Return to list of all articles or to Part 1 of this article or to articles by Medinger.

Last month we discussed the first of five statements frequently put forth by gay advocacy groups to create the impression that homosexuality is simply a normal variation in the human condition .We looked at the oft repeated claim that "10 percent of the world is gay," and at the argument that homosexuality is common in all cultures and many have found it acceptable. This month we look at three other views that have gained widespread acceptance and which tend to support the view that homosexuality is a normal, although minority, condition.

1. "Michelangelo was a homosexual." This is a variation on the "numbers provide legitimacy" argument. A long list of famous persons, men and women who made major contributions to society, are identified as having been homosexuals and lesbians. This is a worthwhile argument if someone were trying to maintain that all homosexuals were totally depraved and unable to contribute anything to society. That is certainly not the issue.

Many people with a homosexual orientation are outstanding in various fields, and there is even the possibility that they, because they are limited in some areas, excel in others. But this does not prove that homosexuality is normal and natural. Edison was almost deaf; Steinmetz was crippled; Fanny Crosby was blind, but these conditions were not normal, natural or desirable. (By the way, the most widely read biography of Michelangelo addressed his romantic relationships with women and the love he had for a young male protege--Tommaso--in his later years, but it says nothing about his being a homosexual).1

2. Animals do it. The logic behind this often stated belief is that, if it occurs in nature, it is indeed natural. Broad statements are made as to the occurrence of homosexual behavior among animals of all types up to and including primates. Efforts have been made to induce homosexual behavior in animals through surgical and hormonal treatments. The best known of these involved the castration of a male rat at the time of birth with the administration of sex hormones in adulthood. Such treatment did result in sex-role reversals in the adult rats.2 Beyond such artificial manipulation, however, all observed homosexual behavior observed in higher mammals has been in conditions of stress, namely captivity. Furthermore, it has never been observed to involve climax or even, among males, insertion.3 If homosexual behavior should occur among animals in their natural environments, should such behavior be extrapolated to humans? Some animals eat their young; others kill their own species in certain situations. Such behavior should not be a model for man.

3. The Kinsey Scale. In his tremendously influential 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred Kinsey introduces the concept of a homosexual-heterosexual continuum. He devised a scale wherein zero represented total heterosexuality, six represented total homosexuality, three represented bisexuality, and the other numbers of the scale represented obvious degrees of proclivity towards homosexuality or heterosexuality. Thus homosexuality and heterosexuality could be viewed not as absolutes, but as variations in the human condition. Most people would be viewed, therefore, as being a blend of the homosexual and heterosexual as Kinsey states:

Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. the sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex.4

It would be hard to overstate the impact that Kinsey and his scale have had on modern thought regarding homosexuality. Nothing has done more to place homosexuality in the context of the normal and natural. But what does his scale really reveal? I maintain that it reveals nothing that we did not already know, but merely creates a nebulous impression that is highly favorable towards homosexuality.

First, as to it revealing nothing new: we knew long before Kinsey that some people were exclusively homosexual some exclusively heterosexual and others, to varying degrees or other, bisexual. But Kinsey, by implication creates an impression of a random distribution of sexuality. People hearing of the Kinsey scale often immediately think of a bell shaped curve in which the great majority are in the middle.--bisexual.--with numbers decreasing as we reach the extremes of homosexuality or heterosexuality. Indeed, if a study did reveal a bell shaped curve, we would be dealing with a natural phenomenon, as if we were measuring men's or women's height or weight. But no, what we have is a very unnatural distribution: Kinsey's own figures showing 85% of the adult male population being zeros (exclusive heterosexual), 5% being sixes (exclusive homosexual) with only 3% being either threes, fours, or fives (mid-point or tending towards homosexual).5

No comparison can be made with inborn characteristics such as height weight or intelligence. The whole concept that nature does not reveal distinct categories as Kinsey maintains in the quote above is simply not true. There are no interim species. Sheep really are different from goats. The more we understand genetics, the more we arrive at a precise cause and effect understanding and the more irrelevant Kinsey's continuum becomes.

The truth about homosexuality is that it is an aberration, a distortion, a dysfunction, one in which a man or woman finds it difficult or impossible to act according to the natural functions of his or her physical body. It is not terribly uncommon; it can occur in many cultures and times; it can be manifested in varying degrees, but none of this makes it natural or normal.

In fact, it is a handicap, as it restricts and limits the opportunities for a natural and normal life, which for most includes marriage and parenting. The average homosexual does not want to be considered handicapped or crippled. He or she, believing that the condition is firmly established and unchangeable, wants to accept himself or herself with that orientation and he or she desperately wants us and society to accept that orientation as well.

But if we are to act in love, and therefore in accordance with the truth, we cannot accept homosexuality as good or as natural or as normal. We can still accept the person, though. Each of us is, by our nature, sinful. God does not accept that sinful nature, but He does accept us -- and He has provided a way for us to leave behind that sin nature. Just as sin is a distortion of God's plan, so is homosexuality. God has provided a remedy for both.

1. Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy, (New York, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961).

2. Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, ~Homosexual Orientation In Women and Men: A Hormonal Basis?" in The Psychobiology of Sex Differences and Sex Roles, ed. Jacquelynne E. Parsons, (Washington, Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, 1980),p.1 08.

3. Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, Homosexuality: A Symbolic Confusion, (New York, The Seabury Press, 1979)p.37. (See also Meyer-Bahlburg above).

4. Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, (Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Company, 1948) p.639.

5. Ibid., p.653.

Return to list of all articles or to Part 1 of this article or to articles by Medinger.