March 22, 2007--Gay DNA
Talk about complicated.
The NY Times headline, “Homosexuality May be Based on Biology, Baptist Says,” of course made me instantly crazy. Anything a Baptist minister has to say on the subject, much less the Rev. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the nation’s leading Southern Baptist seminary, by definition is certain to be ignorant and biased. (Article linked below.)
True, there is debate in the scientific community about the possibility that homosexuality is biologically based and therefore is not a choice of life style as virtually all Evangelicals claim. But what’s this about Mohler weighing in on the side of being reasonably open-minded on the subject? What’s going on here?
If gayness is as inborn in humans as it appears to be in other animals, in what way can it still be considered a “sin” since all men (and women) are created in God’s image? And since through DNA research treatments are beginning to emerge to correct genetic “defects,” something even most conservative Christians do not oppose, what if, just what if a Gay Gene is discovered and a method is developed to “treat” gayness in the womb so that an initially gay fetus pops out as a straight baby?
Rev. Mohler recently wrote about his musings on the subject and they elicited a firestorm of angry responses from many in the gay community (no surprise) and equally from many on the Christian Right (again, no surprise).
On the Right, much of the criticism was based on the assertion that in spite of suggestions from DNA research that there might be a biological basis for homosexuality, gayness is a sin of choice and can therefore be overcome through counseling and prayer. We have seen how effectively this approach works in the case of the Rev. Ted Haggard, the president of the National Evangelical Association, who got caught seeking the ministerings of male prostitutes but was quickly “cured” through such methods.
In the gay community, the Rev. Mohler was attacked because of his claim that even if homosexuality is inborn it is still a sin, one consequence of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. And, he was called a hypocrite when he wrote that if it is DNA based and if a prenatal treatment can be found to “correct” it, such medical intervention would not be against God’s word.
But then when I turned from the Times article to Mohler’s Website where he laid out his thinking, I was shocked by how reasonable he seemed. Though I still cringe at his idea that it would be acceptable to “correct” biological homosexuality if it turned out to be DNA-based or that it is somehow a defect or sin, in the context of the world in which he operates, I found his explication of the issues to be less emotional than those of many of his critics; and his writing is sufficiently couched in genuine-seeming conditional language to actually contribute to open discourse about this immensely complicated subject.
Here’s a sample from his blog, but I urge you to look at it in its entirety. (I’ve included its Web address below.)
What makes the sheep "sexual partner preference testing" research so interesting is that the same scientists who are documenting the rather surprising sexual behaviors of male sheep think they can also change the sexual orientation of the animals. In other words, finding a biological causation for homosexuality may also lead to the discovery of a "cure" for the same phenomenon.
That's where the issue gets really interesting. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has called for an end to the research, while tennis star Martina Navratilova called the research "homophobic and cruel" and argued that gay sheep have a "right" to be homosexual. No kidding.
Homosexual activists were among the first to call for (and fund) research into a biological cause of homosexuality. After all, they argued, the discovery of a biological cause would lead to the normalization of homosexuality simply because it would then be seen to be natural, and thus moral.
But now the picture is quite different. Many homosexual activists recognize that the discovery of a biological marker or cause for homosexual orientation could lead to efforts to eliminate the trait, or change the orientation through genetic or hormonal treatments.
http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=891
The NY Times headline, “Homosexuality May be Based on Biology, Baptist Says,” of course made me instantly crazy. Anything a Baptist minister has to say on the subject, much less the Rev. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the nation’s leading Southern Baptist seminary, by definition is certain to be ignorant and biased. (Article linked below.)
True, there is debate in the scientific community about the possibility that homosexuality is biologically based and therefore is not a choice of life style as virtually all Evangelicals claim. But what’s this about Mohler weighing in on the side of being reasonably open-minded on the subject? What’s going on here?
If gayness is as inborn in humans as it appears to be in other animals, in what way can it still be considered a “sin” since all men (and women) are created in God’s image? And since through DNA research treatments are beginning to emerge to correct genetic “defects,” something even most conservative Christians do not oppose, what if, just what if a Gay Gene is discovered and a method is developed to “treat” gayness in the womb so that an initially gay fetus pops out as a straight baby?
Rev. Mohler recently wrote about his musings on the subject and they elicited a firestorm of angry responses from many in the gay community (no surprise) and equally from many on the Christian Right (again, no surprise).
On the Right, much of the criticism was based on the assertion that in spite of suggestions from DNA research that there might be a biological basis for homosexuality, gayness is a sin of choice and can therefore be overcome through counseling and prayer. We have seen how effectively this approach works in the case of the Rev. Ted Haggard, the president of the National Evangelical Association, who got caught seeking the ministerings of male prostitutes but was quickly “cured” through such methods.
In the gay community, the Rev. Mohler was attacked because of his claim that even if homosexuality is inborn it is still a sin, one consequence of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. And, he was called a hypocrite when he wrote that if it is DNA based and if a prenatal treatment can be found to “correct” it, such medical intervention would not be against God’s word.
But then when I turned from the Times article to Mohler’s Website where he laid out his thinking, I was shocked by how reasonable he seemed. Though I still cringe at his idea that it would be acceptable to “correct” biological homosexuality if it turned out to be DNA-based or that it is somehow a defect or sin, in the context of the world in which he operates, I found his explication of the issues to be less emotional than those of many of his critics; and his writing is sufficiently couched in genuine-seeming conditional language to actually contribute to open discourse about this immensely complicated subject.
Here’s a sample from his blog, but I urge you to look at it in its entirety. (I’ve included its Web address below.)
What makes the sheep "sexual partner preference testing" research so interesting is that the same scientists who are documenting the rather surprising sexual behaviors of male sheep think they can also change the sexual orientation of the animals. In other words, finding a biological causation for homosexuality may also lead to the discovery of a "cure" for the same phenomenon.
That's where the issue gets really interesting. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has called for an end to the research, while tennis star Martina Navratilova called the research "homophobic and cruel" and argued that gay sheep have a "right" to be homosexual. No kidding.
Homosexual activists were among the first to call for (and fund) research into a biological cause of homosexuality. After all, they argued, the discovery of a biological cause would lead to the normalization of homosexuality simply because it would then be seen to be natural, and thus moral.
But now the picture is quite different. Many homosexual activists recognize that the discovery of a biological marker or cause for homosexual orientation could lead to efforts to eliminate the trait, or change the orientation through genetic or hormonal treatments.
http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=891
posted by Steven Zwerling at
1:26 PM
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