A preliminary study in Australia found that the children of lesbian and gay parents are not only thriving, but may actually have better overall health and higher rates of family cohesion than heterosexual families. The full study was published in June Despite all this, the Regnerus Study is still used in the U. MYTH 3 People become homosexual because they were sexually abused as children or there was a deficiency in sex-role modeling by their parents.
This argument is used to counter the common observation that no one, gay or straight, consciously chooses his or her sexual orientation. Joseph Nicolosi, a founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality , said in that "if you traumatize a child in a particular way, you will create a homosexual condition.
A side effect of this argument is the demonization of parents of gay men and lesbians, who are led to wonder if they failed to protect a child against sexual abuse or failed as role models in some important way. The American Psychiatric Association noted in a fact sheet available on the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, that dealing with gay, lesbian and bisexual issues, that sexual abuse does not appear to be any more prevalent among children who grow up and identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual than in children who grow up and identify as heterosexual.
Similarly, the National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization notes on its website that "experts in the human sexuality field do not believe that premature sexual experiences play a significant role in late adolescent or adult sexual orientation" and added that it's unlikely that anyone can make another person gay or heterosexual.
Advocates for Youth, an organization that works in the U. In , Dr. THE ARGUMENT Anti-LGBT organizations, seeking to promote heterosexuality as the healthier "choice," often offer up the purportedly shorter life spans and poorer physical and mental health of gays and lesbians as reasons why they shouldn't be allowed to adopt or foster children.
On the basis of the same obituaries, Cameron also claimed that gay men are 18 times more likely to die in car accidents than heterosexuals, 22 times more likely to die of heart attacks than whites, and 11 times more likely than blacks to die of the same cause.
He also concluded that lesbians are times more likely to die of murder, suicide, or accidents than straight women. Remarkably, these claims have become staples of the anti-gay right and have frequently made their way into far more mainstream venues. However, like virtually all of his "research," Cameron's methodology is egregiously flawed — most obviously because the sample he selected the data from the obits was not remotely statistically representative of the LGBT population as a whole.
Even Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has called Cameron's methods "just ridiculous. Anti-LGBT organizations have also tried to support this claim by distorting the work of legitimate scholars, like a study conducted by a Canadian team of researchers that dealt with gay and bisexual men living in Vancouver in the late s and early s.
The authors of the study became aware that their work was being misrepresented by anti-LGBT groups, and issued a response taking the groups to task. Lively is the virulently anti-gay founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and Abrams is an organizer of a group called the International Committee for Holocaust Truth, which came together in and included Lively as a member.
The primary argument Lively and Abrams make is that gay people were not victimized by the Holocaust. Rather, Hitler deliberately sought gay men for his inner circle because their "unusual brutality" would help him run the party and mastermind the Holocaust.
In fact, "the Nazi party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history," the book claims. These claims have been picked up by a number of anti-gay groups and individuals, including Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association , as proof that gay men and lesbians are violent and sick.
The book has also attracted an audience among anti-gay church leaders in Eastern Europe and among Russian-speaking anti-gay activists in America. Christine Mueller, professor of history at Reed College, did a line-by-line refutation of an earlier Abrams article on the topic and of the broader claim that the Nazi Party was "entirely controlled" by gay men.
Historian Jon David Wynecken at Grove City College also refuted the book , pointing out that Lively and Abrams did no primary research of their own, instead using out-of-context citations of some legitimate sources while ignoring information from those same sources that ran counter to their thesis. The myth that the Nazis condoned homosexuality sprang up in the s, started by socialist opponents of the Nazis as a slander against Nazi leaders.
The Nazis considered homosexuality one aspect of the "degeneracy" they were trying to eradicate. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's security chief, announced that homosexuality was to be "eliminated" in Germany, along with miscegenation among the races. Historians estimate that between 50, and , men were arrested for homosexuality or suspicion of it under the Nazi regime. These men were routinely sent to concentration camps and many thousands died there.
Himmler expressed his views on homosexuality like this: "We must exterminate these people root and branch. We can't permit such danger to the country; the homosexual must be completely eliminated. MYTH 6 Hate crime laws will lead to the jailing of pastors who criticize homosexuality and the legalization of practices like bestiality and necrophilia. THE ARGUMENT Anti-gay activists, who have long opposed adding LGBT people to those protected by hate crime legislation, have repeatedly claimed that such laws would lead to the jailing of religious figures who preach against homosexuality — part of a bid to gain the backing of the broader religious community for their position.
Hate Crimes Prevention Act — signed into law by President Obama in October — would "jail pastors" because it "criminalizes speech against the homosexual agenda.
In a related assertion, anti-gay activists claimed the law would lead to the legalization of psychosexual disorders paraphilias like bestiality and pedophilia. Bob Unruh, a conservative Christian journalist who left The Associated Press in for the right-wing, conspiracist news site WorldNetDaily, said shortly before the federal law was passed that it would legalize "all forms of sexual deviancy or 'paraphilias' listed by the American Psychiatric Association. The First Amendment provides robust protections of free speech, and case law makes it clear that even a preacher who publicly suggested that gays and lesbians should be killed would be protected.
Neither do hate crime laws — which provide for enhanced penalties when persons are victimized because of their "sexual orientation" among other factors — "protect pedophiles," as Janet Porter and many others have claimed. According to the American Psychological Association , sexual orientation refers to heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality — not paraphilias such as pedophilia.
For the last two decades, Pew Research Center has reported that one of the most enduring ethical issues across Christian traditions is sexual diversity. Although its unlikely that the biblical authors had any notion of sexual orientation for example, the term homosexual wasn't even coined until the late 19th century for many people of faith, the Bible is looked to for timeless guidance on what it means to honor God with our lives; and this most certainly includes our sexuality.
Before we can jump into how it is that Christians can maintain the authority of the Bible and also affirm sexual diversity, it might be helpful if we started with a brief but clear overview of some of the assumptions informing many Christian approaches to understanding the Bible. In this light, the Bible is often seen as the primary source that helps us figure out how the people of God should live. Rather, most Christians make these difficult determinations by studying what the whole of Scripture says regarding a specific topic, exploring the linguistic, historical and cultural context within which the words were written, and then putting these discoveries in conversation with what we know to be true of the character of God more broadly.
Whenever any person opens the Bible, they begin a process of interpretation. But, the question is begged, is this a fair and accurate assessment? Are there such things as neutral interpretations? Is there one true or correct way to interpret the Bible, and if so, who determines that? The study of biblical interpretation is called hermeneutics, and helps us to address these kinds of questions.
More specifically, we are seeking to determine if the biblical writers were condemning specific practices related to sexuality in the ancient world, or were they indeed condemning all same-sex relationships of any kind for the rest of time?
While gender complimentarity is indeed rooted in passages from Genesis 1 and 2, it is worth noting that these stories say God began by creating human beings of male and female sex defined as the complex result of combinations between chromosomes, gonads, genes, and genitals but there is nothing that indicates in Scripture that God only created this binary.
This account says little to nothing about gender, the social and cultural norms and practices corresponding to what is considered masculine and feminine. Two dimensions of the text that become important in considering the biblical affirmation of intersex, transgender, non-binary, and other gender diverse people, discussed at more length here. This was what allowed the first Christians to decide to include gentiles who were not keeping the Old Testament law in the early church Acts Churches will continue hemorrhaging members and money at an alarming rate until we muster the courage to face the truth: We got it wrong on gays and lesbians.
We have learned some things that the ancients — including Moses and Paul — simply did not know. Not even Jesus, who was fully human and therefore limited to what first century humans knew, could know about cancer, schizophrenia, atomic energy and a million other things the centuries have taught us. Yet all of this, and more, is commanded by the Bible. You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page , on Twitter usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter.
To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters usatoday. Facebook Twitter Email. American churches must reject literalism and admit we got it wrong on gay people Churches will continue hemorrhaging members until we face the truth: Being a faithful Christian does not mean accepting everything the Bible teaches.
Oliver Thomas Opinion columnist. Share your feedback to help improve our site!
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