The problem with the ‘born gay’ theory
by Gavin Ashenden, Christian Today:
The Methodist Church has just decided to change the definition of marriage and offer it to gay couples. In so doing, it once more raises several important questions, including how one becomes gay.
Is it one more creaking stretch of the limbs of an ancient spirituality learning finally to no longer restrict romantic and erotic love to the biologically fertile? Or the betrayal of Christian fidelity to Scripture and tradition in order to seek favour from a secular and even anti-Christian culture by baptising its disordered affections?
In making a judgement here, it’s not just a matter of how the Church interprets is own Scriptures. It’s also a matter of how the both the Church and society interrogate the science and psychology of gay longing.
Jayne Ozanne has written here recently about how simply questioning whether or not someone is born gay is an act of threat to the sanity, self-acceptance and stability of the gay Christian. But outsourcing the validation of who one is to others to that extent must raise questions about the degree to which one is confident in the permanence of one’s longings and appetites. We all depend on each other to some extent for affirmation and respect, of course, but perhaps it hints at a level of fragility in a way that might arouse our concern?
It does present the difficulty that blaming the curious in this way is a muscular exercise in emotional blackmail. If you dare to question this phenomenon you become responsible for all self-harm, self-denigration and even attempts at suicide.
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