Gays: Natured or Nurtured? Does It Matter?

Sausage and cheese kolaches are a perfect complement to our Sunday morning debating rituals, mainly because they allot me only a small window of interjection time between bites. Someone says, “Barack Obama is going to be a terrible president.” I'm unable to respond to this claim because I'm savoring the warmth and comfort of the sausage. Every new topic seems to blossom at the exact moment of my next bite, so whenever I do eventually find my way into the conversation, I come across as a sage or an ancient oracle instead of soap-box-standing-know-it-all. I prefer it this way.

A man wearing a tan suit with a red, paisley-print tie saunters about the room, poking into various conversations. “I don't care what anyone says. Gays are not born that way,” he whispers over his Styrofoam cup of coffee as the steam from his cup encircles his asymmetrical face. I shift uncomfortably in my seat and, naturally, am trying to ingest the impossible-to-swallow kolache. No one responds to Paisley Man. Everyone, instead, glances sideways and attempts to avoid eye contact with him. When I finally manage to swallow, the topic becomes irrelevant and people are laughing again.

I'm upset because I just missed the opportunity to wow people with my insight, but what bothers me more is that my friends are going to leave this place without giving any consideration to Paisley's statement. I've heard those types of statements all of my life--that gay people aren't born that way and that they choose to be gay. I have subscribed to and accepted this notion for as long as I can remember. And I've never once had a problem with it until now. I suppose it has something to do with the way the steam from Paisley's cup mirrors his swagger across the room.

God places homosexuals, or the effeminate, into the same category as other sinners: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 6:9-10). We're probably not going to get into a debate about whether homosexuality is a sin, and we might all agree that it's something that God doesn't like. But is it possible that gays are born that way?

A few years ago, I was talking to a guy who was telling me about his friend that happens to be gay. He said, “John Doe is just not attracted to women. Is God going to judge him for that?” I didn't have a good answer for him that day because he raised a good point. In support of his theory, I knew for a fact that there were boys out there who were born with less testosterone than other boys, which oftentimes resulted in homosexuality in adulthood. When I thought about this, I became quite troubled because it didn't seem fair that they would be held accountable for being gay, something that was clearly out of their control.

Then I looked more closely at the aforementioned scripture and considered some of the other sins in that same category, such as alcoholism. Babies have the potential to become alcoholics if they are the offspring of an alcoholic, not only because they are in an alcoholic environment, but because they can be predisposed to alcoholism at birth through the blood. So if the baby grows into a young woman who constantly craves beer, is God going to hold her accountable for those desires? Before I answer that, I must first pose the question, “What separates an alcoholic from a person who is clean?” The answer is simple: one drinks, and one does not. The sin is not the craving; the sin is the doing. So the woman would not be held accountable by God unless she actually commits the sin of getting drunk.

Some women have a natural tendency to desire to have relationships with lots and lots of men. They could respond to this predisposition by having sex on a consistent basis, which would be a sin, or they could make a vow to remain pure until marriage. God would never hold them accountable for that desire. Instead, he would reward their purity.

The same principle can be applied to homosexuals. The sin is not the desire to have an intimate relationship with an individual of the same sex; the sin is actually having that intimate relationship.

Some may not support the idea that people can be born gay, but most would agree that everyone has innate characteristics, traits that are not learned from parents. It is important to note how an adopted child oftentimes behaves quite differently than the parents of the home she was raised in. If we can have a genetic predisposition, God is not going to judge us for having that tendency. But more importantly, He isn't going to let us use that fact as a copout, either. Instead, He is going to offer us a way out; it's called being born again. Being born again would be unnecessary if human beings weren't born into sin. Being born again helps us to shed our old habits and develop new, godlier ones.

If I am ever in a situation where someone in a paisley-print tie suggests that gays are not born that way, I can swallow my kolache with ease and tell him that the issue of being born that way is not even the issue and that we don't have to debate about that. Instead of accusing a homosexual of being wrong about his own feelings, we can tell him that he can be born again, which seems like a better approach to me.

Port Arthur Journey

Highway 165 has never been an exciting road. At least in Monroe, though, it has restaurants and life-endangering gas stations on either side. But here in Oberlin, Louisiana, there's no such excitement or threat, just miles of lopsided terrain. To my left, pine trees tower over my Oldsmobile Alero, just to remind me that the right side has nothing but dry dirt, wannabe wheat, and coke cans filled with dirt. The left side is smug with its branches blowing in the wind, a picture of success, contentment, and preservation of the ideal. But I know the truth. Its success was effortless, at least in the eyes of the right side whose cans and twigs are suddenly pressed down by the construction cones. Little girls with bangs should go sit next to the cones and make clover chains. Their classmates measuring the topography underneath the pines across the street would think them strange. "Three inches," one might say. "I wish I would've brought my pink ruler," cries another. But those exclamations are made irrelevant by the fear of the third: "What's Cathy doing by that cone?" Cathy might be too far-gone now; she might even try to have a picnic on concrete. Anyone can wear a beret and a full skirt in an open field with barley and rye, but only Cathy can scrape a poem on the inside of a coke can. Her class will probably be visiting a landfill next, so they won't get to see Highway 12 or the town of Ragley.