But they have no right to depend on that expectation, or to hold their child to that expectation.
The point isn’t just that the parents expect their child to be heterosexual; the point is that the parents make it known that they would treat the child poorly if he/she were not heterosexual. The basis for a reasonable expectation of transparency is thereby destroyed regardless of the child’s actual orientation.
Separately and unrelatedly: never having noticed signs of homosexuality is not evidence of heterosexuality if:
a) You don’t have sufficient experience with raising non-heterosexual children to have any basis for personally knowing what the signs are; b) You would expect that, if your child were not heterosexual, he/she would attempt to hide this fact from you.
In such a case (which seems like a good default assumption), P(signs-of-homosexuality | homosexuality) would be very nearly equal to P(signs-of-homosexuality | heterosexuality) [1]; consequently, P(heterosexuality | no signs-of-homosexuality) would be nearly equal to P(heterosexuality) — in other words the lack of evidence would not be evidence of lack.
If we then add a third condition:
c) There exist false positives, i.e. “signs of homosexuality” that can in fact occur in heterosexual individuals, such as, stereotypically, an interest in cooking / ballet / any other “traditionally female” endeavor
Then the evidence provided by said signs is pretty much entirely nil.
[1] I omit other orientations for simplification of math, and because it’s most relevant to the provided example. No exclusion intended.
But they have no right to depend on that expectation, or to hold their child to that expectation.
The point isn’t just that the parents expect their child to be heterosexual; the point is that the parents make it known that they would treat the child poorly if he/she were not heterosexual. The basis for a reasonable expectation of transparency is thereby destroyed regardless of the child’s actual orientation.
Separately and unrelatedly: never having noticed signs of homosexuality is not evidence of heterosexuality if:
a) You don’t have sufficient experience with raising non-heterosexual children to have any basis for personally knowing what the signs are;
b) You would expect that, if your child were not heterosexual, he/she would attempt to hide this fact from you.
In such a case (which seems like a good default assumption), P(signs-of-homosexuality | homosexuality) would be very nearly equal to P(signs-of-homosexuality | heterosexuality) [1]; consequently, P(heterosexuality | no signs-of-homosexuality) would be nearly equal to P(heterosexuality) — in other words the lack of evidence would not be evidence of lack.
If we then add a third condition:
c) There exist false positives, i.e. “signs of homosexuality” that can in fact occur in heterosexual individuals, such as, stereotypically, an interest in cooking / ballet / any other “traditionally female” endeavor
Then the evidence provided by said signs is pretty much entirely nil.
[1] I omit other orientations for simplification of math, and because it’s most relevant to the provided example. No exclusion intended.