Note on Homosexuality, for a Friend Who Asked

It is highly questionable to deny, as many have, that there is no "genetic" component to homosexuality--that this habitude is in all cases purely a choice in response to environmental conditions with no connection to inborn proclivity, a pure product of the will, as if in man there were any such thing.  Those who make this assertion will lose their credibility not only because it is empirically doubtful, but because if they are Jews or Christians there is no dogmatic reason for it.  

We are not, perhaps, looking at something quite as crass as a "gay gene," but we do believe that everyone is born with what the Jews call the yetzer ha-ra, the inclination to sin, and not only that, but we can see in each person, due at least partly to factors over which he has no control, and which can often be seen to run in families or nations, the inclination toward particular sins.  In this we are all together, and it is important for opponents of homosexuality thus to identify with the professed homosexual--not because it is strategically advisable, but because it is true.  

What we say, particularly when he says that because of our sins we have no standing to condemn his condition, is that while agreeing that we are likewise sinners, he cannot claim exemption for his own sin as though it were not what it is.  He cannot tell the man with the tendency toward heterosexual lust, or gluttony, or sloth, or anger, particularly if he is a penitent, that his own peculiar desires, because he found them in himself without looking for them, are natural, and therefore good. With regard to what is in man in his present state, Christians strongly deny identity between the natural and the good.

Professedly Christian religious assemblies have a tendency to err, on one hand, by being of a “welcoming” disposition that condones or even celebrates the abomination, or, on the other, by expressing hatred for homosexuality in a way that also shows hatred for those who are bedeviled by it. Our Lord’s instruction for the log in the eye applies in these latter places, and they will no more show themselves as Christ’s church than the liberal assemblies: they will augment their own hellward tendency toward self-righteousness, dishearten and drive out those among their own children who struggle with these temptations, and offer no real help for those who come searching for it.