Cynthia Nixon of “Sex in the City” fame, recently gave a speech in which she said that she is gay by choice. She said, “I have been straight and I have been gay and gay is better.”

This of course caused an uproar in the gay community. One gay rights advocate “John Aravosis wrote that Nixon “needs to learn how to choose her words better, because she just fell into a right-wing trap, willingly. When the religious right says it’s a choice, they mean you quite literally choose your sexual orientation, you can change it at will, and that’s bull.” (from the LA Times)

The science on the genetics of homosexuality is sketchy at best. In February of 1999 a Mathew Brelis article was published in the Boston Globe entitled “The Fading Gay Gene”. The following is a summary of that article.

The research project in 1993 that indicated many gay men shared a common genetic marker in the X chromosone was hailed as a momentous scientific discovery — one that would help society to transcend bigotry, heal family wounds, and lay to rest the nagging question: Is sexual orientation genetic?

Six years later, however, the gene still has not been found, and interest in — and enthusiasm for — the “gay gene” research has waned among activists and scientists alike. And there is a growing consensus that sexual orientation is much more complicated than a matter of genes.

Dean Hamer, the molecular biologist at the National Cancer Institute who led the 1993 study (and its validation study in 1995), believes a gay gene does exist and will be found within five years. But he also acknowledges the limits of genetic predisposition. For example, he has been unable to find in women the same genetic marker found in some gay men. “Clearly,” Hamer says, “there is a lot more than just genes going on.”

Many in the gay community as well as the scientists who study these things have known for a long time that gay is not necessarily and certainly not exclusively genetic. So the news that Cynthia Nixon asserts that she is gay by choice should not have startled anyone.

However the reaction does suggest that gay people may have a real quandary. If being gay is genetic, or at least mostly genetic, then they believe it is not a choice and they should be allowed to live openly as the people they were “intended” by nature to be. But, there is also the concern (fear?) that people will try to “fix” it or them, or that parents will test for it in utero and exercise the choice not to have a gay child. On the other hand, if it is a choice, then I am master of my own sexual identity (as Nixon seems to assert) and not the result of a biological roll of the dice. However, if being gay is a choice then it can be more easily marginalized as immoral or deviant behavior.

What I am perplexed by is the number of Christians that are so eager to denounce even the possibility of a genetic factor in sexual identity. They don’t realize that they have accepted the logic that genetics equals righteousness. One pro-gay blog (wouldjesusdiscriminate.org) even says so, stating that “Some Christians confidently assert that God did not create homosexual people “that way.” This is important because they realize if God did create gays “that way,” rejecting them would be tantamount to rejecting God’s work in creation.”

So what is the problem? What happens if a genetic component (a gay gene) to sexual identity is discovered? How will Christians respond then? If Christians have accepted the logic of genetics equals righteousness, how will they argue against it? And how far will the gay community or the society at large be willing to go with this logic?

I would think that the vast majority of people, gay or straight, are opposed to pedophilia. But what if there is a pedophilia gene? Will child rape be acceptable? Again everyone should be opposed to rape. What if there is a rape gene? Some scientists have asserted as much.

Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer have written a book making the case for such a genetic component – A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Would anyone then argue that if it is genetic then it is permissible? Other studies indicate that there may be a violence gene and an alcoholic gene. You can see the dilemma. If you argue that genetics equals righteousness in one area of human behavior, then what makes it an invalid argument elsewhere?

So where will people who have accepted the argument that genetics equals righteousness be willing to stop? Will they stop at pedophilia? Most will, a few will not. Will they stop at rape? And where ever the line is drawn, what logic is there to do so? If genetics equals righteousness then whatever is genetic must be right, right?

Fortunately for Christians and for everyone else as well, we do not have to accept that logic. Genetics does not equal righteousness. Most people understand that Christianity teaches that people are sinful, meaning that we do bad (sinful) things. So we equate sin or unrighteousness with bad behavior. And that is true, as far as it goes.

What most people (including Christians) don’t understand or want to believe is that we are genetically predisposed to sin (see the references at the end of this post). We sin because we are sinful. If our genetics determine our righteousness, none of us have any hope, because we are all genetically sinful, no matter what our sexual identity may be. That is why we need a Savior – whether we are straight or gay – to save us not only from our sins, but also from ourselves, and from our choices.

The Belgic Confession states:

We believe that by the disobedience of Adam original sin has been spread through the whole human race. It is a corruption of all nature – an inherited depravity which even infects small infants in their mother’s womb, and the root which produces in man every sort of sin

King David wrote:
“Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51:5)

The Apostle Paul said:
6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8)

And
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2)

This is the good news
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— (Ephesians 2)

Bill Radford is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America currently residing in Crystal Lake, IL. He blogs at “What Was I Thinking” where this article first appeared; it is used with permission.