4 ms·

> But that's always been a fucked up idea. It shouldn't matter whether it was predetermined or otherwise not in your control. If it's constructed then it's cons

> But that's always been a fucked up idea. It shouldn't matter whether it was predetermined or otherwise not in your control. If it's constructed then it's constructed. If it's not then it's not. People shouldn't be oppressed for their sexuality full stop, regardless of reason. You are right, I think, to root the conflict in religion. The dominant religion in the West, Christianity, treats the human body as a given. That is to say that while you are more than just your body, you are certainly not less: there is a union of mind and body that separates only at death. If they disagree, a reconciliation must be attempted from the outside (i.e., by God). Of course today we have technology that puts a veneer of science on what is really a religious idea: we are essentially our mind and not our body. When the two disagree, we needn't change our minds because we can alter the body through hormones and surgery. On the face of it, I don't see how you could reconcile these two positions. I think the use of genetic predestination was used as an attempt to do this: if I'm made this way then how can it be wrong to be {gay, trans, etc.}? But in general I think the denominations that were predisposed to blessing homosexuality (for example) were unlikely to need scientific persuasions like that. When it became clear that rigid denominations weren't going to budge, it feels like genetic predestination became unfashionable.

yters 6y ago
Plus it doesn't make sense from a Christian perspective. The Roman Catholic branch and derivatives all believe everyone is genetically predisposed to sin through Adam's lineage, and that is a bad thing, and we don't have a choice in the matter. So saying homosexuality is a genetic predisposition just means it gets lumped into the rest of our fallen attributes. Making it a choice doesn't fix things either, since a choice can be intrinsically sinful. There is no other way than to deny that homosexuality is wrong. Yet that is difficult to do, since sexuality has such an obvious role to play in the perpetuation of the human race. If it were normative then the human race would not exist. So the most straightforward explanation is it is a deviation from the way things should be, as is much else in our human nature, which in turn points to a standard that we deviate from.
- memling 6y ago
  > Plus it doesn't make sense from a Christian perspective. The Roman Catholic branch and derivatives all believe everyone is genetically predisposed to sin through Adam's lineage, and that is a bad thing, and we don't have a choice in the matter. So saying homosexuality is a genetic predisposition just means it gets lumped into the rest of our fallen attributes. Making it a choice doesn't fix things either, since a choice can be intrinsically sinful. I think that's an inescapable conclusion in traditional Christianity. That will or choice is not necessarily a component of responsibility is something we also adopt in law: involuntary manslaughter is different than premeditated murder, even though the outcome is the same. In other words, will is not essential to guilt, although the degree to which we assess punishments certainly is. I don't know what Catholicism says to that, really, but it does seem to me that the arguments concerning genetic predisposition would have failed in most conservative religious approaches because of the premise. Even so, I think that this is a mostly ancillary concern. The real issue is that there are competing and irreconcilable views of what it means to be human. Are we human because of the bodies we inhabit? Are we human because of how we can feel about who we are? Because we can transcend our bodies? I would postulate that answering this question is an essentially religious exercise, whether your narrative comes from a biology textbook, genetic programming manual, or the Bible. But that's an opinion that is perhaps even murkier to plumb than the roots of homosexuality in human experience.
  - yters 6y ago
    Ironically, it only makes sense to say humanity is more than the body from a religious perspective. Otherwise all we have is materialism, and this we must be reducible to our matter, i.e. bodies.

yters 6y ago

Plus it doesn't make sense from a Christian perspective. The Roman Catholic branch and derivatives all believe everyone is genetically predisposed to sin through Adam's lineage, and that is a bad thing, and we don't have a choice in the matter. So saying homosexuality is a genetic predisposition just means it gets lumped into the rest of our fallen attributes. Making it a choice doesn't fix things either, since a choice can be intrinsically sinful. There is no other way than to deny that homosexuality is wrong. Yet that is difficult to do, since sexuality has such an obvious role to play in the perpetuation of the human race. If it were normative then the human race would not exist. So the most straightforward explanation is it is a deviation from the way things should be, as is much else in our human nature, which in turn points to a standard that we deviate from.

memling 6y ago
> Plus it doesn't make sense from a Christian perspective. The Roman Catholic branch and derivatives all believe everyone is genetically predisposed to sin through Adam's lineage, and that is a bad thing, and we don't have a choice in the matter. So saying homosexuality is a genetic predisposition just means it gets lumped into the rest of our fallen attributes. Making it a choice doesn't fix things either, since a choice can be intrinsically sinful. I think that's an inescapable conclusion in traditional Christianity. That will or choice is not necessarily a component of responsibility is something we also adopt in law: involuntary manslaughter is different than premeditated murder, even though the outcome is the same. In other words, will is not essential to guilt, although the degree to which we assess punishments certainly is. I don't know what Catholicism says to that, really, but it does seem to me that the arguments concerning genetic predisposition would have failed in most conservative religious approaches because of the premise. Even so, I think that this is a mostly ancillary concern. The real issue is that there are competing and irreconcilable views of what it means to be human. Are we human because of the bodies we inhabit? Are we human because of how we can feel about who we are? Because we can transcend our bodies? I would postulate that answering this question is an essentially religious exercise, whether your narrative comes from a biology textbook, genetic programming manual, or the Bible. But that's an opinion that is perhaps even murkier to plumb than the roots of homosexuality in human experience.
- yters 6y ago
  Ironically, it only makes sense to say humanity is more than the body from a religious perspective. Otherwise all we have is materialism, and this we must be reducible to our matter, i.e. bodies.