Homosexuality and Natural Law -- A Concern

[Amandil]

I don’t know about that but he has a definite aversion to any notion of natural law, scientific or moral. The old Catholic Encyclopedia has a nice discussion on natural law which does justice to Thomas and contrasts his notion with other notions.

Linus2nd

This maybe will help. A lot of what he’s asserting sounds similar.

Here’s what else he had to say(and please pardon his frank language):

It is true that Aristotle spoke of woman as a misbegotten man. But woman was no “accident” but was intended by the nature. The thought being that like produces like, the man is the active principle, so his generative power naturally inclines toward creating another male, but sometimes, instead, something else happens, e.g. certain environmental conditions, that cause a female to be produced instead. This is no accident, but is intended by nature. It is only “misbegotten” in the sense that there is a natural tendency of the male generative power to produce male.

We now know, of course, that the natural tendency of the generative power (of which the male part still stand as act to the potency of the female) is to produce female, and that it is only the intervention of androgens that divert the development to male

None of that has anything whatsoever to do with whether homosexuality is sinful or not.

Aquinas also didn’t “conclude” anything about “heterosexual sex” he concluded things about sex. See the difference? And of course the male organ is made to go into the female and not an anus or mouth. That is just mind blowingly obvious. And of course semen ejaculated is meant as a vehicle to get sperm to the eggs and fertilize one. That is why it is alkaline based!

It doesn’t take a rocket science to realize that sex is by nature procreative. It is more than that. Just as eating is by nature ordered to nutrition, even if it is more than that. It is just obvious, and only the wicked heart rails against obvious reality, in order to convict itself of sin.

And why is it a moral imperative not to use these faculties for other things, to the exclusion of such designed purposes? Because we are men, and our nature demands the rational apprehension and pursuit of our natural end, which means we must order our lower faculties to rational ends. It is not wrong to eat for pleasure or have sex for pleasure, per se. It is wrong to eat for pleasure to the detriment of eating for life, because that violates the natural inclinations and due end of human nature (here it is self preservation!).

Now take homosexual acts compared to actual sex (see what I did there?). In one case, you are performing an act with the organs of two persons, male and female, which are designed to go together to do this act. We call that act sex. Whether or not the sex leads to a child, or even whether it is likely to (say the couple is old and past child bearing years), what they are doing is still sex. But a man who puts his organ (in some place other than what it was designed for) is not sex. He is pursuing sexual pleasure in an act that is not sex, but only like to it in a superficial way. Whereas the sterile couple is doing something that is by nature procreative, the homosexual is not.

We can go further, that the common life, the unitive aspect of sex and all that is for the sake of the family. Heck the very hormones released in sex are meant to form bonds that are marital and ordered to family, which is for the sake of children by design.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

This maybe will help. A lot of what he’s asserting sounds similar.

Here’s what else he had to say(and please pardon his frank language):

What you say here seems reasonable but I will have to wait until later to read the link. And perhaps I need to reread Thomas’ thoughts on Natural Law as well. I bought Griese’s fist volume of his ethics years ago and set it aside as inomprehensible.

Linus2nd

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

The standard natural law argument against homosexual activity runs something like this:

1. The purpose of the sexual organs is procreation.
2. It is wrong to use an organ in a way that thwarts its purpose.
3. Homosexual acts use the sexual organs in ways that thwart procreation.
4. Therefore, homosexual acts are wrong.

I hope I have clearly and fairly expressed the argument, and I’m open to revisions.

The problem with this argument, as I see it, is that Premise 3 is false. Sodomy could be used to thwart procreation, but it could be used in other ways too. For example, it’s conceivable to participate in homosexual acts, but only ejaculate with one’s opposite sex spouse. It is hard to understand how this would be thwarting procreation – however otherwise objectionable the course of action is!

Now, despite the flaw in this particular argument, I believe its conclusion is true – both because of the my own instinctive moral sense, and because of the revelation of Scripture and Tradition.

There is another natural law argument against homosexual acts, one that I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone but myself give. It heralds back to the first dawn of natural law theory, with Aristotle. Here it is:

1. Human beings have a distinctive telos, or purpose.
2. Any type of action that tends toward the thwarting of one’s telos (or other people’s telos) is wrong.
3. The telos of a human being is happiness.
4. Homosexual actions tend to lead to unhappiness in oneself or others.
5. Therefore, homosexual actions are wrong.

Now, let me right off the bat respond to a few objections:

Objection 1: Premise #4 is false, or questionable.

I have sympathy with this objection. The jury’s still out on whether homosexual actions tend to lead to unhappiness. But if you read through histories about this stuff, even in pre-Christian cultures, authors generally connect homosexual activity (at least among men) with hedonism, and the modern link between homosexual activity and promiscuity suggests a similar connection.

Now, you might say “different people have different ideas of happiness”. But what does that matter? Happiness is a real thing. It is possible to thrive as a human being. And quite honestly, if I saw all the sexually active gay people I know thriving, I wouldn’t oppose homosexual activity at all. But I don’t see them thriving.

Objection 2: This argument is utilitarian.

It’s not, though. The argument does not evaluate individual actions on the basis of their actual or expected results. The argument evaluates action types on the basis of one result: happiness. The argument is consequentialist, in some broad sense, but not utilitarian. I follow Aristotle and Aquinas in believing that good actions tend to have good consequences, and bad actions tend to have bad consequences. (Thus, I reject Kant entirely).

An advantage to my argument: It compares very favorably to Romans 1, the Bible’s only extended treatment of homosexuality. In Romans 1, we see people exchanging true happiness for a shadow of that happiness: idolatry and lust. In order for this to happen, their “hearts” had to be “darkened” – they had to lose sight of what real happiness was. Romans 1 says that their passions were “unnatural”, but it does not say this with respect to their genitals, but with respect to their intellect. They were like drug users who didn’t understand that the costs of drug use outweigh the pleasures of drug use.

I’d love some constructive criticism. **Please **don’t use this thread as a place to denigrate gay people.

Just a fine point.

In your statement of standard NL reasoning, #1, I would argue, is not properly formulated.

Instead of reading: “The purpose of the sexual organs is procreation.”

It should read: “The purpose of the sexual organs is inseparably union and procreation.” “Union” = (heterosexual) marital union.

So when you go on to object to #3. . .

The problem with this argument, as I see it, is that Premise 3 is false. Sodomy could be used to thwart procreation, but it could be used in other ways too. For example, it’s conceivable to participate in homosexual acts, but only ejaculate with one’s opposite sex spouse. It is hard to understand how this would be thwarting procreation – however otherwise objectionable the course of action is!

The scenario would thwart union with one’s spouse.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Just a fine point.

In your statement of standard NL reasoning, #1, I would argue, is not properly formulated.

Instead of reading: “The purpose of the sexual organs is procreation.”

It should read: “The purpose of the sexual organs is inseparably union and procreation.” “Union” = (heterosexual) marital union.

So when you go on to object to #3. . .

The scenario would thwart union with one’s spouse.

KindredSoul made much the same point, and I appreciate the point.

One potential objection is that we just shift the burden of the argument, in this case, onto the claim that homosexual “unions” aren’t genuinely unitive – which would be the type of thing I would want to prove *after *proving first that homosexual activity is wrong.

When people say homosexual sex isn’t unitive, they usually mean one of two things, I think:

(1) Homosexual sex does not involve complete mutual self-giving.

or

(2) Homosexual sex doesn’t unite two people’s souls in a meaningful way.

The first claim involves a depth of Catholic theology that I’d prefer to avoid in a basic argument like this. The second claim is a phenomenological claim that gay people could just simply deny. So both claims seem, to me, somewhat problematic.

 

[inocente]

FYI: I showed your comments both to my friend(a Catholic) and another acquaintance (a Baptist), both scholars on Aquinas, and to put it charitably, both of them said that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Anecdotes about what your friends say are not overly impressive, since any man and his dog can claim to have authoritative friends but the rest of us have no way of knowing how good the claim is.

Please get your friends to sign up to CAF and give their case, it’s always good to get more opinions.

That you wrap quotation marks around the passage yet do not cite your source or provide a link is evidence by itself of the specious nature of it.

I always link the source of a quote, and can’t find any where I didn’t, so please point it out. I gave you links to two articles about Thomas’ reasoning in post #185. Here they are again:

catholicculture.org/cultu…fm?recnum=2793
iep.utm.edu/sexualit/#H9

There are many more. You’ve not linked any sources which say different. Please let’s have some evidence from you instead of all your huffing and puffing and personal comments.

Discussing morality can be difficult because we find it hard to understand how anyone could think differently. It requires that we stand outside of our own opinion to understand other points of view. Simply calling those who disagree with us insincere or dishonest is not philosophy and is not Christian.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

KindredSoul made much the same point, and I appreciate the point.

One potential objection is that we just shift the burden of the argument, in this case, onto the claim that homosexual “unions” aren’t genuinely unitive – which would be the type of thing I would want to prove *after *proving first that homosexual activity is wrong.

When people say homosexual sex isn’t unitive, they usually mean one of two things, I think:

(1) Homosexual sex does not involve complete mutual self-giving.

or

(2) Homosexual sex doesn’t unite two people’s souls in a meaningful way.

The first claim involves a depth of Catholic theology that I’d prefer to avoid in a basic argument like this. The second claim is a phenomenological claim that gay people could just simply deny. So both claims seem, to me, somewhat problematic.

You may be missing my point. It was in response to the scenario involved in your objection to premise #3: that in your scenario homosexual acts prior to heterosexual climax would still violate union with the spouse.

#1, as I formulated it, does not entail the claim that homosexual acts are not unitive. It simply asserts that sexual acts are inseparably both unitive and procreative. So even assuming homosexual acts are (in some manner) unitive, they still are not procreative.

 

[inocente]

Approximately 25% of North Americans are myopic. Extrapolated from that number, about 1.75 billion people in the world are myopic.

You aren’t arguing that sheer prevalence is sufficient to make a condition ‘natural,’ are you? The point being made is that there is a kind of naturally optimal state for natural beings. The definition of “natural” with regard to human traits, and those of living creatures generally, is the range of those traits which make the being a representatively ‘good’ example of that kind of creature.

When the bubonic plague rendered 30% of humans in Europe (20-30 million) incapacitated with swollen lymph nodes and compromised lymphatic systems, we would not claim bubonic plague was ‘natural’ to humans and thereby a ‘good’ merely because of prevalence.

This is, again, a confusion between natural law as a moral foundation for a system of ethics based upon the ‘good’ as derived from what it essentially means to be human (the natural optimal state of a human being) and the naturalistic fallacy which wrongly concludes things are good merely because they exist in nature.

This is circular. You begin by assuming being gay is a disorder or disease, and hey presto.

By your argument, being left-handed is unnatural.

 

[Oreoracle]

You aren’t arguing that sheer prevalence is sufficient to make a condition ‘natural,’ are you? The point being made is that there is a kind of naturally optimal state for natural beings. The definition of “natural” with regard to human traits, and those of living creatures generally, is the **range of those traits which make the being a representatively ‘good’ example **of that kind of creature.

I see what you’re trying to say, though you’ve actually expressed two very different ideas in the bolded portions: natural as optimal and natural as typical. Obviously the typical human isn’t optimal, so these conceptions can’t be the same.

Also, using “natural” in the latter sense, I assume you are speaking of the “average” healthy human when you speak of a good representation. Even assuming that we have a non-ambiguous definition of “healthy”, this is problematic. What is the average human? Is it the one who has the average height, or weight, or longevity, or heart rate? Those are almost certainly different people. Is it the one that has the average of all of these traits? That person probably doesn’t exist.

The notion of an average is difficult to define when you’re dealing with a discrete data set with multiple dimensions (physical traits) in mind.

 

[inocente]

I’m not sure such an objection cuts any ice. To be sure, we aren’t trees. But the point is to understand what it means to possess a power essentially. Prima facie it does not seem to have to do with being able to exercise that power right now or even in the future. To make an exception for humans without giving principled grounds for it suggests special pleading. (Though human examples abound as well. There is, for example, the comatose patient, who is still essentially rational, even though we do not know whether or not he will come out of his coma.)

OK. But there is no prima facie either that procreation is essential to every pair-bond. It isn’t essential to every male-female friendship, only where a special bond is involved. Or for instance, suppose research shows that homosexuality is an adaptation which assists group survival, and so is definitely not any aberration.

Well, this is a point I have made in saying that I think the original argument suffers from premise (1), in that I don’t think that procreation is a sufficient condition for sexual morality. I would agree that to say that procreation is a sufficient condition for sexual morality would treat us as less than fully human.

But to say that it is a necessary condition does not do so. To say that the procreative dimension of sex must be in order for sex to be moral is not to deny that there is more to sex than procreation.

The logical issue here is: If x ought to be F and G, then there is a problem if it is not F, and this is true even though the morality and importance of x is not reducible to F (because it also ought to be G).*

Agreed, but there is a special requirement with natural law arguments. They are supposed to be written on our hearts. Or, to take it out of the religious context, we could say that natural law conclusions must be consistent with what appears to be self-evident to any sensible, rational person. Not intuitive or instinctive, but after quiet consideration. This would seem to place limits on the complexity or subtly of any natural law argument.

 

[inocente]

Being nice does not consist in denying the truth. If defending the truth of what one has said or not said is obfuscation then I am guilty.

Adio’s amigo.

You got me thinking the Church had gone down some weird street until we definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore. Sorry but something in your explanation just got me very confused. But I put a band aid on it and it’s fine now.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

You got me thinking the Church had gone down some weird street until we definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore. Sorry but something in your explanation just got me very confused. But I put a band aid on it and it’s fine now.

As long as you are " fine now, " that is a good thing. As long as your being fine is in accord with the truth. How did you know I lived in the wide open spaces of Kansas? Must have been my firm grasp on solid reality.

Linus2nd

 

[inocente]

I don’t know about that but he has a definite aversion to any notion of natural law, scientific or moral.

Where in heaven’s name did you get that? Please provide evidence.

Over the last several hours I have been getting a serious education involving “inocente’s” source in regards to Aquinas.

It appears that he has latched on a view of the “New Natural Law” theory which severely distorts Thomistic philosophy but claims that it is central to their theory.

I noticed you two gossiping about me. Perhaps ironically, Paul includes gossips in his list of depravities in Romans.

Any chance you two could discuss the OP or shall I start a thread for you so you can gossip some more?

btw I’ve never heard of new natural law theory and don’t intend to examine it.

 

[inocente]

As long as you are " fine now, " that is a good thing. As long as your being fine is in accord with the truth. How did you know I lived in the wide open spaces of Kansas? Must have been my firm grasp on solid reality.

Perhaps you should move back to Kansas to regain it.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

You may be missing my point. It was in response to the scenario involved in your objection to premise #3: that in your scenario homosexual acts prior to heterosexual climax would still violate union with the spouse.

#1, as I formulated it, does not entail the claim that homosexual acts are not unitive. It simply asserts that sexual acts are inseparably both unitive and procreative. So even assuming homosexual acts are (in some manner) unitive, they still are not procreative.

I don’t understand. If the only part of the premise doing any work in the argument is the premise about procreation, then why does the unitive part of the premise matter? Why should it be added?

Or, if your point is that the **person **in my scenario cannot both have marital sex and homosexual sex beforehand, I agree that this is a problem with the person. So we might be able to argue, from that, about people. But the argument we’re shooting for is about acts, not agents. My counterexample to the original premise #3 is a narrow counterexample to the premise, not a counterexample to any detailed moral systems that might justify the premise.

Perhaps if you put together the revised argument – the argument that factors in unitivity and contends that homosexual sex does thwart procreation – in formal notation, it might help clarify things.

At any rate, I’m enjoying this conversation. Thanks!

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Where in heaven’s name did you get that? Please provide evidence.

So you do believe in natural law, not only the moral application of that law but that every substance created by God has a nature from which flow all its identifiable actions, powers, etc?.

Linus2nd

 

[Amandil]

I noticed you two gossiping about me. Perhaps ironically, Paul includes gossips in his list of depravities in Romans.

Any chance you two could discuss the OP or shall I start a thread for you so you can gossip some more?

“Gossip” is to speak negatively about someone without their knowledge.

We neither hid nothing nor spoke falsehoods about you.

inocente:

btw I’ve never heard of new natural law theory and don’t intend to examine it.

Well, whatever you passed off as Aquinas is not Aquinas but is based upon NNLT.

So whether explicitly or implicitly, you are distorting Thomas’ words, and so are tjose by whom you took your quote.

You ought to have done your due diligence and actually understood Aquinas rather than a distorted view of Aquinas.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

I don’t understand. If the only part of the premise doing any work in the argument is the premise about procreation, then why does the unitive part of the premise matter? Why should it be added?

Or, if your point is that the **person **in my scenario cannot both have marital sex and homosexual sex beforehand, I agree that this is a problem with the person. So we might be able to argue, from that, about people. But the argument we’re shooting for is about acts, not agents. My counterexample to the original premise #3 is a narrow counterexample to the premise, not a counterexample to any detailed moral systems that might justify the premise.

Perhaps if you put together the revised argument – the argument that factors in unitivity and contends that homosexual sex does thwart procreation – in formal notation, it might help clarify things.

At any rate, I’m enjoying this conversation. Thanks!

Sure. OK, so it goes like this. But bear in mind I am not disputing your second argument based on NL.

(a) I am only disputing your premise #1. It is incomplete, IMO. The purpose of sexual organs is inseparably both unitive and procreative. For human sexuality we can’t only look at the obvious biological teleology.

People think of sex as both uniting/bonding a couple (gay or straight), expressing love and as being procreative. Even if a married man cheated on his wife with a same-sex partner she would still see and feel that act to be adulterous. Objectively speaking, by observing human behavior too, sex tends to be bonding for the couple.

(b) Your premise #2 “It is wrong to use an organ in a way that thwarts its purpose” I grant.

(c) #3, as stated focusing on reproductive biology, “Homosexual acts use the sexual organs in ways that thwart procreation”, is true.

(d) (i) It is your counterexample that introduces a “spouse” into the discussion, and so departs from your essentially biological analysis thus far. A “spouse” clearly opens the door to the unitive meaning of the sex organs. The behavior in your counterexample would be adulterous and violate revised #1 and your #2; and so fails to undercut the argument–in addition to being a departure from the overall biological thrust of your argument.

(ii) But even biologically speaking I would point out it is still true that while the sex organs are engaged in homosexual activity they are incapable of procreation. It is only when switching tracks to heterosexual activity that they are capable of procreation. So even in the realm of biological analysis alone I’m not sure the counterexample works.

(e) Your conclusion still follows from your premises focusing on human reproductive biology.

Yep. Good discussion!

 

[Amandil]

Anecdotes about what your friends say are not overly impressive, since any man and his dog can claim to have authoritative friends but the rest of us have no way of knowing how good the claim is.

Please get your friends to sign up to CAF and give their case, it’s always good to get more opinions.

You think that this is about impressing you? That’s funny.

No. This is simply about exposing the fact that what you’re saying is false.

I’m not an idiot. Its obvious that you’re too hardened in your own suppositions to be “impressed” by anything contrary of your opinions. You’ll make of it what you will.

What I posted I did so for the benefit of others reading this.

inocente:

I always link the source of a quote, and can’t find any where I didn’t, so please point it out. I gave you links to two articles about Thomas’ reasoning in post #185. Here they are again:

catholicculture.org/cultu…fm?recnum=2793
iep.utm.edu/sexualit/#H9

The catholicculture link doesn’t work and the iep.edu link is simply you committing confirmation bias.

inocente:

Discussing morality can be difficult because we find it hard to understand how anyone could think differently. It requires that we stand outside of our own opinion to understand other points of view. Simply calling those who disagree with us insincere or dishonest is not philosophy and is not Christian.

Well seeing as you have a problem with putting words in people’s mouths which they did not utter it’s obvious that there’s no profit to be had in further converse.

God bless.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Sure. OK, so it goes like this. But bear in mind I am not disputing your second argument based on NL.

(a) I am only disputing your premise #1. It is incomplete, IMO. The purpose of sexual organs is inseparably both unitive and procreative. For human sexuality we can’t only look at the obvious biological teleology.

People think of sex as both uniting/bonding a couple (gay or straight), expressing love and as being procreative. Even if a married man cheated on his wife with a same-sex partner she would still see and feel that act to be adulterous. Objectively speaking, by observing human behavior too, sex tends to be bonding for the couple.

(b) Your premise #2 “It is wrong to use an organ in a way that thwarts its purpose” I grant.

(c) #3, as stated focusing on reproductive biology, “Homosexual acts use the sexual organs in ways that thwart procreation”, is true.

(d) (i) It is your counterexample that introduces a “spouse” into the discussion, and so departs from your essentially biological analysis thus far. A “spouse” clearly opens the door to the unitive meaning of the sex organs. The behavior in your counterexample would be adulterous and violate revised #1 and your #2; and so fails to undercut the argument–in addition to being a departure from the overall biological thrust of your argument.

OK, you’ve definitely convinced me that even if my counterexample to #3 works, it involves muddying the waters in an unhelpful way. The counterexample need not muddy the waters, however. For suppose we simplify the case to the point where adultery is completely absent. Suppose, in other words, we consider the following argument about masturbation (not about homosexuality).

1. The purpose of the sexual organs is procreation and unity.
2. It is wrong to use an organ in a way that thwarts its purpose.
3. Masturbation uses the sexual organs in ways that thwart procreation.
4. Therefore, masturbation is wrong.

Now consider the following proposed counterexample to premise #3: It is possible to masturbate (not to orgasm) without thwarting the purpose of the sexual organs, since one can afterward engage in any sort of licit sexual behavior in a way that tends toward procreation and unity.

So my point is not that this counterexample is true. My point is that the counterexample is plausible – and it is especially plausible to people who are not already Catholic. In order to oppose the counterexample, one must subscribe to the belief that any form of intentionally produced sexual pleasure not in the context of marriage is wrong. This proposition is true, but it’s also question-begging in the context of the argument.

(The masturbation example is not idle speculation, by the way. The argument above is often made to convince people that masturbation is wrong, and it just doesn’t establish that point in people’s minds, unless they already believe masturbation is wrong. Not helpful).

Now, it’s true that the argument against homosexuality doesn’t involve question-begging, to that extent. But your revised argument does require a require a person to believe that the relevant unity cannot be achieved apart from openness to procreation, which is awfully close to already believing that homosexual sex is wrong!

(ii) But even biologically speaking I would point out it is still true that while the sex organs are engaged in homosexual activity they are incapable of procreation. It is only when switching tracks to heterosexual activity that they are capable of procreation. So even in the realm of biological analysis alone I’m not sure the counterexample works.

Now this is the sort of thing that I just honestly don’t understand. I think gay rights apologists are quite right to respond that “thwarting” procreation is a very different thing than simply “not engaging in” procreation. Even if the purpose of the tongue is to taste, it does not defeat the purpose of the tongue if I use it to lick envelopes. And while I am licking envelopes I cannot be eating.

It is just false to say that a person, while he is engaged in homosexual activity, is “incapable” of procreation – or rather he is incapable only so long as he continues uninterrupted in the sexual activity, just as I am incapable of eating only so long as I am licking envelopes. Since no one has gay sex continually without stopping throughout life, no one is thereby disenabled from procreating by having gay sex.

I feel like, in order to be intellectually honest, we must cede that objection to the gay rights advocates, and come up with a better argument.

 

[Amandil]

This will be my final post to you because I just heard back from my other acquaintance, who is also a Baptist minister, this is what he had to say regarding your comment:

Between your own recognition of the distortion of Thomas’ views rather than comment on Aquinas I would offer this thought instead: your friend seems to be committing a genetic fallacy of some sort. Even if he correctly represented Thomas (and, again, it’s obvious he did not), there is a world of difference between “the Church’s teaching on natural law” and Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy. I say that fully aware of the great weight placed on Thomas’ opinion. My point is that even if Thomas were to be shown to be in error or this or that point, it would not follow that Church teaching is therefore incorrect. For once again, assuming that the foolishness your friend offered were the actual Thomas (side bar: any time someone says something plainly stupid and claims that to be the opinion of a philosopher of Aquinas’ caliber, that should tell you an awful lot about that own person’s intellectual capacities), it is still the case that the Church’s discussions on natural law today are nothing like that at all.

It seems to me, not having read the conversation, that the implication in all of this is that if Thomas were wrong on NL and homosexuality, then the Church is wrong on NL and homosexuality. So beyond his idiotic attempt at expounding on what Thomas really said (and I point again back to my sidelight above and remind you of its implications), you also have a very basic logical error in his entire approach to the question. And all that is to say that your Baptist friend is terribly irrational, and that before we even start to look at any of his arguments for homosexuality being natural in any sense.

Personally, as someone raised Baptist and who still has strong affinity for Baptist theology (my denomination is the Christian and Missionary Alliance; we often jokingly refer to ourselves as “mixed up Baptists”), I would say he is an embarrassment to the name and would request, for the sake of those of us who are not so stupid as to pontificate on subjects we do not understand, to stop peddling his drivel immediately at the expense of further exposing the Baptist tradition to ridicule.

God bless.