Tuesday's Wall Street Journal featured a page 1 story on
deaf children and cochlear implants (online only for WSJ
subscribers). These devices, which are placed in the bone behind
the ear to help profoundly deaf children perceive sound, are being
opposed by deaf activists:
Some steeped in deaf culture don't see themselves as handicapped and view implants as an attempt to "fix" something that isn't broken. They especially oppose hearing parents deciding to get implants for their deaf children, believing kids should make the decision themselves when they get older.
It's easy to dismiss the deaf activists, but what if the story were about gay children and parents who, for the sake of argument, at some point could give their kids a treatment to ensure that they would instead be heterosexual?
Being gay, of course, is not a physical impairment, but the deaf activists also think their status is just a different way of being, and that they are part of a deaf culture and a deaf community. And as surely as hearing parents are opting for cochlear implants, so too would most heterosexual parents opt to make their gay kids straight if they could. But such a situation would surely cause a loss to the richness of the human tapestry, so it's a good thing that being gay isn't as simple as being deaf.
Update: Columnist Cathy Young sends a comment
noting her take a few years ago in Reason magazine on what she
calls "the (incredibly offensive) gay/deaf analogy." That article
can be read here (give it a
minute to load).