Designer Babies: Turn Your Gay Baby Straight?

Everybody's talking about this post by the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler: Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?

Money quote:

If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

Lots of folks are upset about this. I'm not sure I am. I would strongly oppose government-mandated treatment of fetuses to ensure heterosexuality, but I don't think I could fault parents for wanting their babies to be straight, given a reasonable choice. While I don't think homosexuality (including homosexual sex) is immoral, there's no doubt that being homosexual can be challenging and if parents want to spare their children that particular difficulty, I don't see what the problem is. It would be kind of sad and possibly harmful to have less sexual diversity in the human race, but I don't think that is sufficient reason to disallow it.

What about genetic/hormonal treatment for other traits? As science progresses, we might be able to alter fetuses in ways we can now barely imagine. I wonder whether Rev. Mohler would support parents who want to treat fetuses for tendencies towards being religious, for example?

Which of the following traits should parents be allowed to alter, assuming a treatment becomes possible? Which should they be encouraged or discouraged from altering?

1. Fatal disease
2. Chronic but manageable disease
   
3. Eye/hair color or other minor cosmetic changes
   
4. Height
5. Deafness/blindness (preventing or causing, as some deaf parents might wish)
6. Tendencies towards addictions, obesity, or anorexia
   
7. Tendencies towards being generous
8. Intelligence
9. Athletic ability
10. Tendencies towards or away from religion
11. Tendencies towards or away from fundamentalist thinking
    
12. Skin color, epicanthal folds, and other distinguishing racial characteristics
13. Lactose intolerance
14. Tendencies towards happiness or optimism
15. Tendency towards political party
16. Tendencies towards wanting to be a doctor
17. Having six fingers or toes
18. Musical ability
19. Sexual appetite or lack thereof
20. Tendencies towards introversion/extroversion, conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, or other personality traits
    

Isn't this going to be a fun can of worms? Even without the ability to change many of these traits, we may be able to screen for them, which will lead to questions about selective abortion. Let's avoid that discussion for now as it would probably overwhelm the more interesting (to me) question of genetic or hormonal treatment of fetuses.

Some of my thoughts were inspired by Reason Magazine's discussion.