They're Using Sheep to Study Gay Behavior
        by
  Jack Anderson (Washington)


When it comes to studying sexual orientation, the politically
correct way for the Bush administration to do it is with 
sheep -- not humans.  So it is, we have learned, that the 
pioneering work on the potential origin of homosexual or heterosexual 
behavior is being done by the Department of Agriculture, 
which has for more than four years been identifying, separating, and 
studying a group of gay sheep.

In fact, the research they've been doing with the rams at a backwater
sheep station in Dubois, Idaho, is the kind of work one
normally expects out of America's premier research center, the National
Institutes of Health. Except that the NIH can't touch these kinds of studies
because some powerful Republican officials think it's a threat to
"Family Values".

Our first report on the Agriculture Department's gay sheep studies
sparked something of a stir in the segment of the American scientific
community that is concerned with sexual behavior. That's because they
hadn't heard of it before and were anxious to compare notes with the 
scientists doing the work.

[deletions concerning who knew what, and when, deleted]

The Agriculture Department had no lofty goal of settling the age-old
question of whether homosexuality is born or bred, is natural
or nurtured -- even if their work unintentionally takes a stride in that
direction.

Quite simply, sheepherders had been complaining that they were losing
money buying some $350 to $4000 rams who weren't interested in mating.
The point was to find the organic or genetic origin of what they termed
for the sheep trade, the "Dud Stud Phenomenon."

Interestingly, in this study the percentage of rams the 
Agriculture Department researchers determined were 
gay -- some 8.5 percent -- is close to some estimates in human society.

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Rendell