Born Homosexual or Not?

(Here is an excerpt from my book, The Third Sex? Revisited: Homosexual and Transgender Issues from a Biblical Perspective)

Born Homosexual or Not?

The question I asked in The Third Sex? forty-four years ago was whether homosexuals were born that way or not. Most, but not all, homosexuals want to believe they were.1 Despite the fact that each person I interviewed for the books published on homosexuality said they were born gay, and a number said they had never had a heterosexual thought, on examination of the conversations from which the interviews were drawn, it appeared to me that each person had merely adopted the prem­ise they were born gay. There was no hard science behind their gay identities. I came to the conclusion that being born gay was little more than a cultural myth in the homosexual communi­ty. “I was born gay, so homosexuality is natural for me” was an identity marker that went with the territory.

Born gay? How could that happen? Did the natural selection mechanism run amok? Or, what purpose or advantage was oper­ative in the evolutionary/biological process, if homosexuality is

normal? It is plain that the body parts weren’t naturally designed to fit as they are with heterosexuals. The homosexual act among human beings goes against what is natural, because sex is not for pleasure alone; the sexual uniting of a man and a woman was designed to perpetuate the species.

1 Some gays grew up fearful of, hateful of, neglected by, rejected by, or molested by a parent of the opposite sex. Some encountered other scenarios, whereby sex with a member of the opposite sex was impossible but the call of the hormones was present, nevertheless. Others learned to get their sex where they could get it and found, for any number of reasons, that it was easier and quicker to find a homosexual partner than a heterosexual partner. The point is that not all homosexuals will claim they were born that way. Some even will engage in homosexuality because it seems sexier or more exciting than the normal version.

Leave a Reply