Twilight of the Golds

Ross Kagan Marks’ The Twilight of the Golds (Ross Kagan Marks, 1997) was released in 1997 during the debate over one of the most hotly contested topics ever (which is still disputed today): gay rights.  The film, although first written as a play, was released and shown by Showtime, the television network, and marketed as a drama.  This is exactly what the film encompasses; it tells the story of a pregnant Suzanne Gold, and her gay younger brother David, whose sexual orientation is not tolerated by his family.  Faced with the news that her child will  “most likely be born gay, like her brother,” [1] Suzanne questions whether or not to have an abortion; this decision stresses the central issue in the film: prenatal genetic testing and its consequences.

            As we see in the beginning of the film, Suzanne’s husband, coincidentally, works as a pioneering scientist for the Human Genome Project; as quickly as he learns the news of his new baby, a coworker of his subtly coerces him to utilize the prenatal genetic tests they have developed on his wife’s fetus.  Problems arise about the future of the fetus when the fetus is discovered to be physically normal, but has a “ninety percent chance of growing up like [Suzanne’s] brother.”

            This interestingly bold statement about sexual orientation directly relates to Dean Hamer’s work on the gay gene; having discovered the gay gene in 1993, his lab since then has conducted many experiments concerning the heritability and genetic properties of sexual orientation. [2]   What is interesting about Suzanne’s predicament is that she is deciding whether or not to keep her fetus, based on an assumption that it has a ninety percent chance of being homosexual.  In Hamer’s book, Living With Our Genes, he argues that, after averaging all the studies to date surrounding this issue, the heritability of male sexual orientation is about 50 percent.  “That means that being gay is about 50 percent genetic and 50 percent from other influences;” [3] even at its best, Hamer never promises this kind of accurate prediction apparent in the film.  Given this new perspective, as R. Alta Charo and Karen H. Rothenberg point out: “there will be the temptation to ask whether we as a nation have an obligation to future generations to minimize their burdens…from the presence of physical or mental disorders among them.” [4]   But before we decide on any policy, what Hamer illustrates is that we need more accurate predictions.

Charo’s and Rothenberg’s statement infers the possible implementation of eugenic policies; just as in Gattaca, the decision to employ such policies lies in the hands of the parents.  This is the decision that Suzanne, as a mother, and her husband, Rob, are faced with; for in this society, a homosexual disposition is a disorder that designates a person inferior and should be fixed.  Both Suzanne and Rob are weary of bringing a disadvantaged child into this world, even if that handicap is not physically visible.  Following this view, we must ask ourselves, as in the case with Gattaca, whether women are accountable to the public for the choices they make. [5]

Whether or not they are, Suzanne is certainly accountable to her homosexual brother, David.  As expressed by Ruth Faden, “treating the prevention of the birth of children who would have an illness or disability as morally equivalent to preventing illness or disability in persons already living involves a morally unacceptable view of the worth of such persons.” [6]   For David feels that everything Suzanne loves about him is tied to “that one element that makes her queasy;” by aborting her unborn potentially-homosexual child, she would be, in a sense, affirming her desire to simultaneously kill her brother.  This, then, brings us to a new question: is it ethical to abort a fetus?

Suzanne gives us her answer.  As Abby Lippman proposes: “prenatal [genetic] diagnosis is constructed as a way of avoiding ‘disaster;’” [7] in avoiding such disasters, as Lippman proposes, we would no longer be human.  This is because, what make us all human are the differences within each of us – we must accept those differences, rather than erase them.  Suzanne realizes her duty as a mother in this light, in that “both mothers and fathers – ought to accept some level of pain and physical risk to aid their child,” [8] even if that risk is raising a baby that might well be stigmatized for his behavior.

Suzanne’s marriage fails for the sake of this belief, since she and Rob feel differently; she decides to have the baby in the end, and although she must raise him as a single parent, she reconciles with David, and has the full support of her entire family.  But the most important and influential argument in this film, as evidenced by its title, which Suzanne realizes by the end, is that “hereditary information is a family possession rather than simply a personal one,” [9] and that “the choice to use genetic services…involves more than a bit of tissue, a sliver of DNA.  It involves the whole person, with impacts that touch all aspects of that individual’s life.” [10]