Making "ex-gay" sheep.

If there are gay sheep, can there also be ex-gay sheep. At Oregon Health and Science University and Oregon State University, researchers are exploring ways to reform rams that love other rams, and they have come under fire from an animal rights group that wants the gay sheep left alone.

According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, both studies rely on finding rams that regularly attempt to mate with other rams and then experimenting on them. Charles Roselli, a physiology and pharmacology professor at OHSU, is dissecting the brains of so-called "male-oriented" rams in search of a hormonal explanation for their homosexual behavior. His collaborator at OSU, animal sciences professor Fredrick Stormshak, operates on gay male sheep to surgically implant a device to release estrogen--an effort, the researchers wrote, "to restore tissue levels of estrogen comparable to those of heterosexual rams and affect sexual behavior accordingly."

In other words, to turn gay rams straight.

In separate letters in July, PETA urged the two universities to shut down their federally funded studies that seek to discover, as the researchers wrote, "whether sexual preferences can be altered." Instead, said PETA research associate Shalin Gala, the universities should devote resources to "sponsor[ing] an LGBT tolerance and acceptance initiative that would serve society in a useful way.

"That would be preferable to any sort of research identifying the biological roots of homosexuality," added Gala, who would like to see the sheep released to a sanctuary. "Even if they can prove 100% that homosexuality is a biological characteristic, that doesn't address homophobia and hatred of gay people, so it's not really addressing anything of social value."

A spokesman for OHSU denied that the study had any social implications for humans. "Our experiments have nothing to do with treating homosexuality or with intolerance," OHSU's Jim Newman told The Advocate. "They're about understanding the brain science behind the choice of a partner."