Are Some Sheep Gay?

Jan. 26, 2007 — -- Eight percent of rams, left to their own devices, seem to have a sexual preference for other rams.

But that's almost beside the point. It's been five years since Charles Roselli, a research scientist at Oregon Health and Science University, set out to understand the neuroscience behind the sexual orientation of sheep.

Then, last summer, the fur -- or wool, or whatever -- began to fly.

"Information has been brought to light about ridiculous 'gay sheep' experiments that are being conducted at the school," said the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, on its Web site, PETA.org.

"You heard right," said PETA, "experimenter Charles Roselli is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to kill homosexual rams and cut open their brains in an attempt to find the hormone behind homosexual tendencies so that these tendencies can be changed."

The university says it got 20,000 protest letters. Blogs were filled with outrage. Martina Navratilova, the tennis star, joined in. She is openly gay and an animal lover.

"For the sake of the animals who will die unnecessarily in these experiments," said a letter from her, "and for the many gays and lesbians who stand to be deeply offended by the social implications of these tests, I ask that you please end these studies at once."

PETA says Roselli and his colleagues are performing cruel, unneeded experiments on sheep, using about $3 million in taxpayers' money.

"The fact remains that once you've figured out what makes gay sheep gay, it's am obvious implication that you can then turn off or change the hormone that can make then straight," said Shailn Gala, the research associate at PETA who has headed PETA's work on the issue. "He's not taking responsibility for that."

For the most part, major news outlets left the story alone. But then, on New Year's Eve, the Times of London ran a story proclaiming "Experiments that claim to 'cure' homosexual rams spark anger."