Yesterday I came across an interesting article that was discussing the causes of homosexuality. Its conclusion was that, while scientists still can't be sure, it is most likely a combination of biological and environmental factors. That got me thinking... why is it that no one ever discusses the causes of heterosexuality? It can't just be uncaused. There has to be a reason that most people are sexually attracted to the opposite gender. Well, there are a few options. Heterosexuality could be biological. I think this is the option most conservative people would opt for. But if heterosexuality resides within our genes, wouldn't it make the most sense that homosexuality is also biological? Okay, so let's say that heterosexuality is caused by being raised in a "normal" environment. If homosexuality is caused by a abnormal environment, then they are determined in the same way, and are equally as powerful and difficult to change.

It just bothers me that people never seem to understand what it means to be gay. They don't get what it feels like to feel attracted to the same gender, and not attracted to the opposite gender. And frankly, I can't blame them. I have a tendency of assuming that nearly everyone I meet is secretly in the closet... because I cannot imagine a man not being attracted to other men. It's almost incomprehensible to me, because attraction to men is all I've ever experienced. Talking to some straight people, and especially straight men, they seem to assume that you are just a confused heterosexual who is lusting after the same gender. But it's so much deeper and more than that. Physical attraction is just one component of attraction, and I don't think that same gender attraction is all about sex.

And so, the important question for me in my life, is why is homosexuality wrong. I don't buy the argument that it's unnatural. The word "natural" is such a farce, because everything that has ever happened has occurred in the natural world... Also, the natural man is an enemy to God, right? Being unnatural doesn't make it wrong (and having naturally experienced the attractions myself, I obviously don't think it's unnatural.) The next argument that's generally used is that two men or two women can't have children. The purpose of sexual intercourse and long-term, intimate relationships, the posit, is to have a family, which homosexuals cannot do naturally. Thus, it is wrong. The problem with this teleological argument is that it mistakes the purpose of intimacy. Is it wrong for a married, heterosexual couple to be intimate if they can't have children? No. Is it wrong for heterosexual couples to use contraceptives and birth control? Not according to our doctrine. If the only purpose of intimacy was to have children, then heterosexual couples would only be allowed to have sex when they were trying to have children. This is not the case, and so the purpose of intimacy must be something different.

The purpose of intimacy is just that-- to be intimate with someone. To express and give love in a physical way. I've pondered a lot before on just how absolutely empty feelings of lust are. There's nothing behind them. Lust is just a really, really strong desire that is never really fulfilled. It just goes away. Sex as an end unto itself is pointless. Allowing your life to be driven by lust and lust alone leads to an empty, purposeless life, I think. Those powerful physical emotions are given depth and meaning when they are not an end unto themselves, but the means to an end. The end being a person that you love. When the person is the object of your love, and not the pleasure, it changes the entire meaning of sexual feelings.

So why would it be wrong for two people of the same gender to share physical intimacy to express deep love for each other? It all comes down to the question of whether or not homosexuality is deviant, or a part of your inborn character. That is why conservative groups spend so much time trying to prove that it is not biological (but as I said before, if it's not biological, then I struggle to see how heterosexuality could be biological, which would put the two, once again, on an equal playing field of innateness).

Within Mormon theology, I think, the wrongness of it is viewed from an eternal perspective. Gender roles and identity are a part of our eternal nature, as it says in the Family Proclamation. The purpose of marriage isn't just to be intimate or to have children here on earth-- it's far more than that. It's to enable us to become like God. God Himself has a Wife, right? And we're meant to go into the eternities as couples, procreating forever. If God is heterosexual, then homosexuality is obviously deviant, because it inhibits you from fulfilling the purpose of life--- which is to become like God. Why would God create a spirit child that cannot fulfill its divine potential? We can safely assume that He wouldn't, because His purpose is to "bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." We were made to become like Him. And so He wouldn't make anyone who couldn't. Homosexuality, therefore, cannot be innate in Mormonism. It has to be either a purely physical affliction that did not exist before and will not exist in the hereafter, or something that went wrong and can be changed.

And so, accepting the premise that it is deviant from the way things ought to be and that something has gone wrong to make you this way, it is acceptable to preach change. Because even if you can't personally change yourself, God can change you. We believe in a God of miracles. He can heal you.

But what if sexual orientation isn't what God needs to heal us of? What if the problems that God wants to heal us of are hatred, pride, selfishness, envy, and prejudice? "The end of the law is this, that you love your neighbor as yourself." "All of the law is fulfilled in one word: that you love your neighbor as yourself." "By this shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." "If ye have not charity, ye are nothing..." "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God, and he that love not knoweth not God. For God is love."

I don't think that my sexual orientation is sufficient reason to doubt what has been revealed to me by the Spirit (no matter how much the Zen Buddhist in me might). And what I know by the Holy Ghost is that God lives, and that He loves me. I know that Christ is my Savior. What I do not know by the Spirit is whether or not homosexuality is wrong. For it to not be wrong in God's eyes, I would have to accept that there are a few fundamental flaws within Mormon theology. For now, I believe Mormon theology. But even more deeply, I believe that God is greater than Mormonism. He is greater than any of us know. And He knows things that I don't.

Well this has been another fun ramble. More to think through my own thoughts than anything else.