheating and falsification are relative matters that cannot be called absolutely wrong.

3. Research Funding and Its Effect on Results

Bailey’s story brings us to the third issue in discussing the reliability of Western research about homosexuality: who funds this research and how funding affects its results.

In the Benkof article just mentioned, which reviewed dozens of studies, the author documented how some studies supporting gay parenting were funded by known gay individuals such as David Bohnett and by organizations supporting gay causes such as the Rainbow Endowment.

A well-known phenomenon in the scientific community is that studies often favor results desired by their financial sponsors, known as sponsorship bias. Imagine a gay man giving a researcher money and saying, “Study whether what I am doing is good or bad, and take your salary from my money.” Then imagine the scientific integrity that follows.

The article also states that, as of 25/3/2014, there were 150 studies on gay adoption. Brothers, every study costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, and many receive United States federal government money in addition to gay advocacy funding. We may ask whether the government or American institutions fund studies on how raising girls with modesty and reserve affects their mental health, for example.

Imagine a researcher hypothesized that Jewish people had genes driving them toward deceit and crime and wanted to investigate that hypothesis. Would his research receive any financial support, or would he be accused of antisemitism and criminalized?

4. Publication Bias

Another funding-related matter concerns publishing study results. Here we encounter publication bias: if a gay researcher obtains results contrary to his wishes and those of the financially supporting institution promoting homosexuality, will he publish them or conceal them?

Similarly, if a genuinely neutral researcher obtains results unfavorable to homosexuality, nothing guarantees that scientific journals will accept his paper. Journals may refuse to publish it, especially when gay advocacy groups and their supporters campaign against any research producing results they dislike. It is easier for journals to avoid accusations of homophobia and a repetition of the Robert Spitzer ordeal that ultimately forced him to apologize.

Fourth: How the Media Handles Research Results

The final topic in our lecture is how the media handles these findings. Well-known American media outlets and those promoting similar agendas in the Muslim world seize studies pleasing to gay advocates, despite the falsehood and falsification we have partly shown, and add further distortion through their headlines. For example, they seized Hamer’s claim of a gene associated with homosexuality and publicized the alleged gene as widely as possible. A scientific publication timidly criticized this, explaining that Hamer’s findings had never been reproduced, yet the media treated them as an established fact. Even after 22 years of empirical contradiction, global outlets such as The Telegraph still shamelessly describe opponents of homosexuality as ignoring science and include Hamer’s study among this “science.”

Not only the media but even the “scientific community” behaved unscientifically by adding the theoretically and empirically contradicted homosexuality gene to the medical database of the twenty-first century.

Conclusion

After all this, we may ask whether what atheists celebrate is science or pseudoscience: liberal sacred causes driving predetermined results, biased funding, efforts to please sponsors with agreeable findings, gay researchers whose credibility is challenged, errors in study design, publication bias, intimidation of those who oppose gay preferences, campaigns against homophobia, and media that select whichever studies they wish and use an alleged genetic relationship to suggest a person is forced into same-sex behavior. Then atheism’s parrots tell you, “I believe science.”

“[They are] darknesses, some of them upon others. When one puts out his hand [therein], he can hardly see it. And he to whom Allah has not granted light—for him there is no light.” [An-Nur 24:40]

Before we finish, brothers, every living heart will feel darkness upon hearing these examples of inverted fitrah. We therefore wish to illuminate our hearts with revelation by reciting verses from Surat Ash-Shu‘ara describing God’s Prophet Lot, peace be upon him, among whose people this grave indecency first appeared. He called them with these words: “Do you approach males among the worlds and leave what your Lord has created for you as mates? But you are a people transgressing.” [Ash-Shuara 26:165–166]

Lot, peace be upon him, did not need a lengthy demonstration of the corruption of their act; its ugliness was so plain that merely naming it exposed its corruption. Most of Lot’s call to his people did not initially concern matters of doctrine; he first tried to restore their humanity, but: “They said, ‘If you do not desist, O Lot, you will surely be of those evicted.’ He said, ‘Indeed, I am, toward your deed, of those who detest [it]. My Lord, save me and my family from [the consequence of] what they do.’ So We saved him and his family, all, except an old woman among those who remained behind. Then We destroyed the others. And We rained upon them a rain [of stones], and evil was the rain of those who were warned. Indeed in that is a sign, but most of them were not to be believers. And indeed, your Lord—He is the Exalted in Might, the Merciful.” [Ash-Shuara 26:167–175]

During the episode, I wanted to ask whether atheism and Darwinism accept justifying crimes such as murder or rape by genes driving such behavior, just as they justify homosexuality. I did not raise these questions because the modern atheist and Darwinian answer is yes, they accept it. Had we not already taken so much of your time, I would have told you the story of the warrior gene, which some criminals can now add to their defense files to reduce sentences on the basis of scientific research, as occurred with Bradley Waldroup. I would also have told you about the book by Drs. Thornhill and Palmer, who justify rape as natural genetic behavior.

“And he to whom Allah has not granted light—for him there is no light.” [An-Nur 24:40]

This was an example of science becoming a tool serving dominant values and of the degradation reached by materialists when they denied the fitrah and explained human behavior in purely material terms. Peace and God’s mercy be upon you. [Sound effects].