Introduction
Both the creationist and evolutionary naturalist world views influence the sex norms and behaviour of their respective adherents. Creationism interprets sex as a biological drive designed primarily for the specific purpose of fulfilling the command to ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’ (Genesis 1:28). Creationism also concludes that the male and female sexual organs were specifically designed to be compatible so as to ensure successful reproduction, and that they manifest clear evidence of being the direct result of planning and purpose. Consequently, homosexual behaviour would be seen as a perversion of the sexual organs’ purpose, and a use of the sexual drive in a way for which it was not designed. Misuses such as this could result in negative repercussions, including disease and tissue damage involving not only the sexual organs, but the total sex drive and its associated responses. Whenever something is used for a purpose other than that for which it was designed, a clear risk of damage or other problems exists. In Morris’ words:
‘
In the West, this position has been the majority view for most of the last two millennia. What changed this view to the degree that in some countries homosexuals now receive special protection under civil rights acts and those who object to homosexual behaviour are labelled psychologically maladjusted, namely homophobes? A major factor has been the secularization of society and the teaching of naturalistic evolution. The common evolutionary biological argument to justify homosexuality runs as follows:
‘Homosexual behavior has been observed in most animal species studied, and the higher we climb on the taxonomic tree toward mammals, the more apparent homosexual behaviour we see.’4
Such claims are often made from a limited understanding of the natural world. For example, in response to the above common claim, Symons notes:
‘In Judeo-Christian theology, unlike evolutionary biology, there is no disjunction between ultimate and proximate; on the contrary, ultimate and proximate are intimately and immediately related. What one ought to do, for example, is a direct function of God’s will. Despite the absence of God in most scientific writing, the implicit belief that nature constitutes a moral order frequently persists. Thus writers with tolerant or positive views about homosexuality often begin their discussions by emphasizing the frequency with which non-human animals and preliterate peoples engage in homosexual activities, implying that homosexuality is natural and hence acceptable. Writers with less sanguine views of homosexuality point out that a great deal of mounting among non-human animals is not sexually motivated, that homosexual behavior is more frequent among captive than among free-ranging animals, and that exclusive homosexuality is rare among preliterate peoples, implying that homosexuality is unnatural and hence unacceptable.’5
Further, homosexual behaviour among animals is engaged in for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with sex. In many cases it is only a ‘ritualized form of aggression’.6
Although the full set of causes of homosexual behaviour is not yet understood, a creationist orientation provides a theoretical foundation to both understand and help persons with this problem. The present approach used to understand and help homosexuals adjust to a heterosexual life has obviously not been very fruitful; most studies show a very low ‘cure’ rate.7,8
The creationist viewpoint would also conclude that homosexuality is not due to normal biological factors that differentiate them from heterosexuals. The Creator-designed sexual orientation is heterosexual, and any deviation from this must be due to an aberration in either biological or psychological development. Importantly, this view can provide prevention advice and guidelines for child care so as to facilitate sexual adjustment. In fact, the common belief that one is ‘either a heterosexual or a homosexual’ and that physical or other clear reasons for this difference usually exist is not supported by research.9,10 The empirical research evidence indicates that for most people the sexual drive exists in a diffuse state in the early stages, solidifying only much later. Sexual development occurs primarily between the second year of life and the onset of puberty. During the first few years it is rather undefined and can develop through learning so that it can be stimulated, or at least influenced, by a wide variety of objects, although at first the primary stimulus is tactile stimulation of the genital area.11
Thus childrenÂ’s sexual development is highly influenced by early experiences in a process similar to imprinting.12 This system enables a person to become sexually attracted to their own race, national group or culture.13 Thus, Chinese men generally find Chinese women most erotic. Black men relate to black women in the same way, etc. This is not to say that people cannot find those in other groups attractive, but that the preference tends to be towards oneÂ’s own national and cultural group. Because the original sexual drive is diffuse, it can thus be conditioned in many different directions.14
For this reason, a variety of experiences, many of which have little to do with the person himself or herself, can cause one to become a homosexual, depending on the degree that oneÂ’s early diffuse sex drive is conditioned toward persons of the same sex and away from persons of the opposite sex. Holmes noted that
‘In many women, particularly, sexual attraction tends to follow on the heels of strong emotional attachments with partners of either sex.’15
Thus this gradual process can occur if the proper conditions—which are extremely diverse, and not yet fully delineated by research—exist. We are all susceptible to homosexual conditioning, at least until our sex drive becomes fairly solidified.16 The longer an orientation is rewarded and successfully persists, the more difficult it is to change. In addition, if one fully believes that homosexuality is ‘part of me, the way I am’, similar to one’s having black hair, change is obviously going to be more difficult. If one has concluded that most homosexuality is learned or acquired due to pathological biological factors because of a specific set of abnormal circumstances which influence development, as creationist psychology theory would predict, the person will recognize that the homosexual can change, even though it may be difficult.17
The evolution explanation
In contrast, the Darwinian view explains the sexual drive and all behaviour as solely a product of survival of the fittest selection. That is, organisms with a strong heterosexually oriented drive produce more of their kind, and are more successful, and those lacking it produce fewer offspring and are, therefore, more likely to become extinct.18 Evolution teaches that the source of sex is ‘biological … written by natural selection’.19 Since nature would consistently select those organisms with stronger heterosexual drives, it would become stronger and stronger until it would eventually become the all-encompassing human drive, more important than food and other life preservation needs. Evolution would not select for length of life beyond childbearing years, but primarily for the number of offspring that an individual was able to produce.20,21
Reproduction rates are not just of major importance in evolution, but are critical because high rates provide the numbers for evolution to select from—and a greater sample size means greater chances exist that more ‘fitter species’ will occur. Homosexuality would obviously usually not produce higher levels of reproduction than heterosexuality—evolutionary selection would consistently work in the opposite direction, selecting for heterosexuality—and any biological factors positively influencing homosexual feelings would rapidly be selected out. Homosexuality is thus not easy to explain from this world view. Heterosexuality is so critical for evolution that Fox stated:
‘During the course of my own [research] pursuit, Darwin loomed larger and larger He provided the major idea within which all else fits: There is ultimately only one life process—natural selection. This truth, once grasped, changes the world for an observer, as it changed it for Marx for example. But Darwin supplies a secondary theory—that of sexual selection, which is the way natural selection connects with the issues that concerned Freud: incest and aggression. Sexual selection has two sides: the competition between members of one sex (usually male) for mates from the other, and the choice exercised by the other (usually female) in picking mates from the competitors. Through this process, genes are differentially distributed in populations, and this can lead to significant evolutionary changes.’22
Nonetheless, evolution theory would not necessarily view homosexuality as ‘abnormal’ or ‘unnatural’, only a less successful mode of reproductive behaviour. To evolution, nothing is ‘normal’ in the sense of moral or appropriate compared to some universal standard or value. The only ultimate value in evolution is the degree to which a trait produces either a selection advantage or disadvantage. Aside from this, they say heterosexuality is not better, or more or less normal or desirable than homosexuality, especially if they both satisfy many of the same needs such as companionship, association, security, and sexual satisfaction. To a consistent evolutionist it thus makes no difference whether these needs are satisfied within a homosexual or heterosexual relationship. Homosexuality today actually could be viewed as more desirable from a secular standpoint because it could reduce population problems:
‘Whether the result of deprivation or a natural tendency for the organism, homosexuality also serves evolutionary processes by acting as a form of population control … as more gay families emerge fewer children will be born … A homosexual solution to overpopulation, however, will not simply happen by itself… If homosexuality is to have a limiting effect on population growth, we must remove the stigma surrounding gay relationships. For it is this very shame that encourages so many gays to contract heterosexual relationships and have children as a means of coping with or covering up personal deviance. Facilitating greater acceptance will not only provide peace of mind to gay people but will also benefit heterosexuals and indeed the entire world by providing a humane method of controlling overpopulation.’23
Emanating from the pure evolutionary approach would also be the assumption that no behaviour is ‘right or wrong’, ‘good or bad’, and any behaviour that results in pleasure (and does not hurt anyone, most would add) is fully proper. Life has no purpose, at least no long-term purpose, aside from what we give it, nor does our behaviour. Consequently judgments cannot be made, except in terms of survival or reproductive advantage.24 The sexual organs are the way they are solely because they supposedly evolved that way as a result of selection, time and chance; not because they were created for a specific purpose. Thus, no ‘wrong’ way to use them. Painful or dysfunctional ways—but not ‘wrong’ ways. Further, if a selective advantage can be envisaged for homosexuality, it could be argued it is ‘normal’ in the sense that nature selected for it:
‘There is, I wish to suggest, a strong possibility that homosexuality is normal in a biological sense, that it is a distinctive beneficent behavior that evolved as an important element of early human social organisation. Homosexuals may be the genetic carriers of some mankind’s rare altruistic impulses.’25
On the selective advantage of homosexual behaviour, a model called kin selection, Wilson speculates:
‘How can genes predisposing their carriers towards homosexuality spread through the population if homosexuals have no children? One answer is that their close relatives could have had more children as a result of their presence. The homosexual members of primitive societies could have helped members of the same sex, either while hunting and gathering or in more domestic occupations at the dwelling sites. Freed from the special obligations of parental duties, they would have been in a position to operate with special efficiency in assisting close relatives.’26
This ad hoc explanation, though, has little if any support from contemporary research, and much evidence against it. The major problem is that little evidence exists for any view except that homosexual behaviour was anything but rare or unknown in ‘primitive’ societies. Ruse concludes that all ‘evolutionary explanations’ models of homosexuality are inadequate and problematic, including theories of kin selection, superior heterozygote fitness, parental manipulation, and homosexuality as a maladaptive side of intensive natural selection for superior adaptive male heterosexual behaviour, selected because the maladaptive behaviour comes along with the adaptive.27
Do ‘homosexuals’ exist?
In my decade of working at various psychology clinics, I have queried all of my ‘homosexual’ clients as to whether they were erotically attracted to the opposite sex. All of them said that they were, and most all said that they liked women as friends. I have always found it intriguing that virtually all of them did not fit the common definition of homosexual—a person sexually attracted to their own instead of the opposite sex—but all were to some degree bisexual. Many were once married and most had sexual encounters with the opposite sex. Furthermore, Masters’ and Johnson’s scientific studies of persons labelled homosexual and lesbian have found that both groups consistently listed heterosexual encounters as highly erotic, actually at the top of a list of their erotic fantasies. In one study both male and female homosexuals listed a ‘heterosexual encounter’ as their third most common sexual fantasy!28 This finding also supports the conclusion that most of those persons labelled gay are, at best, in varying degrees bisexual—especially in view of the fact that many also have heterosexual relations, and many were once married and had families. In the words of Byne:
‘To understand how biological factors influence sexual orientation, one must first define orientation. Many researchers, most conspicuously Simon LeVay, treat it as a sexually dimorphic trait: men are generally ‘programmed’ for attraction to women, and women are generally programmed for attraction to men … The validity of this ‘intersex’ expectation is questionable … sexual orientation is not dimorphic; it has many forms. The conscious and unconscious motivations associated with sexual attraction are diverse even among people of the same sex and orientation. Myriad experiences (and subjective interpretations of those experiences) could interact to lead different people to the same relative degree of sexual attraction to men or to women. Different people could be sexually attracted to men for different reasons; for example, there is no a priori reason that everyone attracted to men should share some particular brain structure.’29
Given this, the often unstated but common inference that ‘gays’ in general are attracted to the same sex with the same power that heterosexuals are attracted to the opposite sex—also sexually repelled to the opposite sex as heterosexuals are to the same sex—is not justified. The labelling process dichotomizes, distorts, and should be rejected by both sides. Studies of homosexuals and heterosexuals have found that the two groups are similar on most traits because most ‘gay’ persons are to some degree heterosexual. The contrast is the label, and this is what has an enormous influence on one’s self-identity, which is a major influence in causing homosexual behaviour.
‘All of us have a wide range of erotic feelings. Societies define some of these as sexual and regulate the degree and the ways in which we are permitted to develop and express them. Homosexual behaviors probably have existed in all societies, but our current perception of homosexuality has its roots in the late nineteenth century. That is when people began to consider certain sexual behaviours to be the identifying characteristic of those who practised them. Homosexuality stopped being what people did and became who they were. As Michael Foucault writes in his History of Sexuality, until that time "the sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species".’30
The research generalization that exclusively homosexual persons who have no attraction for, and are sexually repulsed by, the opposite sex do not exist, but rather homosexual behaviour exists, is supported by other evidence. Studies of adolescents find that many young persons—22% according to one study—involve themselves in homosexual behaviour, especially in early adolescence.31 Further, a large number of prison inmates and males become involved in the so-called tea room trade.32 None of these persons, though, would define themselves as ‘gay’.33,34
Freud concluded that homosexuality was a stage that most boys grew out of, and that adults who involved themselves in homosexual behaviour simply had never matured beyond this developmental stage. This position, interestingly, has been the dominant view in the West. Greenberg concluded from his historical study that the category ‘homosexual’ is a late nineteenth century invention?35 Prior to that time, people did not refer to ‘homosexuals’ as a class of people. There were simply men who did different sexual things, including engaging in homogenital acts. They were viewed—in different cultures and to varying degrees—with puzzlement, tolerance, or often strong disapproval.
The level of the population that is exclusively homosexual has traditionally been placed at 10% , partly as a result of the 1940s Kinsey studies. Numerous new empirical studies in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Britain and other countries reveal the rate is less than 3% and as little as below 1%.36,37 That the number varies from 0.9% of males in Norway to 2.8% found by the national opinion research centre at the University of Chicago for the United States of America, indicates that cultural factors are likely very influential. Further, according to a Minnesota adolescent health survey, only 0.6% of the boys and 0.2% of the girls surveyed identified themselves as ‘most of 100% homosexual’, 0.7% males and 0.8% females as bisexual, and 10.1% of the males and 11.3% of the females were ‘unsure’. This indicates that many individuals do not have a firm sexual orientation as an adolescent, and reveals the importance of social and sexual experiences in development.38
Although many factors are involved, it is my experience that a person is not a prisoner to his or her sexuality and to a large degree chooses a homosexual lifestyle. The unfortunate factor in this debate is that it is very difficult to reason about this topic with those who advocate that a ‘sexual orientation’ called ‘homosexual’ exists. They simply reject, ignore or distort the enormous amount of empirical data against their position. A clear need exists to understand the reasons why people adopt this lifestyle, and the difficulties of doing so in our, or any, society.
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