Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Possibly Offensive Ponder...although it shouldn't be.

I have this thing that I do when I'm curious about something.  I try to break it down and take it back to a simplistic thought to gain perspective.  Now this one idea I kicked around may be offensive to some, but I hope not, because its not intended to, its just merely me trying to find some truth in a world of opinions.  It is a controversial conversation for sure, especially if you are Christian, but hear me out first.

I have listened for years to people talk about homosexuals and whether they are born that way, are a product of their environment or its learned behavior.  I happen to believe they are born that way and I will explain how I came to this conclusion using my simpleton breakdown method I mentioned above.  Let me just say that I believed they were born that way long before I came up with the simpleton method of breaking things down and heres why.

I babysat two kids in the farming community I grew up in back when I was a teenager.  I only babysat them once, but the little boy made a huge impression on me.  The boy was about 5 years old and his sister was around 7.  Lets call them Max and Lisa. (I honestly don't remember their names)  So Max was very dramatic, full of high energy and carried himself with a lot of female mannerisms.  He liked to play dress up and wanted nothing more than to play Barbies with his sister.  When his father came home, he was upset to see his son wearing a skirt, carrying a purse and playing with dolls.  He told me that he would rather his son play with trucks.  The father tried to pull the "girl" toys away from him and Max just broke down and fell to the floor wailing.  And maybe this is why I was never asked to babysit again because I allowed him to play with the things he enjoyed.

I remember being so fascinated with Max because I loved seeing him happy playing with the girl stuff.  I grew up with two brothers who thought Barbies were "dumb" and I think I would have enjoyed having a sibling who liked to do the same things I did, even if he were a boy.  I mean, seriously, kids don't care and make judgements, adults do.  Max's father was clearly embarrassed and ashamed that Max played with girl stuff and I found that quite sad.  I remember thinking that there was no way little Max could have learned to like girl stuff and carry himself like a girl.  His father was a mans man and we had no openly gay community in the cornfields that I was aware of.  People were farmers.  Men were men and women were women so he clearly didn't pick this behavior up around him.  That was when I figured out that God made him that way. (I am also aware that Max could have just been transgender and not gay, but still, my point is, its not a choice.)

On top of homosexuals being born that way, lets think about the reality of society being so cruel to gays and not allowing them equal rights.  Like marriage! HELLO!!?!  People deserve to be happy!  Two men or women marrying does not affect me negatively AT ALL.  I'd much rather have a gay couple on my street with the same rights as the rest of us so they can share their lives legally (if they choose) and take part in the American dream and be HAPPY instead of feeling like they are less than.  I mean, seriously, you stay out of my bedroom and I'll stay out of yours!  Getting back to my point, with the lack of compassion and acceptance from a great deal of society, why on earth would anyone CHOOSE that?  It makes me bananas when I hear someone say they "choose" to be gay!  Why? So you close minded folks can look down on them and tell them they can't marry and are sinners?  THATS INSANE!

This whole thing got me thinking.  And based on what I witnessed with little Max, I was curious to figure out a better argument about how homosexuals don't "choose" to be gay, but just are, God made them that way.  (I know that ruffles feathers because of that great book of fiction that says that its "a sin".  Yea, whatever.)  Heres where this took me.

If you take a Darwin approach that we all evolved from apes, this actually can make a lot of sense.  So lets go back to caveman times for argument sake, before texting and cars and aluminum siding.  Caves, trees, rocks, plants, animals, clans of humans.  At this time in evolution, it was all about survival and its still this way out in the wild, survival.  So lets say we have a clan of 10 males and 12 females.  (just pulling numbers from the sky)  The bottom line for these people is survival.  Some will die of illness or animal attack or stupidity (Darwin Awards started a long time ago) but overall there needs to be balance.  So I wondered in this delicate balance if God would create some of them gay for the purpose of population control?  What if God made 2 of the men, out of 10, like other men?  If this happened, they would only want to have sex with other men and therefore, no children could be born from this natural urge to have sex.  I think that God decided to do this as a part of that balance because if all 10 men were knocking up the 12 women, there would be too many mouths to feed and they would perish during times of lean eating.  There are so many variables but what if this was the baseline reasoning?

Think about it and come to your own conclusions, this is just mine.