Mohler's Little Moment of Acceptance

Changing you own opinions about something is at best, difficult. In some cases, where the opinion is a part of a deeply held belief system, it’s more than hard. It can challenge your views of the world, how you see yourself fitting into that world, and even your faith in God. It rarely occurs in one giant leap, where you cast aside beliefs that you’ve grown up with and latch on to an entirely new way of looking at something. Change happens in tiny moments of acceptance. These tiny moments build until you are faced with an obstacle of belief that no longer makes sense and can’t be justified based on what you know to be true. In that instant, you have to make a decision. You move forward, accepting that your views must change in order to include these new facts or beliefs, or you deny them and fall back on your old ideas.

We are beginning to see evidence of change even in the deepest recesses of our opposition. For such a long time, the conservative right has made a stand against science on many issues. They maintain that man emerged on the planet just a few thousand years ago, against all scientific evidence that man has evolved over the ages. They demand that creationism be taught as a SCIENCE in schools, not satisfied that it be discussed as a religious belief. They deny the evidence of the age of the planet and the universe itself, again in order to reconcile their belief that the biblical account of the creation of the heavens and the earth is fact, rather than a religious belief.

But recently, one well known conservative leader took a giant step of acceptance. The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., one of the country's pre-eminent evangelical leaders, admitted in an article earlier this month, that scientific research "points to some level of biological causation" for homosexuality. Now when those of us who are gay and lesbians read the full text of this article, it’s wildly offensive. He asserts that he would endorse prenatal hormonal treatment, if such a technology were developed, to reverse homosexuality. However, you can get past the abrasiveness of that statement and look deeper, this article is actually a step forward in conservative thinking. It’s a moment of acceptance in a long road toward change.

Conservative religious groups have long maintained that being gay was a matter of choice, and that homosexuality could be “overcome” with counseling and prayer. Even when every respected psychological, psychiatric, and medical organization stated that not only was sexual identity not a matter of choice, but denial of ones identity was destructive to the person – the religious right ignored the science and found fringe practitioners to back their own views. This acceptance that sexual identity is a biologically predetermined part of every human being is a giant step toward change, although I doubt he sees it that way.

What will their justification be for persecuting us, when even they have to admit that we are exactly as God made us? If I am as God made me, how can what I am be something that God does not love? When they accept that I can’t change the fact that I was born a lesbian, have always been a lesbian (even before I knew exactly what that was), and have no more control over that part of myself than I do the color of my eyes and hair – then maybe they’ll accept the idea that I shouldn’t have to be treated as less of a human being because I accept who I was born to be.

Don’t get me wrong! I hate the comments he makes about treating fetus’ prior to birth in order to make them heterosexual. I hate it the same way I hate hearing people talk about predetermining fetal sex, or trying to genetically enhance a fetus. But, I do acknowledge that even his acceptance that there MIGHT be a biological basis for sexual identity is a step in our direction. No matter how much back stepping he’s trying to do now.