Let's tell UK government no on banning conversion therapy

No, not necessarily. I suspect that some are born that way, and some develop their inclinations over time. I’m not convinced it’s entirely static. The economist John Maynard Keynes, for example, was exclusively homosexual in his early adulthood, and exclusively heterosexual (and happily married) later in life. I think it is unlikely that therapy could cause something like this (though there is positive evidence that attempting it is harmful, whether it actually works or not), but I’m certainly not opposed a priori to being convinced otherwise by credible evidence. Setting aside bias is simply a matter of discipline. People do it every day. If we weren’t capable of doing it, science itself wouldn’t be possible. It’s better to adapt one’s understanding of faith to the facts than to preserve that understanding by adopting a postmodernist attitude toward science. For me, that’s a red line, and I think that’s been a red line for the mainstream of the Christian intellectual tradition throughout history as well.

 

Can you adduce evidence that homosexuals voluntarily choose to be homosexual?

I do find that idea difficult to accept. In our present culture it may seem like a valid choice to make. After all, homosexuals are now widely accepted. I am sure there are, however, many homosexuals who would disagree with that last statement.

I am not sure why people would have elected to be homosexuals when it was punishable as a crime and received the opprobrium of society. I am not sure why people would choose outside the West where being homosexual poses numerous difficulties not least of which in many places it is a capital crime.

 

I think the issue of ' born that way ' - versus - ' chose to be that way ', is far too binary for either to possibly be wise propositions. Fools will willingly 'rush into' holding both apparently alternative opinions quite cheerfully and be convinced in their own minds that they are fully justified in their foolish false certainties.

It is clear that human personalities are 'baked in at or even before birth' and also just as clear that we become what we have 'learned to be' through a multitude of experiences from childbirth on.

It is impossible to quantify to exactly what extent our sexual orientation may be fixed at conception or at birth. It is possible however to study to what extent a person's experiences through childhood and adolescence may have influenced their perception of which gender of persons they find most physically and emotionally attracted to for the purpose of procreation or pleasure. (Those natural instincts presumed to be inerrantly implanted by God). Procreation and pleasure having become inextricably combined in the mind of some individuals to the degree that they no longer know the difference between them.

The problem here is that almost every human being without exception has probably discovered pleasure through genital stimulation originally among peer groups of the same age and gender or possibly completely alone, during their childhood. This is perfectly natural and is purely driven by mere curiosity not by sexual obsessions or attraction to one sex or another. Pleasure is just pleasure wherever and with whomever, or not, it is experienced.

Boys - girls / young youths - young maidens, rarely have access to the opposite sex for the purposes of curiosity satisfying, pleasurable experiences, and such experiences, in the nature of things are predictably pleasurably satisfying. They rarely disappoint.

Most adolescent males and females move on from these types of peer shared, mutually sexually exploratory experiences, to shared experiences with members of the opposite sex and find that much more fulfilling and 'natural' feeling. Some however are convinced that their emotional attachments to members of the same sex lead to greater feelings of fulfilment than they can find with partners of the opposite sex.

It is not that they have chosen to feel that way, they just do and the fact that they just do cannot be truthfully denied by them, and why should they be required to deny the truth of their own experience?

I reason that there may be many human beings that have, since birth, always been inclined towards emotional and physical attraction to the same gender as themselves. This may be either natural or some kind of abnormality, who can tell?

I also reason that there may be many human beings who have never fully made the transition from adolescent, pleasurably, sexual experimentation among peers, to an adult emotional and sexual relationship with a single, lifelong, member of the opposite sex. Swans seem to manage it though.
.

 

Can you adduce evidence that pedophiles voluntarily choose to be pedophiles?
I am not sure why people would elect to be pedophiles when it is punishable as a crime and receives the opprobrium of society.

Can you adduce evidence that adulterers voluntarily choose to be adulterers?
I am not sure why people would elect to be adulterers when it was punishable as a crime and received the opprobrium of society.

Can you adduce evidence that rapists voluntarily choose to be rapists?
I am not sure why people would elect to be rapists when it is punishable as a crime and receives the opprobrium of society.

Can you adduce evidence that fornicators voluntarily choose to be fornicators?
I am not sure why people would elect to be fornicators when it was punishable as a crime and received the opprobrium of society.

Can you adduce evidence that people who engage in bestiality voluntarily choose to engage in bestiality?
I am not sure why people would elect to engage in bestiality when it was punishable as a crime and received the opprobrium of society.

 

And even if sodomitical proclivity is more deep-rooted than a quick choice would allow.. guess what, human beings have a subconsciousness, hate to educate all the liberals out there; this where most of our hard decisions come from, and it can be hard to go against but can be formed over time (months/years/decades)… even if it’s hard not to choose sodomy, give it 10 years

And even if you can’t change your subconscious after all this time, fine, just take a vow of celibacy like a decent human being, Scripture teaches that it’s even holier than marriage

There are so many options for someone who’d like to be a decent Godly human being, rather than a degenerate

 

Can you adduce evidence that left handed people choose to be left handed. Many have been forcibly compelled to write with their right hands at school. Was this right or justifiable?

You seem to be confusing sexual orientation, with sexual practices. Temptation is not itself sin. If it were then Christ was tempted and would therefore have sinned, but we know that was not the case. You are assuming that all people who feel sexually attracted to individuals of similar sex or even groups of similar sex, are all engaging in acts of buggery.

One probably shouldn't have any definite evidence to support that assumption unless one has an unhealthy penchant for prying into other's private lives or watch a lot of porn. Admittedly there is altogether TOO much damned pornographic, cinematic evidence of heterosexual practices and homosexual practices easily watched nowadays, which in my opinion are ALL of both kinds equally affronts to decency and holiness of living.
.

 

Why not? They *remain successfully right-handed* for the rest of their lives
Really bad example for your case

 

Seems like a serious case of coertion and a desire for control over others by 'right handers', to me. A serious confusion of the principles of freedom of the individual with tacit acceptance of coercive control over others. Just exactly the abusive practices the government is trying to protect victims from undergoing in some forms of fanatical, quackery, amateur, 'aversion therapy'.

 

Is pedophilia a sexual orientation? And if so, were pedophiles "born that way." Is the desire to engage in sex with animals a sexual orientation?

Maybe I should use the new, PC term of "minor-attracted individuals."

 

I will reply to you by paraphrasing something I said at the beginning of this unfortunate thread:

​

Again, the post in question isn’t about any of those other things. It’s just about conversion therapy. I really don’t want to get into a pointless culture war debate about this. I also don’t understand why this thread was started in the first place, as the premise itself was inaccurate. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I also don’t understand why so many Anglicans on here seem to suddenly forget that they believe in original sin once they start talking about sex (or woke ideology in general), but that’s probably another topic for another thread. People are born desiring all kinds of things, including plenty of things they shouldn’t; this ought not come as a shock to anyone. But bring up sex and all the fundamentalists suddenly become Pelagians.

​

This crude, mean-spirited, and uninformed nonsense better not be the “future of Anglicanism”, or it will be a very deserved short-lived future, I believe.

​

 

Nice dodge!

 

Nah, go back and re-read the full thread, kid. Your questions have been asked and answered multiple times. They weren’t relevant to the discussion anyway. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. It’s a lot easier to learn if you listen twice as much as you talk.

 

Is the desire to engage in sex with ANYTHING or ANYONE, including the video image of a pretty young female on a computer screen, a 'sexual orientation'? It seems there are some fundamentally unhealthy attitudes to sexual matters in the church even today. No wonder it preferred celebacy altogether, (though that only exaserbates the problem), if that's the right word? )

This debate is getting out of hand and seriously off topic I think.

 

So for a man to desire sex with other men is a sexual orientation, but the desire of a man to have sex with children isn't a sexual orientation by some arbitrary standard? What is Tiffy's definition of sexual orientation? Is it "whatever I need it to be to avoid the logical conclusions of my beliefs."

>Homosexuals are born sexually attracted to their own sex (as many homosexuals would say).
>God gave them this gift.
>Scripture is wrong/outmoded/misunderstood on homosexuality.
>It would be wrong to punish people for the way they were born.
>Therefore, the church should accept homosexuals.

>Pedophiles are born sexually attracted to children (as all pedophiles would say).
>God gave them this gift.
>Scripture is wrong/outmoded/misunderstood on pedophilia.
>It would be wrong to punish people for the way they were born.
>Therefore, the church should accept pedophiles.

>People who engage in sex with animals are born sexually attracted to animals (as they themselves would say).
>God gave them this gift.
>Scripture is wrong/outmoded/misunderstood on bestiality.
>It would be wrong to punish people for the way they were born.
>Therefore, the church should accept bestiality.

 

I think that someone, (and we all know exactly who that would be), is putting a lot of words in other people's mouths, and should wind their neck well back in, pronto.
.

 

Asked and answered. Also irrelevant to the thread. The subject of the thread is whether therapy can alter one’s orientation:
- Male attracted to male
- Male attracted to female
- Female attracted to male
- Female attracted to female
- Male attracted to both
- Female attracted to both
Can therapy alter that? - That’s the subject of the thread. And all of this assumes we’re talking about consenting adults and only consenting adults. Get your mind out of the gutter. We’re not on here to talk about all that other garbage you keep trying to bring up. Start a new thread if you want to talk about that stuff.

 

You could add for good measure:
- Male attracted to neither
- Female attracted to neither.
There are well known medical conditions and/or medications that can cause sexual drives in male and female to be suppressed, even cancelled altogether. Lack of or heightened libido due to Hormonal imbalances can easily be attributed to personality or personal choice even by GPs, let alone by ill informed religious bigots.
.

 

You shouldn’t rely on what “seems” or “feels” right to you
To a person whose conscience is malformed, wrong will feel right, and right will feel wrong, and if your head is filled with conspiracy theories, even the most wholesome course of action will seem distasteful

So instead of going by your feelings, you should use objective and independent factors to inform your grasp of the situation

1. God is against sodomy, fact
2. Nature is against sodomy, fact
3. It is possible to change even the most deep-rooted preferences like handedness
4. Even without 3, options like celibacy allow the person a holier life more sanctified by God than even marriage

This is Christianity, deal with it, it is not up for revision

 

Also irrelevant to the thread, but I'll address these briefly (not that it'll actually matter):

1. Laws such as we find in the Pentateuch were hardly unique in the ANE. The ancient Code of the Assura (c. 1075 BCE) contains the following:

I.20. If a man have intercourse with his brother-in-arms, they shall turn him into a eunuch.
​

There are, in fact, many features of the various legends and legal codes in the Pentateuch that were common to the surrounding cultures of the Northern and Southern biblical kingdoms. To flatly assert that these texts are unimpeachable evidence that God is "against" each and every practice named in them is to skip over two centuries of biblical scholarship, archaeology, and anthropology. James Kugel's How to Read the Bible is an excellent and thorough introduction to the subject.

2. How does one go about determining whether Nature, a non-person, is "against" something? Homosexual behavior has been documented by observation or inference in numerous species of birds, mammals, reptiles, even insects. Some of these animals predate human beings by millions of years. I don't think any sound ethical theorist would say that what can be observed in the animal kingdom should be our guide to right and wrong, but one could hardly look to the natural world and conclude that natural selection had eliminated homosexual behavior. It's everywhere.

3. The scientific evidence assembled so far points to the conclusion that your statement is simply wrong (see the numerous studies I provided links to above). Assertions made without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

4. There is no estate higher than marriage. As the Westminster Confession put it:

No man may vow to do anything forbidden in the Word of God, or what would hinder any duty therein commanded, or which is not in his own power, and for the performance of which he hath no promise or ability from God. In which respects, monastical vows of perpetual single life, professed poverty, and regular obedience, are so far from being degrees of higher perfection, that they are superstitious and sinful snares, in which no Christian may entangle himself.​

We are inherently social beings who need love, family, and community. Telling someone who wants all these things that they can just be single and celibate forever is not a real answer.

Christianity has in fact been revised constantly since its inception. There is no such thing as "unrevised Christianity". Anglicanism was itself a quite drastic revision of late medieval Western Christianity, the Eastern Orthodox will tell you that medieval Western Christianity was itself dramatically different from that which prevailed in the late Patristic era, and so on and so on. This "no revision" stuff only exists in hagiographic texts and fundamentalist chat rooms; it bears no resemblance to actual history.