The winner of GayNZ.com's Supreme Cameron Award, Dr Whitehead, claims to be an authority on the origins of sexual orientation, and has even written a book called My Genes Made Me Do It!: A Scientific Look at Sexual Orientation. He claims that there is no biological or genetic origin for homosexuality; that the Civil Union Bill would increase the number of gays in partnerships (a bad thing?); that same-sex relationships are inherently unstable; that many gay relationships are short-lived due to deaths through AIDS; that homosexuals have higher rates of mental instability and drug abuse; that sexual orientation is a choice; and that because of all these issues, children will suffer if the Civil Union Bill becomes law. Among the concerned responses from researchers upon whose work Whitehead's "scientific" claims are based was this, from Associate Professor Michael Dunne of the School of Public Health at the Queensland University of Technology: Dr Whitehead's claims about the potential impact of the Civil Unions Bill can, quite fairly and with due respect for the passion of his convictions, be rejected. His argument is flawed. His "research method" seems little more sophisticated than joining dots on a two-dimensional plane. He superficially connects observations from some published studies of genetic and environmental factors in human sexuality and mental health. The pattern that emerges is a distorted caricature of existing knowledge that lacks depth and complexity. It adds nothing to serious, informed debate about the nature of homosexuality or the ways in which a civil society should formulate law. The essential problem is that Dr Whitehead's research is quasi-science. He has strayed far beyond his field of expertise. His training and professional experience, and his publications in academic journals, are almost entirely in geological and nuclear science. I conducted an exhaustive search of his research papers listed by Thompson ISI Web of Science (the international standard search tool for scientific information). Although Dr Whitehead claims he has researched the field of sexuality for 13 years, this effort has been entirely unproductive. My search revealed no empirical study of human sexuality and indeed no systematic review on the topic that has been accepted by internationally recognised, peer-reviewed journals. His three books are populist and are not published by mainstream academic publishers that require scientific review. Thus, they are not regarded as serious works in the field of human sexuality. What does it mean to say that "chance is responsible"? We could only draw the conclusion that genetic influences may not be important for the expression of homosexuality in adults. This does not necessarily implicate "chance" (or the social environment, as implied by Whitehead). Innate tendencies can arise through a complex range of biological processes, including hormonal, immunological and neuro-developmental factors. However, a chief limitation of Whitehead's argument in his submission on the Civil Unions Bill is that he ignored a strong conclusion in our paper: That is, a personality trait (childhood gender atypicality) that has repeatedly been found to predict homosexual orientation is quite strongly heritable. Dr Whitehead has argued that it is the responsibility of society to limit the environment that may be conducive to people who have this predisposition to ultimately "become gay or lesbian." Thus, he postulates that homosexual civil unions would be conducive to such an environment. It is precisely here that his argument becomes devoid of any scientific basis, because of one key point. To date, there has never been a study that has convincingly demonstrated that any particular social or environmental influence (including social policy) "promotes" or is conducive to the development of homosexual orientation. Not one. - 1st September 2004