[Dialogue] Spong idscusses science

[kroegerd@aol.com]

September 28, 2005
Born Gay! 

A new book co-authored by Dr. Qazi Rahman, a lecturer in psychobiology at the University of East London and Dr. Glenn Wilson, a member of the faculty of the University of London, has just been published in the United Kingdom. It was reviewed in The Guardian, one of the United Kingdom's four major daily newspapers last month. Entitled, "Born Gay," this book lays out in a quite public way the consensus today of both the scientific and the medical communities in their attempt to understand homosexuality. 
In a nutshell, these authors state the widely accepted conclusions that homosexuality is not something "that can be caught, like 'flu'," it cannot be "learned from people who make it look really cool and fun like those chaps on 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' (a British sitcom) and it has nothing to do with smothering mothers and distant fathers." All of that, they assert, has now fallen by the wayside. Those ideas are now completely dismissed in intellectual circles. 
Drs. Rahman and Wilson write: "It is quite clear now that homosexuality in gay men and lesbians is caused by biological factors." This conclusion, they assert, is "so widely accepted" in academic circles that many colleagues asked why they had bothered to write this book at all. "They tell us," they said in the Guardian interview, "that all we are doing is pointing out what everyone already knows." Everyone, that is, who is not homophobic and therefore not open to the data that so deeply and significantly challenges this ancient, deeply held emotional prejudice. 
I welcome this book precisely because it is not written for the academic world of science and medicine, where this issue is no longer debated. Rather, it is written specifically for those people who still operate out of an uninformed definition of homosexuality as either a sickness or a deviant, sinful, unnatural and depraved choice. More importantly, it is written for those who somehow think that this issue was settled when the Book of Leviticus was written in the sixth century before the Common Era or by St. Paul, who wrote between 50 and 64 C.E. It is written to resource the churches of the world that are increasingly seen as the bastions of an undying homophobia, which causes them to be at war over an issue that outside those churches has largely been settled. It is written to place in the clear relief of its own ongoing ignorance the embarrassing rhetoric that still emanates from people like Benedict XVI, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their passionate acolytes of the Religious Right in America. Negative words also come from Christian leaders in the third world who try to cover their obviously uninformed opinions with the charge of racism when those opinions are rejected as simply ignorant. The evidence is so clear. Homosexuality, just like heterosexuality, is morally neutral. Both can be lived out in holiness or in degradation. Both are 'givens' not 'chosens.' The only "sin" of homosexual people is that they are born with a sexual orientation different from the majority. 
Dr. Rahman says that the impetus for this book was that "over the last decade or so, there has been an explosion of work on this subject and we felt that no one had reviewed it all or laid it down in a way that was accessible to non-academics." Noting that although the scientific community is convinced about the biological causes of homosexuality, some parts of the wider world still seem to have doubts. Perhaps the fact is that this knowledge has simply not been made accessible to them. This book then addresses the need to educate the masses, revealing with clear and credible evidence that homosexuality is a natural minority expression of the spectrum of human sexuality. That insight alone has huge ramifications for social policy. 
This book exposes the claim that religious conversion and religious counseling can 'cure' people of homosexuality. Without equivocation, these authors state that the data offered to support such claims have been debunked and dismissed as the medical fraud that it has always been. We need to embrace the fact that fraud perpetrated in the name of religion is still fraud and should be treated as such. Those who attempt to practice medicine without a license should be charged, convicted and jailed. 
Rahman and Wilson believe that the reason for lingering confusion over this issue in our society comes not from the lack of scientific consensus that biology is the root of homosexuality, but rather because within that biological data, the determining factors are still debated. It is not genetic in the usual sense of being an inherited characteristic. Homosexual persons presumably have straight parents, and the children of homosexual couples are no more prone to be gay or lesbian than the children of anyone else. Dr. Rahman's best guess at this moment is what he calls "the sponge model," which he defines as the presence of genes that predispose a fetus toward an orientation different from the majority. These genes, he suggests, affect receptors in the brain causing the brain "to soak up testosterone like a sponge." Admitting that this is just one hypothesis, Rahman believes, nonetheless, that it has promise and can be tested. This is why, he concludes, that "developmental biology and neurogenetics are so important in this field." 
In the late 1980s, realizing that I knew almost nothing about sexual orientation except the unchallenged prejudices with which I had grown up, I looked for a place I could go to gain the necessary intellectual and medical background on this human phenomenon. I knew only that my ignorance and prejudice would make it all but impossible to be an effective bishop in the metropolitan New York area. My search led me to a member of the faculty of The Cornell School of Medicine in New York City. This man, whose name was Robert Lahita, had both a PhD and an MD degree. At that time he was working on the differences in the immune systems of men and women, an interest that had led him deeply into the science of the brain. What impressed me most then, and it is now verified by this new book, is that the idea that homosexuality could be adopted as a lifestyle of choice or that it was caused by some factor or experience in early childhood was totally and universally dismissed. No one on the medical faculty at Cornell saluted this idea. That fact alone changed for me the whole dynamic in the debate going on in the Church. For if sexual orientation is part of what we are rather than something some choose to do, then it must be related to in the same way that we have learned to relate to skin color, gender, left handedness and ethnicity. These things are neither good or bad, they simply are. To discriminate against a person because of who that person is, is the essence of racism, sexism and xenophobia. I was now coming to the awareness that it is also the essence of homophobia. It was the 'given-ness' of sexual orientation that produced in me the sea change in my own attitude. That is also what is happening in both church and society at this moment. A new understanding of homosexuality is colliding with a definition that is uninformed, prejudiced and dying. Dying prejudices are never revived and they are never re-installed. Indeed the fact that a prejudice is being debated is a sure sign that it is dying. The only question is how long will it take and how many people will be hurt before this prejudice takes its place in the graveyards of human history alongside other discarded discriminatory practices that have marked the human journey through history. 
The fact is that heterosexual people cannot recall the moment when they chose their sexual orientation. I, for one, can only remember that in my very early adolescence, I decided that girls were not obnoxious and that I desired their attention. This awakening was accompanied by behavioral changes that were thought of by my parents as both remarkable and noteworthy. I took baths more frequently, combed my hair, dressed better and even used deodorant! My mother observing this behavior said: "the sap has risen!" I had no idea what that meant either. Now I wonder why those of us who did not choose to be heterosexual have always assumed that homosexuals in fact did choose to be gay! 
I learned many things from my Cornell contacts. I learned that scientists believe that the percentage of homosexual persons in the general population is stable among all people, in all cultures and throughout all history. I learned that homosexual behavior is well documented in the animal kingdom today. I learned that the origin of all sexual orientation is believed to be connected with the presence or absence of the same realities described in Rahman and Wilson's book. Somehow both the levels of testosterone and brain formation are factors. I learned that the division between male and female in nature is not nearly as well differentiated as we have always thought. All human life appears to start as female and it only develops masculine identity if and when the "y" chromosome kicks in, reshaping the developing fetus. Following my work with Dr. Lahita and the others at Cornell my mind has been clear on this issue. Discrimination against homosexual persons is as wrong as discrimination against people on the basis of race, gender or ethnicity. It has no place in the life of the Christian Church. I no longer even want to debate this issue in the various councils of the Church. It is for me a settled issue. It is time for people to adjust their ancient prejudices to new realities. This debate, for me is in the same category as the debate between evolution and creationism, whether the earth is flat or round and whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa. Some issues are simply settled. If the Church and its leaders from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope to the evangelicals across the world don't understand this, they reveal Christianity's irrelevance. Church unity is a bogus smokescreen. A Church united in prejudice is not worthy of continued life. Politicians who do not understand this are either ignorant or irresponsible. There is no other choice. It is time to move both Church and State into the 21st century. 
? John Shelby Spong 
  
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
Marion Pember from Kansas writes: 
In my state the Board of Education threw out the teaching of evolution a few years ago. Upon election of moderate members, the Board brought it back again. Now conservatives are in the majority again and the whole issue of universe origin is being debated again. This time the issue of "intelligent design" is being brought in as needing to be taught. Is this just another way of bringing in conservative belief about instant creation? 
Dear Marion, 
On one level it really doesn't matter what the Kansas Board of Education thinks, evolution is real and is not subject to majority vote any more than whether epilepsy is caused by demon possession. Yet it is embarrassing to live in a state where public ignorance can force people to deny reality. It will also ill-equip the children of Kansas to live in the modern world. Already American school children are far behind Asians in the field of science. The pursuit of knowledge should never be compromised to protect religious sensitivities. That is where religious tyranny begins. 
Intelligent Design is just one more smoke screen. The task of geologists and anthropologists is to study the sources of the life of this world. They should be free to follow wherever their scientific research carries them. If Christianity is threatened by truth, it is already too late to save it. Imagine worshiping a God so weak and incompetent that the Kansas School Board must defend this God from science and new learning. It is pitiful. 
The challenge of Darwinian thinking to traditional Christianity is deep and profound. That means that Christianity's survival depends on its being big enough to embrace a post-Darwinian world. If we cannot then Christianity will surely die. I do not believe that is the fate toward which Christianity is headed unless it becomes that petty, small-minded enterprise that must hide in ignorance and fear lest it be destroyed. 
I hope you and others will resist these tactics at the ballot box. If that fails then you have to assess whether or not you want your children to grow up in the environment that Kansas is creating. If not, you might consider moving. I for one hope you will stay and fight for ignorance will not prevail forever, even in Kansas. 
John Shelby Spong 
 
Dick Kroeger
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