Irrefutable Proof against being born gay?

[Palaeologos]

Palaeologos;6378547:

1973

• The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM-2)

“How many sexes are there?”
“How many do you want?”

The DSM describes psychiatric disorders by means of a statistical “normalization” of human behavior. If 85% of humanity had sex with children, pedophilia wouldn’t be considered a disorder in the DSM either. Regardless, Christian moral theology would still consider it a sin.

The same goes for homosexual behavior. What does it matter whether psychiatrists consider it disordered? Since when has Christian morality depended on the zeitgeist for legitimation?

If you’re Catholic, you’re bound to go with the sensus fidei–and that means not just your circle of Catholic acquaintances, or the Rosemary Radford Ruethers of the world, but the faithful in this world and the next. And the voice of the faithful is abundantly clear. What was a sin 1000 years ago is still a sin today.

 

[avflf]

“Progressive evolution” - the hypothesis that life has an innate tendency to move in a unilinear fashion due to internal or external driving force. Change due to continuous creation.

“The orthogenesis hypothesis began to collapse when it became clear that it could not explain the patterns found by paleontologists in the fossil record, which was non-linear with many complications” - Wiki.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

I never said they “manipulated scientific research.” They have, however, often overgeneralized about its supposed findings, made over-broad statements, indulged in various manipulations of the language about it, etc. This is well documented in the history of the public debate about it for a good 30+ years. The same nonsense continues in populist rhetoric about it in print, broadcast, and online media, etc., such as Comments sections in popular periodicals (NY Times, LA Times, National Catholic Reporter, and secular discussion forums centered around politics and social behavior).
No, I have a certain hostility toward the degradation of true science and the substitution of inflammatory rhetoric (any opposition to gay indoctrination = “hate,” etc.) for data and logic. I also oppose the tactics of divisive name-calling to those opposing the redefinition of social institutions and/or the control of social institutions (education, marriage, what have you) by a single group which is intent on propaganda wars. IOW, activist homosexuals who reinvent language and distort science strictly for political ends. Their tactics are even more intolerant than the intolerance they claim and the intolerance they decry. The point is, that the unscientific premise that they were all “born gay” is part and parcel of this campaign.

“Passion and prejudice govern the world” (John Wesley)

Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles. Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it has ended in skepticism; and whenever religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to wilful blindness and superstition. I am quite sure that I have no prejudices, all I care to know is that a man is a human being.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

I’m only combative when challenged.
Someone also just accused me of “hostility,” merely because I dared to state my viewpoint, based on reading and on life experience. Those are fighting words, but you want me to be meek. Sorry. I have a right to defend myself forcefully either when I’m mischaracterized, or when the facts are misrepresented.

And what rights do you afford the homosexual?

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

“The orthogenesis hypothesis began to collapse when it became clear that it could not explain the patterns found by paleontologists in the fossil record, which was non-linear with many complications” - Wiki.

“Converging evidence from the many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution” *(Pope Benedict XV1, Communion and stewardship: human persons created in the image of God, 2002-2) *

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

KEVIN WILCOX;6378736:

The DSM describes psychiatric disorders by means of a statistical “normalization” of human behavior. If 85% of humanity had sex with children, pedophilia wouldn’t be considered a disorder in the DSM either. Regardless, Christian moral theology would still consider it a sin.

Hypothetical justification.

The modern Church advocates collaboration between Church and the sciences (including psychiatry)

 

[bryan123459]

How can you disprove it when there is no evidence to support it in the first place?

They looked for a gay gene, it doesn’t exist.

It is up to them to prove it don’t you think?

Who are “them”? Scientific searches for truth, like any search for truth, are good.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

“In pastoral care, sufficient use should be made not only of theological principles, but also of the findings of secular sciences, especially psychology and sociology: in this way, the faithful will be brought to purer and more mature living in the faith” (Gaudium et spes, n. 62)

“A distinction is drawn, and it seems with reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable…
This judgement of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomoly are personally responsible for it” (Persona Humana, December 29, 1975)

 

[CarlaOLS]

By the way, I had a very emotionally distant/absent father and never once felt a crush or romantic or physical attraction to a male.

Backing up the discussion (I just returned from Montreal) I wanted to comment on your statement Larkin.

It is exactly this type of thinking that is so problematic in the discussion of the causes of homosexual drives. The fact that you experienced ONE or even a dozen factors that are commonly known to contribute to SSA, and the fact that you have never experienced same sex attraction prove nothing. Your personality, sensitivity, relationships with siblings, peers, mother, and extended family - grandfathers, uncles etc…your experiences, circumstances, were unique. In other words, Lark you may thank God that the stars did not align for you to develop SSA.

Had you developed SSA, we would hopefully be discussing and examining each of those areas of your life, your perceptions of your relationships, your experience of acceptance and love while growing up and more.

Does that help you to understand where I and so many others are coming from on the subject of the development of SSA? If so perhaps you can see why we feel the “born that way” myth is so detrimental to those with SSA looking for hope and healing. (Please keep in mind, healing covers a spectrum - living a chaste life, controlling and diminishing SSA drives and sexual urges, to, for some, the development of heterosexual attraction.)

Peace

 

[larkin31]

Backing up the discussion (I just returned from Montreal) I wanted to comment on your statement Larkin.

It is exactly this type of thinking that is so problematic in the discussion of the causes of homosexual drives. The fact that you experienced ONE or even a dozen factors that are commonly known to contribute to SSA, and the fact that you have never experienced same sex attraction prove nothing…

I was not trying to “prove” anything. My point, repeatedly, is to bear witness to the fact that studies and personal testimony suggest a genetic factor in human sexual orientation. The precise nature of this genetic factor and its role are obviously still very unclear in the very complex area of human sexuality. No “myth” is being expounded here.

 

[larkin31]

My apologies, Elizabeth. You are right about the word “barking”

Back on the topic

Do you deny the possibility that some personal testimonials might accurately reflect early onset (let’s say elementary school years) of sexual orientation?

Elizabeth?

 

[larkin31]

I asked also about “Boston Marriages”: two women who love each other intimately, who lived together, who shared everything but sexual contact.

How is that marriage, outside of the waggish nickname?

This is my way, through a very well-known social arrangement of the late 19th century, of probing whether the objection is to the love and intimacy and living arrangement, or to the sexual contact.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

Had you developed SSA, we would hopefully be discussing and examining each of those areas of your life, your perceptions of your relationships, your experience of acceptance and love while growing up and more.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

This is my way, through a very well-known social arrangement of the late 19th century, of probing whether the objection is to the love and intimacy and living arrangement, or to the sexual contact.

“…how incongruous is the demand to accord ‘marital’ status to unions between persons of the same sex. It is opposed, first of all, by the objective impossibility of making the partnership fruitful through the transmission of life according to the plan inscribed by God in the very structure of the human being. Another obstacle is the absence of the conditions for that interpersonal complementarity between male and female willed by the Creator at both the physical-biological and the eminently psychological levels…” (Pope John Paul 2, Address to the Tribunal of Roman Rota, 21 January 1999)

 

[CarlaOLS]

Indeed "listen to the voice of the Church…

*“This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of. (Person Humana VIII)”

“Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life.” (CCC-2333)*

Every soul must be fully respected in their human dignity. AMEN. That dignity is found and respected in living the truth as taught by the Holy Catholic Church. My heart bleeds for the pain endured by those separated from the Truth, which is why I work and pray for them.
Peace,

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

Indeed "listen to the voice of the Church…

*“This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of. (Person Humana VIII)”
Every soul must be fully respected in their human dignity. AMEN. That dignity is found and respected in living the truth as taught by the Holy Catholic Church. My heart bleeds for the pain endured by those separated from the Truth, which is why I work and pray for them. *

OP - Irrefutable proof against being born gay?

Which brings me to my 2nd point: "Faced with theories that consider gender identity as merely the cultural and social product of the interaction between the community and the individual, independent of personal sexual identity without any true meaning of sexuality, the Church does not tire of repeating her teaching, ‘Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity’ (CCC 2333)

And

"…there are some ‘homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable’ (Persona Humana, 29 December 1975)

Although the Church considers homosexuality abnormal, it may be a person’s sexually identitifying characteristic and in some cases the Church considers it untreatable, incurable, unfixable.

Homosexual acts have throughout the centuries been condemned by the ordinary teaching of the Church and by formal judgments of the magesterium. It is extremely difficult to assess the personal guilt.

 

[bryan123459]

OP - Irrefutable proof against being born gay?

‘Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity’ (CCC 2333)

And

"…there are some ‘homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable’ (Persona Humana, 29 December 1975)

Homosexual acts have throughout the centuries been condemned by the ordinary teaching of the Church and by formal judgments of the magesterium.

Point 1 merits a smile as does Point 2. Point 3 gets a shrug because it does not follow from 1 and 2. (Of course, that was your point. I agree.) One must carefully consider the teachings of the Church and then act in accord with his or her conscience.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

Point 1 merits a smile as does Point 2. Point 3 gets a shrug because it does not follow from 1 and 2. (Of course, that was your point. I agree.) One must carefully consider the teachings of the Church and then act in accord with his or her conscience.

Bryan, nice to chat with you again
Point 3 comes in the post as the official teaching of the Church. Assignation of guilt is something again. Now we get onto the constituents of sin, and the questions raised by accountability.

Would it follow the same rational as masturbation: “To form an equitable judgment about the subjects’ moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the effective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that can lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability” (CCC 2352)?

 

[Elizabeth502]

Elizabeth?

Sorry, larkin, I was off this thread and on others instead.

Yes, such testimonials might reflect early onset, and they might not reflect them. Often, it is too early to tell (to make a judgment one way or the other), given, as psychologists have observed and human experience can confirm, such early experiences which are still in experimental and questioning stages, can be misleading and are not always definitive.

But I wanted to share with all here an excellent program that I PM’ed someone about. It was Marcus Grodi’s Deep in Scripture this week. He had a guest on who had chosen, then repudiated, a gay lifestyle. It was not the usual focus on only, or even mainly, reparative therapy. It was deeper than that. I fully agree with the guest and with Marcus that close, deep male friendships (and for that matter, female – although the focus on this program was male) used to be not just acceptable but expected in western societies, for example. It has been only the very modern transformation of such expectations from Platonic to erotic, that has changed. You don’t have to “do” everybody that you love; that is a distinctly contemporary perversion and hijacking of same-sex friendship. IOW, the transformation of a preference for other males in close relationships to one of sexual bonding is one more manifestation of the oversexualization of modern culture.

The profound observations of the guest certainly reinforced for me my own view that SSA is not a sexual imperative, and further that appearances of SSA in a romantic, an attachment, let alone an erotic,sense can mask or substitute for other needs, can be a stage of self-questioning, and much more.

The other area in which I strongly agree with the guest is in the inappropriate contemporary equivalence of sexuality (orientation and/or behavior) with identity. Those of us who have studied both philosophy and psychology can relate to the artificial nature of such equations and to the superficial understanding of identity which such assertions signify.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

“different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence” *(Pope John Paul 2, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 1991)*Only an anthropologist corresponding to the full truth of the human person can give an appropriate response to this problem with its different aspects on both the societal and ecclesial levels (Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, 1 October 1986)