But if somebody is born homosexual, how can a religion seriously call that person sinful? Because homosexuality, first of all, is not an act but just a type of sexuality. Even if somebody is theoretically able to adopt homosexuality, it is clear to anybody familiar with homosexuals that their behaviors are so unique that it is impossible for them to just turn themselves that way.
Still, strangely, a lot of Christians believe that homosexuality is something that you just turn on, that society turns you into, or that your bad parents force you into. What I tell these people is that we heterosexuals could never, ever force ourselves to engage in homosexual acts. I tell them that people, everywhere on Earth, have very, very similar tastes in everything from architecture to food. Everywhere you go, people basically have the same preferences for things like food tastes and colors. So why do Christians believe that a guy who is at one time attracted to women can just switch over. Sexuality, like our tastes and preferences for other things, is something we carry with us throughout our life.
Neatly hidden away it may be, but both mainstream Christianity and Mormonism may nod to homosexuality in their earliest years, although in very different ways.
Today, Mormons are among the strongest anti-homosexual groups in America. But curiously Mormon founder Joseph Smith was completely accepting of homosexuality. He, in fact, believed Mormonism to be a sexually liberating religion, which is why polygamy was so important to him. In a eulogy to a fallen gay man, Smith says:
"...to bring it to the understanding, it would be upon the same principle as though two who were vary friends indeed should lie down upon the same bed at night locked in each other's embrace talking of their love and should awake in the morning together. They could immediately renew their conversation of love even while rising from their bed, but if they were alone in separate partments they could not as readily salute each other as though they were together..."
There is really no basis for the weird views of modern Mormons on homosexuality. It certainly isn't in the Book of Mormon. I wonder sometimes if how a mormon reacts to homosexuals is God testing them.
The relationship between the beginning of Christianity and homosexuality is less clear. The New Testament sought to distance itself with all the rules of the Old Testament. Similarly, Christians have distanced themselves from all the specific religious rules of the Old Testament: masturbation is no longer sinful, women appearing in public during menstration is no longer sinful, sex during menstration is no longer sinful, having sex with a non-Jew is no longer sinful. But one of the Old Testament laws clearly still has Christians causing a stir: the one presumably regarding homosexuality.
The only mention of homosexuality in the New Testament was written by Paul:
"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet." - Romans 1:26-27
The Apostle Paul was, as Christianity itself was, focused on the excesses of the Roman world. This quote, from a letter to them, was basically what Christianity was all about. To unite the Jews and Gentiles against the power of excess and social decay, Rome.
Rome was already bloated, wealthy, and seeing the decay that a welfare state brings. People gorged on food and lavished on excess. Strange as it may seem, but man-on-man acts among heterosexuals was encouraged among the elite. There is no question that this behavior is borne of sickness. Today it exists primarily in our prisons and has nothing to do with homosexuality.
So for Paul to assess all this as a part of social decline was probably accurate. But even more revealing is the revelation that the Apostle Paul was quite possibly homosexual himself.
