Minister Confused by Sexuality

Actually a rather simple subject, at least for most people

In an op-ed of 03 September in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Presbyterian minister Robert Cunningham, citing a study, asserted that sexual orientation as an innate biological property (born that way) is “not supported by scientific evidence.”  The Bible, conversely, seems to insist that there are exclusively males and females, with no other genders, transgenders, homosexuals, lesbians, queers, etc., signifying, even though perverted behaviors common to these groups are profoundly condemned.  

Cunningham later doubled-down on his declaration: “To put it bluntly, nobody is ‘straight’.”    Written for shock value or not, he indicated that people who think they are of a specific sex are mistaken. Or, given the consensual definition of “straight,” everyone is homosexual or some other kind of sexual, quite a stretch, though he explained that this applies only if “straight” is considered more than heterosexual-attraction, as if attraction preempts quite observable biology.  

Cunningham represents the politically correct approach to somehow normalizing the LGBTQ population lest these folks be offended, never mind that birth-certificate data indicate only male or female.  Clinically, any other classification is impossible, a stretch of the imagination too far, meaning that another classification is merely claimed, not born, comporting with the biblical approach.  

Cunningham insisted that all people are haunted by their sexual desires, thoughts, secrets and practices, knowing that something is “off,” whatever that means.  However, the minister can speak only for himself but not for everyone else, not in matters that private.  He may have heard some weird things in counseling sessions, for instance, but they could hardly be held as universally applicable.  

Cunningham: “In other words, the data leave us searching for different ways to explain the immense pain that accompanies human sexuality.”  Whose human sexuality?  There seem to be a few hundred million folks who aren’t particularly pained by their sexuality – might even enjoy it.  Previous to this statement, he mentioned the “alarming mental health crisis within the LGBTQ population,” notably suggesting anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicide, all of which are problems in the general population, not just confined to the LGBTQ community.  Just check the problems in especially drug-ridden, poverty-stricken eastern Kentucky that comprise everyday news items.  

Cunningham: “It may come as a surprise, but the Bible actually shares a complex view of sexuality.” This is the most outrageous statement in the op-ed. Essentially, sex is mentioned in two ways in the Bible, the normal one in which the admonition is always to a man and woman, who must be married to “have sex,” and be fruitful and multiply. The other is to condemn anything else like anal/oral sex, adultery and bestiality. In Matthew 11, Jesus held up Sodom and Gomorrah as the standard by which to measure evil regarding cities.

As a cultural matter, one need only read Plato, Aristotle and Socrates – homosexuals/pedophiles – to see how a nation is headed when it becomes obsessed with perverted sex, the Greek empire long since gone to the ash-heap of history. A current example is in TIME magazine in an article about a transgender woman with a female partner (both lesbians?), who starts the medical effort to become a man, decides she/he wants a baby, stops the testosterone gig long enough to conceive artificially ($12,000 worth), has the baby, then restarts the male-creator regimen, so the child will have both mother and father in one package. Lurid? You bet! The grossest picture shows her “chest-feeding” the infant.

This current obsession with the LGBTQ population, especially in the “mainline denominations” (most evangelicals justly horrified), is hard to understand because there's nothing to understand in the first place. Until about 1973, homosexuality was officially considered a mental illness by the professional psychology community. For instance, until Obama came along homosexuals (mentally unacceptable) were not tolerated in the military.

No clinical explanation contrary-wise has ever been offered. All one has to do to become officially homosexual, bisexual, transgender or queer (whatever that is) is simply affirm that to be true. This is sort of like a Boy Scout announcing he's a Navy Seal, and VOILA! everyone genuflects before him.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark