| Isaac Katz |
The son of a physicist who was recently taken off a federal scientific advisory board earlier this year for an essay in which he condemned gays for the AIDS epidemic has come out of the closet.
Isaac Katz, son of Washington University professor Jonathan I. Katz, announced that he is gay in an op-ed article published Oct. 10 in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Katz made mention of a number of GLBT youths who have killed themselves recently after enduing anti-gay bullying, and said that while he had not been bullied in high school the pressure of keeping his sexual identity a secret had weighed heavily on him. Katz wrote that, "being in the closet hardly helped my mental well-being. I was hospitalized for depression the summer after my sophomore year in college and tried to overdose on pills later that fall."
In 1999, when Katz was 11 years old, his father authored the blog posting denouncing gays and declaring because they were "responsible" for the AIDS epidemic, anyone "choosing" to be gay was also morally accountable for the spread of the disease. "Any person ’cursed with unnatural sexual desires’ should suppress those desires," the younger Katz quoted from his father’s posting. "Further, even if gays are thoroughly safe and monogamous, they are still morally culpable for the promiscuity that spread AIDS in the past, just as people who join the Ku Klux Klan without physically engaging in violence still share the responsibility for past Klan actions. Though one should ’not engage in violence against homosexuals,’ my father argued, one should ’stay away from them.’ The last line of the essay is as follows: ’I am a homophobe, and proud.’ "
Katz revealed in his essay that his father’s first reaction to the announcement that his son was gay was to deny it. His next response was to advise his son to suppress his natural sexual desires. Even so, Katz defended his father, who was removed from a panel assembled to address the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year.
"At the height of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill this past summer, Energy Secretary Steven Chu nominated my father to a small and elite group of scientists working to help plug the gusher; when gay rights groups protested, he was forced out of the position," the younger Katz recalled. "As it happens, I don’t believe that anyone’s personal opinions have any impact on whether they can help fight oil spills."
The Department of Energy said upon announcing that the elder Katz would "no longer be involved" in the panel that the physicist’s anti-gay writings had been unknown to Dr. Chu.
The elder Katz’s 1999 posting declared, "The religious believer may see the hand of God, but both he and the rationalist must see a fact of Nature. The human body was not designed to share hypodermic needles, it was not designed to be promiscuous, and it was not designed to engage in homosexual acts.
"Engaging in such behavior is like riding a motorcycle on an icy road without a helmet," the senior Katz added. "It may be possible to get away with it for a while, and a few misguided souls may get a thrill out of doing so, but sooner or later (probably sooner) the consequences will be catastrophic. Lethal diseases spread rapidly among people who do such things."
The younger Katz noted that his father had warned that an attempt to stop the gushing oil would not be successful, and advised another method that might have succeeded had it been used. "Would my father have helped stop the gush of oil if only he had remained on Chu’s team?" asked Katz, "That’s presumptuous. To me, though, it is undeniable that removing him from the team for reasons unrelated to his scientific knowledge, academic credentials or intellectual capacity was a mistake."
However, the younger Katz did not shy away from pointing out the fallacy in his scientist father’s thinking regarding gays. "Underlying his opinions and those of other homophobes is the belief that homosexuality is not ingrained within gay men and women, that someone attracted to people of the same sex should simply choose not to be a ’practicing homosexual,’ " Katz wrote. "That this idea is absurd should be obvious to all straight people, unless they can identify a time in their lives when they chose to be straight and not gay, and would gladly become intimate with a same-sex partner if only they chose to."
Citing the It Gets Better project-a series of video messages designed to reach out to GLBT youth that might be contemplating suicide-Katz wrote about his plans to attend film school. "To struggling gay and lesbian teens in St. Louis and beyond, then, as a young gay man I gladly repeat Dan Savage’s words: It does get better."
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Isaac Katz, son of Washington University professor Jonathan I. Katz, announced that he is gay in an op-ed article published Oct. 10 in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Katz made mention of a number of GLBT youths who have killed themselves recently after enduing anti-gay bullying, and said that while he had not been bullied in high school the pressure of keeping his sexual identity a secret had weighed heavily on him. Katz wrote that, "being in the closet hardly helped my mental well-being. I was hospitalized for depression the summer after my sophomore year in college and tried to overdose on pills later that fall."
In 1999, when Katz was 11 years old, his father authored the blog posting denouncing gays and declaring because they were "responsible" for the AIDS epidemic, anyone "choosing" to be gay was also morally accountable for the spread of the disease. "Any person ’cursed with unnatural sexual desires’ should suppress those desires," the younger Katz quoted from his father’s posting. "Further, even if gays are thoroughly safe and monogamous, they are still morally culpable for the promiscuity that spread AIDS in the past, just as people who join the Ku Klux Klan without physically engaging in violence still share the responsibility for past Klan actions. Though one should ’not engage in violence against homosexuals,’ my father argued, one should ’stay away from them.’ The last line of the essay is as follows: ’I am a homophobe, and proud.’ "
Katz revealed in his essay that his father’s first reaction to the announcement that his son was gay was to deny it. His next response was to advise his son to suppress his natural sexual desires. Even so, Katz defended his father, who was removed from a panel assembled to address the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year.
"At the height of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill this past summer, Energy Secretary Steven Chu nominated my father to a small and elite group of scientists working to help plug the gusher; when gay rights groups protested, he was forced out of the position," the younger Katz recalled. "As it happens, I don’t believe that anyone’s personal opinions have any impact on whether they can help fight oil spills."
The Department of Energy said upon announcing that the elder Katz would "no longer be involved" in the panel that the physicist’s anti-gay writings had been unknown to Dr. Chu.
The elder Katz’s 1999 posting declared, "The religious believer may see the hand of God, but both he and the rationalist must see a fact of Nature. The human body was not designed to share hypodermic needles, it was not designed to be promiscuous, and it was not designed to engage in homosexual acts.
"Engaging in such behavior is like riding a motorcycle on an icy road without a helmet," the senior Katz added. "It may be possible to get away with it for a while, and a few misguided souls may get a thrill out of doing so, but sooner or later (probably sooner) the consequences will be catastrophic. Lethal diseases spread rapidly among people who do such things."
The younger Katz noted that his father had warned that an attempt to stop the gushing oil would not be successful, and advised another method that might have succeeded had it been used. "Would my father have helped stop the gush of oil if only he had remained on Chu’s team?" asked Katz, "That’s presumptuous. To me, though, it is undeniable that removing him from the team for reasons unrelated to his scientific knowledge, academic credentials or intellectual capacity was a mistake."
However, the younger Katz did not shy away from pointing out the fallacy in his scientist father’s thinking regarding gays. "Underlying his opinions and those of other homophobes is the belief that homosexuality is not ingrained within gay men and women, that someone attracted to people of the same sex should simply choose not to be a ’practicing homosexual,’ " Katz wrote. "That this idea is absurd should be obvious to all straight people, unless they can identify a time in their lives when they chose to be straight and not gay, and would gladly become intimate with a same-sex partner if only they chose to."
Citing the It Gets Better project-a series of video messages designed to reach out to GLBT youth that might be contemplating suicide-Katz wrote about his plans to attend film school. "To struggling gay and lesbian teens in St. Louis and beyond, then, as a young gay man I gladly repeat Dan Savage’s words: It does get better."
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