OPINION:
DEAR DR. E: I recently had a conversation with my neighbor regarding my church and its stance on marriage and morality. I showed her a handout highlighting our denomination’s belief that homosexuality is a choice. My neighbor disagreed. The same topic came up yesterday while visiting with three other friends. All three agreed that homosexual, queer, and trans people are born that way. What is your view? - WANTING TO BE FAITHFUL FROM INDIANA
DEAR WANTING: My personal view as to whether or not people are “born” lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, or whatnot is that, in some sense of the word, it doesn’t matter. Let me explain.
We all must admit that we live in a broken world. All of us are “born” with a sinful nature — broken bodies, attitudes, and spirits.
All of us are born with some compromised aspects of our personalities and souls. Whether physical or mental — none of us come into this world perfect. We all have some handicaps we are cursed to accept as we struggle with life. G.K. Chesterton summarized this well: “The fact of sin [is] a fact as practical as potatoes… and indisputable [as] dirt… [It] is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”
He went on to suggest that to dispute the cleansing nature of water is one thing but to deny the dirt is, well, absurd.
The bottom line here is this: Genetic predisposition frankly doesn’t mean that much when it comes to questions of morality and corresponding behavior. For example, some people may be born with a genetic predisposition to be angry. Does that mean they have the right to always strike out at others? Does a guy with the “anger gene” have the moral right to hit his children or verbally abuse his spouse?
Some folks may be genetically predisposed to pedophilia. Does that give them an excuse to use children for their sexual pleasure? Many would argue that all men are genetically predisposed to have a wandering eye. Does that justify them being unfaithful to their wives? How about racism? If it could be proven that Germans are genetically predisposed to hate Jews, would the argument that they are “born that way” justify the Holocaust? You see, the “born that way” argument really doesn’t work if we believe that people still have the obligation and free will to “behave” morally despite our broken world.
The measure of right behavior and wrong behavior has never been and can never be grounded in the assumption that we are free to do all the things we were “born to do.”
We are not animals. We don’t just rut about like pigs enslaved to uncontrollable instincts. We are moral creatures which means that, by definition, we don’t do some of the very things we are “born to do.”
I have to conclude that even if someone were to find proof of a gay gene (which, by the way, has not happened), it wouldn’t matter.
Who cares about biological proclivities? You and I are predisposed to do a lot of things that are just simply wrong. Genetic predisposition does not determine what is moral and what is not.
If our physiology or chemistry becomes the final measuring rod of right and wrong, then we are left with absolutely no “moral” standards regarding pederasty, necrophilia, bestiality, or any other sexual expression. Sex with kids, sex with kangaroos, or sex with a cadaver would all be a matter of personal choice.
On what basis would you or anyone else argue that such behaviors are wrong? Frankly, in such a world, we would have no moral arguments for or against any action — sexual or otherwise.
If personal behaviors are “predetermined” by nature or even by nurture, then personal freedom and any corresponding concepts of morality and personal responsibility are mute by definition.
And as Chesterton said, if you simply watch the daily news, that’s just not the world we have, nor is it one we’d want. Steppenwolf may have sung that we were “born to be wild,” but even they admitted we all have a decision to make. We can “climb high” or we can choose otherwise.
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