Increasingly, there is public discussion about the idea that the Gay Can Be Prayed Away, or otherwise, corrected or "cured." Born This Way is more than title of a song, the anthem has become something of a battle cry for the young generation.
And the message isn't staying only in a pop-culture youth echo chamber. It's become prevalent in the news and the general conversation. Multiple Presidential candidates have been asked "Is gay a choice?" Herman Cain has received a lot of pushback for taking a hard stance it is.
Recently, in Minnesota State Representative Steve Simon (DFL Hopkins/St. Louis Park) became something of a national sensation. Speaking against the Minnesota's attempt to add a du jure discriminatory amendment designed to marginalize gay and lesbian people under the law, he asked his colleagues from the floor:
"How many more gay people does God have to create,
before we ask ourselves if he wants them around?"
He may not have even intended to but Rep. Simon quietly reframed the debate, by turning the conventional faith position on its side just a little. Notice the premise of his question includes the view that
God creates gays.
And such a view does present a vexing question to the community of Faith, in that:
"if God causes same-sex attraction, and yet commands that it not be satisfied, then this is divine cruelty?"
Well, Washington, D.C. area clergyman, Father Daniel Avila, formerly of the Catholic Bishops in Massachusetts has pondered the question for you and in
"Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction" he provides an answer for his Catholic flock.
It isn't God that creates gays, but rather the Devil.
Honestly, it takes a lot to surprise me, relative to the Catholic Church's chattering on gay rights.
They did after all, threaten to shut down a homeless shelter in Portland, Maine for supporting the rights of gays to get married. Apparently they spent all their money fighting that ballot initiative and sequestering priests away from the police leaving the cupboard bare for things like feeding and sheltering the poor.
And then there was the time Catholic Bishops lobbied the Federal Government against implementing housing protection for LGBT Americans. Jesus may have been a carpenter but he wouldn't have built a trans person a home, or something. Or the time Catholic Charities tried to bully Washington DC not to pass marriage equality or they would stop feeding the homeless there.
But I was a little taken aback to see Father Avila opine in 2011 that gays are a product of the Devil's work.
In a piece at the Boston Pilot, a Catholic news site, Avila takes on the vexing question of "if God causes same-sex attraction, and yet commands that it not be satisfied, then this is divine cruelty?"
Avila does a cursory and wholly unscientific, cherry-picking glance at the science on the origin sexual orientation. His conclusion, is not wholly incorrect:
No one has found a "gay gene."
But nor is it the full story. We may not yet have found a definitive genetic marker, but that doesn't mean we will not. The same could be said in 1989 of BRCA1 and BRCA2, the genes that predispose a woman to develop breast cancer. Now we know they exist. Our lack of understanding is conclusive of nothing more than we lack understanding.
A fuller picture does indicate that, in fact, the preponderance of scientific evidence is suggesting both nature and nurture play a part. Which he acknowledges some of the newer studies, he then takes a very ominous turn:
So what causes the inclination to same-sex attraction if it appears early and involuntarily and "who," if anyone, is responsible? In determining the answer to the "what" question, the most widely accepted scientific hypothesis points to random imbalances in maternal hormone levels and identifies their disruptive prenatal effects on fetal development as the likely and major cause.
The most recent and most comprehensive discussion of this research is found in a book published earlier this year by a scientist who also happens to be a gay-rights advocate. Even though it discounts other environmental factors that other scientists believe also may play a role, Simon LeVay's publication, "Gay, Straight and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Attraction" is worth the read.
LeVay is not interested in the "who" question and describes same-sex attraction as just a variation among other human inclinations. Catholics do not have the luxury of being materialists. We look for ultimate explanations that transcend the strictly physical world and that stretch beyond our limited ability to mold and reshape reality as we know it. Disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart.
In other words, the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil.
Wow.
That is really a mouthful. The Good Father has found "credible basis" in science of the Devil's handiwork. Stop the presses! This is a true revelation. Someone alert Scientific American!
OK. This is a very strange conclusion for him to arrive at. He seems to presume that lack of scientific evidence of God's work, is "credible basis" to conclude the work of the Devil.
Truth is, I find this stuff very hard to parse this bizarre attempt to mix science and faith and arrived at some kind of satisfactory conclusion. In fact, you can't get that chocolate in that peanut butter and you can't get peanut butter in that chocolate and it doesn't taste great.
Father Avila does seem to be of the school that earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods have spiritual explanations, he goes on to say:
Any time natural disasters occur, we as people of faith look back to Scripture's account of those angels who rebelled and fell from grace. In their anger against God, these malcontents prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. They continue to do all they can to mar, distort and destroy God's handiwork.
But we know earthquakes are caused by the natural shifting of tectonic plates in the Earth's crust, not disgruntled fallen angels.
I mean, I think we know know this. Right?
On the one hand, I agree with the Father that explanations should be sought, in matters spiritual, that "transcend the strictly physical world." I would encourage people of faith to apply the same level of scrutiny to ancient Bronze Age texts dug up from faraway caves and deserts and translated by Lord knows who from one language to another and maybe another. Are we really so certain the Devil's handiwork can not be found in the Scriptures of Leviticus?
And ultimately, God is magic.
And as such, He doesn't need to leave his fingerprints on chromosomes for his will to be evident. In fact, nothing on His green Earth is irrefutable evidence of His will. That is the essential nature of Faith, is it not? To know, without requiring evidence.
God leaves no fingerprints behind when Taylor Swift wins a Grammy, the Tennessee Titans win the Super Bowl, Matthew Shepard is left to die on a fence or a small child is run over by a city bus. But these are all at times described as "God's will."
I'd encourage people of Faith to look into their owns hearts and ask themselves if they think God wishes them to hold LGBT people in contempt and scorn and cast them away as strangers to the Faith community and the bigger community of America. I bet evidence of God's will is abundantly clear to those who can listen.
Update and correction
Apologies, I have incorrectly identified the author as a priest. I did some due diligence to research this man, his only bio at the site was:
Daniel Avila formerly served the Catholic Bishops in Massachusetts and now lives and works in the Washington, D.C., area.
I incorrectly surmised he "served" in a theological capacity.
jgilhousen corrects the record here:
He is an attorney who served the Massachusetts Catholic Conference as their Associate Director for Policy and Research, and now serves as a lobbyist and spokesperson for the Subcommittee for the Promotion & Defense of Marriage of the U.S. Catholic Conference. His portfolio seems to exclusively consist of defense and promotion of the Catholic Bishops' policy positions relating to traditional definitions of marriage.
In any case, as a paid staffer of the U.S. Catholic bishops, and specifically their lobbyist and P.R. guy on these issues, we can be fairly confident that his statements are in accord with those of his clients.
So he serves as a political lobbyist. So I suppose his opinion on the origins of gays souls is more closely tied to his interest in seeing the Defense of Marriage Act survive judicial and legislative challenges than it is tied to his knowledge of the actual Bible.