The current hot topic has to do with Section 377A. You can go over to Singapore Daily to follow the discussions. I grew up being taught that homosexuality is morally wrong. Even now, although I support the repealing of 377A, I cannot shake the belief I grew up with.
One of the arguments made by those who support the repealing of 377A say that there are a lot of immoral issues which are not illegal so why should consensual homosexual sex between two individuals be treated differently. I agree with them. There should be a separation of state and church.
Pause. I’m still figuring how to go with this.
Unpause.
I was taught that homosexuality is immoral because it isn’t natural. The simplified argument is God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. There was the rather lame joke that the right tool should be used for the right job and poking another man’s butt with your penis was definitely a misuse of the tool.
I was given biblical evidence of verses which showed how God was against sodomy and sex between males. I was taught that Rome’s elite indulged in homosexual acts by choice and that showed how decadent they were.
Basically, since young, my mind has been hardwired to think it’s wrong and now, even using logic, while I can reason why 377A should be repealed, I cannot prevent myself from thinking it is morally wrong.
Ok. Where am I going with this…
Is being gay biological? I don’t know. Depending on where you look, what you read and who you listen to, you will get evidence supporting both the ‘it is natural’ and ‘it is un-natural’ arguments. I don’t know.
It was from Yawning Bread that I learned the difference between homosexual acts and being a homosexual. I’m not sure if this was a distinction he was consciously making but it is this distinction that I’m trying to reconcile everything in what I believe about God and homosexuality.
First, let me digress. I think it was when I was in upper secondary and doing biology for O-Levels that I went for this field trip to NUH. There was this room where they had preserved babies. More specifically, deformed babies. There were some with their hearts outside the body. There was one with one eye. There were many strange sights in that room. This babies I learned were a result of mutation. Unfortunately, these mutations were such that they could not survive in the womb or outside after being born.
Where am I going with this? There are many forms of genetic mutations. One of them is sickle-cell disease which apparently makes the people who suffer from this disorder resistant to malaria. Is it possible for gays to be a mutation in the human race? Why not? And when I say mutation, I mean it in a good way like getting Xavier-like psychic powers or Logan’s healing factor.
As a young Christian, I was taught that when God made us, he made us perfect. Ok. He made man, then he perfected the art by making women, but I digress. Anyway, you know the whole story. Adam ate the apple and like being the coward he was blamed Eve … you know the story. I was taught that everything went to the shit-hole after that. Death entered into the picture as the consequence of sin. Disease. The whole Pandora’s box was opened. That is why we need Jesus, so that when we die, we get eternal life and we can be part of God’s original plan when he created us.
Now, if everything changed after we got kicked out of the garden why can’t mutations be a part of that? Yes, it may be producing a different result from God’s perfect plan and what he had intended (although, I always like to point out if it was so perfect, he would have known we were going to fuck it up by making the wrong choice to eat the apple and thus start this whole fracas…I digress again) but it could be natural, or rather natural in the current broken down world we live in with natural disasters, diseases, mutations…
Does that make it immoral?
Wouldn’t God in his infinite wisdom know which gays were being gay because it was natural for them as opposed to which were just indulging in homosexual acts because they just couldn’t stop sticking their penis into any hole even a vacuum cleaner’s.
And what would God do? Punish them? Are we to take everyone who was created that deviates from God’s plan to be immoral and sinners (actually Christian doctrine says we all are, even Christians, which is depressing since we start life as a condemned needing to be saved). Are we to be like Glenn Hoddle who believes that handicapped people are so because karma is being a bitch to them for some past sins or in the Christian case just sins. I mean, I don’t think God when he first created this universe intended anyone to ever be born handicap and yet now it happens. It is a natural occurrence in a broken down world. Are these ‘deviations’ from God’s perfect plan also immoral for being handicapped?
I guess what I’m trying to do is reconcile within myself that God may dislike homosexual acts (which is a notion I probably wouldn’t have if I didn’t grow up in a Christian family,although my parents were not the ones who put these ideas into my head,but you know, Sunday school and all that…) and that it really could be natural to be gay in this time and age. I am sure the God I want to love and one day hope to whole-heartedly do so wouldn’t want the homosexuals to be considered immoral sinners that will be condemned to hell just because they do not want to repent by changing their behavior when they can’t because it is not their choice to be so.
Of course, some people would argue that some people are born with a temper problem and yet they can control that so…
I guess like a wise Chinese man once said, “He who sits on fence hurts his balls.’
And since, I’m lukewarm, I know where I’m probably going. Sigh…
