“The Biology of Homosexuality” by Jerry Woolpy, Earlhamite, Winter 1989. Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic by Elizabeth R. Moberly (Attic, 1983, 1986, 56 pp.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Earlhamite is the alumni magazine of Earlham College where Woolpy is professor of biology and psychology. He here reviews the literature on biological factors in the etiology of homosexuality, something he is professionally qualified to do. He reports: “Evidence accumulated over the past 30 years about the developmental origins of sexual orientation shows the presumption of free choice to be mistaken and the discriminatory treatment to be misguided”. More specifically: “There is substantial evidence that the concentration of the hormone testosterone in the bloodstream of the developing fetus influences the sexual orientation and sex-typical behavior of the resulting adult”. Woolpy concludes by saying that his “hope is that these observations of nature by contemporary biologists will lead traditional philosophers, theologians and politicians to a new enlightenment and help to create a society more tolerant of variations in sexual orientation and sex-typical behavior, a society less ashamed of its natural variations, with individuals less inclined to feel guilty about their own differences”. Woolpy and the editors of Earlhamite have rendered an admirable service to this Quaker school’s alumni and have contributed to the well-being of all the homosexuals in their lives.
Sadly, nothing so positive can be said about Moberly’s book. Moberly is a British psychoanalytic writer and conference speaker who is enjoying favor in the usually anti-psychoanalytic American evangelical community. This may be because she seems to be speaking with a certain secular authority against a secular pro-homosexuality in which many evangelicals sense they’re out beyond their depth. Having learned the hard way that Christian conversion and “deliverance”, contrary to their initial wish-claims, do not “cure” homosexuality – a lesson Moberly confirms – frustrated evangelicals now turn to her baptized psychoanalysis-cum-prayer. This is a curious but typical phenomenon. As Reformed theologian G. C. Berkouwer notes in another connection: “The opponents of criticism of Scripture, in spite of their rejection of criticism and its accompanying scientific approach to Holy Scripture, have occasionally shown a sudden interest in science, that is, when its results can be incorporated into their own apologetics. Whenever science arrives at certain conclusions that appear to confirm the concre4te historical information of Scripture, they seize upon these results and point to them as proof that the Bible was right after all.” Moberly’s “science”, however, is a pseudoscience (as are so-called Christian Science and Creation Science). But it appears to ill-informed and desperate evangelicals to be the genuine article, or at any rate, it says what they want it to say.
To build her case, Moberly misreads several Bible verses, relies on a defrocked (for adultery) non-scholar for biblical scholarship, relies on another preacher as an authority in biology, and relies on generally discredited antigay “Freudians” while overlooking the antithetical views of Freud himself (he did not view homosexuality as pathology) and the current biological, psychoanalytic, psychiatric and psychological research. Contrary to the science-based revisions of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association on homosexuality, Moberly dogmatically and without scientific grounding asserts: “Homosexual activity implies the eroticization of deficits in growth that remain outstanding, and this is, fundamentally, a confusion of the emotional needs of the non-adult with the physiological desires of the adult”. It’s her assumption that: “The homosexual condition is one of same-sex ambivalence, not just same-sex love. … and it is in itself”, she says, “a relational deficit vis-à-vis the same sex rather than vis-à-vis the opposite sex”. She insists, again against the best professional literature, that: “Homosexuality (same-sex incompletion) has a goal beyond itself, and that goal is heterosexuality (same-sex completion).” With other, equally arbitrary and pre-scientific, assumptions, the very same approach could be taken to preach against heterosexuality.
It’s difficult to interact with her arguments because of Moberly’s strange use of terms. For example, to her, the term “homosexual needs” does not refer to erotic/romantic homosexual orientation needs, as is its usual meaning, but to non-sexual parent-child relationship needs. “The term ‘homosexuality’ in fact begs the question”, she says. “A non-sexual definition would be better … . It is vital to the whole task of evaluation that homosexuality would be set within this particular perspective”. Yes, it’s vital to her solution, but it’s descriptively and interpretively manipulative and misleading. Her “secondary eroticization” and “homosexual acts” are restrictively limited to genital acts. She uses “homosexual love” in contrast to “eroticization” even though the research and clinical data show that the former is erotic/romantic rather than, as she thinks, a “normal” need for the same-sex parent-child relationship gone haywire. She focuses unrealistically on genital accts but as well says realistically and repeatedly that, contrary to “ex-gay” terminology, “A non-practicing homosexual is still a homosexual”. Her seeming agreement with other writers, e.g. Process theologian Norman Pittenger, is only formal — they don’t use the terms in the same way.
A century ago, another Briton pronounced a proper sentence on such books as Moberly’s. In the Preface to his Sesame and Lilies, critic John Ruskin warned: “Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books”.