Headings
Where the Nature v/s Nurture Argument Stands
How does homosexuality fare in the nature vs. nurture argument, that is, could it be that environmental factors lead to it, or is it determined in the DNA. We can be fairly certain that a “homosexuality gene” does not exist because we do not see any familial inheritance patterns in the manner of the patterns that we see in known genetic conditions. However the caveat to this question is that even should it be the case that genetics is involved, this would not be a reason to maintain the normalcy of this condition, just as we do not genetically inherited conditions as normal, apart from innocuous variations in appearance that help us differentiate between individuals in the first place.
Homosexuality is definitely seen in the animal kingdom where its cause is similarly not understood, and even its purpose, my feeling from what I have read about it is that in cases it might serve a social purpose, and in many cases these might also be bisexual animals. There is a lot of research on this behaviour, but I have not made any sysstematic study of it at this point.
Anecdotally it is not difficult to come across several cases where there has been family breakdown or abuse in the upbringing, however once again, this is not a subject that is easily documented and reearched due to it’s sensitive and politically charged nature.
“But they’re Not hurting Anyone”?
The problem with the most popular “it’s not hurting anyone” argument is that such an argument would be equally applicable to any form of sexual deviancy in the which the harm is invisible: a secret love affair, secret visits to the brothel, polygamous/ polyamorous relationship, “open relationships”, bestiality- “surely it’s bettern than eating them!”. We can show how such “invisible harm” can be extended to more subtle forms of deviations from the norm like contraception and abortion, but that’s in the articles of those names.
Now in any scenario involving only one person, the potential for manipulation is minimal, since a person is likey to look out for their own interests, but marriage involves two persons as a mininum and many more if there are also children and further we must no fail to consider the admittedly more secondary yet not insignificant rights of grandparents. Any attempted legal definition of marriage must take due account of attempting to safeguard the the interests of all possible persons involved, because that is the point of having legal definitions. The modern decular definitions provide no more than financial protections in the case of a break up of the marriage.
For example, what protects the children against the possibility that they would have preferred a normal family? What protects the child against the possibility that their 18 or 30 year-old self would not have wanted the sex-change operatoin that their 7 or 10 or 12 year old self sonsented to? What is the protection against one of the spouses feelin presured into “consenting” to an open relationship for fear of being abandoned? What protects one of the spouses from “consenting” to not having children through being similarly pressured? What protects that 50 year old homosexual against being refused conversion therapy that might hve benefitted their 16 year old self?
When a man marries a woman, there are a number of implied promises of the institution. One of these implied promises is commitment, the other is that the women’s body will realize its reproductive potential. Now this might sound alarming “in this day and age”, however it is not unreasonable to state that even taken out of any religious context, the default desire for amy woman is to bear children and that of a man is to be a father and patriarch. A Christian marriage includes “freely accepting children” literally as part of the marriage vows.
The problem is immediately apparent: Human beings are poor judges of what does and what does not caue harm, and this is the reason rates of depression are on the rise worldwide and especially so in Western cultures where sexual deviations are increasingly acceptable. What’s more, it is also certain that humans in power are going to always be very adept at manipulating the boundaries of what consitutes “hurt” so as to benefit themselves.
This is why the church teaching does not merely condemn homosexual relationships, it also condemns divorce, live-in relationships, and contraception. No homosexual should feel singled out by the Church’s teaching, rather the latter teachings fall foul probably of a larger mass of humanity than those that are at rights with it. That’s hardly what “singling out” implies.
In fact if happiness indicators can be taken as a measure of whether these conditions are hurtful or not then it is quite simple to make the case for the injury cause by them to those involved. Those with LGBT and related conditions have vastly higher rates of suicide an depression than the general population. The usual pushback against making an argument based on such statistics, is that it is the social stigma and unacceptability of these conditions that are the reason for the stress that they cause. However this is begging the question, and furthermore large parts of the developed world are quite accepting on these issues anyway.
Sexual Complementarity in Traditional Family
There is a certain mystery of the complementarity of the sexes, from which it can be said that every rightly ordered human virtue is derived. The development of a virtuous upbringing begins with the experience of a child of the tenderness of a mother, beginning right with the first suckle at the breast, and the discipline of a father. From these experiences are derived every rightly ordered relationship in future life.
One might say that the attitude of chivalry toward all women which supercedes any sexual urges engendered by the ferocious love he will feel for his tender mother, and the attitude of justice to his brothers, which supercedes any competitive instincts, only from the fierce loyalty to his father.
Sexual Abstinence in a Christian Marriage
The joys of the Kingdom far outweigh the pains of privations involved along the road, like that of sex. Like refugees making the perilous journey across the sea escaping the terrible war in Syria, having given up their life-savings for the chance at life because the option for them is unthinkable. Life without sex is not really as unthinkable an option as it might sometimes seen and especially when put in the context of the spectrum of suffering. Like the Little Mermaid, it would be better to have no tongue, rather than to have a tongue and no hope.
Spiritually speaking, everyone bears their individual cross, so do those who are straight but had terrible upbringings or been exposed to strife and/or deprivation. So if one is indeed born with this condition as a birth defect through no fault of their own, one is nonetheless called to battle against it rather than accept it, which is what one would do with any other defect.
Indissolubility of Marriage
There is nothing in a religious Marriage ceremony that speaks of alimony, and the reason is simple, there is nothing in it that provides for divorce, hence the words “till death do us part”, as a gentle reminder to the couple, five words that have never been heard on this Earth, if they were not quoted in Christianity. Marriage is either forever, or else is isn’t at all. An atheist marriage IS a pre-nuptial contract, in the secular sense of the word. The only implication of the piece of paper is the various legal implications of protecting one partner from the other, and the children from both.
Is Lust Necessary for Love?
What is it that prevents two men from truly loving each without having sex? In Christian terms, abstinence from sex can be as much an expression of love as performance of it, or even greater. The sexual act is only proper to a loving relationship if it is rightly ordered to it because any act is capable of being harmful if disordered. If sex were truly indispensible to love, then one could never love anyone other than one’s spouse, even one’s parents, children, siblings, relatives and friends. And yet people will give their lives up for those they have never had sex with. Consider how persons give their lives up for others in the army or in various other rescue missions in the services. It is certainly a lie that sex is indispensible for a loving relationship, it is ceratinly also true that disordered perception and pursuit of sex is not only injurious to a relationship but can be disastrously ruinous to one’s mental health and it is certainly also true that voluntarily abstinence is not necessarily harmful to love.
Man is not defined by his physical desires, rather more often than not he is defined by his struggles and battles with them. Now in the case of love and lusr, while love means being ready to do anything for the other, lust is a physical desire and it is wanting the other for one’s sexual gratification. Thus lust in and of itself can have no place in a loving relationship. My dad once explained it to me thus: “If it is only for the object, then it would also be OK with any other object”. A man is not defined by his inclinations and desires. That is why it is condescending to tell a homosexual that it is OK for him to give in to his desires and that he cannot possibly control them.
In most relatonships lust can be disguised because it is tempered by elements of love that are also present. It is alwasy difficult to speak objectively of sexual matters, but I believe it might be agreed that even when one believes that pure lust has its place in a loving act, on the contrary the the lust is put in its place by the love in that act. In the final analysis, it is the love makes an act which seems like no more than a satisfaction of the lust meaningful, because it brings a satisfaction of love primarily. In other words, it is love that gains expression in the sexual act. However the point we are making here is that sex could not possibly be the only means for the expression of love and its satisfaction, as we have shown earlier.
What if they just stay comitted and not have children either?
Choosing a lifestyle that is representative of the injustices is an unwitting support to those injustices, in the same manner that pracititioners of inherently violent creeds in some western countries are implicitly lending support for practitioners in other countries where there are no restrictions to its violent practise through advertisement, normalisation, propagation and so on. Probably the most damaging effect of aquiescing to homosexual unions is the resulting movement to the legal redefinition of marriage, which heretofore had been defined as between a man and a woman. Now it is seemingly whatever two entities turn up at the registry office, because there are apparently 62 genders. What exactly would be the reason that a homosexual couple could not remain together and not have to amend the definition of marriage, because the law of the land if I understand it corectly grants equal rights to co-habiting couples anyway. But with changing the definition of marriage has enabled and opened the door for all the deviancies that we mentioned before. How so? If marriage as between a reproducing committed couple is no longer the basic unit for society and recognised as such then naturally it opens the door to all these other options for “basic units”, and essentially, there is no such thing as a standard basic family unit.
Real concerns regarding “Gay Subculture”
It is worth aquainting oneself to the darker side of the homosexual lifestyle and this can be seen in material written by gay persons themselves, examples of such recent articles: https://www.josephnicolosi.com/collection/why-reveal-the-dark-side and here: https://www.josephnicolosi.com/collection/why-reveal-the-dark-side.
I will write a synopsis of this issue in due course.
LGBTQIA+ indicates the arbitrariness of choice
Sexual discernment in LGBTQIA+ is fluid, which itself points to arbitrariness which too is fluid. Indeed aspects like fluidity and concurrence (simultaneous occurence) in the orientations negate the possibility of genetic determination which would in contrast imply their fixedness. For example if it were to be admitted that homosexuals find it simply impossible to resist the attraction of the same sex as opposed to that of the opposite sex, then is that not negated by the presence of bisexuals for which it is indeed possible? That is to say, a bisexual person is able to resist the temptation of the same sex, at least for the time that they are with the opposite sex. Surely also a bisexual person in order to live in accordance with the Biblical teaching could limit themselves to the opposite sex without this constituting an unreasonable sacrifice even by atheistic standards. The locus in the brain, if indeed there is one, that makes on either hetero or bisexual could not possibly be a one-say switch (or mechanism) in the some creatures and a two-way switch in others if indeed it is the same switch or mechanism. The same goes for gender, there are those in the LGBTQIA+ community who are quite comfortable with admitting that they are “gender fluid”. If the thing that detemines sex is fixed by the brain then it cannot be a th ing that also has the aability to become unfixed in some but not in otherse, if it si the same mechanism. And when the gender changes does the sexual orientation change with it? To spell it out anyway, if a person feels like a man on a different day and a woman on the next, then is this a person who’s orientations correspondingly also change, or if not then do they switch to not being homosexual anymore when the change to the opposite gender of their partners (if the “sponataneous” change in gender is indeed to be taken seriously). We are struggling to keep up at this point, are we not?
The point is that it is overly simplistic to try and make a case for the defense of an idealized comitted homosexual relationship if that which the argument is being made is not strictly representative of the group that is being argued for in the first place, and further there is good reason to conclude that overt harm can be caused by the practise.
The Bible, on Homosexuality
“No practicing homosexual …will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven”, blatantly flouted by the Church of England among many others, who actually have gay priests and Bishops. So this poor guy, whose not inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven, is teaching his flock how to go to Heaven?
Leviticus 18:22 “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
Romans 1:26-28 ESV “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”
Also importantly St Paul says categorically that there is no inheritance for ‘practising homosexuals and fornicators”. This certainly applies to pre-marital sex, and could just as easily apply to contraceptors and masturbators even:
1 Cor 6:9,10 “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”
1 Cor.6:9
for example 2 Cor 1:9 NRSV “updated edition” (I don’t have this) waters down the homosexual part. My NRSV edition uses “sodomites”, which is at least accurate. Arsenokoitai is arsenos= males, koitai is sex, same word from which we get coitus, so its for male male sex, a word Paul uses only once. ESC-CE is pretty clear and uses “males who practise homosexuality”.
So you have Pornoi (fornication, any non-marital/illicit sex), eidolatrai- eidolos+ latria= idol worshippers, moichoi-adulterers, similar meaning to pornoi imo, probably prim. word for paramour, 3occ. (Heb.13:4; Luk.18:11); malakoi- “softies/effeminate”, referring to the practice of using boy prostitutes by Romans were using for their pedophilia, 3occ. (Mt.11:8, Lk.7:25, ) and the softness referring to the passivity, arsenikoitai, kleptai (like kleptomaniac), pleonektai (coveters, 5occ.), methysoi (drunkards), Lordoroi (verbal abusers), harpages (swindlers) will no inherit the Kingdom of God
1 Tim 1 9-11 “This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave-traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.”
Leviticus 20:13 ESV “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them”
Romans 1:32 ESV “Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
Genesis 19:1-38 ESV “The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said, “My lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the town square.” But he pressed them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.”
Jude 1:7 ESV “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.”
1 Kings 14:24 ESV “And there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.”
Judges 19:22 ESV “As they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on the door. And they said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, that we may know him.”
Using Classical Arguments
There is no a priori argument for things like “natural law” in nature, because scientifically everything is evolution.
Evolution is purposeless, even survival is not the purpose, because you can ask “what’s the purpose of survival of the fittest?” and the purpose is the “survival of the species”, really. If the species is fit then it does not go extinct.
But what’s the point of the preservation of species? Well its the preservation of life. It seems like life on earth as a whole, and as a “super-organism” is attempting to avoid reverting to the non-life it came from.
Seemingly running parallel to this there is a tendency to rationality, because if nothing more than life was the point, then we could have just had bacteria. But then it could be argued that rational life is just an alternate pathway to preserving life as such.
So where does individual teleology come in? Individuals just blip in and out of existence like the little baby turtles on the beach getting picked up by seagulls, or the fish in a school getting picked by orcas and shark and so on.
It seems individual teleology is subservient to the overall preservation of the super-organism, like the little birds that go to make up a flock or the locusts in a swarm or the bees of a hive.
So if you say to an atheist “everything has a purpose, a human has the purpose of reproduction” they’re gonna be like “well, we’re not interested in increasing the world’s population through reproduction”, you know.
Then you might try to say “well if a thing that used for a certain is used for another thing instead, it can lead to emotional harm”, that’s potentially true, but how’re you supposed to prove something as subjective as emotions? they’re just going to reply “well, maybe we’re wired differently, now what?”
However if you did make a religious argument then you could say “well, you know, you’re not just a wheel in the evolutionary cog, in fact the you are the reason for evolution, rather than the other way round. God created evolution so that it could get to you, its not that he created you do that evolution could survive and continue to evolve.
But then they can still say, well that’s fine, but that still doesn’t mean that there’s a specific problem with homosexual sex, just because it doesn’t make babies, we’re still expressing love, love for creation, whatever.
Then you would either have to argue from St Paul and the Old Testament, or if they tried to wriggle out of that then add in the argument from silence too- how come there aren’t any model homosexual relationships in the Bible, right down to Greek and Roman times even when it was acceptable in those societies.
So in summary you’re down to two arguments: the religious argument, which the non religious will not buy, and the argument from harm, which is my article.
A Teleology Argument?
One way of argumentation that has been used in the discussion is an old Aristotelian argument, which is from teleology. It’s also one of Thomas Aquinas’ 5 proofs for God, the argument that everthing seems to have some goal to which it is directed to, so how can that be the case if no one directed it in the first place. Extending that argument to the case of homosexuality, we see that man is directed to a specific end of reproduction and family life, so homosexuality seems a violation or at least an absence of that teleology ascribed to us by nature.
I don’t believe that this of argument works very well. It sounds patronising and nobody is convinced by it except if you believe in God in the first place, in which case you don’t need the “chair” argument anyway (some use a “the chair of for sitting, isn’t it?” type prop). I don’t see teleology as an a priori argument, not with the state of modern science. I can easily ask “well what’s the teleology of the electron field” or of gravity, or of light…there’s no obvious answers here. it would work at the time of Aristotle and Aquinas when they didn’t even have a magnifying glass, leave alone a microscope-or telescope, they didn’t have a periodic table, there is no clarity about it the sky a dome, is there’s only one solar system and nothing else, or only one galaxy even at the time of Newton etc etc A seed grows into a plant sure, but then it just becomes fertilizer, enters the carbon cycle, all living things are part of the carbon cycle, so where’s the teleology. If you try to say “you’re body is meant to reproduce because obviously you have there genitals etc”, you can argue well even people who get married often don’t have children, so then what. There’s over-population anyway, there’s not enough food etc etc. (not that I necessarily believe that). Many animals are not able to break free from their instincts, of hierarchy of the herd and so on. But humans can. Animals end is to be one with nature, but humans make nature work for them and manipulate it. Animals get evolved by nature, but humans have started evolving themselves. the main a priori teleology argument is that if you do something that youre body was not designed for then it is likely to have adverse health and mental effects. If the person is willing to take that risk then it would be up to them. Like contraception can lead to ovarian and breast cancer, same as the risks of not having a baby and not breast feeding, DVT, migraines, and other things, and the mental health associations are all there. That’s because you biology is geared for something else than what you’re doing to it. It’s a sort of healthcare argument. Like you should exercise, not just watch tv or you’ll get a heart attack.
In science there’s no purpose to life. At the most we are part of some macro-organism that is aiming to keep itself alive through the living and dying of its members, just like our own body cells and blood cells live and die inside us. There is no importance of the individual in science. The individual is just the place where quantum fields meet in a certain manner. Further scientifically how can you prove that human dignity is greater than animal dignity just because we are rational? So if we’re making a teleological argument then it can be argued that eating animals violates their teleology and so on.
Appendix: Should one tell one’s partner that one is HIV positive?:
If you read the leaflet, it says you shouldn’t feel forced to tell your partner you’re HIV positive, if you’re indulging in low-risk activities like kissing and sex with a condom. It’s a difficult question, I feel, and the situation is different depending on whether you’re married or not. Surely, Marriage should be based on trust. But non-commital sex, on the other hand, is mistrustful anyway.http://www.ippf.org/sites/default/files/healthy_happy_hot.pdf
So if you’re partner does not trust you enough to marry him, though you might in some cases even have his baby, then why does he expect you to tell him your deepest secrets? When you have casual sex, you risk HIV and STI anyway. Why would you trust anyone? On the other hand, if an atheist’s sanity depends on getting some decent sex, say they risk becoming suicidally lonely if the partner splits up with them over the issue. Then is a small risk of HIV not acceptable for the sake of “love”?
Truth is I’m not sure what’s the right answer. But I think HIV victims mental state should be also considered. Let me put it like this: I find less justice in condemning an AIDS patient to loneliness, than in subjecting the community to the risk of infection, albeit small…for was that very community not to blame for that person’s condition in the first place? Why should only the patient be punished?
So this is the equation:
Condition 1: no legislation against HIV transmission through wilful non-disclosure. Consequence for the larger community- no free sex. Consequence for HIV patient-sex.
Condition 2: legislation against HIV transmission through wilful non-disclosure. Consequence for he HIV sufferer- no sex. Consequence for the larger community- free sex.
Why choose conditions two over one, when it victimises the patient?
Answer this perhaps: what if you had multiple partners and were high risk for HIV. But you don’t bother checking, because obviously, you’d rather not know. You then infect a partner. Still culpable homicide?
That’s why proper justice only gets done in Heaven. And believe me, they’ll all be culpable.
HIV or not, all fornicators will be guilty of grave sin.