Kinsey, sexuality and the Church

Notes accompanying a talk on homosexuality given by Dr Angus Bell at All Saints’ Church, Marple, 15 February 2004.

Click here to listen to Angus’ talk.

The Lambeth Conference

The Lambeth Conference, 1998 1:10, on human sexuality in part states as follows:

“In view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage.

“While rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, violence within marriage and any trivialisation and commercialisation of sex.

“Cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions.”

About homosexuality and sexual orientation

Is homosexuality a biological state?
Is it a psychological illness?
Is it a spiritual bondage?
Is sexual orientation:
Fixed or flexible through life?
Is everyone really heterosexual?
What percentage of the population “are gay”?
Is Scripture clear or confused on this issue?

Recent events

On the 15 and 16 October 2003, an emergency convocation of 37 Anglican Primates met to discuss “recent events in the diocese of New Westminster, Canada, and the Episcopal Church (USA).” The Canadian and American churches had acted unilaterally in multiple ways to endorse homosexuality. The Canadian diocese had adopted a Rite of Blessing for those in committed same sex relationships. The Episcopal Church (USA) elected Canon Gene Robinson, a divorced man living in a homosexual partnership, as Bishop of New Hampshire.

The primates stated that the actions in New Westminster and the United States “do not express the mind of our Communion as a whole, and these decisions jeopardize our sacramental fellowship with each other.” “In most of our provinces,” said the primates, “the election of Canon Gene Robinson would not have been possible since his chosen lifestyle would give rise to a canonical impediment to his consecration as a bishop.”

The participating primates unanimously gave consent to a statement that described Canon Robinson’s lifestyle as chosen rather than given.

The primates called upon Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to establish a study commission charged to bring a report back to the group within twelve months.

Meanwhile on 19 November in Kampala, the church of Uganda (Anglican) joined Nigeria and Kenya in declaring themselves in broken Communion with the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (ECUSA):

“We deplore, abhor and condemn in the strongest possible terms the resolution of ECUSA to consecrate Gene Robinson and all other resolutions related to the ordination of homosexuals and blessings of same sex unions.”

Kinsey and the sexual revolution

Background history

Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948. His ‘scientific’ findings were likened to the atomic bomb in effect, that 98% of men and roughly half of women had had premarital sex, 95% of American men were legally sex offenders and 10% or more of men were largely homosexual. And, while no one noted that 317 infants and children were ‘tested’ for Kinsey’s child sex data, educators repeated his conclusions, that children were sexual from birth, hence school sex education should be mandatory.

That his 5,300 research subjects included 26% sex offenders, 25% prisoners, 4% prostitutes and, very worryingly, children seemed not to be noticed at the time.

His investigators included known paedophiles, as revealed by Kinsey himself: “Better data came from adult males who have had sexual contacts with younger boys and who, with their adult backgrounds, are able to recognize and interpret the boys’ experiences. Unfortunately ... [only] 9 of our adult male subjects have observed such orgasm. Some of these adults are technically trained persons who have kept diaries or other records which have been put at our disposal... on 317 pre-adolescents who were either observed in self-masturbation or... with other boys or older adults.”

[Judith Reisman, Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House, 1990]

From this report, the finding that 10% men were exclusively homosexual for three years became a media statistic that 1 in 10 men were homosexual in society. However, the males surveyed had not necessarily been homosexual all their lives, nor would they necessarily be homosexual in the future. Future studies by the Kinsey Institute, in fact, would confirm that sexual orientation is not necessarily fixed, and may change throughout a person’s lifespan.

The 1990 Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex states: “Some people have consistent homosexual orientation for a long period of time, then fall in love with a person of the opposite sex; other individuals who have had only opposite-sex partners later fall in love with someone of the same sex.” [Reinisch, June, The New Kinsey Report, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990, p. 138]

Subsequent studies have disproved the 10% claim. USA Today reported on 15 April 1993, a new survey of 3,321 American men indicating 2.3% of them had engaged in homosexual behaviour within the previous ten years; only 1.1% reported being exclusively homosexual.

This was only the latest in a series of studies proving Kinsey wrong. In 1989, a United States survey estimated no more than 6% of adults had any same-sex contacts and only 1% were exclusively homosexual. A similar survey in France found 4% of men and 3% of women had ever engaged in homosexual contacts, while only 1.4% of the men and 0.4% of the women had done so within the past five years. The article concluded, not surprisingly, that the 10% statistic proposed by Kinsey was “dying under the weight of new studies.”

Sexual orientation, chosen or given

The Socio-political debate is between:

“Became gay/gay environment theory” – “Chosen and thus responsible”
“Born gay/gay gene theory” – “Given and thus not responsible”

Science has taken three approaches:

Twin studies
Brain dissections
Gene “linkage” studies

Twins studies

In 1991, psychologist Michael Bailey of Northwestern University (a gay rights advocate) and psychiatrist Richard Pillard of Boston University School of Medicine (who is openly homosexual) compared sets of identical male twins to fraternal twins (whose genetic ties are less close). In each set, at least one twin was homosexual. They found that, among the identical twins, 52% were both homosexual, as opposed to the fraternal twins, among whom only 22% shared a homosexual orientation. Pillard and Bailey suggested the higher incidence of shared homosexuality among identical twins meant homosexuality was genetic in origin. [Bailey and Pillard, A Genetic Study of Male Sexual Orientation, Archives of General Psychiatry, 1991:48, pp 1089-1096]

A later study on twins yielded different results. In March of 1992, the British Journal of Psychiatry published a report on homosexuals who are twins (both fraternal and identical) and found that only 20% of the homosexual twins had a gay co-twin, leading the researchers to conclude that “genetic factors are insufficient explanation of the development of sexual orientation.” [King and McDonald, Homosexuals Who Are Twins, The British Journal of Psychiatry March 1992, Vol. 160, p. 409]

Not only, then, has Pillard and Bailey’s work not been replicated, when a similar study was conducted, it had completely different results. The most comprehensive research summary on the subject to date notes the unexpectedly: “… large proportion of monozygotic twins who [did not share] homosexuality despite sharing not only their genes but also their prenatal and familial environments.

“The... [50% odds]... for homosexuality among the identical twins could be entirely accounted for by the increased similarity of their developmental experiences. In our opinion, the major finding of that study is that 48 percent of identical twins who were reared together [and where at least one was homosexual] were discordant for sexual orientation.”

[Byne W and Parsons B, Human sexual orientation: the biologic theories reappraised, Archives of General Psychiatry. 50, 3:230 (1993)]

Brain dissections

In 1991, Dr. LeVay, a neuro-scientist at the Salk Institute of La Jolla, California, examined the brains of 41 cadavers: 19 allegedly homosexual men, 16 allegedly heterosexual men, and 6 allegedly heterosexual women. His study focused on a group of neurons in the hypothalamus structure called the interstitial nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus, or the INAH3. He reported this region of the brain to be larger in heterosexual men than in homosexuals; likewise, he found it to be larger in heterosexual men than in the women he studied. For that reason, he postulated homosexuality to be inborn, the result of size variations in the INAH3. This is the study most often quoted when people insist homosexuality has been ‘proven’ to be inborn. [LeVay, Simon, A Difference in Hypothalamic Structure Between Heterosexual and Homosexual Men, Science, August 30, 1991, p. 1034-1037]

Problems:

Three of the homosexual subjects actually had larger INAH3s than the heterosexuals. Additionally, three of the heterosexual subjects had smaller INAH3s than the average homosexual subject. Thus, six of LeVay’s 35 male subjects (17% of his total study group) confounded the theory.
The INAH3 area is smaller than a snowflake, and the neuroscientific community cannot agree on whether the INAH3 should be measured by its size in volume or by its number of neurons. This further reduces the robustness of the findings.
Six of the 16 reportedly heterosexual men studied died of AIDS, increasing the likelihood that the sexual histories may have been inaccurate. If it is uncertain which of the subjects were heterosexual and which were homosexual, how useful can the conclusions about “differences” between them really be?

Even if differences do exist between the INAH3’s of homosexual and heterosexual men, it is possible that these differences could be caused by the behaviour, rather than the behaviour being caused by the INAH3’s size.

Gene linkage studies

In 1993, Dr. Dean Hamer of the National Cancer Institute studied 40 pairs of non-identical gay brothers and claimed that 33 of the pairs had inherited the same X-linked genetic markers, thus “indicating a genetic cause for homosexuality.” [Hamer, Dean, A Linkage Between DNA Markers on the X Chromosome and Male Sexual Orientation, Science, 261, July 16, 1993, p. 321- 327]

George Ebers of the University of Western Ontario examined 52 pairs of gay brothers, and found “no evidence for a linkage of homosexuality to markers on the X-chromosome or elsewhere.”

With an associate, he studied 400 families with one or more homosexual male, and found “no evidence for the X-linked, mother-to-son transmission posited by Hamer.” [Gay Genes Revisited: Doubts Arise over Research on the Biology of Homosexuality, Scientific American, November 1995, p. 26.]

Time and time again, scientists have claimed that particular genes or chromosomal regions are associated with behavioural traits, only to withdraw their findings when they were not replicated. “Unfortunately,” says Yale’s Dr. Joel Gelernter, “it’s hard to come up with many findings linking specific genes to complex human behaviors that have been replicated. “... All were announced with great fanfare; all were greeted unsceptically in the popular press; all are now in disrepute.”

[Mann C, Genes and behaviour, Science 264:1687 (1994)]

Dr. William Byne of Columbia University calls the ‘inborn’ evidence “inconclusive” and compares it to “trying to add up a hundred zeroes so you can get one.”

Authority of scripture versus interpretation of scripture

The advocates of homosexuality have only two approaches when it comes to the Bible. They must either deny that the Bible has any authority in this debate, or they must present an interpretation of the biblical text that claims that it doesn’t mean what it says. Most of the gay theorists use both arguments.

The Church of England and the Anglican Communion are established by constitution. At their centre is the confessional statement known as the Thirty-nine articles, Article XX of the confession reads: “It is not lawful for the church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another.”

Quotes

Dr. Philip Giddings, convener of Anglican Mainstream insisted on a BBC website that the church cannot be driven to revise its understanding of homosexuality by the pressure of modern political correctness. “We respond to the argument that we have got to ‘move with the times’ by saying that as Christian disciples we are called to obey the teaching of Scripture whether we like it or not. People may wish it said something different, but we are not at liberty to pick and choose the bits that fit with our current culture of our personal desires.”

In response, Reverend Gareth Williams, Vice Principal of St. Michael’s Theological College in Llandaff, argued: “As regards the Bible, the problem I have is that many people who take the view that the Bible is against homosexuality are approaching a rich and complex text rather too simplistically. Two thousand years on we know so much more about what makes us human. Reading the Bible with the naivety that pretends to know nothing of what modern human psychology tells us about the givenness of our sexuality only perpetuates injustices towards lesbian and gay people. We know that sexuality is hard-wired into our genes, so what Scripture can then help us with is how we can best handle our given sexuality in a way that best honors human integrity, honesty and faithfulness.”

Bishop-Elect Gene Robinson, said during the media attention directed at him as the church’s first gay bishop, “Just simply to say that [homosexuality] goes against tradition and the teaching of Scripture does not necessarily make it wrong.”

Scripture

Seen in overall context, the whole Bible has an assumption that man is made for woman and vice versa. Man and woman together reflect God’s relationship to the church and is an example of submission in creation. Thus homosexuality is seen not only as a sexual sin (a strong word is used in the Old Testament, that of abomination), but it is also a sin of rebellion against God’s created order. Male and female homosexuality has always been seen as a sign of unrighteousness. It is highlighted in the Sodom and Gomorrah story (Gen 19), but in 1 Cor 6 is listed along with other sexual sins and in 1 Timothy 1:10 with liars. So, like anything else, the sin needs to be rejected not the sinner, and there is no excuse for a persecutory homophobia. God loves all mankind and all sin has been atoned for on the cross.

But at the beginning of creation, God “made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one. “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Mk 10:6-9)

Abomination – get a balance! (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13)

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable [or an abomination].

If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable [or an abomination]. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable [an abomination or toevah] to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers. Proverbs 6:16-19

Paul on ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’

“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” Romans 1:26-27

Paul and Arsenokoite

Scripture only condemns male prostitution, doesn’t it?

Arsenokoite is a compound word of Arsene, which appears a few times in the New Testament, always referring to male and Koite, which appears only twice* in the New Testament, and means bed, used in a sexual connotation. The two words combined, as Paul used them, put male and bed together in a sexual sense. There is no hint of prostitution in the meaning of either of the words combined to make arsenokoite, which occurs in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:9-10.

“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders [abusers of themselves with mankind]... nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”

We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels... for adulterers and perverts [them that defile themselves with mankind]... for kidnappers (slave stealers), for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.

* “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality [koite] and debauchery... “ (Rom 13:13). “Marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed [koite] kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” (Heb 13:4)

Change is possible

“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders... will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Cor 6: 9-11; emphasis added.)

Stanton Jones, Chair of Psychology at Wheaton College says “Anyone who says there is no hope (for change) is either ignorant or a liar. Every secular study of change has shown some success rate, and persons who testify to substantial healings by God are legion.” [Jones, Stanton, The Loving Opposition, Christianity Today, July 19, 1993, Vol 37, No. 8]

There are some reports of changed orientation [Nicolosi & others, 2000; Yarhouse & Burkett, 2002]. In one report that was highly publicized by advocates of sexual reorientation, Robert Spitzer (2002) located, with assistance from ‘ex-gay’ ministries and therapists specializing in sexual conversion, “200 subjects reporting a change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation.” When interviewed, only 54 percent of the females and 17 percent of the males, however, had achieved “exclusively opposite sex attraction.” Critics questioned the accuracy of these after-the-fact retrospective memories and testimonials (there were no before-and-after measurements of sexual response). Even so, the difficulty locating people who had made a self-reported U-turn in sexual orientation suggested to Spitzer that sexual reorientation “may actually be quite rare.”

This study does, however, hint at a finding reported recently by other researchers, that women’s sexual orientation tends to be less strongly felt and potentially more fluid and changeable than men’s [Diamond, 2000; Peplau & Garnets, 2000]. This finding accords with other research on men’s more ‘target-specific’ sexual arousal. In their self-reports and measured sexual responses, heterosexual men are more aroused by female erotic stimuli, homosexual men by male erotic stimuli. Women, regardless of sexual orientation, respond to both male and female stimuli [Chivers & others, 2002].

Summary

We have been created male and female, that is gender, the Bible does not define us by our sexual orientation.
We have been given a sexual appetite, which needs to be disciplined and contained within limits.
Our sexuality is not biologically fixed and can therefore change.
Sexual sins are not to be elevated above other social sins.
We love you. Come and struggle with us against sin. Don’t give in to it.

Quote

“To suggest that sexual orientation may turn out to be disposed rather than chosen leaves us free to regard homosexuality as either a normal variation (as with left-handedness) or as a tragic abnormality to be contested (as with dyslexia). As the scientific picture becomes more complete, it will not resolve the values issue. Moreover, straight or gay, we all face moral choices over options that include abstinence, promiscuity, and long-term commitment.

“When torn between judgment and grace, let us err on the side of grace.

“When torn between self-certain conviction and uncertain humility, let us err on the side of humility.

“When torn between contempt and love, let us err on the side of love.

“In so doing, we may be more faithful disciples of the one who embodied grace, humility, and love.”

Exodus international

Exodus international is a coalition of some 135 ministries supporting gays who wish to change.

“We believe freedom from homosexuality is increasingly experienced as men and women mature through ongoing submission to the lordship of Christ and His Church,” says Bob Davies, executive director for Exodus North America.

Since 1976, Exodus has challenged two sets of people: those who respond to homosexuals with ignorance and fear, and those who uphold homosexuality as a valid orientation. “These extremes fail to convey the fullness of redemption found in Jesus Christ, a gift that is available to all who commit their life and their sexuality to Him,” says Davies.

Love Won Out

Conferences hold that all people are heterosexual and that homosexuals “have a psychological problem”, advocating “reparative therapy”.

What a tangled web we weave! [Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)]