sexuality and choice: a metaphor and a god question

Great Debates
#1

While I of course welcome our resident atheists and agnostics to chime in, this question is directed more to the posters who feel that homosexuality is a choice and regard the act as a sin. First, the metaphor that I think best explains this point of view:

Let’s say I recently found out that I have some sort of intestinal disorder that requires certain changes in my diet, some of which are drastic. I’m an avid fan of all sorts of nuts and foods with seeds in them, but I must learn to not eat them. Let’s also say that because of this condition of mine, I must eat foods high in fiber and low in fat to maintain digestive health for the rest of my life.

Now, I don’t want to quit these tasty foods. My whole being says, “aw come on, just eat them. The airline doesn’t have anything besides peanuts.” But I have to decline unless I want a lot of pain in my guts.

It seems that the homosexuality-as-choice-and-sin camp would say that eating peanuts is pleasurable to me, and I didn’t choose for them to be so naturally appealing to my taste buds; BUT I must make the choice to not eat them if I want to avoid the punishment of painful guts and poorer health.

In this sense, homosexuals feel deep down more of a desire to be with members of the same sex, that it is completely natural; YET they must make the choice to be straight if they want to avoid God’s wrath.

So in this metaphor, 1) peanuts are naturally tasty to me, something I didn’t select of my own accord, and 2) my body doesn’t accept peanuts, as they irritate my intestines.

Now my question:

Did God make me like peanuts or not like peanuts?

#2

I’m not sure your analogy is valid, but I will say that in the Catholic Church at least you don’t have to “choose to be straight”; you don’t practice homosexuality. Neither is a straight person to practice her/his sexuality outside of marriage.

http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/sixth.html#CHASTITY

#3

God gave you an appetite you chose to fill it with peanuts instead of chocolate chips.

#4

I don’t think it’s the best analogy. Even if we say that the same God who designed you to like peanuts also designed your intestines to not like them (ignoring for a moment the people who say all disease comes from Satan) that still isn’t the same as God designing you to do something he considers evil.

God doesn’t hate you for eating peanuts, only your intestines do. So that would bring you back around to the homosexual’s contention that a loving God would not design you to only be able to engage in one of his greatest gifts (love and sex) by doing somthing he hates.

(Also, the Christians probably won’t like you likening God’s wrath to diarrea, and the homosexuals won’t like you comparing theie sex life to peanuts :).)

#5

[/quote]

jumblemind:
Did God make me like peanuts or not like peanuts?

[/quote]

God makes every human dislike peanuts. But Satan, that wily trickster, tries to tempt people into eating peanuts anyway, just to piss of God. God, of course, trusts you to make up your own mind. But should you decide to eat peanuts, you’ll sizzle for eternity in hellfire, because peanuts are BAD, BAD, BAD!! Don’t ask me why! Because I said so, dammit!

That about sums it up.

–Caliban

#6

lol@Caliban :slight_smile:

Not because you said so, but because GOD said so…
GOD doesn’t make you dislike peanuts, he give you the ability to choose to like them or not to like them, if it be bad bad bad, or good good good, you have the choice.

#7

I have to agree with gigi, puddlegum, and betenoir

#8

Not the point at all.

I happen to like bananas. I despise lima beans. Damn if I can remember choosing to like bananas, nor can I remember choosing to hate the beans.

Whether or not you choose to practice hetro-, homo-, or bisexuality is a choice, given that unlike breathing, you won’t die of abstinence. (good thing, too, or I’d be six feet under by now. sigh :() But what you find attractive and pleasing in that regard is almost surely decided by things other than conscious choice after a weighing of options

Do YOU remember the day you decided “Hummm, from now on, I’m going to like choclate and girls [or whatever]”

Frankly, rational choice or beyond your control is a red herring. Unless I’m intersted in them, someone’s sexual orientation is of little import to me. I’ve got good friends and enemies of all flavors in that regard, and it’s no more relevent than their eye color.

#9

I’m not sure what I’m being agreed with about.

I think God likes peanuts just fine.

#10

LOL@BETENOIR

#11

Um, did God tell you that personally, JD?

Mix Peanuts AND Chocolate Chips together for trail mix! See-everyone’s happy!

#12

No, no! Plainly, trail mix represents bisexuality. Therefore trail mix is sinful. You must not eat peanuts and chocolate chips on the same day, lest you burn in hell forevermore.

#13

the rocky road recipe i have calls fot peanuts and chocolate chips.

i am going to hell.

#14

Hazel, excellent furtherance o’ the analogy, and may God have mercy on your soul, anya marie.:wink:

For the sake of argument, let’s say that it appears in the Old Testament that peanuts are not to be eaten, that it is unnatural. There is heated public debate on what this passage and several others are really saying about the consumption of these particular legumes.

betenoir, you make very good points, but didn’t God make my intestines? If it is impossible to say that God both made me like peanuts and made my intestines not like peanuts, then the only way out is to say that God made my intestines and Satan made my tastes (or vice versa, but I don’t think anyone will go along with that). AND it would then be impossible to assert that “God likes peanuts just fine.” Obviously he does not, or he would have made my intestines differently, right?

So the Believer side says I have to make some sort of conscious choice to follow my intestines and not my tastes. I guess I just don’t see how they can be mutually exclusive like that. Of course, I s’pose I can’t give complete support of the God-and-Satan-as-people ideomythology, either.

#15

Well i certainly agree with many of the points in this post. I would say however that not all the gay people in america are truely Homosexual. There will be the few people that have no real “choice” it is the way they are configured genetically. I think that over 60% of gays are by choice. It has to do with Trend, what is cool, what is different. Now this is a personaly belief of mine, and i cannot really add facts into it. But logic and critical thinking would seem to point out that natural selection would weed out the majority of the non-reproducing homosexuals. Its evolution, if they do no reproduce those genetic configurations are not passed down en masse. A few “mutations” (not meant in a bad way of course) will occur, but not in the way that you see it today.

#16

Sixty per cent, huh? How’d you arrive at that nice round figure?

Amazes me when people say some are gay because it’s trendy. It’s trendy to be hated? Trendy to be splayed out on a fence like Matthew Shepherd? Trendy to be disowned by your parents? Trendy to be called ‘faggot?’ Trendy to be called a ‘biological error’ (a la Dr. Laura)? Trendy to be afraid to run into a convenience store at night when the loser eighteen year olds are hanging out looking for a fight?

Ever met one of these poor guys who has decided to remain celibate for life rather than to give into ‘primal urges?’ Not a pretty sight. A guy I work with (this is ancectodal, to be sure) tried to sue a woman twenty-five years his senior because she ‘looked at him funny.’ How could he work on his problem when there were women - and good looking men - in the workplace? He lost, than the goddess.

Sigh.

#17

Sixty per cent, huh? How’d you arrive at that nice round figure?

Amazes me when people say some are gay because it’s trendy. It’s trendy to be hated? Trendy to be splayed out on a fence like Matthew Shepherd? Trendy to be disowned by your parents? Trendy to be called ‘faggot?’ Trendy to be called a ‘biological error’ (a la Dr. Laura)? Trendy to be afraid to run into a convenience store at night when the loser eighteen year olds are hanging out looking for a fight?

Ever met one of these poor guys who has decided to remain celibate for life rather than to give into ‘primal urges?’ Not a pretty sight. A guy I work with (this is ancectodal, to be sure) tried to sue a woman twenty-five years his senior because she ‘looked at him funny.’ How could he work on his problem when there were women - and good looking men - in the workplace? He lost, than the goddess.

Sigh.

#18

jumblemind:

G-d made you like peanuts.

Next question…

#19

It seems to me that all are talking about the Physical aspect of this. My tastebuds like peanuts, but my intestines don’t. But don’t forget this, "We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts…"Eph 6:12

If you are hungry, then we are talking about a physical need. But you’re talking about a craving for peanuts. Most Christians that I know, and myself, would look at the craving for peanuts, used here, as a Spiritual issue.

Everyone is attacked by Spiritual powers, sometimes repeatedly and powerfully. So not everyone can agree with the theory that some are born homosexuals, anymore than some are born gamblers, or born addicts or born…whatever.
Sometimes it’s a spiritual battle that we, in ourselves can’t do anything about, we have to totally surrender to Jesus Christ and let Him fight it.

Take for instance an alchoholic. Alot of the time, the parent was an alchoholic or alchoholism has run in the family somewhere. That can open the door for anyone being born into that family to be attacked SPIRITUALLY. That doesn’t mean however that you were BORN an alchoholic. What it does mean is that you need help from a “Higher Power”, Jesus Christ to rise up out of it.

Theres alot of different scenarios that can be played out, but I’m convinced that it is a Spiritual Battle.

I’m sure I just made alot of new friends on the SDMB.

#20

So homosexuals have to choose, but heterosexuals do not? Dude, your God is messed up.