Is Homosexuality inborn or acquired, learnt?

Homosexuality is a very old practice, which is still a reality in today’s world. Some countries have even taken the step of legalizing it as marriage while others criminalize it. Other countries prefer not to say anything on the topic. Its existence pushes us to ask ourselves a few questions:

What is homosexuality? Is it inborn or acquired (are homosexual oriented people born like that or do they become homosexuals)? Is it possible to change one’s orientation from homosexuality to heterosexuality? What is the aim of homosexual activity? Is homosexuality morally good or bad? Are there consequences of a homosexual activity? What attitude should we have towards homosexual oriented people?

What is homosexuality?

Every human being is a sexual being: we are born male or female. The physical, biological and psychological aspects of a male are different from those of a woman. This is obvious. Among the differences, we can note that the sexual organs of a male human being are different from the ones of a female human being. These sexual organs are also called reproductive organs because they play a very important role in the reproductive activity of human beings.

When a human being becomes mature, he feels the need to exercise his sexual activities: the sexual activity is in the sense of a man with a woman or a woman with a man. In most societies and religions, sexual intercourse is not allowed before and outside marriage. Therefore, the man and the woman are expected to officially get married in order to have sexual intercourse which in itself leads to reproduction or procreation as the ultimate scope of the union.

At times there are people who are sexually attracted to both sexes. These are called bisexuals. In other cases, there are people who are sexually attracted to another person of the same sex what we normally term homosexuality: a man sexually attracted to another man, and a woman sexually attracted to another woman.

Homosexuality is a sexual orientation in the same way as heterosexuality: when someone is sexually attracted by a person of the opposite sex. Some homosexual oriented people are active, others are not, just as for heterosexual oriented people.

Is it inborn or acquired, learnt?

What l have mentioned above leads us to ask the question over homosexuality: is it inborn or acquired? In other words: are there people who are born homosexuals or is it something which is acquired? Do some people become homosexual?

It is not easy to answer this question. There are two positions: those who say that it is inborn and those who say that it is acquired.

Some people claim that they were born homosexuals because they have never felt any attraction to the opposite sex. They say it’s not a free choice, but they are born like that, as one is born white or black without any choice on his behalf. Some think even that it is linked to the biological, physiological and neurological functions in them. There would be some gene or hormones or nerves responsible of this orientation. That’s why they have never been attracted to persons of the opposite sex. If they are responsible of the behavior which results from their attraction to the same sex, they don’t feel responsible of the attraction which doesn’t depend on them.

But the fact that one has never been attracted to the opposite sex is not enough to affirm that he was born homosexual. Sexual attraction comes with age. If one becomes homosexual in his childhood, it is later on that he will feel that attraction.

On the other hand, there is nothing to prove that homosexuality is not inborn. Maybe later on science will be able to prove that it can be inborn. Even then, we cannot exclude the possibility that it may also be acquired.

In the case it would be inborn for some people, it could be considered as a “mistake” of nature. At times nature can have failures, for instance when a woman gives birth to a monster, which is possible.

For the time being, there is no proof that homosexuality is inborn though some people claim that it is. At the biological point of view, there is no gene or hormone or nerve responsible of homosexuality. Should we for instance make a biological test with scientific instruments to compare a heterosexual oriented person and a homosexual oriented person, we would find no difference in the genes, hormones and nerves. Therefore, the problem is neither genetic nor hormonal or neurological.

It is a different story when it comes to a hermaphrodite: it can be discovered in him a gene responsible of his hermaphrodite state, but it is not transmissible: a hermaphrodite will not give birth to another hermaphrodite.

How does one become homosexual?

If homosexuality is not inborn but is acquired, then the question is: how does one become homosexual? There are many possibilities.

There are factors which can play an important role in becoming homosexual of some people:

-              The lack of sexual identity in a person. This can be caused by some aspects which can be found in the childhood of the person, depending on how he has been treated by the parents or his educators.

-              A hyper-protective attitude from the parents.

-              An exaggerated authoritarian attitude from the father can influence the boy to become homosexual.

-              A non-resolved conflict between the father and the son or the mother and the daughter can result in the son/daughter becoming homosexual.

-              A prolonged absence of the father from the family. The son has no opportunity to identify himself to the masculine figure and so develop a feminine identity.

-              Some become homosexuals because of some kinds of disappointment in life. Thus one can meet someone who was heterosexual, married but who abandon the relationship in order to be united to a person of the same sex.

-              The influence of the milieu or the place, like nowadays the influence is greater in Western countries, with an easy access to movies, internet, clubs etc on the topic.

-              Money and some other material advantages or favours.

-              The practical experience of a homosexual act.

-              There might be much more reasons why people become homosexuals.

-             It has been noted that while listening to the stories of homosexual people, there is always something especially in their childhood: divorce, authoritarian father, etc. This doesn’t apply to those who become homosexual at adult age.

Can a homosexual become heterosexual?

The question can be asked differently: Is it possible to change one’s orientation from homosexuality to heterosexuality?

If homosexuality is not inborn but acquired, we can think that it is possible for a homosexual to recover his heterosexual orientation. For this, an appropriate counselling by specialized psychotherapists should be necessary.

Unfortunately, nowadays, many psychotherapists, especially those who are somehow anticlerical or antichurch tend to rather help their patient of homosexual orientation to accept their situation and be at ease with it, since one cannot change what they consider to be natural.

Psychologists of Christian faith try to help their patient to be aware of the possible origin of it and to recover again the heterosexual orientation in them. In some cases, they succeed, and in others do not because the person/patient is not to be forced, but let free to choose his life.

What is the aim of a homosexual activity?

As l said at the beginning that in many societies and religions sexual intercourse is allowed only to married people of opposite sex and it is associated with the intention of procreation though it can be accomplished without the aspect of procreation. The aspect of pleasure is part of it. People can seek pleasure in this activity though pleasure is not the main aim of it. Then there is another aspect in it: complementarity. A man alone feels lonely and incomplete. The same for a woman, a heterosexual relationship fosters or enhances the realization of a certain complementarity.

In brief, we can identify three reasons for a heterosexual relationship: procreation, complementarity and pleasure. Above all these three aspects there should be love which is at the origin of a marriage.

In a homosexual relationship, the first two aspects are absent. It is only pleasure which remains. In general, people who engage in homosexual activities are looking for the pleasure which they experience during that act. Is there love in homosexual couples?

Is homosexuality morally good or bad?

Since l am witting in the context of moral philosophy, it is quite normal to ask the question about the morality of homosexual activity. Here we need to be specific that we are not judging the homosexual orientation in itself; we are not judging homosexual oriented people since many are not responsible of it and their freedom has not been engaged and most might have found themselves homosexuals. We will judge the homosexual activity because it engages free will of those who practice it, a part from children who are somehow pulled in without their full free will.

Some philosophers spoke of it. Taking example of Plato and Aristotle, we shall apply some moral principles to the situation of homosexual activity.

Plato has spoke of homosexuality in various books and some scholars say that his position was not clear at the beginning. But in his later thoughts we get the idea that Plato rejected homosexuality. For him, the pleasure is natural when it is in a heterosexual relationship; he condemns homosexuality by stating that all forms of sexual conduct outside heterosexual marriage are shameful, wrongful and harmful.

In Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses the topic of homosexuality, in various moments he considers it as something natural but against nature and another time he considers it as a morbid state and a kind of bestiality.

In Judaism and Christianity, it is an abomination and therefore a sin: (Leviticus 18,22 ; 20,13 ; Rm 1,26-27). In Christianity, apart from the aspect of pleasure, every sexual activity should be open to procreation. This aspect is impossible in a homosexual relationship because it somehow refuses/not oriented towards procreation. Hence a contradiction when some of them ask for the right to adopt children, which is unjust toward those children who will grow up without a parent of the missing sex… A child need both!

The practice of homosexual activity contradicts the principle of sufficient reason which affirms that there is a reason to everything and why something is the way it is, not otherwise. There is a reason why God or nature made human beings male and female. There is a reason why their sexual organs are different in the way they are made. Then it is not normal for instance to perform sexual intercourse in the nostrils.

We can also confront homosexuality to the categorical imperative of Kant: “So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle establishing universal law”. Here we can ask ourselves: can we universalize homosexuality, considering it as a value for everybody all the time? The answer is clearly No.

We can confront homosexual activity to the ideas of Hans Jonas who says we need to avoid the destruction of humanity. Humanity has to exist. Should everybody be homosexual, would humanity exist? ¡No!

At realm of health, homosexuality is more dangerous than heterosexuality. It has been proved for instance that among men, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are more easily spread among homosexuals (especially male), just because the anus is not the natural place of the penis.

All these elements show us that a homosexual activity is not morally good. Our rationality should help us to see that it is not a good practice.

What attitude should we have toward homosexual oriented people?

When one goes to a psychotherapist, it is because he discovers there is a problem and is seeking for help. Not to try to help him is not fair.

Some people think that spiritual means can be used as well to help homosexuals become heterosexual. We should not exclude these means since a human being is also a spiritual being.

Towards homosexual oriented people, we need and they need understanding. We should not condemn them. We can let ourselves be inspired by Levinas who said that every encounter is ethically meaningful, and so it is also for them: 'ethically meaningful'. Their face reveals to us the face; the Epiphany. To use the anthropology of St Thomas Aquinas, we can say they are created in the image of God and they are 'image of God', therefore endowed with human dignity as any human being. We need to love, to respect and to understand them. They are human beings. Those who can be helped, let us help them.

From my class Notes of Social Ethics, 2014.

NSINGA., Robert.

The Christian In the Face of Death

We normally live a certain number of years, having suffered, like everyone else, some passing diseases especially the COVID - 19. But on a good day, we discover with sorrow that we have cancer and that body so faithful, so durable, so useful, we begin to fall apart irretrievably. And after many or few cares, in a more or less short time, we die.

Either it can happen that being perfectly healthy, we fall fulminated by cardiac arrest or we lose victims of a fatal accident. In the end, one way or another, WE WILL ALL DIE. No one will absolutely escape death. It's the most irrefutable reality in the world. Since we are conceived in our mother's womb, we are by definition mortal.

Death is the ultimate trance of life. Before her comes all her realism, the weakness and helplessness of man. It's a moment without a trap. When someone is dead, there is the dispossess of a deceased: a corpse.This situation causes a very complex climate in family members and the Christian community. The dead man's body generates questions, unbearable questions. It confronts us in the face of the meaning of life and everything, it causes acute pain in the face of separation and annihilation. Anyone who has contemplated the dramatic immobility of a corpse does not need dictionary definitions to find that death is a terrible thing.

That loved one, from which so many memories we have, who interned his life with ours, is now an object, one thing to remove from the middle, because death follows decomposition. We have to bury him. And after the funeral, as we retreat from the grave, we go thinking to Becquer: How lonely and sad the dead remain!"

What is Death?

The definition given by a very in vogue dictionary is:"The definitive cessation of life". And it defines life as "the result of the play of organs, which is the development and conservation of the subject". It must be recognized that these or other definitions of both life and death do not express all the beauty of the former and all the horror of the second.

Death is tragic. Man, who is a living being, meets death, which is the contradiction of all that a human being yearns for: projects, future, hopes, illusions, perspectives and magnificent realities.

Instinctive Attitude to Death.

No wonder, then, the horror of death. And not only to the mysterious moment of the "cessation of life", but perhaps more so, to the painful process that leads us to death.

We have the wonderful instinct for conservation that makes us defend and fight for life. We know that life is a formidable gift and humanity loves life, spreads life, defends life, prolongs life and hates death. In many cases we fight for life even if this is a real hell.

If there are people who at the top of hopelessness resort to suicide, we usually don't want to die and we are willing to go through all the suffering and spend all our fortune to heal a sick person. We fight him to death a loved one at the expense of anything, from time to time even against the will of the interested party. Life is life! Thanks to the advances of science and technology, we can now resort to sensational methods in the fight against death.

A formidable example of this is organ transplantation, including the heart. Unfortunately, on some occasions, this struggle is not really an extension of life, but of a painful senseless agony. We feel compelled to remove from the body of the dying sick, until the last beating of a heart that alone would stop, totally exhausted. Sad spectacle to see our loved ones full of tubes everywhere and surrounded by sophisticated gadgets in an intensive care room. Let's not resign ourselves to letting him die.

Worthy Death

The question now arises of the right to a "dignified death." We must understand for this reason the right of the person to decide for himself the treatment of his disease. When the body has already fulfilled its normal life cycle, there is no obligation to resort "to extraordinary methods" to prolong life, as defined by the Church. The sick person has the right to ask to be left to die in peace.

The time may come when it is not fair to artificially keep a person alive, at the expense of the same person. The sufferings of prolonged agony by a misconception of what life is or what death is, make no sense. But it is one thing to dispense with those extraordinary methods and another is to provoke death positively, a crime that is called euthanasia. Nor can we call suicide "dignified death." Nor are we obliged to painfully postpone the moment of death, nor can we provoke it.

Do we know anything about the more there?

Since man is a man, he has had the intuition that life somehow does not end with death. The oldest archaeological testimonies of humanity are precisely the tombs, in which we can discover the idea that different cultures had from beyond. Similarly, man has always tried in a thousand ways to come into contact with the deceased. Various kinds of spiritualism, apparitions, ghosts, souls in sorrow, have been a vain and superstitious attempt to transpose the lintels of death and know something from beyond.

How many theories man has invented! How many experiments you've done! Books, novels and magazines proliferate from the most innocent to the most terrifying, to science fiction that appearing to be scientific solidity, only discover its falsehood. The reality is that our efforts to investigate what happens after death are otherwise frustrating. We can say that everything is left in speculation, some totally wrong or fraudulent, that explain nothing or comfort anyone. We know practically nothing.

Death and Resurrection. 

Thus, the Christian knows that death is not only not the end, but on the contrary, it is the principle of true life, eternal life. In a way, since we enjoy divine Life on this earth through the Sacraments, we are already living eternal life. Our bodies will have to pay their tribute to Mother Earth, from which we leave, because of sin, but the Divine Life we already enjoy is by definition eternal as Eternal God is.

We carry in our bodies the sentence of death due to sin, but our soul is already in eternity and in the end, even this body of sin will be resurrected for eternity. St Paul (Rom.8:11) expresses it magnificently:

"But you are not of the flesh, but of the Spirit, for the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever did not have the Spirit of Christ would not be Christ's. On the other hand, if Christ is in you, even if the body goes to death as a result of sin, the spirit lives because it is in God's Grace. And if the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead is in you, he that raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to their mortal bodies; He will do so through his Spirit, which already dwells in you."

The Christian enlightened by faith therefore sees death with very different eyes from those of the world. If we know what awaits us once the threshold of death has been transposed, it may become desirable. St Paul himself, in love with the Lord, complains "of the body of sin" asking to be released from him. "For me life is Christ and death gains" (Fip.1:21) "When the one who is our life, Christ, is manifested, you too will be in glory and come to light with Him" (Col.3,4).

The Sky

Unfortunately, we are so carnal, so earthly, that we cling to this life. After all, that's all we know, the only thing we've experienced. From the use of reason, we learn to discern between the good things of life and the bad, between the beautiful and the ugly, between the pleasurable and the unpleasant. And we work hard to get the best for us from life. All man's cares are motivated to accommodate us on earth as best we can.

Not being able to deny us that life can offer us precious things. Enjoy the beauty of the prodigious world, open the senses to the whole cosmos, the intelligence to the secrets that matter encloses, learn to love and be loved, create works of art, finish a work well, see the fruit of our struggles, have what we call "satisfactors" because they precisely satisfy our tastes, know other cultures, read a good book, etc...

It's not easy to relativize all of this or downplay it.Our relatives and friends, our possessions, our projects, are all we have and have worked for all our lives. We've spent on it, investing all our strength. And so we don't even think about the afterlife. Not in Heaven or Hell. Neither Heaven attracts us, nor hell frightens us. We live immersed in time, as if we were immortal. Talking about Heaven or Hell may even seem ridiculous. And yet it is, one thing or another, our inescapable destiny!

We can say that all the enjoyments or all the sorrows of this temporal life, are not so important, they are not so much. St Paul, who was taken away in ecstasy to have a glimpse of those who await us, cannot describe in human words his experience: "Neither the eye saw, nor the ear heard, nor came into the mind of man what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor.2:9). And in 11 Cor. 12:4, he entrusts us that he snatched from paradise, where he heard words which cannot be said; are things that man would not be able to express."

Faced with the ephemeral of the enjoyments or sufferings of this life, the Apostle himself recommends us in the letter to the Colossses 3:1-4, "Look for the things above, where Christ is located; think of the things above, not the things on earth".

The way and the Goal.

This way of thinking can be compared to a journey: however charming the landscape of the road is, that is not the important thing, but the arrival of the destination. It would be awkward to wish that the road would never end and forget that at the end of this, we are waiting for for a delicious holiday by the sea.

There could be a possibility that we would change our minds and decide to stop in a more beautiful place than the same purpose planned above. But in life this cannot happen: we go to death unfailingly; we can't stop time, we can't "change plans." And if we make fatal progress at the end of the journey, it is wise to set our sights on what can await us.

Someone might say that thinking "about the things above" as advised by the Apostle is detrimental to humanity's progress and the development of all human possibilities. That's why Marx said religion was the opium of peoples. And he was not right to study certain religions, especially Eastern ones, in which it seems that all human effort lies in leaking from everyday reality. Christianity doesn't fall into that position. History demonstrates this extensively by seeing what it has been like precisely in Christian countries where the greatest steps have been taken in the well-being of the human being.

The danger lies not so much in 'running away' but on the contrary in clinging in the temporal, losing sight of the eternal. The true follower of Jesus Christ, while working to make this world more livable, nevertheless loses sight of it, that this is but the way to eternal and boundless happiness that God promises us. We live with our feet well seated on earth, but with the yearning to obtain at the end of our day, the crown of eternal glory.

 Getting older is Wonderful. 

The instinct of conservation and the lack of faith, make us have horror of irretrievable aging. We've made youth a myth. "Youth, divine treasure, " said the poet, and losing youth we consider it a drama. It is worth seeing mature and post-mature people, trying to defend against baldness, graying, wrinkles... They fail, of course, to deceive anyone, let alone stop time.

All the plastic surgery operations they suffer, neither preserve the youthful beauty, nor subtract a single day from their advanced age. All these vanos attempts to drink at the source of eternal youth only show that we have lost our sense of life and death. Age not only makes us put temporal things to their right extent (which young people have not yet learned) but bring us closer and closer to God, our last end. The elders take advantage of the boys. They are already reaching their full realization, they are reaching the finish line.

The great St. Paul writes to us: "That is why we are not discouraged. On the contrary, as our exterior is destroyed, our inner man is renewing every day. The light and soon passing test prepares us for eternity a wealth of glory so great that it cannot be compared. We, then, do not look at what is seen, but at the invisible, for visible things last a moment and invisible things are forever." (II Cor.4:16-18)

And it's not that we meekly resign ourselves to the inevitable. It is on the contrary the jubilant awareness that we are being called of God. Grays and wrinkles are the signs of this joyful call. And diseases and blames tell us the same thing: the goal is already close. You'll see God soon.

The great St. Ignatius of Antioch, old man and on the way to martyrdom, progresses joyfully to the encounter with God and writes to the Romans: "My love is crucified and the fire of the land desires is no longer in me; I only feel within myself the voice of a living water that speaks to me and says, 'Come to the Father. I can no longer find delight in the material food or pleasures of this world." How wonderful to come to understand that death is the beginning of true life and that all this has been but an essay, a path, an invitation! 

"Death is the companion of love, which opens the door and allows us to reach the One we love."St Augustine "Life has been given to us to seek God, death to find him, eternity".

 Personal Reflection on Death as aresult of Coronavirus. 

NSINGA., Robert.