The Science of Same-Sex Attraction, Preliminary Comments (Redux)

Sev­eral days ago, I lis­tened to a dis­cus­sion of a cur­rent movie plot that, open­ing with the quo­ta­tion, “I spoke of things that I did not under­stand; things too won­der­ful for me, of which I did not know” (Job 42:3), quite sud­denly and unex­pect­edly, “bursts” into an extrav­a­gant, multi-sensual evo­lu­tional his­tory of earth extend­ing, lit­er­ally, from a cos­mic “bang” for­ward. The dis­cus­sion was focused on “unimag­in­able” com­plex­ity that nec­es­sar­ily pointed to an exter­nal “cause,” rem­i­nis­cent of a sec­u­lar­ized “riff” of the Sec­ond The­o­log­i­cal Ora­tion (Ora­tion 28) ¹ of St. Gre­gory Nazianzus, hav­ing been trans­ported “into the Mount” (Ex.24:1) to behold:

And them some­one said, “But wouldn’t it be cooler if it [the com­plex­ity] was all totally ran­dom?” I was stunned by the lack of appre­ci­a­tion for the enor­mity of the impli­ca­tion: our cause, and ulti­mately our destruc­tion, was chaos. And more impor­tantly, it spoke to our tragic loss of ref­er­ence, sum­ma­rized in a six-word phrase invoked repeat­edly by the Fathers in refer­ring to the Cre­ation, “as it was in the Begin­ning”; reflect­ing the full inten­tion, and the full wish and desire of our God who “saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen 1:31).

Hav­ing con­sid­ered all of these ideas, it seems rea­son­able to con­clude that by pro­vid­ing yet another “expo­si­tion” of the rela­tion­ship of tem­po­ral, bio­log­i­cal sci­ence and the the­ol­ogy of the Church invites unnec­es­sary dichotomy out of hand; for some, imme­di­ately sug­gest­ing the urgency, if not the neces­sity, of mount­ing a defense of the eter­nal from the con­tem­po­rant. Fur­ther, as seem­ingly end­less “posi­tions,” pro­nounce­ments, debates, argu­ments, and rhetor­i­cal may­hem – most of greater author­ity than my own – are avail­able by print and inter­net, should you wish to explore the issue, I am con­fi­dent you will find it a sim­ple mat­ter to sup­port or to depre­ci­ate the posi­tion you will find here. And so, we may begin by ask­ing, what is the posi­tion you will find here?

Com­ments you will read here derive from a belief that med­ical sci­ence is a fun­da­men­tal unity or a συμφωνία (mean­ing a unity of “sounds” that result in a sin­gle “voice”) of biol­ogy (includ­ing human genet­ics), psy­chol­ogy (includ­ing the impact of devel­op­men­tal expe­ri­ence and “events”), social (includ­ing envi­ron­men­tal events) , and spir­i­tual (includ­ing one’s faith, moral­ity, integrity, tran­scen­dence, and sobri­ety) dimen­sions. And so uni­fied, so sym­phonic is this rela­tion­ship, that attempts to “explore” or ascer­tain the cor­rect­ness of, say, a bio­log­i­cal prin­ci­ple, in iso­la­tion from the sym­pho­nia will nec­es­sar­ily result in error, a liken­ing to the ancient story of the blind men attempt­ing to define an ele­phant. There­fore, the mes­sage of Καὶ ὁ Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο (John 1:14), is an Ortho­dox anthro­pol­ogy as defined at the Fourth Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil at Chal­cedon, ²

and by anal­ogy, the Eighth Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil as well: “for the honor accorded to the image passes over to its pro­to­type, and who­ever adores the image adores in it the real­ity of what is there rep­re­sented,” such that the man­i­fes­ta­tion of His human­ity, the human body, is essen­tial to our under­stand­ing of Ortho­dox anthropology.

I have read both pos­ture and lengthy refu­ta­tion of such ques­tions as “What would the Apos­tles [or the Fathers, or the var­i­ous and assorted The­olo­gians] say if they were to have had the bio­med­ical infor­ma­tion avail­able to us now?” In my mind, it does not neces­si­tate an “in-depth” analy­sis to con­clude, “Absolutely noth­ing would change, as the con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous words of the Mas­ter and Cre­ator were on their lips.” In my mind this is aca­d­e­mic exer­cise that, while incit­ing abun­dant con­ster­na­tion, seems to demand a “defense” of things Eter­nal. I rea­son­ably con­clude that, with a cor­rect under­stand­ing of human med­i­cine as an insep­a­ra­ble dimen­sion of Ortho­dox Anthro­pol­ogy, it is star­tlingly short­sighted to pre­sume emer­gent sci­en­tific find­ings are some­how in oppo­si­tion to the Mind of the Church. If we accept the dog­matic con­clu­sion of the Coun­cils and the Fathers, that the Lord “assumed,” σὰρξ ἐγένετο, every­thing that is our human­ity except sin – and I would empha­size that is also refers to his res­ur­rected body, as St. John of Dam­as­cus notes,”which was cer­tainly the res­ur­rec­tion of a real body” – then we must accept the bio-molecular com­po­si­tion of his human nature.

With the increase in the num­ber of states leg­is­lat­ing mar­riage and/or “unions” between same-gender cou­ples, the legal­iza­tion of adop­tion for same-gender cou­ples, as well as those enti­ties, for exam­ple, that pro­vide “marriage-similar” ben­e­fits (e.g. health & life insur­ance) to employ­ees, and the increas­ing demand for not sim­ply “par­ity,” but, in effect, “class pro­tec­tion,” the Ortho­dox Church has remained rel­a­tively silent. Some would sug­gest that this “silence” is reflec­tive of a ques­tion, “asked and answered”: the Tra­di­tion of the Church – of which is the Scrip­ture, the Coun­cils, and the Fathers – emphat­i­cally rejects homo­sex­u­al­ity as a cor­rup­tion of the nature of human­ity, “as it was in the begin­ning.” Fur­ther, many sug­gest that by sim­ply ini­ti­at­ing dis­cus­sion, we have begun a process of a covert, insid­i­ous process of “seduc­tion” – I have read the proverb applied, “The camel’s nose is in the tent.” Quite fre­quently, those “native” mem­bers of the Church find them­selves inex­tri­ca­bly caught in a feed­back loop with “con­vert” mem­bers of the Church who point to the col­lapse of their native churches as a con­se­quence of enter­ing into dia­log with “Gay, Inc.”

I must be frank in admit­ting that I find the rep­e­ti­tious appeal to the inter­net mono­lith of “tra­di­tion” which has seem­ingly come to mean “the past,” excep­tion­ally pon­der­ous: ³

Such cir­cum­stances have mis­tak­enly led to the quash­ing of attempts to re-articulate Eter­nal Truths – for we are ser­vants of Truth, and not its pos­ses­sors – as if it were “inno­va­tion” ⁴:

The point here has been to empha­size that “mod­ern med­i­cine,” as the struc­tured inves­ti­ga­tion of the icon of the Lord’s Human­ity, is mod­ern only by virtue of its matu­rity as a field and inves­tiga­tive tech­nol­ogy. “What” is being inves­ti­gated was car­ried into this fallen, bro­ken world by Adam and Eve. Sec­ondly, the legit­i­mate ser­vants of the Truth are those who know the Truth needs no defense. By nature it is vig­or­ous and dynamic, ani­mated and free, and whose Spirit is life-giving and the Giver of Life, by which we are empow­ered in this world to seek the world which is to come. And finally, I end these pre­lim­i­nary com­ments by acknowl­edg­ing the Truth as respite from fear; for the vig­i­lant, “dia­log,” dis­cus­sion, and the exchange of ideas do not con­sti­tute mech­a­nisms to which we will­fully and fool­ishly tempt seduc­tion, but rather afford oppor­tu­ni­ties to enlighten.

– Down­load The Sci­ence of Same-Sex Attrac­tion, Pre­lim­i­nary Com­ments (Redux) as a PDF file –