I was born this way?

I would like to revisit a subject I have already written on, but look at it from another angle. That being ‘what are we trying to justify when we say that I was born this way”.
When one puts this statement into the context of being born Gay what is this trying to justify? Now before some one throws some emotional hate mail my way, I would just remind you that I believe reality has a true interpretation and a correct way to function in it. So I am aloud to make judgement claims, investigate for truth and define that something’s go against a moral standard and a correct deigned nature. It is those who don’t who are left being paralyzed with no rational foundation to make an objective judgement claim that I am wrong, unfair, or out of touch with reality. If you don’t believe in an absolute moral standard then your view is just your own random subjective choice. What I say here may be wrong, and I may have to check my claims and facts out, but my worldview at least has a foundation to talk about objective morality, make meaningful judgements.

What anyone thinks on the subject about sexual orientation is not really what I’m writing about here. My point here is to see if the claim “I was born this way” can justify a certain behavior. Our culture has many slogans, but many of them do not hold water.

Many gay people assert that their sexual orientation is due to how they were born and this justifies they sexual acts. But does this answer give a moral justification for their actions. I think there may be better arguments for supporting the norm of gay relationships then asserting that it is due to our genes. I mean if sexual orientation is based on just inherent feelings without a norm to check them against what can we say about other claims. As Paul Copan says “The logic of such arguments is that if someone had a natural inclination towards bestiality (being in a loving relationship with an animal such as one’s pet) or necrophilia (sex with corpses), sadomasochism, pederasty (adult male sex with boys) or even rape, that person can legitimately act on that orientation.”

Some may say that those I offer go against common sense, but what is common sense, subjective votes or an absolute moral law? To condemn any of these is to imply an objective “norm”. Some may say well at least some of them could be ok as long as no one gets hurt. But this claim I refuted in my last blog. Avoiding pain doesn’t establish morality.

More to the point Copan says, We’re all born with a natural self-centered tendency, but that doesn’t mean we should assume that we have a “right” to fulfil those inclinations. To say that we act one way because of our genes would mean that our nature goes against the existence of freewill. If one could locate a biological basis for alcoholism, pedophilia, or violent behavior would we accept it as normal. Some acts seem to be wrong, which would imply they go against an objective standard that the universe should be following and this again slips in the existence of God. Just maybe we have fallen natures, which have twisted us spiritually, psychologically, sexually, physically and mentally. Maybe this is the reason why we cant get away from assuming a objective moral law of right and wrong, even when we have inclinations we cant resist at times. To reject any kind of sin nature or falleness is to wipe out the existence of right and wrong, they become empty words that can be filled with any action or behavior. Those that give lip service to this view do not live it when some one abuses them.

We should be careful not to commit the naturalistic fallacy of going from what “is” to what “ought” to be the case. What about people who have tendencies toward pedophilia, cannibalism, racism, rape, or substance abuse? Tendencies don’t necessarily tell us how we “ought” to live. I believe in a culture that basically has no norms and thinks that we live in some chance universe that all things are permitted have in fact conditioned themselves to think that all our inclinations are in fact normal. The concept of normal implies some objective standard to judge our actions against. If everything is normal due to what each individual thinks, then the word becomes meaningless.

Many experts think that our sexual orientations these days are due to our environments. We become what we accept in the end. Our justification for accepting our cultures ever changing adoption of morals could well be explain by our environment. Through genetic or hormonal differences, (note they could be fixed), societal or individual confusion, family dysfunction, permissiveness, positive homosexual experiences and freely consenting. When one rejects an unchanging norm, one loses their power to justify anything. Some may think that it can all be proven from brain chemistry, that our brains drive us. But Dr. Satinover of Harvard Medical School speaks of bio-neural processes that are shaped through habit formation. It seems to be the other way around rather then being dictated by our genes. Now some my not like what I say, but what could be ‘right’ is not based on some ones emotion but on some rational establishment that justifies some objective norm for the universe. And no I’m not homophobic. I could just as well say your heterophobic or a Philosophical-Phobic.

Therefore I affirm that the claim I was born this way does not establish what is right. I would say what is right, is what creation was designed to perform or act, which establishes correct function. This only exists if there is an eternal interpretation to creation.