Vladimir Moss – Orthodox Christianity Author

• Home
• About
• Books
• Articles
• Publications
• Biography
• Contact

HOMOSEXUALITY, EVOLUTION AND THE NATURAL ORDER

Written by Vladimir Moss

HOMOSEXUALITY, EVOLUTION AND NATURAL LAW

 

     One of the greatest problems for the theory of evolution has always been sexuality. Why should nature change from the comparatively simple process of asexual reproduction to the far more complex one of sexual reproduction? And how is it possible for one sexually reproducing species to evolve into another, given (a) that both the male and the female of the new, emergent species have to have changed in many, precisely complementary ways if they are to produce offspring, and (b) that these changes must all take place, not over millions of years (time – loads of it - is the usual savior of evolutionary theories), but in a single generation (otherwise sexual reproduction will fail and the species will die out)?

     If normal, heterosexual reproduction is hard enough for evolutionism to explain, then to do so for the phenomenon of homosexuality is virtually impossible, as psychologist Robert Kunzig admits: “If there is one thing that has always seemed obvious about homosexuality, it's that it just doesn't make sense. Evolution favors traits that aid reproduction, and being gay clearly doesn't do that. The existence of homosexuality amounts to a profound evolutionary mystery, since failing to pass on your genes means that your genetic fitness is a resounding zero. ‘Homosexuality is effectively like sterilization,’ says psychobiologist Qazi Rahman of Queen Mary College in London. ‘You'd think evolution would get rid of it.’ Yet as far as historians can tell, homosexuality has always been with us. So the question remains: If it's such a disadvantage in the evolutionary rat race, why was it not selected into oblivion millennia ago?”[1]

     A good question; and the obvious response would be to look for an explanation outside evolution – or abandon evolutionism altogether. But evolutionists are not so quickly discouraged. Since evolutionism is for them more of a philosophy of life in general than a particular scientific hypothesis, they must attempt to force every living phenomenon onto this conceptual crustacean bed, whether or not it fits. And so they duly think up theories of how homosexuals come to constitute (according to them) between 2 and 6 percent of the human population. Such theories need not concern believers: they testify to the extraordinary ingenuity and fertility of the human mind when it is in straits, but not to the truth about God’s creation…

     However, there is an important reason why we cannot leave the matter there. If evolution were true, and if it were possible to find a convincing evolutionary explanation for the existence of homosexuality, then we would be forced to admit that homosexuals cannot help being such, that there is nothing wrong (morally or in any other sense) with being homosexual, and even that we should encourage homosexuality because it serves an evolutionary function. And this, of course, is what politicians and human rightists, scientists and publicists of all kinds are proclaiming.

     Thus in sharp contrast to twentieth-century psychiatry from Freud onwards, which saw homosexuality as a disease to be cured, our modern wise men see it as a completely normal phenomenon. More than that: homosexuals now are called “gay”, an acronym for “Good As You”; for not only have they nothing to be ashamed of: they are proud of their disease, and insist that everybody else must think the same. So if we are to defend traditional, Christian morality on this point – and indeed, morality in general, insofar as evolutionism undermines the very possibility of saying that anything existent is good or bad (for if it survives, it must serve an evolutionary purpose and therefore be “good”) – we need to say a little more about what homosexuality is from a Christian point of view.

 

*

     We need to distinguish between three meanings of the word “nature”. There is “nature” as God created it before the fall; there is “nature” as adapted by God to survival in the conditions of the fall; and there is “nature” which goes against “nature” in both the previous senses, being “unnatural” even in fallen creatures. Human nature before the fall was already divided into the male and female sexes; but our bodies were not opaque or subject to pain or corruption, and so were not capable of sexual intercourse and reproduction as we know them. After the fall, however, we received “garments of skin”, our present coarse and corrupt nature, which is capable of sexual intercourse and reproduction – but only, of course, in a heterosexual manner. And then there is the “unnatural nature” that violates even fallen nature as God adapted it. It is a question whether this “unnatural nature” exists at all in any real sense – that is, whether it is not in fact a demonic imposition on human nature, being “subhumanism”, in Fr. Seraphim Rose’s phrase, rather than human nature in either its pre-fall or fallen state.

     Even some leading gay activists admit that homosexuality is unnatural. Thus Lesbian activist Camille Paglia writes: "Homosexuality is not normal. On the contrary, it is a challenge to the norm. Nature exists whether academics like it or not. Procreation is the single relentless rule. That is the norm. Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction. No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous. Homosexuality is an adaptation, not an inborn trait." (http://liberallogic101.com/?p=6651)

     The distinction between what is natural and what is unnatural is fundamental to all morality. The Apostle Paul condemned Sodomy, “going after strange flesh” (Jude 7), because it went against “the natural use” of sexuality. And he identified its ultimate cause in the pagan worship of the creature instead of the Creator, of which modern naturalism and evolutionism can be seen to be another form: “When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, Who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one towards another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet…” (Romans 1.21-26).

     St. John Chrysostom comments on this passage: “Here he sets the pleasure according to nature, which they would have enjoyed with more sense of security and greater joy, and so have been far removed from shameful deeds. But they would not; which is why they are quite beyond the pale of pardon, and have insulted nature itself. And still more disgraceful than these is the women seeking these couplings, for they ought to have more sense of shame than men.… Then, having reproached the women first, he goes on to the men also, and says, ‘And likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman’. This is clear proof of the ultimate degree of corruption, when both sexes are abandoned. Both he who was called to be the instructor of the woman and she who was told to become a help like the man now behave as enemies to one another. Notice how deliberately Paul measures his words. For he does not say that they loved and desired each other but that ‘they burned in their lust for one another’! You see that the whole of desire comes from an excess which cannot contain itself within its proper limits. For everything which transgresses God’s appointed laws lusts after monstrous things which are not normal. For just as many often abandon the desire for food and come to feed on earth and small stones, and others, possessed by excessive thirst, often long even for mire, so these also charged into this explosion of lawless love. But if you ask, where did this intensity of lust come from? [I answer:] it was from being abandoned by God. And why were they abandoned by God? Because of their lawlessness in abandoning Him: ‘men with men working that which is unseemly’. Do not, he means, because you have heard that they burned, suppose that the evil was only in desire. For the greater part of it came from their luxuriousness, which also kindled their lust into flame…. And he called it not lust, but that which is unseemly, and that rightly. For they both dishonoured nature, and trampled on the laws. And see the great confusion which fell out on both sides. For not only was the head turned downwards but the feet too were turned upwards, and they became enemies to themselves and to one another….

     “It was meet that the two should be one, I mean the woman and the man. For ‘the two,’ it says, ‘shall be one flesh’. But this was effected by the desire for intercourse, which united the sexes to one another. This desire the devil first took away and then, and having changed its direction, thereby divided the sexes from one another, and made the one to become two in opposition to the law of God. For it says, ‘the two shall be one flesh’; but he divided the one flesh into two: here then is one war. Again, these same two parts he provoked to war both against themselves and against one another. For even women again abused women, and not men only. And the men stood against one another, and against the female sex, as happens in a battle by night. So you see a second and third war, and a fourth and fifth. And there is also another, for beside what has been mentioned they also behaved lawlessly against nature itself. For when the devil saw that it is this desire that, principally, draws the sexes together, he was bent on cutting through the tie, so as to destroy the race, not only by their not copulating lawfully, but also by their being stirred up to war, and in sedition against one another.”[2]

     Fr. Thomas Hopko writes: “An interpretation of this passage that claims the apostle was right in forbidding acts ‘contrary to nature’, but was ignorant of the fact that many people are ‘by nature’ homosexual and therefore should act according to their God-given homosexuality, is unacceptable to Orthodox Christian faith. No one in Orthodox Christian tradition has ever interpreted this text in this way, nor can anyone do so, according to Orthodoxy, when they read the Bible as a whole. On the contrary, the biblical teaching is rather this: The fact that many people have sexual feelings and desires for persons of their own sex is among the most powerful proofs that human beings and life have been distorted by sin…”[3]

     Clearly, then, there is a difference in kind between natural heterosexual desire, fallen though it is, and unnatural homosexual desire. The one was implanted in nature by God (according to St. Cyril of Alexandria, innocent sexual attraction was already present between Adam and Eve in paradise): the other is unnatural, and is incited by demonic forces outside human nature to which sinners give access through their idolatrous worship of creation. Like the demonic lust of “the sons of God” for the daughters of men in Genesis 6, homosexuality is a demonically inspired undermining of the natural order.

     This is proved by the many cases in which people who have been led to think that they are homosexual return quickly and joyfully to the natural order once they have been freed from the unnatural power that controlled them. Thus Robert Epstein writes: “In a landmark study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in October 2003, [Robert L.] Spitzer interviewed 200 men and women who once considered themselves homosexuals but who had lived their lives as heterosexuals for at least five years. Most of the participants had undergone some form of reorientation therapy. In addition to determining whether such therapy actually worked, Spitzer wanted to know just how dramatically people could alter their orientation. To his surprise, most of his subjects not only reported living long-term (more than 10 years) as heterosexuals, they also declared that they had experienced ‘changes in sexual attraction, fantasy and desire’ consistent with heterosexuality. The changes were clear for both sexes…”[4]

     A vivid example of such a “conversion” is the following true story related by the present writer’s wife, Mrs. Olga Moss. (The names of the people in the story have been change.) “This took place some years after the war, after I had graduated from Amsterdam university, had married and was living in England with my first husband. I had a schoolfriend who was a real macho man, good at sport and so on. He had a younger brother called Pieter who was quite the opposite: tall and slim, with a sensitive nature, studying history in Leiden. Because of the sharp contrast with his brother, many of his student friends started to suggest to Pieter that he was a homosexual. And when he listened to them talking about falling in love, and how their pulses would race, and their heart would beat, at the sight of certain girls, Pieter, who had never experienced what they were describing, thought: ‘Maybe I am a homosexual’. As a result, he made himself vulnerable to the advances of other men, and entered into a relationship. He then wrote me a letter from Holland telling me his story, and said: ‘Maybe you don’t want to know me any more.’ I replied: ‘Of course I want to know you. But this is against the Law of God [Pieter was a believer], it is an abomination in His sight, and you must fight against it. We all suffer from various temptations and sins. But we must not give in to them, but must control them. We must not say: “Because I’m made that way, I can act that way.” For example, if we are kleptomaniacs, we cannot just give in to the temptation to steal. And if we have a violent temper, we cannot just give in to our temper and be violent.’ Pieter fell into a depression, and went to his parents’ town to throw himself off a bridge near his parents’ home. But by Divine Providence, his father decided to go for a walk in that area, something he never normally did. Approaching the bridge, he recognized his son standing on the edge, as if he was about to throw himself in. He called out: ‘Pieter!’, Pieter stopped, and turning to his father, put his arms around him and sobbed: ‘I was about to commit suicide because I’m a homosexual.’ His father was deeply shocked; he took him home, but didn’t want to speak to his son again. Some time later, Pieter’s father was dying. Pieter was the only one of his three sons who was in Holland. He sat next to his bed in hospital, keeping watch. He fell asleep and had an extraordinary vision. He saw a great and evil angel trying to throw him onto the ground. Pieter struggled to free himself, knowing that it was essential that he did not fall. But this angel was far stronger than him. Suddenly, however, the angel let go. Pieter woke up and felt himself completely cured of his homosexuality. He bent over to his father to tell him the news, but his father had died…

    “A little later, Pieter went to Ireland for his Ph.D. studies in history, and met a Spanish student called Pilar who was also working for her Ph.D. They fell in love. Returning to Holland via London airport, Pieter phoned me up at 5 in the morning to tell me excitedly: ‘Olga, Olga, I’ve fallen in love. My pulse is racing, my heart is fluttering. She’s beautiful, has lovely eyes and voice,’ etc., etc. I was very sleepy and could hardly take it all in. But I was very happy for him. A little later Pilar came to Holland – they were going to get engaged there and then get married in Spain. She was going to leave the Roman Catholic church, and he the Protestant church in order to join the Orthodox Church to which I belong. Then followed the happiest weeks of his life preparing for the engagement and wedding. She came over before Pascha, but unknown to us was carrying the Legionnaires’ disease, which she had caught in Spain. He was infected, and fell very ill on Great Friday. 24 hours later he was dead. The death was so rapid that an autopsy was ordered. It revealed that Pieter had been deficient in a certain sexual hormone. Pilar went back to Spain, and Pieter was buried next to his father…”

     Although this story constitutes no more than anecdotal evidence, it strongly suggests three things: (1) that a low level of normal libido may make a man vulnerable to homosexuality even when he is in fact heterosexual; (2) that environmental influences – the suggestions of schoolfriends and peers – may also dispose a man to the sin if he does not actively resist it; but that (3) the main agent of homosexuality is demonic, the demon of homosexuality.

     The idea that homosexuality has a biological base in human nature has been based mainly on the hypothesis that there is a “gay gene”. However, “no one has yet identified a particular gay gene,” writes Kunzig.[5] Linda Bowles puts it more bluntly: “The truth is this: There is no "gay" gene. The scientific search for a biological basis for homosexuality has been a complete failure. Highly touted studies, including the study of the brains of 35 male cadavers by Simon LeVay (1991) and the heralded study of 40 pairs of homosexual brothers by Dean Hamer (1993), have not stood up to rigorous scientific scrutiny.

     “The widely respected Dr. Joel Gelertner of Yale University in an article in Science made this observation about various studies trying to link genes with complex human behavior. ‘All were announced with great fanfare; all were greeted unskeptically in the popular press; all are now in disrepute.’

     “Studies of identical twins are especially revealing. Identical twins, unlike fraternal twins, have precisely the same genetic makeup. If same-sex orientation were genetically determined, one could expect identical twins to always have the same sexual orientation. Dozens of studies prove they do not. Almost all scientists who have studies human development agree that environmental influences and life experiences play a significant role in essentially all complex human behaviors, including sexual mindsets.

     “The bottom line is this: No child is born to be a homosexual. Homosexuals are made, and they can be unmade. This is the truth that more psychiatrists and psychologists need to acknowledge. This is the truth that the American people need to know, parents of young children need to heed, and politicians need to understand.”[6]

 

*

     “By their fruits ye shall know them”: that homosexuality is evil and unnatural is proved by its destructive fruits. Thus it is destructive from a medical point of view (because it spreads AIDS), from a psychological point of view (because it creates no stable, satisfying bonds), from a social point of view (because it is divisive, dividing “straights” against “gays” and men against women), and from a political point of view (because it undermines the foundation of the State, which is the family).

     Let us look first at some of the psychological and social effects.

     “In their book The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop, David McWhirter and Andrew Mattison found that of the 156 couples they studied, 75 percent of the partners learned within five years that for the relationship to survive, cheating had to be tolerated, as long as one or the other did not become emotionally involved with the other sex partner. In her book The Mendola Report, lesbian Mary Mendola conducted a nationwide survey of approximately 400 homosexual couples. She, too, found that homosexuals distinguish between sexual and emotional exclusivity. Indeed, just 26 percent of homosexuals believe commitment is paramount in a marriage-type relationship.This translates to an almost unfathomable degree of sleeping around. A recent Amsterdam study found that men in homosexual relationships cheat with an average of eight partners a year. Others have found that the average homosexual has between 100 and 500 sexual partners over his or her lifetime. One study showed that 28 percent have had 1,000 or more sex partners, with another study placing the percentage between 10 and 16 percent.While adultery is certainly a factor in traditional marriages, it is comparatively rare. In fact, studies on matrimony place the male fidelity rate between 75 and 80 percent and that of females between 85 and 90 percent. The reason is simple: Unlike homosexual relationships, emotional and sexual fidelity within matrimony are inexorably linked and always have been by definition. To extend the concept of marriage to a situation wherein fidelity is not the norm would not only cheapen the institution, but it would have disastrous consequences for children. Simply put, a marriage is not a marriage without total exclusivity.”[7]


     Finally, let us look briefly at the political effects of homosexuality. A permissive attitude towards Sodomy is not only a mortal sin in the eyes of God and has profoundly evil consequences for private and public morality and happiness: it is also incompatible with any understanding of the State that is based on the natural order. This is because the State is based on the family, and is designed to protect the family and its continuation and multiplication down the generations, whereas homosexuality, for obvious reasons, cuts short the timespan of the single-sex “family” to one generation. Therefore the State that legalizes homosexuality and discourages or downgrades natural, heterosexual marriage and childbirth will first undergo a process of rapid aging (this is already happening in many western societies), and then will eventually simply die out - unless it adopts unnatural, artificial (and often immoral) methods of acquiring children, such as kidnapping, accelerated immigration, genetic experimentation and surrogate motherhood.

     That the State is based on the family was attested by the greatest thinkers of antiquity. Thus Aristotle wrote: “The king is in the same relationship with his subjects as the head of a family with his children”. The State is, as it were, the family writ large. The family, writes St. Augustine, is “the beginning, or rather a small component part of the city, and every beginning is directed to some end of its own kind, and every component part contributes to the completeness of the whole of which it forms a part. The implication is that domestic peace contributes to the peace of the city, for an ordered harmony of those who live together in a house contributes to the ordered harmony concerning authority and obedience obtaining among citizens.”[8]

     Again, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow says: “The family is older than the State. Man, husband, wife, father, son, mother, daughter and the obligations and virtues inherent in these names existed before the family grew into the nation and the State was formed. That is why family life in relation to State life can be figuratively depicted as the root of the tree. In order that the tree should bear leaves and flowers and fruit, it is necessary that the root should be strong and bring pure juice to the tree. In order that State life should develop strongly and correctly, flourish with education, and bring forth the fruit of public prosperity, it is necessary that family life should be strong with the blessed love of the spouses, the sacred authority of the parents, and the reverence and obedience of the children, and that as a consequence of this, from the pure elements of family there should arise similarly pure principles of State life, so that with veneration for one’s father veneration for the tsar should be born and grow, and that the love of children for their mother should be a preparation of love for the fatherland, and the simple-hearted obedience of domestics should prepare and direct the way to self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness in obedience to the laws and sacred authority of the autocrat.”[9]

     Again, Bishop Ignaty Brianchaninov writes: “In blessed Russia, in accordance with the spirit of the pious people, the Tsar and the fatherland constitute one whole, just as in a family the parents and their children constitute one whole.”[10]

     So the king’s rule in the State is a reflection of the father’s rule in the family, which in turn reflects the rule of God “the Father, from Whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3.15).

     The advent of democracy undermined the authority of fathers of all kinds, both the Heavenly Father and the head of the earthly family and the head of the state. This has led not only to the break-up of families, but also to the rapid atomization of society as a whole, making it “the lonely crowd”, in sociologist David Riesman’s famous phrase. It has also prepared the ground for totalitarianism, for nature denied still speaks out, and those denied natural fathers who naturally love and protect them will seek to venerate and obey unnatural ones who despise and destroy them.

     All these tendencies leading to the destruction of fatherhood and the family are greatly accelerated by the glorification of homosexuality, the most unnatural of sins. So let us not “be deceived. Neither fornicators, not idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, not sodomites… will inherit the Kingdom of God” (I Corinthians 6.9-10).

 

January 1/14, 2014.

St. Basil the Great.

‹‹ Back to All Articles