Does God Make Homosexuals?

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from an opinion column on the editorial page of Tulsa World, July 20, 2003, with the headline: “Switching: Southern Baptists Target Homosexuals—Want your eye color changed? The Southern Baptists believe they can do it for you. They contend a homosexual can become a heterosexual by adopting Baptist teachings. So, presumably, eye color can be changed, too.

“Ridiculous? Yes, because the Southern Baptist Convention, at its annual meeting in Phoenix, claimed that homosexual folks can choose to be heterosexual if only they give their heart to Jesus. That presumes that homosexuals choose their sexual orientation, kind of like the way the rest of us choose our eye color. The point is that homosexuals are born with different sexual orientation, like some people have blue eyes while others have brown eyes.

“To accept this, however, is to go against what Southern Baptists believe is the sacred word of God. After all, ‘unnatural sex’ is condemned in the Old and New Testaments. That’s because the biblical writers did not have as much information on the human body and its development as modern man has. Their understanding of the body—and science, for that matter—was indeed primitive. That clashes with the view that the Bible is inerrant and all of it inspired by God. So, people who believe are always in a twist, trying to reconcile the Bible with science. Tolerance, love, and understanding are the teachings that predominate in the Bible. All creatures are believed to have been created by God, including homosexuals.

“Is homosexuality an inborn condition? Or, do homosexuals choose that orientation? There has been, and obviously still is, a lot of debate on that question. But given society’s general condemnation of the homosexual lifestyle, the open contempt shown by organizations like the Southern Baptist Convention, and innumerable obstacles in a world ordered for heterosexuals, why would anyone openly choose to be gay if it were not a compelling inborn drive? Maybe, the SBC can explain.”

Tom: Dave, normally, we look for news articles, and this is an editorial from the Tulsa World, so it’s written by the editors of this magazine. Do they know anything? There are so many errors in here, so many misconceptions, misinformation, it’s just—it’s unbelievable!

Dave: Well, but these are misconceptions that have been promoted by the homosexuals that this is in the genes. First of all, it’s not in the genes. The homosexuals have no different genes, no different chromosomes, than anyone else. So, if they say it’s like blue eyes, it’s in the body, this is what they are talking about.

It is not in the body. That simply isn’t true. We could give many examples of that. For example, you could get a book, The Fatal Shore—it tells you the origin of Australia. It was a penal colony, and they used to send their criminals down there, even eight-year-old boys that stole a handkerchief or something—it was horrible. They were all men. What happened? They developed into homosexuals; they had homosexual mafias forcing men to become homosexuals and homosexuals slaves, and so forth. We have the letters, still, of some of these men who wrote back to England, saying, “I hate myself for this! This is horrible—I don’t want this.”

And you know, Tom, that there are some Roman Catholic seminaries—not outsiders claiming this, but they have acknowledged themselves—70 percent homosexuals. Isn’t that amazing that all the people with homosexual genes end up in Catholic seminaries—or such a high percentage. Come on! It simply isn’t true, and we have the testimony of hundreds, thousands, actually, of former homosexuals, who have been delivered by the power of Jesus Christ.

Tom: And truly delivered—not just living, gritting their teeth, and saying, “I’m never going to do that.” Deliverance!

Dave: Absolutely. Just simple logic. These guys that wrote the editorial, whoever, and the homosexuals themselves, many of them, most of them, believe in evolution. Now, if homosexuality is an aberrant—aberration in the genes, and it has to be, it is unnatural, you couldn’t deny that—so, you got zapped by some cosmic ray or something that changed your chromosomes or your genes or whatever, well, the next generation—it would be eliminated because these people don’t produce children. So, evolution would wipe out homosexuality in one generation. I mean, maybe a few of them have had some children. Okay, but it would be gone, and yet it increases—increases! And these people are forcing their lifestyle on the world. You can’t go into the public schools in America and teach them about Christ and say anything in opposition to homosexuality, but the homosexuals have the right to go in there, say what a wonderful life this is, and maybe it’s for you, and give it a try, and so forth. This is criminal, and they are forcing this upon the rest of the world, and it isn’t right, but they have some powerful lobbies.

Tom: Dave, the other thing about this editorial—“tolerance, love, and understanding are the teachings that predominate in the Bible.” The Bible does teach tolerance, it does teach love and understanding, but it also teaches that sin is sin and it needs to be dealt with.

Dave: Yeah, tolerance—you know, again, we’ve talked about it in the past. This is an over-worked word, and it is a word that is abused. You want the police to be tolerant of crime, you want doctors to be tolerant of disease? Tolerant? What do you mean by “tolerant”? “Just accept me”—that’s what we have learned, you know, from the hippies and on down. “Accept me.” Well, we accept you, we love you; but we don’t love what you are doing. And if we love the homosexual, we want to try to help them. We want to try to deliver them. We have so many testimonies of these people who say, “I hated this lifestyle.”

And furthermore, Tom, we have the disease that it causes; we have the fact that homosexuals and lesbians—their life expectancy is cut by about 40 to 50 percent. All the facts are against it. So then why does it grow? Because it’s a lust.

Tom: The Bible says there is pleasure in sin for a season—after that, it turns to destruction. This is the fruit of something like that, and it’s sad, Dave. And it’s even sadder that you have people who are really misinformed, don’t understand, but laying things out as though it were truth.

Dave: Because they want the homosexuals to read their newspaper and they want the homosexual vote, politicians do, so, that’s more important than truth, and that’s pretty much where we are in much of the world today, and that’s sad. It does not bode well for the future.