Three Homosexuality Myths

by Jack J. Richardson
July 2009

1) Homosexuality is a choice

It is not difficult to see why the ultra-conservative constituency of the religious right must see homosexuality as a choice, and not as current science sees it - a naturally occurring differentiation on human sexuality which is described as innate, predetermined, and fixed at birth, or shortly thereafter. For these, if this more gay-positive view is true, the religious right would:

- not have the convenience of condemning homosexual acts, which are chosen, but would instead have to condemn persons for being intrinsically and mortally flawed

- have to assign God the moral responsibility for the "naturally occurring" condition (which some churches do, but admonish the expression as sinful - see below)

- have to face the idea, according to their anti-gay world-view, that God would become known as a cruel and unjust God, giving to most a sexual orientation that can find full fulfillment, while the mandate to gays is that they must change their orientation, or they must live life without the possibility of expressing humanity's God-given and deeply rooted desire for human intimacy - A loving God? Surely not!

For the gay person, however, we know through our experience, just like our straight friends know through theirs, that we do not choose our sexual orientation. One does not choose to be gay or straight. For, if it were as simple as a choice, as we have been told, the vast majority of the gay folk, like myself, would have long since abandoned our gayness. Consequently, most of us have spent a great deal of time, energy and money in trying. But the simple truth is: things biological tend to stick around.

I did not choose, for example, the color of my skin, and whereas there are things I can do to decorate it, there is nothing I can do to alter its pigmentation. Likewise, I did not choose my body type. Although there are things I can do to shape my body, I will carry it (unfortunately) to my grave. Well, somebody will. My sexual orientation, although I can alter its behavior and expression, will forever be homosexual. The attraction for and connection with men that is clearly fixed within me, at a mental, emotional, physical, and even a spiritual level, I have never been able to, nor will I ever be able to, achieve with women.

One's sexual orientation, whether it's straight or gay, exists and operates at the biological level, is deeply embedded in our psyches, and cannot be changed. For as much as the majority of we gay people would have opted to change our orientation if we could have, there is no constituency of people on the face of this planet that knows more intimately the fact that that is an impossibility.

For this reason, among many others, when asked: "Is it a choice?" many gay people will respond to the question with sarcasm: "Oh, sure. We choose to be a part of a constituency that is hated more than any other, who live our lives in fear and isolation, who are afraid we will not be accepted or that we might even be killed, whose society would identify us by our worst traits, who are not given equal civil rights, who are seen by many to be 'sick' 'sinful' 'unnatural' 'deviate' 'pedophiles' 'perverts' and so many other hateful and bigoted terms. Yeah, we choose that!"

Fortunately, for God's gay children (and the thinking straight ones too) the "alternative" is to acknowledge the mystery of God's vastly differentiated creation, and to recognize that Homosexuality, just like its heterosexual counterpart, is a gift, not a sin, not a sickness, not an addiction, and NOT A CHOICE!

In my humble little, insignificant opinion, I think that straight people who desire that their loved ones try to change that essential part of their person should be required to spend ONE MONTH out of the 900, or so, that are allotted for the human life-span, in an attempt to change their own sexual orientation to gay. I believe that would settle the question once for all.

For those who see the validity of sexual orientation, and yet who proscribe its expression, I would like for you to entertain this: We believe as Christians that God made us. He is in charge of the biological processes that determine gender, or any one of a million other biological conditions. Isn't that a fair statement? Why then, do some say that God is not in charge of the processes that give way to a homosexual sexual orientation? Is He only in charge of those things that tend to please us or that we view indifferently, such as eye color; is He not in charge of those things that we find to be a displeasure or offensive, such as blindness?

I think it's time for theologians and scientists to sit down over lunch and make out a list of those things, biologically, that God is in charge of, as opposed to those He is not. Folks, use your brains - it has to be that God is in charge of biology AND sexual orientation (of all varieties), or He is not accountable for either. We apply the same truth of the concept of a "slightly pregnant woman" to this issue. There is no middle of the road.

For this and other reasons, the anti-gay folk must use the thoroughly discredited environmental explanations (i.e. bad parenting) that have long been dumped by mainstream psychology.



2) Homosexuality is "unnatural"

Most conservative Christians believe that homosexuality is "unnatural," backing their unsupported view with the Apostle Paul's words to the Roman church found in Rom. 1:26-27. This misunderstood scripture, and a very small handful of others (equally misunderstood), has led ultra-conservative and mainline denominations alike to included statements in their church's governing documents that read something like: while we recognize that the inclination toward homosexuality (i.e. a homosexual sexual orientation) is not a sin, the person who engages in "homosexual behavior" (which is considered to be "contrary to the natural order of things") does, in fact, sin.

Many Christians, however, do not take into account the fact that the Greek words para physin (as found in Rom.1) from which the terms "contrary to nature" "against nature" and "unnatural" are derived, are without moral or ethical weight. They were meant to be understood as "uncommon" "uncharacteristic" or "atypical". We know this to be true because Paul, in Rom. 11, uses the same term (para physin) when referring to God's actions of grafting the wild branch (the gentiles) into the cultivated tree (the Jews). Horticulturalists know that this is backwards if one wants to produce great fruit. Paul tells us that in God's atypical, reverse action He acted "against nature". Dare we call God immoral or unethical? I sure won't! There were other Greek words that Paul could have chosen if he wanted to add that dimension to his discussion of the sexual excesses that ensued in the context of the idolatry that was normative to the pagan, Roman culture. He chose para physin. To Paul, as it should be to us - whether we're gay or straight - IDOLATRY was THE moral issue of Romans, chapter one.

A further argument is the fact that if indeed the Church agrees with science, that a homosexual sexual orientation is naturally occurring, as seen in the assertion of a typical denominational governing document like the one above, then for a gay person to "act" otherwise - that is, anything but gay - is to act "contrary to nature". Oops?! Herein lies the fallacy of those denominations that declare that a homosexual sexual orientation is not sinful, but the expression of it is. Thus, if they are going to argue that homosexuality is "against God's created order of things," they need to use someone else's words besides Paul's to do it.

It's pretty obvious to me that the Church needs to rethink its position.

Added to this is something that we observe in nature. Science has discovered, and documented extensively, that a small percentage of over 450 species of animals display exclusive homosexual behavior when courting, and some in pairing with a life-partner. So, this must mean that we gays (a small percentage of humans) should consider this God's approval that we might act accordingly, right? WRONG! But a simple observation and recognition of the consistency - and at the same time, the marvelous diversity - of God's created world speaks volumes.

Has anybody told you about Clown Fish? We'll leave that discussion to our transgender sisters and brothers.

One more observation: One of the innate qualities that makes one human, one of the traits that sets humankind apart from the rest of God's animal kingdom and places it to the exalted position of "crown of God's creation," is the God-given, human ability to rise above our biology. It is for this reason that God says that we are "made in His image." Every individual is more than the species. Every person is capable of co-creating with God.

John J. McNeill in his book The Church and the Homosexual says: "We do not find it "contrary to nature" that man has taken the hands which biological evolution provided him as grasping instruments and employed them in the ideal creative pursuits of wielding a brush or a pen. Nor do we find it contrary to nature that man has used his mouth with its teeth, tongue and lips, obviously intended by nature for eating, in order to communicate through speech and song his most intimate aspirations. Nor should we find it any less according to nature if a man should use his sexual organs, designed by nature for procreation, in order to give the most intimate expression to his drive for union in love with his fellow man."

McNeill goes on to say that while we are born male and female, biologically speaking, mere "biological givens never determine human behavior as precisely human." In other words, the "plumbing" of individuals need not factor in to the intrinsically human expression of love for one another. For a small constituency of the world's population, homosexuality is as natural and normal in those individuals as heterosexuality is for the vast majority of Earth's children.



3) Homosexual relationships are intrinsically unstable

Among those that are a part of, or support, the so called "ex-gay ministry" phenomenon, are people that purport the notion that "gay relationships" are inherently doomed to failure, causing gay people to live lives that are, at best, unhappy and unfulfilled. Hence, these "ministries" claim to be able to heal the "sexually broken," as they term it, by turning gay people straight.

The very fact that a good many gay people have been, and are doing this very thing - living happy, fulfilling lives with a life-partner, and in numerous cases, children - discredits the negative allegation above. The fact is if just ONE couple were able to do so, one would have to conclude that unsatisfying, unfulfilled relationships cannot be seen as innate to intimate, gay relationships.

Current psychology would suggest that the reason one jumps from relationship to relationship (gay or straight) is because of the inward, un-dealt-with, emotional turmoil of the person or persons entering the relationship. This can be seen when a straight woman, who has been physically or emotionally abused (the "victim"), moves from male abuser to male abuser. We often say of this person: "She has trouble breaking the cycle." Guess what?! Some gay people have trouble breaking the cycle brought about by past emotional trauma too. Furthermore, they need not be any more or less deviate or "broken" than their straight counterparts that move from relationship to relationship, and yet no one has concluded that the female victim described above is "sexually broken."

Perhaps it's time for the gay constituency to start an "ex-straight" ministry? Sound preposterous? Now, apply that to the ex-gay sham and it becomes clear what we gay people have come to know, through experience and reason, about the so called "ex-gay" movement.

For the vast majority of gay people who grew up in closets (a place that breeds fear, dishonesty, and psychological turbulence), and to whom the opportunity was not afforded for the development of such healthy, romantic, same-gender relationships during adolescence (unlike our heterosexual sisters and brothers), it should come as no surprise that the tenor of many of our gay relationships would, at least at first, be equally unhealthy. The closet kills the gay person from the inside out. Those who find it difficult to recover from its injuries will likely carry them into any relationship he or she enters. Once the relationship fails, due to unresolved emotional turmoil, a person will often abandon the relationship, hoping to find the cure, the "answer" in another.

Sound therapeutic methods for healing this kind of grief will never be found in ex-gay ministries (i.e. "praying the gay away"), as this so called "reparative" or "conversion therapy" only infuses more guilt, more shame, more self-loathing, and inflicts more psychological harm into the already despondent, upon realizing that they are not changing. Ask ex-gay survivor Perterson Toscano, a now openly gay man who spent seventeen years in numerous ministries, and over thirty-thousand dollars to find that he had not budged an inch in attempting to shift of his orientation. Ask Mark, a former client of Exodus International who, after "falling off the wagon" while thinking himself healed, slashed his genitals with a knife and poured drain cleaner on the wounds.

While the examples above are extreme, there are thousands upon thousands of ex-gays dropouts who will never again darken the doors of anything having any religious affiliation whatsoever because of the cruelty and harm done to them by people, in the name of an unconditionally loving God, claiming to have the answer.

The only valid remedy is to deal with the psychosomatic consequences of false-guilt and shame, the despair that rules the life of the once closeted or "unacceptable" individual. It is when we, as gay people, begin to embrace the whole of ourselves, and begin applying God's healing balm to our psychological wounds - realizing that God does not create abominations or mistakes - and when we begin experiencing His unconditional love conveyed to us by affirming persons of faith or otherwise, that we can set in motion our journey toward mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Our well-intentioned ex-gay "ministers" only serve to confound, prolong, and in some very unfortunate cases, arrest this process.

Added to this argument is the fact that, due to cultural and religious prejudice, and the climate of hatred displayed in the religious right's "war against homosexuality," we gay people have very few positive role models. And those that we do have are demonized by the Church. Once God's Holy Spirit has diminished the horribly negative social stigma that surrounds us gay and lesbian Christians, more positive gay role models will be free to surface, showing us a much brighter and healthier path to follow. Unfortunately for the moment, mainstream Christianity is working overtime, it would seem, to counter what God wants to do among His gay children in particular, and in his Church in general.

Robert A. Bernstein puts it this way in Straight Parents, Gay Children: Keeping Families Together, "Representatives of the conservative arms of mainstream denominations ...proclaim that they act in the name of a loving God, while in effect [are] facilitating the cruel oppression of a class of their fellow citizens [many of whom are themselves committed church members]. They purport to uphold "family values," but support attitudes that among other things turn parents against offspring...and generally encourage deceit and fear. They decry promiscuity among gays, but pay little attention to similar behavior among heterosexuals, while denying gay couples the formality of the non-gay world's most effective inducement to monogamy - legal sanction of their unions.

The truth remains that despite the fact that there are numerous roadblocks to healthy, long-standing, committed, loving, monogamous gay relationships, they exist, have always existed, and will continue to exist, while still other homosexual liaisons - and heterosexual, for that matter - will form and fall away; instability is intrinsic to neither. Furthermore, both gay and straight relationships depend largely on the health and wholeness of the individuals who enter them.

If you liked this article, please share it. It's easy to do. Give it a try.

Note from Mary: The Google Ads at the top and bottom of these pages are supposed to reflect the content within the website, however they are selected by robots so may actually be contrary to ChristianGays.com beliefs and principles. ChristianGays.com does not necessarily endorse the Advertisers, although I'm sure some of them are very good.