What’s the origin of homosexuality?
I dunno.
I suspect, in a species as highly cognitive as homo sapiens, that homosexuality has an origin that is significantly cognitive. That is: Though few individuals may have a moment where they deliberately choose to be homosexual, most find themselves faced with homosexual temptations that they indulge over the course of time and that result in a pattern of temptations toward their own sex.
If the researches of some psychological professionals are a guide, such temptations may be especially strong among individuals who fail, for whatever reason, to form a strong, healthy relationship with their parents–and particular with their fathers (this is true regardless of whether it is male or female homosexuality).
Though I recognize that humanity is a highly cognitive species with a sexuality that is significantly susceptible to cognitive training, I can’t rule out that there are other factors involved in the genesis of homosexual temptations. There may be a genetic or hormonal component that is independent of the environment in which an individual is raised.
Suppose there is.
Suppose that researchers one day produce significant evidence that there is a specific gene or combination of genes that inclines a child toward homosexual temptations. Alternately, suppose that they find evidence that a specific combination of hormones at a particular stage of gestation that affects a child’s later sexual orientation.
What should happen in such a situation?
Many parents would choose, given the right resources, to correct the situation. They would ask that their unborn child be given genetic or hormonal therapy to correct the problem so that their child would experience only the ordinary sexual temptations that affect normal people and thus not be faced with homosexual temptations.
But suppose that such genetic or hormonal therapy is not available.
What would parents do? Some might willingly shoulder the burden of raising a child who will likely have homosexual temptations. But some may not. Some parents might shy away from this burden and choose, instead, to abort the child they have conceived.
THAT WOULD BE MURDER.
I’m sorry, but one cannot kill someone–before or after their emergence from the womb–on the grounds that they have a particular sexual orientation.
Do you support laws against murder?
YOU SHOULD.
And I ask you to join me in supporting a Maine bill that would prevent parents from aborting their children should future science be able to show that their children may have a predisposition toward homosexual temptations.
No man is the sum of his temptations. Nor is any woman the sum of hers.
ALL individuals are human beings who deserve respect and compassion, regardless of what their particular temptations may be.
If science can help allieviate some of these temptations, it is a cause for rejoicing. But whether science can or cannot do this, nobody may be murdered to prevent the arrival of an individual because of the temptations he may face.
Conscientious Christians should therefore support the current Maine bill against aborting babies that might one day be shown to have a predisposition to homosexual tempations.
Hi Jimmy!
I agree with you inasmuch as I highly doubt that there exists a “gay gene.” Of course I also believe that the psychological models of homosexuality leave much to be desired. Let us, for the moment, consider some of the other ramifications of your supposition that homosexuality has a biological genesis and that it is something that is able to be objectively assessed, even in utero.
Isn’t a law that specifically protects homosexuals and not the population at large a “special right?” Wouldn’t such a law make a mockery of the 14th Amendment? Would we still, merely on the basis of an individual’s homosexuality, be justified in not supporting other “special rights” for this category of people? Once we’ve determined, as a matter of legislative fact, that homosexuality is genetic what basis do we have for denying housing, employment, public accommodations or even education in a Catholic school?
As far as Representative Duprey is concerned, apparently not. When it turns to questions such as the one I raise he says “I think everybody should be treated equally, not one person at a higher level than another.” He even voices support for the ex-gay movement which bases its existence upon a psychological model of homosexuality. It is things like this that leave me to believe that his proposal of this bill is disingenuous at best.
On its own merits, I suppose the bill is a good thing as a means to an end but that is because abortion is murder. Abortion does not become especially evil simply because the fetus might grow up to be gay. Anyone who really believes that this bill is more about gay rights than it is about abortion is kidding themselves.
Maybe this is one way to begin the “de-legalization” of abortion. Now we need to find the NEXT class of specially protected individuals.
I vote for people with Down Syndrome. Not only is in-utero genetic testing regularly performed for Down Syndrome, it is often for the specific purpose of identifying and KILLING these people in the womb. My wife has worked a great deal with Down patients and they are HUMAN BEINGS.
God help us to end this in our lifetimes, and forgive our nation for this slaughter.
I’m in favor of any law that limits abortion. But this sounds rather inconsistent. If the baby is shown to have the so-called “gay gene”, then the baby is protected from abortion — but otherwise the law says that abortion is just fine?
By the way, Rush Limbaugh has talked about this bill on his radio show. He said a while back that if a “gay gene” is ever identified, you’ll immediately see gay activists switch to the pro-life side, at least where babies with the gay gene are concerned. He sees this bill as a fulfillment of his prediction.
I haven’t read the text of the bill so my support for it is of a generic nature, but I would imagine that the bill is framed such that one cannot kill the baby *regardless* of what the genetic testing may show (i.e., whether it has genes that would foster homosexual temptations or not).
If it prohibits axing babies *because* they’re heterosexual just as much as axing babies *because* they may have homosexual temptations then the bill does not favor one class above the other in principle, though one class will benefit from it more since few parents are likely to want to abort kinds *because* they’re straight.
I’m generally opposed to special privileges legislation but given a choice between saving no babies and saving some babies, my instinct is to take the latter option. I’d like to save ALL babies, but until that becomes possible, I’m interested in offering what protections can be gained.
Indeed, for it to be possible to save all babies it will be necessary to get people to think through the abortion issue more thoroughly. Bills like this one, even though they would save no babies in the here and now, would facilitate that.
How or whether such legislation can be squared with the Fourteenth Amendment, I’ll have to think about, though if framed as above (i.e., you can’t kill the kid regardless of what the genetic or other test says) then it may avoid violating the equal protection clause since both kids with and kids without the genes for homosexual temptations would be protected.
Hi Jimmy!
Here is the text of the bill. It is one that appears to define sexual orientation as a protected category. Though it doesn’t refer specifically to homosexuals, I note that the people of Maine have already twice rejected adding sexual orientation to their list of protected groups.
In case people did not realize it, there are gay and lesbian folks who are not just pro-life, but rather passionately so. It’s not the ersatz orthodoxy of the activist establishment, but I just thought people should avoid making overly sweeping assumptions.
And the remote-father hypothesis of the etiology of homosexuality has had a lot of holes shot in it over the years; it’s gotten pretty creaky as the decades have rolled on (remember, Freud helped popularize it; that should be fair warning about it veracity). If there is anything to the theory qua theory, it is more likely that the causal pattern is reversed: that is, certain fathers distance themselves from children they consciously or subsciously perceive to be non-conforming to cultural gender norms. T(hat includes well-intentioned fathers who try to “toughen-up” their boys they fear are on the road to sissyhood, which can backfire very badly.)
I am all in favor of adding any children with developmental and physical debilities.
The bottom line: the treatment of no person should depend upon whether and to what degree they are valued (or devalued) by others. All of us are prone to sin against others in this way, btw; the lure of utilitarianism runs deeply in the human psyche. And utilitarianism is a profound enemy of human dignity.
I wish it was just that clear cut. I would want to support such a measure, but am fearful of its special protections. I’d argue that a Christian would actually support broadening the language of the bill as far as possible.
Tim’s is, I think, a good suggestion. But there’s that nagging feeling at the back of my mind that something is wrong here. In particular, I think it comes dangerously close to effectively erroding the place of free will.
…like many here…I’d feel morally obligated…but I also feel…well…used.
I hear what you’re saying Jimmy. I lean your way too. Here are some interesting scenarios to think through (not sure which way they cumlatively lead):
1. If the bill passed, I’d assume some pro-abortion group (who wasn’t also pro-gay) would challenge it. I wonder what kind of impact the ensuring court cases would have on allowing other abortion limitations? It could be good (this law is OK, opening the door for others). It could be bad (the right to abortion is sacred).
2. If the bill passed, what if no pro-abortion group challenged the bill? What impact would that have on proposing other legislation (disability testing of fetuses?)?
3. If the bill didn’t pass and a gay gene was found, would (as it seems Limbaugh has suggested) having the gay community forced to choose between being pro-abortion and pro-gay possibly create a new friend in the overall abortion fight?
4. What if it did pass, the courts say it’s allowed, and all types of disabilities get added to the list of protected fetuses. Would we loose some friends in the abortion fight (the disability groups)?
5. What if the bill passing is the beginning of the slippery slope to showing the American public that we can’t discriminate against fetuses because they are “inconvenient” and we’re finally able to overturn Roe v. Wade?
6. What if the bill passing had no other implications (perhaps because we never find the gene) but advancing the pro-gay legislation and court cases allowing for gay “marriage” and hate-speach laws? Maybe any challenges to the law do nothing but “force” the courts to call the gay lifestyle “sacred”?
Lots of question marks here. It gives me pause for sure, but I think I still lean the same way Jimmy does: stop what we can now. Speculative logic often finds a way to fall flat on it’s face. However, it still gives me pause.
From a quick reading of the bill, it seems that it would disallow any abortion after testing for any ‘homosexual gene.’ I would assume that this would be overturned in our crazy court system (until the EVIL decision goes away), but it may bring one more liberal-tending group over to the pro-life cause (what would a bill that disallows abortion after discovery of gender do?)
I’m following this thread with interest, for multiple reasons: I’m a new law professor, I teach Constitutional Law, I have recently returned to full communion with the Catholic Church, and I have profited immeasurably from Mr. Akin’s books and website. There’s much one could say, so here are some preliminary remarks:
Consider why any orthodox Christian (and, a fortiori, a Catholic) abhors abortion and the judicial opinions that elevate to Constitutional status the “right” to obtain one: the “right” effectively withdraws an entire class of human beings from the protection of the homicide laws. That is, human beings between the age of conception and 9 months (not just to viability, as is commonly thought) can be killed without any of the (extremely limited) justifications or excuses that would support killing other human beings (such as self-defense). Now imagine a law that purports to “re-extend” the law’s protections to some subset of that class, whether to females or to asians or, as this law, to “projected homosexuals.” (I don’t see how to read the bill as protecting both projected homosexuals and heterosexuals; look at the title of the Act, for instance). We, as Christians, are asked to support such a law both on moral grounds (it will prevent some murders) and on pragmatic grounds (it is a stealth strike against abortion rights generally).
As to the moral grounds, assuming that the law could be upheld by a court (which I seriously doubt, given the Roe-Casey-Stenberg line of cases), it is true that it would prevent some murders (how many, it’s difficult to tell; possibly none). But at what cost to the law itself? It seems to me that we would have inserted into the law a disturbing premise: namely, that the lives of projected homosexual fetuses are worth more than the lives of projected heterosexual fetuses. And how much more? The projected homosexual child deserves life; the projected heterosexual child may be killed for any reason at all. Perhaps we, as Christians, should support this measure, but I think even the possibility that the law advances such a premise should give us pause.
Are there other possible premises for the law? Maybe. The proponent of the law likely thinks that the projected homosexual child is more vulnerable to abortion than the projected heterosexual child. If so, that would need to be demonstrated (and, if the law were challenged in court, that demonstration would be crucial). But even if we could establish that empirical premise, we are still left with a law that responds to one perceived vulnerability (projected homosexuality) with a protection from killing, while leaving all other human fetuses subject to killing for any reason at all. Again, is that the kind of legal premise Christians want to support?
An analogy occurred to me that might answer my hesitations. If one were able to save some but not all inmates of a Nazi death camp from extermination, would one not have the moral obligation to support that limited measure, while simultaneously grieving over the many that one could not save? Again, maybe. But by participating in saving some of the inmates, has one possibly accepted two disturbing propositions: (1) that the ones saved were more valuable that the ones lost (perhaps not, but it’s a possibility; it may depend on the criteria for choosing those who were to be saved), and (2) that the overall mission of the death camps is legitimate?
Again, my hesitations might be overwrought or just wrong, and it may be true that a Christian ought to support this law on limited, prudential grounds. As a Con Law teacher, however, I must say that the law would have virtually no chance of being upheld by a court that was trying to be faithful to the Roe-Casey-Stenberg precedents (as well as the Equal Protection Clause, although one might make a sound legal argument that it does not apply here at all). Does this independently undermine the pragmatic reasons for supporting the measure?
I look forward to your thoughts.
Hi Guys!
It’s interesting to note that gays becoming suddenly pro-life is not the only realignment that’s going on here, as some on this board seem to be beginning to question their reflexive support of whatever pro-life legislation is suggested.
I don’t think it is a questioning of the reflexive support; I think it is more a questioning of the motive behind the law. I personally feel compelled to support this. I think everyone who’s commented feels the same. The worry comes from whether we would be supporting a de facto difference in value of human life. We could also be supporting a de facto (and in my uneducated opinion flawed) belief that being homosexual springs nearly solely from genetics.
India has laws to prevent abortion of girls because they are girls.
Doesn’t do a thing. The parents get the test done on the sly and then just happen to want an abortion.
You would have to pass a law forbidding the abortion of a baby with the gene for any reason, for fear it was a blind for the real cause. And equal protection would require that the law forbid the abortion of a baby without the gene, for fear that it was because of the absence.
Do you have any proof that homosexuals decide to be homosexual? NO, you do not. You do not know what it is like to be a homosexual, you do not have the same mind, and most likely know none. Some homosexuals (effeminated)have signs of being gay from early ages, before any sexual attraction takes place, and do afterall turn out to be homosexuals. It is completely rude and not compassionate at all to say it would be a miracle to get rid of homosexuality. And if you believe in God, then you are probably in denial, as he is the creator, and obviously had to have created homosexuality.
anonymous: Did you actually *read* this post before commenting? If so, your comments make no sense.