Publisher still does not seem to be listening. If you will carefully read my post I stated that the Catholic church teaches that homosexual BEHAVIOR is intrinsically evil. The church does not condemn someone with homosexual desires; nor do I.
All I asked you is if there were specific medical reasons to explain homosexual orientation. This is not a religious question.
I simply asked why homosexual behavior is not a choice.
Friend, I do not know…nor does the medical/psychological community know the reasons for different sexual orientations. Human sexuality is still a new field…research into the brain and how certain traits are exhibited is not fully known. Is there a “gay gene”? I don’t know…is there a “straight gene”?..I don’t know. Is it “nurture/nature” or “nature” only? I don’t know.
What we do know is that outside of religious understanding, homosexuality is a normal and natural variation of human sexuality. Sexual orientation seems to be as unchangeable as eye or hair color…one can wear colored contacts and dye one’s hair…but one’s hair and eye color stay the same. Is it genetic only or is it partially genetic and partially some other cause or natural occurance that hasn’t been discovered?
One is homosexual whether one acts on it or not…just as one is heterosexual whether one acts on it or not. If your religious beliefs tell you homosexual behavior is a “sin” that is your religious belief. If your religious belief tells you that sexual acitivity’s primary purpose is procreation and any activity outside of that base belief is “not being open to life”…I understand that…I don’t agree with it…but I understand the proposition.
My faith tell me sexuality is benign. It tells me not only is sexual activitys purpose of procreation, but it is not the only purpose. It binds people together…it is a physical demonstration of two people’s love for one another…it is a pleasurable activity that is intinsic of human behavior.
One is not compelled to have a sexual relationship…one has no say on who one is attractied to sexually or one’s seuxal response…if one acts on that, it is a choice of course…the choice to act on one’s homosexual feelings/orientation as one chooses to act on one’s heterosexual feelings/orientation.
I support the right of self determination. I support the right of homosexual persons to form loving, mutually affirming life long relationships with all the rights and secular priveleges due to heterosexual persons. I support the right of homosexual persons to adopt and form families, not your or your churches definition of families, but families just the same. I also expect the same “moralality” from gay and lesbian people as I do straight couples…life long monogomous bonds through civil marriage for stablility. I support my Meetings decision to bless those relationships through the Quaker marriage ceremony if those gay and lesbian couples wish to put their marriage under the care of the Meeting.
Homosexual sexual activity is no more a sin in and of itself than is heterosexual activity. That it does not conform to your religious beliefs is not a deep concern to me. If your particular religious institution chooses to not bless or santify those relationships…that too is a choice in behavior…I am for civil equaltiy…and if religous bodies wish to re-examine their stance and bless those relationships, all the better.
I am not for refusing same sex marriage based on religious beliefs…nor am I advocating that religious institutions who do not find themselves in a place to bless same sex relationships be penalized…keep religious belief and restrictions out of the civil arena which is not governed by religious belief.
I think we can both agree with that!