Following on from Hamish,

This “logic” already is seeping into thinking in other areas.
First thing that came to my mind was the increasingly popular TV Show Dexter. Have never watched it (out of principle) - the premise is that a person with sociopathic tendencies can be tolerated/supported/defended/etc because the ends justifies the means.

Which is weird (on so many levels!) when you consider how socially unacceptable or rather how trendy and popular obescity is! “But I’m born this way” doesn’t hold water when airlines charge for an extra seat or the medical association demonstrates extreme prejudice by putting adverts on TV all the time telling us that being fat is evil. (well at least that is message being conveyed).

Overeating yourself to death is greedy, selfish, prideful and sin. So is overspending so is homosexuality! Why stop at verse 9 of 1 Corinthians 6 when verse 10 has so many more (common) birth defects
“nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God”

I know it over simplifies things, but I think the danger in confronting or dealing with this is to focus on the symptoms of sin without addressing the root cause?

Don’t get me wrong - it needs to be engaged - but not at expense of over emphasis or at the expense of excusing other forms of unrighteousness.

The interesting thing is that when I went through university and studied genetics, the head of the school at the time was not a Christian and yet he stated that the evidence for the ‘gay gene’ was very flimsy at best and he stated that a more rigourous study which was later done overturned the initial conclusions (I must confess I haven’t looked at the data myself and so am trusting the faithfulness of this non-Christian genetics lecturer)

The reaosn the subsequent study was not paraded across the front pages of newspapers was because it didn’t fit into the ‘world view’ that the pro-gay lobby wanted to put forward. An interetsing case of selection bias.

However I’m surprised that people put so much weight upon the genetic influence of ‘being gay’ because the flipside is that if you DON’T have the gene/chemical imbalance and identify yourself as ‘gay’ then you are living a lie. Are these people lying to themselves? Should they be allowed to identify themselves as ‘gay’? It seems to me there’s a lot of people trying to use data for their own agendas when it suits them.

Just to clarify, I do not want to trivialise the struggles that many people may face in homosexual temptations; my point is that the pro-gay lobby use data very selectively and we need to be careful when engaging with arguements.

James,

I think the point here is that while it may (or may not) be right to oppose “gay gene” idea in the name of good science, it’s completely missing the point to focus on it in any sort of Christian argument. The deeper problem isn’t data selection, but the assumptions used to interpret it.