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[Johann]

What is the criteria? Recently a psychiatrist was disqualified for a university/hospital position because he did not believe in evolution. Was that a scientific evaluation?

[Gregory]

Johann, you tell me.  I do not know anything about your example so I cannot comment on it.


I once was asked to advise on a SDA nurse working in a government hospital who was up for discipline.  She clamied that I was an agent of the devil because I did not support her desire to pray with patients.  It is true that in a government hospital you cannot force prayer on a patient who does not want it.  But, her prayers were only a side issue.  The central issue was that she refused to adminster the medications that the physicians ordered for the patients and she urged them to exercise their ethical right to refuse to take them from other nurses.  The bottom line is that my intervention kept her from being charged in a Federal court that would likely have sent her to prison.  Instead, she was discharged. 

If you know enough about the psychiatrist to comment, do so.  I do not and therefore will not comment.

 

[Johann]

Johann, you tell me.  I do not know anything about your example so I cannot comment on it.

If you know enough about the psychiatrist to comment, do so.  I do not and therefore will not comment.

 

I only have the information given by the media which stated it was because he did not believe in evolution. The case was later evaluated by authorities who ruled that the hospital had discriminated illegally. By then the psychiatrist was no longer available for this position.

[youngwarrior]

I had a friend who was homosexual.  He begged God for years to make him attracted to women instead of men.  In his early twenties he gave up and plunged into the "gay lifestyle" with multiple partners.  He eventually contracted HIV.  He still could not stop what he was doing.  He eventually developed a relationship with a man who was married.  He said he knew he was killing that man's wife and he still couldn't stop.  Finally he gave everything to God and asked God to change him.  No, he didn't suddenly become attracted to women.  He remained attracted to men.  Yet by the power of God he was able to live celibate for the last two years of his life.  He died of AIDS in 1995.

I agree with Gregory.  Who you are attracted to is not a choice.  What you do about it is a choice.

[Gregory]

Exactly.  That has been the experience of many in the SDA church.

As I said, at a time when I was working closely with homosexuals, some were SDA and some were celebate.  But, those who lived a celebate life, remained sexually attracted to people of their gender and they continued to consider themselves to be homosexual regardless of the fact that they were celebate.

[Gregory]

Think with me for a moment:

You are attempting to witness to the love of the Lord to a male homosexual.  You have helped him to see that homosexual conduct is outside of the will of God.  Your homosexual friend is convicted.   But, he is struggling.  So, you take the next step, and you say to him:  "You prefer male sexual partners because you chose to prefer males as your sexual partner.  If you want to advance in spirituality, you need to chose to be attracted to women.  You can do it.   It was your choice to be attracted to men and it can be your choice to be attracted to women.

That message is likely to be devasting.  It is likely to result in the person giving up on spirituality.

[horsethief]

What I can't stand are these homosexes who want to flaunt themselves and tell everybody that they are gay. They get on their facebook or whatever social media and tell of their sexual episodes and gross out everyone and they think they are being completely normal.

Well, it ain't normal, it's WRONG! The plumbing don't fit and it never will.

[Bob Pickle]

Gregory,

Back to my tobacco comparison, would you tell a smoker that their attraction to cigarettes is totally a choice in the here and now, and that if they choose to do so, they can cease to have such an attraction? I doubt it.

But one can't say that the smoker's attraction is not the result of his or her choices in the past.

I don't see how anyone can say that no one who has homosexual desires could not possibly have those because of any choice they made in the past. It's too absolute to say that no one at any time has such desires today because of any choice they ever made.

[Gregory]

Bob, I agree with what you have said in your 1st and 2nd paragraphs. Tobacco useage is an addiction.  There is known physiology behind addictions.  We know how nicotene affects certain nerve cell systems in the brain.  We know how cocaine makes changes in brain chemistry.  In some cases we can measure these (sometimes after death). 

These addictive changes in physiology do not exist in homosexuality.

As I have said several times.  We do not conclusively know the etiology of homosexuality.  Some investigators are looking at genetic factors.  Others are looking at pre-natal influences that are outside of the genetics of the child and others are looking at social factors.  But, at this point in time, none of these can be said to be conclusive.

While there are those wh disagree with what I say next, the best that one can say is that gender preference is not a choice.  Maybe 10 years from now the evidence will be different.  But, I can only go with what it is now as I understand it.

As to your 3rd paragraph, you are not alone in your opinon.  There are those who agree with you.  In my opinion, the basic issue that lies behind these two opinions is one of defination of the word homosexuality.   Maybe someday all will agree on a common defination, maybe not.   Check any standard dictionary and you will see that two definations are given.  One will relate to desire or gender preference.  The other will relate to behavior.  The dictionaries are accurate in that they present words as to how they are understood.  They reality is that people are large understand homosexuality in two different ways.  One way is as I understand it.  The second is as you appear to understand it.  I disagree with you.  You disagree with me.  O.K.  That is how it is.  At this point in time, probably neither of us will convince the other as to what is correct.


 

[Bob Pickle]

Gregory, we seem to be talking past each other. You seem to me to be addressing the question of whether homosexual attraction is always the result of a choice. I have not been arguing for that idea one way or the other. I have simply been arguing against taking the extreme position that homosexual attraction is never the result of any choice, whether present or in the distant past.

Your response regarding tobacco seems to only address the chemical dependency of tobacco, not the habit portion of the addiction. Thus, your response appears to fall short of addressing the individual who has not smoked for 5 years, but who still has a desire to smoke.

If you acknowledge the possibility that 10 years from now, the evidence may be different, then why take the extreme position today that no one has ever made a choice that led to having homosexual desires?

What about my rabbit that was only a lesbian pedophile when the cage was overcrowded? Does not this suggest as a possibility that the choice to be around certain environmental factors could lead to certain desires?

You acknowledge that behavior is a choice. Well then, would not the choice to indulge or not indulge in certain behaviors have an effect on at least the intensity of one's desires in the future?

The evidence you refer to, is it universally acknowledged without exception by scientists, or are there scientists of a contrary opinion that present contrary evidence on this question?

[Johann]

Studying this week's Sabbath school lesson and 57 years experience in marriage gives me a different horizon from which I look at this question of homosexuality.

In connection with the lesson, which deals with the Biblical perspective of sex between a man and a woman, and basing on my own experience, I conclude that sex and love is closely connected. This means I must study and define real and true love also as related to sex.

True love is not defined by the satisfaction nor the achievement I obtain in the relationship. The real satisfaction is only obtained by giving your whole self to let your spouse reach the best and highest that is possible through your whole relationship.

If my relationship was based mainly on whom I am physically inclined to be attracted to, this sublime pinnacle, as I have experienced it, would never be reached.

The Song of Solomon shows how important attraction is to initiate love, but to my understanding that attraction is formed by yourself under divine guidance. If that principle is not understood there is nothing which regulates it, and your sexual attraction might be tuned to a dog or another animal of which there are a number of accounts from agrarian environments. They might not be available where you live, but I have come across a number of these. I even recall some accounts given by our professor of biology at Emmanuel Missionary College, now Andrews Universities, in the 1950-ies.

[tinka]

  Horsethief,
Straight out and forward - lol almost as I.
There is absolutely no confusion in the broad picture of Choice. Diet, habits and the SP  give all the cause of Homosexuality. I don't need a scientific reasoning for the big picture of what happens to understand that when things are not normal in parental and surroundings you got a child in confusion.

Treatment and care also (or environment) if you want to call it that contributes to this at very early age probably before 3 to newborn. Family, traits or genetics from foul life and the child will have to make choice by knowing other surroundings if it even has that choice before damaged.

Attraction to another man or female is because you have been made inferior in someway and can't be what they are (you believe). So yes you will have attraction to something you think you are not because of how you were treated from the start. That is just common sense opinion.

Somebody had to take the masculine identity away or the feminine traits away. That is how some families operate. A big bully for a dad or an overbearing mother. So bad that there is no idenity left. Some can overcome and some cannot. What a shame, and the Lord will hang a rock around their neck in the end for their gift of child that was given. Whooh!!  But for sure the horrible stigma put on these children God gives them the choice! and choice is still there or conscience is not more and then they resort into TS. or the likes of it. The victims need to hold their head up and overcome as their trial is hard. They are still loved the same of God even as all was taken from them causing them to be confused.

[Gregory]

Ihave been out and about with little time to reply to the several comments that Bob has made.  So, I will limit myself to reply to the following at this time:

The evidence you refer to, is it universally acknowledged without exception by scientists, or are there scientists of a contrary opinion that present contrary evidence on this question?

 

Yes, as I have stated, there are those who disagree with me.  Some of them are scientists who have published their views and research that they have done along with their conclusions from their research.  They are a minority group. There are generally several issues with their research and publications:
1) The news media has commonly gone beyond what the scientists have actually concluded.  As a result, a careful review of what they have actually claimed is often much less than what has been claimed by the media.
2) Often the subjects who are said to have changed their orientation were bi-sexual in the beginning rather than homosexual.
3)  It has often been behavior that has changed and not gender preference.
4) The subjects have often continued to fantisize  about homosexual behavior even when engaged in heterosexual behavior--still showing same sex gender preference.
5) Often the change in behavior has been to a lower level of sexual relationship with someone of the same gender.

Some years back a pair of authors pubished a study that was claimed to show that sexual orientation could change.  I wrote on that study and found that all of what I have stated above existed in that study.  Expecially true was the issue of the media reporting much more than the authors claimed.  I was asked by one magazine to expand the brief piece that I had written into an longer article.  But, I declined to do so sue to a lack of time at that time.

However, I will give you one example of such a scientist.

Robert Spitzer published a paper in 2001 that has been claimd by the media to prove that homosexuals could change their orientation and become straight.  Spitzer had the scientific credentials.  I do not challenge that.  HE became very disturbed as how his paper was being reported int eh media.  In an interview on CNN on May 9, 2001, he was directly asked:  "... are you saying that a homosexual can choose to be strainht?"  Spitizer's response was:  "No, I'm certainly not saying that." 

A careful analysis of Spitzer's work shows that everyone of the issues that I have listed above were present in his study, as well as some others issues.

I am not willing to say that a person who is engaging in heterosexual sex and who at that very moment is thinking in their mind about homosexual sex with someone of the same gender has changed their gender preference.

I am not willing to say that a person who changes to a less explicit level of homosexual encounter with someone of the same gender has changed their gender preference.  On this point, the SDA denomination has suffered some major wounds.  In the interests of protecting the privacy of individuals I will not say anything further on this point.

[Gregory]

Bob said:

What about my rabbit that was only a lesbian pedophile when the cage was overcrowded? Does not this suggest as a possibility that the choice to be around certain environmental factors could lead to certain desires?

The question that Bob raises is a critical one (and a valid one) and it has been well considered by those who study homosexuality.  The reality is that some humans react in a maner somewhat like Bob's rabbit.  Those humans generally, when theyget out of their enviornment (such as a prison) give up their homosexual behavior and return to heterosexual behavior.

So, what is the answer?

If you subscribe to the idea that homosexuality is defined by behavior, the above clearly shows that homosexuals can be cured and become straight.  I do not accept this defination of homosexuality.

If you, like me, subscribe to the idea that homosexuality is defined by gender preference, you will say that the return to heterosexuality demonstrated that their gender preference never changed and for that period of time you only had heterosexuals who on a temporary basis engeged in homosexual behavior but remained heterosexual to the core.

 

[Bob Pickle]

Gregory,

Everything that you just said in your next to last post seems to pertain to whether or not one can choose to stop having desires that one has already been having. Nothing appears to address the point I raised as to whether one's choices in the past could be why one is having such desires today.