Gay Paradox

Big Horn Sheep, Religion and the Gay Paradox

By John Taylor; 13 November, 2005

I just lost some dear friends, a lovely couple who were serving the
Faith with great devotion. They did not die, what happened was that
they resigned from the Faith in a very abrupt and public manner. I
know from experience that however much one may resolve to the contrary
even the closest friend who makes that dire divorce from their
convictions sooner or later ends our relationship too. It is sad for a
part of myself to go into the trash like that and the really
frustrating thing is that they resigned from the Faith out of
misguided loyalty to their son, who is in a gay relationship. As they
made clear in an open letter, the recent policy change discouraging
enrolling gays who are maintaining same-sex unions, as mandated by a
recent letter of the House of Justice, was too great a test for them.

What can I do about this? Nothing, I suppose, but I have been moved to
dust off an argument I set out in a 2003 essay. I have been told that
it is not unpersuasive. I am renaming it:

The Gay Paradox

It is one thing to start a fad and quite another to propagate a belief
over several generations. All major religions and living philosophies
teach that good behavior is desirable and bad behavior is, well, bad.
This for very good reason. Let us imagine a religion or creed that
taught that good is bad and bad is good. Their followers become
notorious for doing evil and hating good. What would happen? Sooner or
later, that group would extinguish itself. It might take a day, like
the spectacular mass suicide at Jonestown, or it might take a
generation or two, but their own beliefs would doom them. This
happened with the Shakers and their policy in the 20th Century of
excluding new members. That alone doomed their creed; they did not
have to teach that good is bad, they just stopped teaching and, by
separating men and women completely, their converts did not reproduce
either. End of the road.

In any belief system both new converts and old believers alike find it
good, useful and attractive to try to be good, and to pay particular
attention to applying that to reproductive relationships. The belief
in good and morality propagates itself, and the followers reproduce
themselves effectively. That spread is proof of validity. The teacher,
the teaching and the application of the teaching among many followers
are judged in a competitive marketplace of ideas. In time good ideas
live on and the bizarre, the useless and the harmful are weeded out.
Success among millions of people over many generations is pretty much
by definition what makes a major religion major.

All religions that have endured longer than a few centuries share the
same position on sexual purity and are strongly opposed to
homosexuality. So it is natural to to ask, why? Why do lasting faiths
condemn homosexuality?

There is no need to pretend that this is exclusively Baha'i. It is
most emphatically not, it is the belief of the vast majority of
humankind and all enduring creeds, now and throughout history. And, as
economist Jeffry Sachs points out, the vast majority of mankind
throughout history have been dirt poor. That is to say, families with
this faith have endured and propagated under the toughest conditions
imaginable. The distaste of most cultures for homosexuality is not a
passing prejudice, it has real, proven survival value.

As I say, it is a red herring to take the argument against
homosexuality as distinctly Baha'i, except in one way. Baha'is, even
more than Muslims, believe in the harmony of science and religion. And
in spite of the stereotype of traditional religions being behind the
times, if anything faith-based distaste for homosexuality is
reinforced by the latest scientific findings about the role of
sexuality in evolution.

Now let us say that a belief, any creed or system, embraces
homosexuality. I don't care if it is religious, scientific, or
whatever, that system would immediately subject itself to the same
evolutionary pressures that now are bearing down on big horn sheep and
elephants. This sad tale is told in a Reuters story dated Wednesday,
10 December, 2003. The headline reads, "Trophy Hunting Depletes Genes
for Big Horn Sheep." Scientists are finding, the journalist reports,
that there are fewer large horns on the males of this species of high
mountain climbers, just as there are more and more tusk-less male
elephants being born. Why is that? Because for God's sakes we shoot
them all! No wonder the gene pool is starting to say, "Hey maybe it is
a good idea to forget about producing these huge horns and tusks now
that it confers like, zero percent survivability." In the words of the
scientists,

"`Unrestricted harvesting of trophy rams has contributed to a decline
in the very traits that determine trophy quality...' Although revenue
from hunting is used to conserve populations of bighorn sheep ... so
far little attention has been paid to the potential evolutionary
consequences of hunting."

So, dare I say that little attention has been given to the
evolutionary consequences of homosexuality?

From an evolutionary standpoint, homosexuality is a form of dumb birth
control. I say dumb because the more intelligent, social animals find
ways of voluntarily cutting back on births in times of deprivation; in
a wolf pack, for example, only in very fat times are any females other
than the Alpha allowed to mate. In humans it is known that with every
boy a mother produces the greater the chances become that he will be
homosexual. This seems to be a way of limiting the geometric growth of
a population explosion. A dumb way to do it but that is the end
result.

Again, from a genetic standpoint (which is the perspective of time)
there is no difference between a homosexual and a dead man. The bigger
big horn sheep that are selectively killed have no more chance to
reproduce than a gay person. Their genes do not make it to the next
generation. In the long perspective, any group that encourages
homosexuality among its members will be cutting down on its own
chances of surviving, much less spreading to future generations.

This leads to what we can call the gay paradox. Who loves gays more? A
gay lobbyist who promotes gay pride or a member of one of these long
standing, future oriented religions who encourage people with gay
leanings to reproduce, to jump into the gene pool? The gay advocate
may not hate gays but without realizing it his beliefs have the same
effect as a trophy hunter on big horn sheep. He encourages gays to
behave in ways that cut them off from the gene pool.

Religion, on the other hand, asks that a gay person go against
powerful physical desires and personal inclination. That is hugely
difficult, nobody doubts that. But nothing worthwhile is easy. In the
long run their affiliation to a faith group helps gays propagate their
genes, as well as more freely influence the next generation with their
wonderful, creative, unique spiritual qualities, given to them --like
all tests -- as a gift from God. So again, who really stands for gay
people as people, those who defend homosexuality or those who defend
their place as full agents in forming the future of humanity?

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com