God has created you to be heterosexual. Deep inside, He has planted a seed that is meant to be nurtured and fed by a healthy family and cultural environment so that at the right moment in your emotional development heterosexuality will blossom and become a natural part of your self-identity and self-expression.
Unfortunately for some, damage is done to that dormant seed and it fails to germinate. It never gets watered and fed with the elements necessary for a healthy emotional development. For others, the seed or emerging seedling is damaged by abuse. What arises in its place during preadolescence is a false identity - an identity that has emerged to fill the void caused by the failure of the healthy seed to germinate.
The person sets out on their own search for identity, trying to force the completion of their emotional self through willful acts - both social and sexual. The void of sexual self-identity that causes them to fix on their own gender for the hope of their completion is exacerbated when God fails to heal them with the touch of His magic wand (a typical preadolescent expectation). Envy and idolatry erupt from the heart and the child forsakes God and sets out on a trail of tears, (borne on a river of self-pity), to heal him or herself.
If the child has invested a great deal of hope that God will heal them, His seeming indifference is perceived as a lack of love and the child may set out on a course designed to pay God back. The child makes a dramatic, self-destructive plunge into behavior he or she knows God would consider "wicked" in order to cause God to suffer for failing to rescue them (according to their immature picture and timetable of how that must occur). This volatile cocktail of uninitiated cause and willful "sins of response" explodes into anger, rebellion and self-justification.
The "creation account" in Genesis 1 & 2 reveals three intentions that are clearly built into the very design of human beings:
1. There was intention and purpose in creating them male and female because God thinks and acts out of a place of pure wisdom and purpose. In fact, due to His omniscience, He is incapable of doing anything that lacks meaning and purpose. One thing God can never say is, "Oops!"
2. The call to be fruitful and multiply requires heterosexual monogamy; heterosexual, to make babies; monogamy, to avoid the natural consequences to promiscuity and homosexual behavior found in the natural order.
3. The command to reunite what had been separated - for male and female to "become one flesh" again can only be realized in monogamous, heterosexual unions.
4. Scripture condemns every departure from this model, for what it does to society, for what it does to our bodies and for what it does to the image of God in us.
Even if homosexuality was discovered to have a physiological component, the point is moot for several other reasons:
1. Even though alcoholism is believed to have a genetic link, (although the early studies on that have been found to be inconclusive), God still calls us to live sober lives. He clearly labels drunkenness a sin worthy of eternal damnation (Gal 5:19-21). His power is available to us in the areas where we fall short, whether the problem is physiological, emotional or psychological and so the, "I couldn't help it" defense can never be used for sin of any kind.
2. Everyone is born with an inherited propensity to sin. The formative code of the entire human race has this same inbred mutation. We sin as a natural course of being. Yet God expects us to take advantage of His provision to overcome that predilection so as to live holy lives instead of sinful. This is as true of the homosexual inclination as it is of the basic inclination to sin.
3. Even if one cannot accept the first two propositions, it could still be properly argued that genetics and hormones could never force (without recourse) a behavior that God condemns man for acting out. If they could, God would be unjust for condemning mankind for a behavior that could not be helped. If God created some people to be homosexual, He could not judge their behavior to be sinful, which He clearly does throughout Scripture.
"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable." (Lev 18:22)
"God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." (Rom. 1:26-27)
"Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Cor. 6:9-11)
A lot has been made in the press and by gay activist groups that science has proven a genetic or physiological cause for homosexuality. The publicity campaign has been so effective that the average person on the street assumes this is true. However, the fact is that it is not true - that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that homosexuality is caused by such factors. Many scientists have even pointed out that the idea that homosexuality can be caused by such a thing as genetics is a ludicrous proposition to begin with - that it shows a fundamental ignorance as to the part that genetics plays in behavior.
A number of years ago, "fetal brain androgen" studies were said to indicate a physiological component to some sexual identity confusion. However, the studies were few and highly speculative, creating a great deal of unscientific, biased speculation by pro-gay propagandists.
In an article, "Born or Bred?", the February 24, 1992 issue of Newsweek magazine reported more recent studies using the size of the hypothalamus gland as "proof" that homosexuals were born that way. Another study of identical twins supposedly "proved" the same thesis according to pro-gay groups. Fortunately, the Newsweek article fairly reported the insurmountable evidence against these "political" conclusions. Here are some reasons why:
Regarding the genetically identical twin experiment? a study that was reported to have proven genetic causation for homosexuality. In this study, the researchers found that some genetically identical twins were either both gay or both straight. The theory was that this proved a genetic link to sexual identity.
The problem with this theory is that many of the "genetically identical" twins had one who was gay and one who was straight. If genetics were the cause, this outcome would never occur. Newsweek reports, "How could two individuals with identical genetic traits and upbringing wind up with totally different sexual orientation (if sexual orientation is genetically determined)?" Even the researchers admitted, "There must be something in the environment to yield the discordant twins." And so what they actually proved was that genetics could not be the causal factor for homosexual orientation. Newsweek reported: "Instead of proving the genetic argument, it only confirms the obvious: that twins are apt to have the same sort of shaping influences. 'In order for such a study to be at all meaningful, you'd have to look at twins raised apart,' says Anne Fausto Sterling, a developmental biologist at Brown University. 'It's such badly interpreted genetics.'"
Newsweek quoted the response of the dean of American sexologists, John Money (of Johns Hopkins University) to the "discovery" that there are brain differences involved in sexual orientation as: "Of course it is in the brain. The real question is, when did it get there? Was it prenatal, neonatal, during childhood, puberty?"
"Many scientists (says Newsweek) say it's naive to think a single gene could account for so complex a behavior as homosexuality."
Then we had the famous study on the hypothalamus gland. The theory here was that a part of this gland was smaller in size in homosexuals, thus proving a physiological cause to homosexuality. First, you have not addressed the very real question of whether or not it was the homosexual beliefs and behavior that caused the change in the gland. Secondly, there were heterosexuals in the study found with the smaller area in the gland and there were homosexuals in the study with a normal sized gland. Thus the study actually showed that this area of the hypothalamus gland was not a causal factor in homosexual orientation rather than the reverse. And thirdly, another huge procedural problem with the study is that the researcher used AIDS infected cadavers in his research. He used the bodies of men who had died from a disease that ravishes the brain, to study a part of the brain! Newsweek points out, "One of the major criticisms of the study was that AIDS could have affected the brain structure of the homosexual subjects." Newsweek quoted the researcher in the study as admitting, "We can't say on the basis of that (the size difference of the gland in some homosexuals) what makes people gay or straight."
Newsweek goes on to say, "The trickier question is whether things might work the other way around: could sexual orientation affect brain structure? Kenneth Klivington, an assistant to the president of the Salk Institute, points to a body of evidence showing that the brain's neural networks reconfigure themselves in response to certain experiences. One fascinating NIH study found that in people reading Braille after becoming blind, the area of the brain controlling the reading finger grew larger. There are also intriguing conundrums in animal brains. In male songbirds, for example, the brain area associated with mating is not only larger than in the female but varies according to the season.
Says Klivington: 'From the study of animals, we know that circulating sex hormones in the mother can have a profound effect on the organization of the brain of the fetus. Once the individual is born, the story gets more complex because of the interplay between the brain and experience. It's a feedback loop: the brain influences behavior, behavior shapes experience, experience effects the organization of the brain, and so forth.'"
Newsweek quotes the researcher of the hypothalamus study as admitting he knew "regrettably little" about the sex histories, or the presumed orientation of his subjects. "That's a distinct shortcoming of my study," he said. In the article, he also confesses to going into the experiment with the intention to prove that homosexuality is genetically caused. Any research scientist will tell you that going into a study with a pre-intended outcome is the number one cause of inaccurate research.
Newsweek also reveals, "Even within the enlightened ranks of the American Psychoanalytic Association there is still some reluctance to let homosexual analysts practice. As arrested cases themselves, the argument goes, they are ill-equipped to deal with developmental problems. The belief that homosexuality can and should be cured persists in some quarters of the profession."
New York City analyst Charles Socarides says, according to Newsweek, that the only biological evidence is "that we're anatomically made to go in male-female pairs." "Some psychiatrists still see the removal of homosexuality from the official list of emotional disorders as a mistake. It was instead innocuously identified as 'sexual orientation disturbance.'"
E.L. Pattullo, former director of Harvard's Center for Behavioral Sciences, recently pointed out in Commentary magazine that the scientific evidence does not support the claim that sexual orientation is biologically fated and thus entirely impervious to environmental influence." (from Chas Krauthammer commentary in the Honolulu Advertiser (April 1993)?columnist for the New Republic and Time)
Finally, we have the 1993 Hamer et al. "Genetic Link" study, touted by the press as "proof" that homosexuality is genetically caused. It did not prove any such thing. This was an investigation of 40 pairs of homosexual brothers, whose X chromosomes were studied to see if they shared inherited genetic peculiarities that could be attributed to sexual orientation.
In their research article in the July 16, 1993 issue of Science magazine, the researchers admitted that seven of the 40 pairs of homosexual brothers did not co-inherit the variation in the genetic region that supposedly was the locus for the "homosexual gene" found in the other pairs, and that these discordant pairs might be the result of "non-genetic sources of variation in sexual orientation." Neither did they have any control data indicating the presence or absence of the genetic variant in non-homosexual men. At the end of their report, the researchers admitted: ". . . a single genetic locus does not account for all of the observed variability," and that the sibling pairs that did not fit their conclusions might exist because there could be "environmental, experiential and cultural factors that influence the development of male sexual orientation." Hardly "proof" of a genetic cause for homosexuality.
In an accompanying article in the same issue of Science, Robert Pool commented: "The field of behavioral genetics is littered with apparent discoveries that were later called into question or retracted. Over the past few years, several groups of researchers have reported locating genes for various mental illnesses?manic depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism?only to see their evidence evaporate after they assembled more evidence or re-analyzed the original data. 'There's almost no finding that would be convincing by itself in this field,' notes Elliot Gershon, chief of the clinical neurogenetics branch of the National Institute of Mental Health."
Pool goes on to note: "(Researcher) Hamer warns, however, that this one site cannot explain all male homosexuality."
In a letter to the editor in the September 3, 1993 issue of Science magazine, Evan Balaban of Harvard University and Anne Fausto-Sterling of Brown University criticize the weaknesses of the Hamer et al. study, noting the lack of an adequate control group and a logical misassumption of the study: "We wish to emphasize that?correlation does not necessarily indicate causation. A gene affecting sexual orientation in some segment of the male population might do so very indirectly. For instance, any gene that might increase the tendency of brothers to psychologically identify with one another might influence their similarity in such matters as sexual orientation and would be picked up in the present study." In other words, the data collected by the study doesn't even begin to prove the hypothesis that it purports to prove.
Finally, the researchers themselves admit, in a letter of response: "We agree that genetic studies can never, in and of themselves, determine the mechanism by which a locus influences a trait." You certainly didn't hear them saying that before being publicly challenged with the erroneous conclusions that had been publicized about the study.
Richard Dawkins, a geneticist at Oxford University says that homosexuality is not genetic?that genes do not affect behavior.
God creates us with a time-release seed of heterosexual identity. For some, this sexual identity is set askew from its divinely intended mark. Somewhere along the line, the emotional growth stopped and these folks underwent the sexualization of unmet emotional needs, blocking the healthy emergence of their true heterosexuality.
Let's lovingly help them. Let's extend God's grace-filled hand of love to them and show them the way to the Father. He will heal their inner wounds. He will fill in the empty places. He will feed and germinate that dormant seed, and over time, their true heterosexual identity will emerge (provided they are also putting to death the false homosexual identity as the Holy Spirit leads and empowers them).
Are you one of those whose emotional growth and sexual identity has been damaged or has remained unformed? Join the human race! We all have such areas of immaturity, incompletion and corruption. Let's all sit before the Father and receive His plan and His power for our transformation. Let's humble ourselves and do it God's way. Let's make the sacrifices that maturity requires. Let's devote ourselves to the One who died on a Cross for us and decide today that whatever it takes, however long, we will love and serve our Father in heaven before all others - even ourself. +++
