“Homosexuality: A review of recent medical research papers” by Kenneth V. Dodgson, The Inspiriter, Summer/Fall 2003.
“Choosing Life” by Gerald Bray, Modern Reformation, September/October, 2004.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Nobody knows just why some people are gay – or why most people aren’t. Yet so many people seem not to know that nobody knows. In 1967, after surveying the etiological research, I concluded that an interaction of multiple constitutional and cultural factors were involved. (Carlfred Broderick, editor of the Journal of Marriage and the Family, called that survey “the best in existence.”) In 1970, John Money of Johns Hopkins Medical School summed up the literature by stating that sexual orientation is the “product of the confluence of heredity and environment” and added that “to classify homosexuality as hereditary or constitutional versus acquired is outmoded.” Dodgson shows that that’s still true.
Dodgson is a physician who served for 24 years as a surgeon with American Baptist missions in India. He is also a Baptist minister. Here, in the newsletter of the GLBT caucus of American Baptists, he presents a summary of findings of over 300 studies on homosexuality published in peer-reviewed medical journals in the previous three years.
He notes that “A consensus appears to be emerging among many researchers that sexual orientation combines both [biological and cultural] modalities in what is now referred to as the biopsychosocial model which recognizes that various combinations of biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors are involved in an individual’s sexual orientation.” Thus, the endless reductionist squabble over a “gay gene” (in both antigay and pro-gay rhetoric) is quite beside the point.
He adds that “every study evaluating the availability and appropriateness of medical care for this population exposes gross inadequacies” and decries the “stigma, isolation, apprehension about discovery, fear of assault, humiliation, or violence” threatening many gay adolescents.
Bray is Anglican Professor at Beeson Divinity School at Baptist Samford University in Alabama. With recent homosexuality debates in view, he complains: “Being an Anglican (or Episcopalian) is never easy, but the past several months have been more trying than most.” His griping over gay folk recalls the griping over black folk among the college’s earlier generations of slavery-supporters and segregationists. But if Bray wants to know what a truly trying experience can be, he should know the experience of a young, gay seminarian who’s kicked out of Beeson for being gay and then finds “acceptance” only among drug dealers and men who want to use him for sex. It’s a lesson today’s antigay preachers don’t bother to learn about those their “Christianity” oppresses. And it’s the kind of lesson few of the Bible-spouting slaveholders and segregationists ever bothered to learn about those their “Christianity” oppressed.
Bray claims to “have thought a great deal about this recently.” But how much is “a great deal?” As a teacher at a very conservative school, how deeply, how candidly, and how empathically can he afford to think about this? And only “recently?” Those he would think about and explain away have been wrestling with this for as long as they can remember. Bray has not thought about this well enough or long enough to realize he has not thought about this well enough or long enough.
Bray’s superficiality shows in “the conclusion” he posits a priori: “Homosexual practice is a denial of life at the most basic level.” How so? He says “the most important” dimension of human sexuality is “procreation.” That’s what falling in love, getting married and lifelong commitment is really all about? What about those who cannot conceive? What about the efforts married couples make to avoid pregnancies? Isn’t human sexual partnership a bit more complex than the copulating of wild beasts? Besides, Bray ignores all the procreating that is done by gay men and lesbians trying to be “normal.” And he overlooks the sad aftermath in their broken families.
He argues that “if all of us went the homosexual way, the human race would cease to exist,” adding: “that is the basic fact which nobody in the current crisis seems willing or able to mention.” Maybe nobody mentions it because it’s so silly. Who is advocating that all go gay? Who would comply even if someone did urge that all go gay? One might as well worry about what would happen “if all of us went” to seminary? Who would do the plumbing, make the pizza, or fly the planes?
Bray’s comparing homosexuality with smoking is strange. Homosexuality is a complex, deep-seated psychosocial orientation that no one changes (though one may change what one does). And the orientation can be expressed in a loving, life-long companionship or in abusive, self-defeating dysfunction. But smoking is always an unhealthy activity and many people have stopped smoking with no continuing craving. His equation of homosexuality with death and heterosexuality with life is stranger still. Many more have died as a result of a heterosexual act’s resulting in a lethal pregnancy or complications of childbirth than have died from the result of a homosexual act. (And by far, most HIV is heterosexually transmitted.) Furthermore, Bray’s call to “choose life” is an odd choice because people don’t choose to be homosexual any more than people choose to be heterosexual. Many homosexuals do, of course, choose to act heterosexually and many wish they could be heterosexual, but neither the genital acts nor the wishes give them any ability to be heterosexual.
Bray says he “hope[s] that the church will proclaim [his] message, not in a spirit of homophobic condemnation, but from hearts overflowing with faith, hope, and love.” But this profession is as hollow as was the Christian slaveholder’s or segregationist’s insistence that they “loved” their black folk. Real love must be informed and just.
Beeson is affiliated with a Baptist school that changed its “scriptural” spin on slavery, segregation and inclusion of Anglican faculty. Can it change its “scriptural” spin on homosexuality? Can Modern Reformation adopt the old motto “Reformed and ever reforming?” But generations of black folk had to wait too long. How long will gay people have to wait?