That's rich with ramifications. Best I can do is try to decompose and analogize.

The practice of clitorectomies has come to the world's attention the last few years, and condemnation is universal: It's child abuse.

Those who defend it try to couch it in arguments about hygiene, to make it seem like circumcision (whose hygenic value has also been questioned). But in fact it's done for religious reasons with the specific intent of irrevocably altering a female's future sexuality by amputation.

I think parental rights end at child abuse, and imposing irrevocable choices on people before they're adults and able to make those choices on their own is clearly an abuse of parental power. A parent might have the right to prohibit homosexual behavior in their children before they're grown, but to make it a lifetime ban through medical treatment or surgical alteration? Absolutely not. Any more than it would be acceptable to force a sex-change operation on a child because the parents would prefer the other gender.

I thought this was a little creepy:

Michael Bailey, a neurology professor at Northwestern University near Chicago, said: “Allowing parents to select their children’s sexual orientation would further a parent’s freedom to raise the sort of children they want to raise.”

Typical surgeon, I guess--their patients are always unconscious, and just slabs of meat to them. But jeez, we're talking about human beings here, not topiary. You don't sculpt other people to suit your own whimsy. Wanna bet that guy's kids are already emotional basket-cases?

As for the politics of whether the research should be banned, no, I don't think so. It wouldn't be right, and on practical grounds, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. We have to deal with it like we deal with any technological innovation: Restrict its harmful uses if necessary, but we can't restrict the knowledge.