Same-sex Attraction – Joshualetter

Rejoice!

303 Creative, LLC v. Elena

Supreme Court of the United States
June 30, 2023
Slip Opinion No. 21-476

Americans of all persuasions have cause to rejoice, now that Lorie Smith, a Christian and a Colorado web designer, has prevailed in the Supreme Court of the United States in her action against the State of Colorado, which had sought to use its Anti-Discrimination Act to compel her to design web sites celebrating gay marriage, against her sincerely-held belief that marriage should be reserved for unions of one man and one woman. The Supreme Court, in a 6-to-3 opinion authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, held in 303 Creative, LLC v. Elena that Smith’s right of free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, protects her from such action. By doing so, the Court spared the country a dramatic escalation in the culture wars.

What effect would a ruling in Colorado’s favor have had?

Here is the Latest on the Science of Same-Sex Attraction

Jesus loves LGBT!

“. . . [T]here is a great chasm between much of the public discourse and what science has shown.”

– Lawrence S. Mayer, Paul R. McHugh, Special Report: Sexuality and Gender – Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences. The New Atlantis, Number 50, Fall 2016.

In the first six months of 2015, I researched and wrote my Survey of the scholarly literature concerning the nature of same-sex attraction (SSA) and its causes, and published it on this blog under the title, What is Homosexuality – A Survey of the Scholarly Literature. (Originally posted June 26, 2015; reposted July 4, 2015, see below.) My primary motive for diving into the literature was to inform myself in order to be able to help my sons in their thinking about the topic. Chiefly I wanted to know: is there anything to the claim that SSA is inborn and immutable?

Not much, I learned. The most concise and fair way to summarize my findings would be to say that while there do appear to be one or more unidentified biological factors – perhaps genetic and/or epigenetic – which contribute causally to the incidence of homosexuality, other causes are much more significant, including adverse childhood experience, parental role modeling, and individual free choice; and large numbers of LGBT do change their choices of partners and even their SSA, some once, and some many times over the course of a lifetime. In short, the weight of the evidence, far from justifying the supplanting of traditional sexual morality, instead provides substantial reason for its reaffirmation.

By pure coincidence, I finished my Survey and posted it on the very day of the decision of the US Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, the gay marriage case. By that time I had become conscious of the utter lack of discussion about the science of SSA in the policy debates, from gay marriage to transgenderism; but I was still amazed that the science was given virtually no place at all in the Court’s decision. In the opinion of the Court there was only one mention of any scientific authority, which was a reference to the claim in the brief filed by the American Psychological Association that “sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable” – but the APA brief contains no reference to any scientific evidence. Yet none of the four dissenting Justices even mentioned the APA’s claim, much less challenged it. Could it be that 100 “friend of the court” briefs ignored the science completely?

I began looking for someone, anyone, engaged in bringing the science into the policy discussion. It took over a year, but I have found two pairs of scholars who have published their own surveys of the scientific findings about SSA. It is very gratifying to be able to say that my own findings are almost entirely consistent with theirs.

One pair published their findings way back in 2000 – unfortunately, I did not become aware of it until August 2016. Stanton Jones is Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College, and Mark A. Yarhouse is Professor of Psychology at Regent University. Their book, Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Church’s Moral Debate, published by InterVarsity Press, is outstanding. The other pair of scholars published their review of the literature in a lengthy article in the Fall 2016 issue of The New Atlantis. Lawrence S. Mayer is a scholar at the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University. Paul R. McHugh is University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Their conclusions track very closely with Jones’ and Yarhouse’s (and with mine), namely: there does appear to be a weak biological factor in SSA, but “scientific research does not give much support to the hypothesis that sexual orientation is innate and fixed. . . . Some of the most widely held views about sexual orientation, such as the ‘born that way’ hypothesis, simply are not supported by science.”

Let me emphasize again, LGBT individuals bear the image of God as much as anyone. They are citizens and entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. However, the reckless departure on which our society has embarked is very dangerous. May it be that our courts and legislatures will soon become acquainted with what science has to say about SSA. Spread the word.

What is Homosexuality? A Survey of the Scholarly Literature

Neither public policy nor church policy with regard to same-sex attraction (SSA) should be formed in ignorance of the essential nature of homosexuality as reflected in the best scientific evidence available. The Survey was first posted June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court of the United States issued its opinion in Obergefel v. Hodges. Click here to read the February 27, 2016 update.

God Loves Gays!

A few hours ago I posted an exchange of comments on a New York Times Online article about gay marriage. In doing so, I violated my own guideline about such conversations, namely: on this subject (religion and homosexuality), misunderstanding is difficult to avoid; therefore, we must always lead with the Good News about God’s love for gays and lesbians. I didn’t do that, so I pulled the post. Please allow me to start over.

God loves homosexuals. Jesus His Son gave His life for them, just as much as for anyone. Christians are called to serve others – gays and lesbians as much as any – because He taught us that to serve them is to serve Him.

But we also cannot lose sight of the reason it was necessary for Christ to die for us: to atone for our sin. One of the conditions of God’s forgiveness is that we recognize our need for it. Homosexuals are also no different in this respect: we all need God’s forgiveness.

In spite of what some say, Christians are not as a class a self-righteous bunch. That is not to deny that there are plenty of hypocrites in the church – Christians are just as susceptible to that vice as anyone. One of our cardinal doctrines, after all, is that all sin (Romans 3:23). But Christians are not as a class any more hypocritical than anyone else. The difference between Christian hypocrites and other hypocrites, you see, is that, by definition, we Christian hypocrites realize we are hypocrites: that is why we are Christians: we have recognized our sin, we have renounced it, we have relied upon Christ’s payment of the penalty for it, and we come to Him for cleansing and for reconciliation to God. What this means is that as a class, we Christians are less hypocritical than we were.

We Christians believe – for excellent reasons – that the Bible is the Word of God, and binding on us. We couldn’t change it if we wanted to. Indeed, I think that in many instances we would like to change it. We might even like to change what it says about homosexuality – frankly, it’s not a fun topic for us, and I’m sure many of us would prefer to just ignore it. That is becoming less and less an option, however.

So when Moses and Paul unambiguously identify homosexuality as a sin, that pretty much resolves the question in the minds of most Christians. We cannot deny what the Word of God says. Furthermore, it would be wrong to pretend that the Bible is less than clear about this, because if some parts of the Bible are unreliable, then it would be impossible to know which parts are not unreliable, and hence, there would be no way to know that there is any forgiveness of sins. We would therefore be unable to say to gays and lesbians what we must say to everyone: believe in the Lord Jesus and you will have God’s forgiveness.