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PART 1: HOMOSEXUALITY, GENETICS, AND OVERCOMING
This is part of the series:
Homosexuality, Genetics, and Overcoming
I just posted a long comment on BlogCatalog in response to this article:
US researchers find evidence that homosexuality linked to genetics
Such findings would further the debate over whether homosexuality is innate or a choice
McClatchy newspapers
guardian.co.uk, Monday December 1 2008 18.14 GMT
Here's my comment.
Hello All,
Genetics at conception isn't the end-all-be-all. It's a snapshot that the spirit can still overcome. The spirit is over all matter. Humanity (part of it) is retarding it for a multitude of reasons.
Even if there is a homosexual gene(s), it doesn't mean that it's a good lifestyle. Also, no one has to harm anyone for sexual release. There is no such thing as a homosexual who must have sex. Sex is a choice regardless of genetics. Furthermore, homosexuality is harmful. It's better not to engage in it.
People can stop being greedy. They can stop being violent. They can give up pornography. They stop using tobacco. The list goes on.
Do we say keep drinking a liter of vodka a day, because one is predisposed to alcoholism? I don't say it. I think it's monstrous to say that.
The analogy may not seem apt until one starts talking about the predilection (genetic?) of most homosexuals to also engage in promiscuous and STD-spreading behavior even though they technically know better.
How many cigarettes does it take one to smoke a day before smoking cigarettes becomes harmful? Who finds it genetically more difficult to quit smoking than does the average person? The smoker should still quit. The schools shouldn't be teaching that smoking is fine just because some people are more attracted to smoking from birth than are others.
The statistics bearing out what I've said here are out there for anyone who cares to look. I have some of them on my blog. I raise them since the cited article raised this whole issue based upon what it claims is scientific evidence when in fact it draws many conclusions that are preconceived and arbitrary.
It isn't well-reasoned. It doesn't demonstrate sound logic. What it is, is propaganda the author hopes will have its impact upon people (proselytizing) who will not have engaged in sufficient critical thinking.
Different people are genetically more predisposed than are others to every kind of behavior and addiction. There's no way around that. That's the nature of the flesh, which is weak. There's no way around the fact that nurture plays a large part as well.
Before anyone is tempted to throw the term homophobic, let me say that my views are not irrational. A phobia is an irrational fear. Also, I don't quake in fear around homosexuals. Fear is a word with many connotations. I fear God for instance, but different people will take that to mean different things. Most will not understand the term "fear" in the sense I am using it. It means respect. I do fear for people and society concerning homosexuality, just as I fear greed and violence.
I want to be clear here also about something else. I am adamantly opposed to coercion. No human being should use violence or property destruction or the like either for or against homosexuality.
As for constitutional amendments on the issue, I'm no secularist. I stand outside that system, because it's based upon violent coercion.
You have people on either side of this whole issue clamoring for the power of the secular state to force the other side by threats of violence to do or not to do things. Homosexuals want that state to sanction and condone their behavior. They want that violently enforced. If the state says no one may discriminate here or there on account of homosexuality, most homosexuals want anyone discriminating to be stopped by whatever means necessary. How far do we get in the movement to a more perfect union with that mentality? I say we don't. The perfect union is harmless and unselfish.
I know this was an unusually long comment for BlogCatalog. How else though could I really even begin to cover it? Thank you, and may God bless all.
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Wednesday, December 3, 2008 @ 3:16:30 AM (Pacific Time)
One major stumbling block to the "it's in the genes" viewpoint is simple sexual behavior. Gay men do not act like women sexually. They act like heterosexual men gone wild. They have more partners and more sexual encounters than their straight friends.
University of Michigan (could be Ohio) did a study a few years ago on this topic. They hoped to support the Gay Gene view and failed miserably.
Of course their findings are not widely quoted since it would not fit well with the need to justify deviant behavior.
Blessings
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 @ 7:32:48 AM (Pacific Time)
I agree, very well said.
I also believe we always have choice whether to follow our heart regardless or to use our head and conscience.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 @ 4:59:36 PM (Pacific Time)
@Ori – @Faith and Facts –
Thank you both for leaving comments in solidarity with seeking to cut through to the real truth.
People who don't claim Christianity who also say homosexuality should be treated on an equal footing with heterosexuality are one thing. People who do claim Christianity and still say the same thing are just blowing off Jesus's very words.
It's coming down to this. There is no escaping it. The goats and sheep will be divided along this fault line. I don't mean over just homosexuality. I mean over being as honest as can be about Jesus's words and giving it our all to adhere to his principles. There are just people twisting and making up a new religion calling it Christian. Let them go start another religion, because they can't have Christianity that blows off Christ.
If they don't like it, what's it to Jesus? They aren't of his fold. They can't be. If they are of his fold, then there are no goats and Jesus is the biggest liar who ever existed. I don't believe that for any fraction of a second. These people try to turn Jesus into Satan.
You two should visit this article: "Ethiopian eununchs and reading the text from the margins" (by Miguel De La Torre. Associated Baptist Press. December 2, 2008) and chime in there too.
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship supports them.
God bless the truth seekers.
Tom Usher
Thursday, December 4, 2008 @ 9:52:21 PM (Pacific Time)
Homosexual in my opinion is not a natural way of enjoying the sexual pleasures by having an intercourse. It is a bundle of diseases and is very harmful for our society in a number of ways. Everyone should need freedom but not like this which starts harming the other person. In American, UK and other industrially advanced countries, people do rally and ask their right and law for it but till this time non government has supported.
Friday, December 5, 2008 @ 1:46:32 AM (Pacific Time)
Hello,
In America and the U.K., homosexuals are protected by law. If you mean that in general they have not obtained all the sanctioning they seek, that's correct.
I'm opposed to both homosexuality and coercion. What about you?
Thanks,
Peace,
Tom Usher
Friday, December 5, 2008 @ 6:30:55 PM (Pacific Time)
Hi Tom,
Just this week, I found out that someone who is rather famous within Christian circles, came out of the closet and disclosed that he is a homosexual.
He even divorced his wife of 33 years so that he could pursue his lust to the full measure!
It was a shocking discovery to say the least, as I once had great respect for this person whom I believed had a solid relationship with the LORD. That, of course, has changed.
And to make matters worse, he is trying to say God made him that way.
To use such a premise to justify homosexuality is to use the same premise to justify all sin. I just don't understand why he can't see this.
After all, if God made people to be what He doesn't want them to be, then what does that say about God; and what sense is there in being held accountable for our sins?
Nevertheless, the Bible is very clear on the subject. Only those who are perverse in their manner of thinking will attempt to twist the scriptures so that they may have their cake and eat it too, so to speak.
And now some are even attempting to change the Bible, to make it look like God supports homosexuality! It's just absolutely repulsive and disgusting behavior to do such a thing to God's Holy Word!
Indeed, we are living in the last days!
Please come soon LORD Jesus!
Blessings to you…
Chris [deleted]
[deleted]
Friday, December 5, 2008 @ 9:39:18 PM (Pacific Time)
@Bible Devotions –
Hey Chris,
I'm sorry to learn about this fall, but I'm glad you shared it as a warning, an alarm. It's your duty you've done here. You're the watchman sounding the trumpet. The blood won't be on your hands.
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
(Psalms 127:1 KJV)
It's not your fault. This society has been built up by men, not God.
The person of whom you've written here is committing adultery without doubt. That's bad enough isn't it, but he didn't stop there.
So many people are focused on the wrong things. Look at this one relationship where bonding, loyalty, and promise have been put asunder just so some may abuse themselves with others. Rather than falling to this abuse, we want overcoming. It's what Jesus wants.
Most people think they're off the hook. They're not the least bit repentant about it or their trying their best to pretend they're just fine with it.
His marriage vow was not sacred to him. So, what will this one homosexual or bisexual person think when God isn't there for him, when the tormentors get him so he learns, or maybe not, through the pain and suffering he's inflicted, is still inflicting, and only magnifying? We experience our own standard in the end.
It's not God punishing. Satan does that. It's to learn that God is where cause and effect are compassionate and merciful. Where's the spirit of mercy in homosexuality? Harming others for twisted sexual gratification isn't merciful in any sense.
Well Chris, this is why Jesus said that few there be that find it (the strait and narrow and New Heaven).
You're doing your best to tell people to have soft hearts toward each other. As you and I have already been through, if we discuss things openly enough, we finally can see how to understand the different contexts of words.
We can't though say fornication is okay just because usage dictates. My God (I mean that in no blasphemous sense), if we do that, child sacrifice and cannibalism and pedophilia and frankly stuff we haven't imagined in terms of utter depravity are licensed just because we can. That's the ultimate sociopathic life isn't it?
I even saw a person in a video several years ago saying that he couldn't wait to get to Heaven where God would introduce him to His hot son, Jesus. The thing is, this young man who said that was serious. He actually has been deluded into imagining that his homosexual lust for Jesus Christ is acceptable even in the Highest.
How much damage has been done to get to that point?
Claiming God made people homosexual is making God the author of sin. People are just in denial that we exist in a fallen condition brought about by our choices and our proselytizing (tempting) generation after generation. This isn't Heaven. I hear people say, "It could be worse" though. Yes, it could be, and humanity is heading that way even while many are headed in the opposite direction.
Chris, Satan sifts souls as wheat, as you well know. This whole life here and now is about that sifting – who doesn't and doesn't fall into that sieve. Our hearts are measured. So many souls who have engaged in homosexual behavior are just refusing to look at the harm they are doing and also are refusing to put the welfare of others before their sexual whatever it is (release; sense of power at getting away with something; now being exhibitionists about it).
God made humanity before the fall. God made us to learn. We are in this together, but we are capable of being separated.
Jesus said it right. If one is of God, one knows it and returns. If one is not of God, one stays with the dead root of Satan. Satan is a spiritual Lord. He's the dark side. You and I and others like us want the truth. We are promised that if we keep going for it, it will be given to us but not to those who don't go for it. They stay back with Satan as their god, the god of this old earth. We look forward to the New Earth, one with the New Heaven. Satan is overthrown from his portion he's futilely fighting to maintain.
What are they doing, writing a blatantly homosexual Bible? Tell me about that. I'm not aware of it although it would fit perfectly with the downward direction in which they are trying to drag humanity. Even King James had the sense not to let all the commoners know he was a sodomite.
"Please come soon LORD Jesus!" Yes, Chris, but it will be very, very dark before the Dawn of the New World. Amos is right about that. Jesus warns about it. He wanted the coming wrath of Rome to already have been over. Of course we know that Jesus's whole message wasn't just about Rome wiping that one manifestation of the temple away.
Blessings to you to, friend.
Tom Usher
Friday, December 5, 2008 @ 10:31:45 PM (Pacific Time)
@Tom Usher –
Amen, Tom!
Saturday, December 6, 2008 @ 11:20:38 AM (Pacific Time)
@Bible Devotions –
Hi Chris,
I want to add that concerning my statement in my previous comment that "Claiming God made people homosexual is making God the author of sin," we must sort the truth.
The following is true:
The man was born blind but not on account of his parents' or his sin. Being blind in that way isn't necessarily a sin. It isn't necessarily the result of witting wrong-doing.
Any analogy between homosexuality and the state of that blind man isn't applicable, because homosexuals know in the sense Jesus used the term "know" in this case.
Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. (John 9:41 KJVR)
The unrepentant homosexuals see but reject.
Thanks,
Tom
Thursday, January 8, 2009 @ 6:13:02 AM (Pacific Time)
Overcoming homosexuality is definitely possible for those who wish to abandon homosexuality, and the testimonies of ex-homosexuals attest to this matter. Today people still report overcoming homosexuality and becoming heterosexuals or celibate through their Christian faith. In 1980, a study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and eleven men participated in this study. The aforementioned study stated that eleven homosexual men became heterosexuals "without explicit treatment and/or long-term psychotherapy" through their participation in a Pentecostal church.The results of this study are not surprising since Christian faith has shown itself to be effective in combating drug addiction
Thursday, January 8, 2009 @ 12:21:33 PM (Pacific Time)
Hello Deepak,
Your comment has been placed around the Internet, but I'm allowing it even though technically it's comment-spam. Try varying what you're saying from post to post. Otherwise, you're liable to find that your name is mud with the anti-comment-spam services.
Anyway, God has the power to change anyone. Some people lie about their conversion, but others are not lying. The old cliche, "Once a thief, always a thief," for instance is false. By God, people can break any habit and be healed of anything. It is a matter of faith, both individual and collective.
Thank you for witnessing here.
Tom Usher