Gays Were Not Created that Way

Bill Hernandez was a 23-year-old homosexual who took a job as a bartender at a ‘gay’ bar in California. Bill had been regarded as effeminate as a child. Through his teens he allowed his thinking to lure him into becoming a practising homosexual by his early twenties. By the age of 25, Bill was ready to commit suicide.

The gay life is a sad life. Accounts from former homosexuals testify that ‘gays’ need to be helped—not to see their behaviour as ‘normal’, but to lay it aside. One study has shown that 40 per cent of homosexuals believed they were psychologically disturbed. Other studies show that attempted suicide and thoughts of suicide are much higher among gays than heterosexuals.

Many governments have already decriminalized homosexuality. Others are considering it. Yet former homosexuals who have been helped to abandon their gay lifestyle by Christian ministries to homosexuals, such as Exodus International, point out something too important to ignore: homosexuality is learned behaviour that causes enormous problems for gays and for others. When gay bartender Bill Hernandez admitted this, he was helped back on the road to a normal life.

The Australian Federation for the Family in the latter part of 1990 submitted a 46-page document on homosexuality to the Criminal Justice Commission in Queensland. This was in response to a government inquiry into whether to decriminalize homosexuality. Federation spokesman Jack Sonnemann says homosexuality is devastating to any culture that encourages its lifestyle. He says, ‘People with an alcohol problem do not need more ready availability of drink, they need to learn to run dry.’ His meticulously documented submission points out some frightening facts apart from the horrifying spread of AIDS among homosexuals:

• Homosexuals commit between 33% and 50% of all recorded instances of child molestation.
• Homosexual teachers have been involved in 80% of recorded teacher-pupil sexual interactions.
• Homosexuals have accounted for about half of all molestations among those who work with children.
• You are 15 times more likely to be murdered by a homosexual than a heterosexual during a sexual murder spree.
• Most victims of sex murders die at the hands of a homosexual.

‘Homosexuality in itself produces nothing of substantive value,’ Mr. Sonnemann says, ‘yet we all must pay for its activity.’

On such facts alone it seems that decriminalizing homosexuality is being unhelpful to homosexuals and cruel to society. In addition, the Bible gives no support to the homosexual lifestyle. Every passage of Scripture dealing with the subject puts it in a bad light. And lest homosexuals say they are born that way or have inherited their homosexuality, research does not support this.

Studies of physical build, chromosomes, hormones, neurological, or biochemical make-up, and so on, show no differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals. American Christian psychologist Dr. Gary Collins says in his comprehensive book Christian Counselling that most researchers have concluded ‘there is no present evidence to support the idea that homosexuality has a physical or biological cause.’ This clearly fits God’s attitude towards homosexual practices. If homosexuals were born that way and ‘couldn’t help it’, their actions would not be so soundly condemned by God. Homosexuality is not a genetic trait.

Any government considering decriminalizing homosexuality has a ready-made answer in Scripture from the One who created mankind in the beginning. The Creator provided a suitable partner—a woman—for the first man. God observed ‘It is not good that the man should be alone’, and made the woman. Thus the propagation of the human race was ensured. No union between men alone or women alone can fulfil the role God created for the man-woman relationship. Jesus emphasized this in His teaching on divorce (Matthew 19:4-6), where He quoted from both Genesis 1 and 2 to show the basis for marriage.

Homosexuality is not an alternative to heterosexuality. God made no alternative. Homosexuals need to be helped to understand what their all-wise Creator intended, and to work at getting back on that path. It is not easy, particularly if much of the ‘learning’ has taken place at an early age. Decriminalization leads to greater social acceptance of homosexual behaviour. This brings a greater risk of young people’s being influenced at a vulnerable age. Instead of decriminalizing homosexuality, governments need to help the homosexual abandon his sinful practice. That is to his benefit and society’s.