The eternal question
The Cooperative Congressional Election Study (#CCUS2016) published a graph that purported to show an increase since the 2012 election of 15 percent in those identifying as bisexual.
Some then asked, “If homosexuality is innate, why are the numbers increasing?”
What is more important to sexual orientation—your innate characteristics, or your upbringing and environment?
The left as a whole believes that your sexuality is hardwired, innate, you did not and could not choose your orientation, especially LGBTA.
The right is actually more inclined to believe that your sexuality is on a continuum, and is sometimes changeable. Although many on the right proclaim themselves rigidly heterosexual, the libertarian/conservative mind generally believes in free will.
If there is an uptick in the number of gays, wouldn’t that indicate learned behavior? In the new, post-Obergefell v. Hodges world, will more people walk on the wild side who wouldn’t have in more repressed times?
When traditional Christian blogger Rod Dreher posed this question, gay marriage champion Andrew Sullivan accused Dreher of a belief in “latent homosexuality,” and of advocating a return to closets.
Dreher argued, if someone were conflicted with gender disphoria in adolescence but was primarily straight, and if a more traditionalist society did not encourage him to live out his occasional gay fantasies, might he be better off? If he married, had a family, and lived relatively happily, would he be better off than if he indulged his desires and then had identity problems for years, possibly a bad marriage? What about the children?
Only individuals have rights, but the first social organization is the family. Christians and others who believe in traditional marriage believe that the family is the cornerstone of the community, and the community both supports and is supported by family. They are distressed by what they see as the dissolution of the family in a post-Christian world.
Many who supported gay marriage said they were persuaded by arguments that if gays had no choice but to be gay, they should have equal rights to marriage.
But then, how does the new liberal belief that you can be whatever sex you identify yourself as, anytime you decide to, square with the Doctrine of Innateness?
And if sexual identity is plastic, then shouldn’t parents be able to try to instill a desire for a traditional marriage in a minor in their household who is confused? Is that always harmful to the minor child? What if the young person is primarily straight but has secondary homosexual desires? Shouldn’t traditionalist parents have access to psychological help in cultivating heterosexual feelings they believe will bring their offspring happiness but, most importantly, spiritual wellness?
Not according to the Nevada Legislature, which banned conversion therapy (as opposed to perhaps regulating it), even if the minor wanted it. But Gov. Sandoval did veto Assembly Bill 348, which would have required parents to opt out instead of opt into sex education for their children. That gives traditionalists some shelter in the storm. They do not have to opt their children out of the new orthodoxy. The clinical health class lectures on sex are preserved as the norm.
The traditional religious viewpoint on marriage is under attack by what Dreher calls “the law of merited impossibility.” The liberal left pretends to be understanding and compassionate, while continuing their attacks on the marriage traditionalists. Traditionalists are now the ones forced into closets.
We may never settle the nature-or-nurture debate. While we try, shouldn’t we acknowledge and respect the different views and lifestyles that we may have chosen if indeed we had a choice?
