Someone sent me this USA Today opinion piece a couple weeks ago and I've been mulling over talking about it ever since. The title "When religion loses its credibility" refers to the author's insistence that the church needs to accept homosexuality because it is genetic --> therefore the person has no choice --> therefore there is no moral culpability. He suggests the Church will soon need to issue a statement along these lines:
Correction: Despite what you might have read, heard or been taught throughout your churchgoing life, homosexuality is, in fact, determined at birth and is not to be condemned by God's followers.
He gave his opinion. Here is mine.
The author continues that the Church is in trouble if it continues its:
...pattern of discrimination against gays and lesbians in the face of mounting scientific evidence that sexual orientation has little or nothing to do with choice. To the contrary, whether sexual orientation arises as a result of the mother's hormones or the child's brain structure or DNA, it is almost certainly an accident of birth. The point is this: Without choice, there can be no moral culpability.
I disagree with the premise that calling something a sin is discrimination. There is no organization that I know of called GLAD (Gossips and Liars Against Defamation). I've never heard of a Murderers Pride Parade or a Protection of Disobedient Children Act being considered in Congress. My point is, Christians point to the Bible to say that x, y and z is sin and we try to live by that. Not rules or legalism, but trying to live with a Biblical worldview. And we all break them all the time -- but it doesn't stop us from trying. Cherry-picking or "selective enforcement" as the author calls it seems to me to be happening on the other side -- picking homosexuality as the sin that is being discriminated against rather than calling for an end to discrimination against all sin, if that's truly what calling a sin a sin amounts to.
As to the genetic argument, I disagree in more ways than one. However, I'm not going to bother with the studies I've read that refute his premise. Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that a "smoking gun" was found -- a specific gay gene. I'd like to know what that would prove in a moral discussion.
There are mounds of evidence that a genetic predisposition to alcoholism exists. If we were to follow that to a similar conclusion, we should be giving special rights to alcoholics. Perhaps separate sentences for DUI's -- a longer sentence if you're not an alcoholic, a pat on the back if you are. There have been studies that suggest criminal behavior is also a genetic predisposition. What about a study that says testosterone is a leading cause of divorce?
The author says, "Without choice, there can be no moral culpability." If that statement is true, we are in a world of hurt.
Speaking of selective enforcement, the author says:
A better reading of Scripture starts with the book of Genesis and the grand pronouncement about the world God created and all those who dwelled in it. "And, the Lord saw that it was good." If God created us and if everything he created is good, how can a gay person be guilty of being anything more than what God created him or her to be?
Ok, so we have to follow this to its logical conclusion. AIDS is good. Cancer is good. War and incest and rape and murder is good -- because God created the person who perpetrated it. That is taking the word "good" and giving it a meaning not many would agree with.
The last quote I'd like to respond to is this:
So, I ask you. Would you want to be discriminated against? Would you want to lose your job, housing or benefits because of something over which you had no control? Better yet, would you like it if society told you that you couldn't visit your lifelong partner in the hospital or file a claim on his behalf if he were murdered?
I'd like to reference again the alcoholic. Genetically predisposed, given no "choice" other than to give in to his programming. Do we give this person a pass? Do we say it's ok, you may have killed that family when you were driving drunk, but you had no "choice." Actually, we don't.
A genetic predisposition, a homosexual gene, does not release a person from moral culpability. They have as much responsibility for their actions as the person who is genetically predisposed to disobey their parents at age 16. If calling a sin a sin is discrimination, homosexuals shouldn't be discriminated against any more than any other sin -- but until the government starts making laws that favor the alcoholic, liar, gossip and covetous neighbor, we shouldn't be creating special rights for them.
The reasons we have homosexual pride organizations, political action committees and high school clubs when we have no corresponding groups for pro-drunks, pro-liars or pro-gossips are varied and deserving of an entirely separate response. Bottom line, there are at least two things wrong with this article. First, the idea that the Church tries to live by and point out Biblical morality only until science proves them wrong and when science finds the gay gene holy grail the Church will have to apologize. Second, that the discovery of a gay gene makes a moral difference.
