This week, the struggle between Catholics and the gay rights front took an interesting turn with this statement from Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan:
Homosexuals and transsexuals “will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said Wednesday, reports Italian news agency Ansa.
Cardinal Barragan, of Mexico, declared that being gay is an “insult to God,” but he added that discrimination against gays and transsexuals should not be condoned.
Barragan, who served as the president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, also said being gay is something learned.
“People are not born homosexual, they become homosexual, for different reasons: education issues or because they did not develop their own identity during adolescence,” the cardinal said. “It may not be their fault, but acting against nature and the dignity of the human body is an insult to God.”
While this statement seems to put a firm boundary between where gay rights & the Catholic church depart — that being gay is an act against God, but it does not justify discrimination against gays — it strengthens an even larger one that is stopping the LGBTQ from being understood by society on a whole: the idea that being gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual or otherwise queer is unnatural and learned, a conscious decision made counter to what nature intended.
It also places feminists in an interesting position within the argument. Feminists and the LGBTQ community have long worked hand-in-hand, their struggles often intersecting or otherwise becoming one in the same. However, feminists popularly believe that sexuality and gender is a social construct, something that isn’t learned, but developed into. But recent research on where and how gender/sexuality biological emerge has done more to affirm queer theorists than reaffirm what the Catholic church would have you believe about heterosexuality being the only “natural” path. In May 2009, the American Psychiatric Association–the association that classified homosexuality as a psychological disorder up until recent decades–released this revised statement:
“There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles….”
The complexities of this scientific research have proved confusing and disheartening; the existence of a “gay gene” has been seen as a point of leverage and propaganda for the so-called “gay agenda,” that people would be more accepting and less resistant towards gays if it was proven that homosexuality was hard-wired. However, people neglect to notice there are many more levels which play into someone’s biological make-up that go much deeper than genes; for example, humans and chimps are 96% percent the same genetically, and while some similarities are obvious, the differences in how we live span much wider.
On the other hand, primates have 24 pairs of chromosomes, while humans have 23. This plays a key role in how we develop prenatally–and in the womb is where many people feel the biological roots towards their sex/gender identity emerge. The hormonal theory of sexuality holds that, just as exposure to certain hormones plays a role in fetal sex differentiation, such exposure also influences the sexual orientation. Examining such subtle differences between the LGBTQ and heterosexuals can point out interesting differences in how we develop in the womb; things like the length of fingers is an indicator of how much prenatal androgens a fetus was exposed to. A smaller difference in the length between your index and ring finger points to a bigger amount of androgen levels, which could hormonally influence a woman’s sexuality.
So, have we got it all figured out, that prenatal hormones determine a person’s sexuality, and therefore it is not a taught behavior? Well, not exactly. Sexuality is already fluid to begin with–most people will feel a sexual impulse toward someone who is not their usual gender preference at least once in their life. Although homosexual relationships have existed in every civilization known to man, the social significance of these relationships has always been vast. Similarly, the roles of heterosexual couples have often taken on different forms in different cultures; different types of polyamorous relationships have been frequent throughout human history, for example. But one could examine numerous dynamics in sexual relationships from any day or age and find a persistent example of a certain level of both power and/or shame associated with given roles within that relationship–those characteristics play more to social influence than anything biological.
Therefore, the APA was not too far off its mark with its revised statement of what influences homosexuality. In fact, it’s the same that influences any decision a straight person makes about who they date–it’s both instinctual longing and social reaction, and neither can be inherently controlled by anyone. Our identities are something much larger than ourselves, something too complex to be explained by simple science or religious doctrine. What we can only understand is the importance of diversity and acceptance.
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