It's about behavior, not orientation

The success social liberals have had in changing society's attitude toward homosexuality seems to me to be largely due to two factors.

The first is the social Left's deftness at confusing the issues. And the second is social conservatives' ineptitude at identifying them. It's hard to tell which has had the greater impact on the current one-sided debate on gay "marriage" and other issues regarding homosexuality.

For years after the position became scientifically untenable, the cultural Right played into the homosexualists' hands by arguing that sexual orientation is either a matter of voluntary choice, or at most a bad habit. Even now, they continue to allow the debate (such as it is, given the Right's ineptitude in waging it) to center on sexual orientation.

But orientation is not, and never has been, the issue. I wish I could say that there are not a very large number of idiots who continue to argue that sexual orientation is somehow a mere matter of choice or habit. Alas, I cannot. But there is not, and cannot be, any real ethical or moral issue with homosexual orientation, not the least because- whatever the bozos say- it is involuntary.

No major religious tradition teaches that it is somehow unethical to merely have a homosexual orientation. Roman Catholicism and the various flavors of conservative Protestantism alike (or at least the ones whose roots lie in the Magisterial Reformation) understand what medicine has established beyond doubt: that homosexual orientation is a combination of genetics and the influence of environment, but is simply not a choice.

No, it is not a matter of genetics alone. Approximately half the identical twins of gay men- who, by definition, have genetic inheritances identical to their twins- are also gay. Were homosexuality simply a matter of genes, it would be 100%.

The Christian tradition, in its most traditional and authentic forms, does not condemn homosexual orientation. It condemns homosexual behavior. I a society which, since the 'Sixties, has essentially abandoned the notion that sexual restraint or continence is possible for human beings, this is an easy point for the less thoughtful among us to miss, and for the homosexualists to fudge. But people of homosexual orientation are no more animals, living at the mercy of their sexual urges they are unable to control, then are unmarried heterosexuals.

To be sure, celibacy is difficult- and probably impossible for those not granted the gift. The fact is that Christians, whatever their sexual orientation, slip. Which is pretty much what Augustinian (and Pauline) Christianity would predict. The Christian life is not a life of perfection, to paraphrase Luther; that will have to wait until the next world. We strive to put the Old Self to death daily that the New Self may arise. Repentance is not an occasional remedy for sin, but the very substance of the Christian life. To be a Christian is to live in a constant state of repentance, and in constant awareness of the need for it.

But to recognize that human beings are weak and in need of grace is not to condone sin, no matter what the sexual orientation of the sinner.

As much as the cultural Left may deny it, homosexuals- like heterosexuals- are creatures with minds and wills, capable of resisting their sexual urges. The need for forgiveness when we slip does not negate the worthiness of the effort. Nor does it make that effort, in biblical terms, optional. While this doubtless will come as a surprise to many whose religious training has been in the essentially pagan framework espoused by liberal Protestantism, Christianity expects celibacy from unmarried heterosexuals and from homosexuals alike. No,orientation is not the issue, and never has been. The issue is behavior.

Yet the social Right continues to allow the social Left to get away with the non sequitur that somehow to disapprove of homosexual behavior is in someway analogous to being prejudiced against people because of involuntary characteristics like skin color. Given the fondness of the Left for the ad hominem, it seems that they cannot resist the logically bizarre charge that those who disapprove of homosexual behavior are somehow therefore "bigots," or even "haters."

The ad hominem can be a powerful weapon when wielded by those handicapped by a lack of quality arguments. But the fact remains that one cannot validly be charged with being a bigot- much less with hating a person or group- because one disapproves of his or her or their behavior.

Alas, social conservatives continue not only to allow social liberals to confuse the distinction between orientation and behavior, but to help them do so. It seems that a Virginia legislator recently made the thoroughly regrettable remark that "sodomy is not a civil right."

There are at least two things wrong with that statement. The first is that, in fact, sodomy is a civil right. However one stands on the controverted status of privacy per se as a constitutional right (it is nowhere actually spelled out in the Constitution, though it seems a logical implication of the Third and Fourth Amendments), it would be hard to argue that what two consenting adults to in the privacy of their own bedroom which does not violate the law is anything but a private matter, which they indeed have a civil right to engage in if they so choose.

What is not a civil right is social approbation for what one does even in the privacy of one's bedroom. Unlike the right to privacy, the right to have one's own religious beliefs concerning sexual ethics is more than simply implied by the First Amendment. It is part and parcel of the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of religion. Moreover, it would be difficult to make the case the First Amendment does not at least as strongly imply a right to one's own code of sexual ethics- even if not based explicitly on religion- as the Third and Fourth Amendments imply a right to privacy. And this holds true even if one believes that this ethical code should be binding on others, so long as one does not seek to use coercion to impose it on them.

Yes, there is indeed a civil right to sodomy. But no, there is no civil right to have others- much less society as a whole- approve of it. In fact, there is explicitly a civil right to disapprove of homosexual behavior, and a constitutionally guaranteed one at that.

And it's not those who avail themselves of that right who are the bigots. It's those who slander them as bigots because they disapprove of social conservatives- and often, in the most literal sense, hate them.

HT: The Drudge Retort