And, entering the debate over Archbishop Alan Harper’s comment that if science can prove homosexuality to be “natural” then the Church may need to reconsider its approach to the issue, Bishop [Harold] Miller explained why he disagreed.
“If you say that because you are born with a certain inclination then it is God-given and you should be free to follow that through in your life, it doesn’t make any logical sense whatever,” he said.
“You would then have to say that there are many different inclinations with which people are born ”” even if it is true that this is an inherent thing ”” and which people spend their lifetime trying to subdue.
“The fact that you are born with it doesn’t make any moral judgement on the inclination. People fight to subdue inherently bad tempers, depressive streaks or lots of sexual inclinations. Some inclinations are good, some are not good and some are mixed.”
Bishop Miller warned that changing positions on homosexuality would open up other areas of debate, some of which may be even more divisive.
“I stood at the front gate of a Cathedral in America last month and read a notice saying ‘Anybody going on the LGBT parade come to the Cathedral first and have your relationship blessed by the bishop’.
“There’s no doubt about it ”” it’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered for a start ”” so the thing has widened already and you have to ask: what does it mean for someone who’s born bisexual to follow their inclination or inclinations?”
Read the whole interview and there is an additional article about the interview here.
There is a staunch homosexual rights guy, Peter Tatchell, who has a new essay: [url=http://www.petertatchell.net/gay gene/homosexualityisntnatural.htm ]Homosexuality isn’t natural. Biology is not destiny. One-sided genetic explanations of homosexuality are crude, simplistic and doomed to failure
[/url]
I also wrote the following on Ruth Gledhill’s blog but cross posted it on Sanctifusions [url=http://sanctifusion.blogspot.com/2008/08/western-mythology-part-four.html ]discussion[/url] of the gay gene business:
Francis Collins, the famous genetic scientist puts the percentage of innate nature of homosexuality of around 20% or less. The inheritability of alcoholism is undoubtedly much higher.
The following quote from Scientific American about alcoholism would be extremely politically incorrect if said about homosexuality:
[blockquote]
“Genetics is never destiny, however. Genes may interact with specific toxic environments, such as abuse or neglect, to result in problems for some gene carriers but not for others. And if half of alcoholism risk is heritable, the other half must derive from other sources. NOBODY GETS TO BE ALCOHOL-DEPENDENT WITHOUT MAKING SOME POOR CHOICES, but clearly some people are more sensitive to alcohol than others in the same set of circumstances, and scientists are working to identify the sources of that vulnerability.”
[/blockquote]
The inclusionists are shown to be hypocritical until they start a letter writing campaign against Scientific American, labeling the author of the article as “dipso-phobe.” (I find the term dipso-phobe very droll, if I do say so myself.) God doesn’t make mistakes! Full inclusion! What’s next? Homosexual alcoholic bishops? (Don’t answer that.)
There was a statistic that 70% of women who, in their late teens/early twenties, identified themselves as lesbian, when they hit their thirties, then identified themselves as heterosexual. At which point were they lying about themselves?
We are sexually differentiated beings because, as a species, we reproduce sexually; there is an abundance of species the reproduce asexually and lack sexual differentiation. We are born sexual beings; what we do with our sexuality is decided at the cortical level. Mature adults generally take responsibility for their own actions.
“… if science can prove homosexuality to be “natural” then the Church may need to reconsider its approach to the issue …” How refreshing that this bishop has identified the crude philosophical error involved. He at least knows a good argument from a bad one.
Homosexuality is a serious defect, a serious handicap, a radical abnormality. What does it take to see something as obvious as this? In this sense, it is no different from an other inherited or in utero malfunction. Evolution allows every conceivable misstep because one of them might turn out to be a boost to survival in an altered environment. Missteps remain missteps nevertheless, and homosexuality is a disorder for which evolution patently can have no use. Homosexuality is “natural” in the sense that it occurs without our intervention, but so are cystic fibrosis and cerebral palsy. Shall we do the liberal thing and called them all “differently abled” in the pusillanimous jargon of the left? Larry