A Better Conversation about Homosexuality (Part 5): Not about Nature vs. Nurture

     Are people born this way?  Or are they shaped this way by experience?

Photo Credit: McBeth

People often think the "nature vs. nurture" debate is extremely important.  

     For gay-affirming people, the argument for "nature" usually goes something like this.  
1. I was born gay.  I always knew I was different.  I knew from a very early age that I liked girls instead of boys.
2. If I was born this way, then God made me this way.
3. God doesn't make mistakes.  I am beautiful and good as God's beloved child.
4. My homosexual orientation is a good, God-given part of my nature.
5. I can live as a practicing homosexual and still honor the God who made me this way.

     For people who reject homosexual practice in all formats, the argument for "nurture" usually goes something like this.
1. Most gay people experienced some kind of abuse or poor parenting.  
2. Those experiences unfortunately warped the person's sexual desires toward homosexuality instead of their God-given heterosexuality.
3. Acting on those desires is a choice, and the gay person should pray and work for a reorientation to God-honoring heterosexual desires.

A Better Conversation about Homosexuality (Part 4): Not about Promiscuity

   The stereotype is that gay men are extremely promiscuous.  This aura of promiscuity plays into many Christian conversations about homosexuality explicitly or implicitly.  The idea seems to be that if we accept homosexuality in any form, then we are accepting wide-scale promiscuity: "Just go out and have sex with whoever you want in whatever bathroom you want." 

Photo Credit: Gary Bridgman

However, the promiscuity argument is fallacious.

First of all, quite a few studies flatly contradict this argument.  This list of six scientific studies finds that a minority of gay men are extremely promiscuous (18% with more than 20 partners, compared to 6% of straight men).  However, outside that very active minority, the rest of the homosexual population tends to mirror very closely the promiscuity and fidelity rates of the heterosexual population.