Obviously, you will want to use my religion to dismiss my views. .... But the view that there is design in human nature - whether or not you admit a Designer - is widespread, natural, and eminently defensible. And the view that the two sexes are, in this design, complementary and meant to encounter, is equally easy to reach. And that from it follows that what orientates sexual desire away from its obvious target and to one which has no evident design value at all, is a disorder.
That's all fine, but mankind has long overcome the boundaries of doing what nature intended for a certain purpose and has turned it all into an end in itself. We do not eat to stay alive, we eat because we enjoy it. The same goes for sex. No one I know has sex solely for the purpose of making babies (although apparently your church says you should, but really!), but everyone has sex just for the fun of it. And unless *you* stop having sex for fun and only do it to create new life (which I do not think you've done with your four loves/girl friends - or are you a father four times?), you have no right that I can see to preach others they have to stop having sex for fun. And sex for fun and not for reproduction means sex with same sex partners as well.
My view is that homosexual desire is natural in the same way that blindness or congenital disease are; because there are flaws in everything, and all things tend to go wrong.
Okay, I have no difficulty accepting that view. It seems that ten percent of mankind are homosexual - perhaps it's an aberration, like colour-blindness, left-handedness or flat feet. Maybe. Maybe it has other reasons. Fact is, I don't really care why it exists. It's there.
And that it is not as homosexuals - there is the error - but as human beings and citizens, that people who carry this particular feature or flaw have a right to be respected. This, in my mind, parallels the rights of disabled people. It is because a disabled person is still a human being, with the same basic value as all other human beings, that he or she has a claim on our respect; certainly not because he or she is blind or deaf or paralyzed or mentally disordered. Not as a victim, but in spite of being a victim.
I absolutely agree with you here. But how come that you would probably cry out with righteous indignation if blind, deaf or wheelchair-bound people (who have to deal with their own brand of neglect and abuse, no doubt!) were socially persecuted like homosexuals have been and sometimes still are and can find nothing to say about mutilating and killing people that just have to happen the wrong (for you) sexuality?
To go further: in certain ways, and in certain fields, disability may actually spur human beings to achievements that they might not have otherwise made or even thought of. .... it was the point of pain in the flesh around which, to make sense and value, music grew.
Sometimes great suffering can be sublimated into great art. Inspite of that I'm not convinced that makes us entitled to inflict suffering onto other people.
That's all fine, but mankind has long overcome the boundaries of doing what nature intended for a certain purpose and has turned it all into an end in itself. We do not eat to stay alive, we eat because we enjoy it. The same goes for sex. No one I know has sex solely for the purpose of making babies (although apparently your church says you should, but really!), but everyone has sex just for the fun of it. And unless *you* stop having sex for fun and only do it to create new life (which I do not think you've done with your four loves/girl friends - or are you a father four times?), you have no right that I can see to preach others they have to stop having sex for fun. And sex for fun and not for reproduction means sex with same sex partners as well.
My view is that homosexual desire is natural in the same way that blindness or congenital disease are; because there are flaws in everything, and all things tend to go wrong.
Okay, I have no difficulty accepting that view. It seems that ten percent of mankind are homosexual - perhaps it's an aberration, like colour-blindness, left-handedness or flat feet. Maybe. Maybe it has other reasons. Fact is, I don't really care why it exists. It's there.
And that it is not as homosexuals - there is the error - but as human beings and citizens, that people who carry this particular feature or flaw have a right to be respected. This, in my mind, parallels the rights of disabled people. It is because a disabled person is still a human being, with the same basic value as all other human beings, that he or she has a claim on our respect; certainly not because he or she is blind or deaf or paralyzed or mentally disordered. Not as a victim, but in spite of being a victim.
I absolutely agree with you here. But how come that you would probably cry out with righteous indignation if blind, deaf or wheelchair-bound people (who have to deal with their own brand of neglect and abuse, no doubt!) were socially persecuted like homosexuals have been and sometimes still are and can find nothing to say about mutilating and killing people that just have to happen the wrong (for you) sexuality?
To go further: in certain ways, and in certain fields, disability may actually spur human beings to achievements that they might not have otherwise made or even thought of. .... it was the point of pain in the flesh around which, to make sense and value, music grew.
Sometimes great suffering can be sublimated into great art. Inspite of that I'm not convinced that makes us entitled to inflict suffering onto other people.
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