THE BOOK
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THE REVIEWS

1

September 28, 2005
Born Gay!

A new book co-authored by Dr. Qazi Rahman, a lecturer
in psychobiology at
the University of East London and Dr. Glenn Wilson, a
member of the faculty
of the University of London, has just been published
in the United Kingdom.
It was reviewed in The Guardian, one of the United
Kingdom's four major
daily newspapers last month. Entitled, "Born Gay,"
this book lays out in a
quite public way the consensus today of both the
scientific and the medical
communities in their attempt to understand
homosexuality.
In a nutshell, these authors state the widely accepted
conclusions that
homosexuality is not something "that can be caught,
like 'flu'," it cannot
be "learned from people who make it look really cool
and fun like those
chaps on 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' (a British
sitcom) and it has
nothing to do with smothering mothers and distant
fathers." All of that,
they assert, has now fallen by the wayside. Those
ideas are now completely
dismissed in intellectual circles.
Drs. Rahman and Wilson write: "It is quite clear now
that homosexuality in
gay men and lesbians is caused by biological factors."
This conclusion, they
assert, is "so widely accepted" in academic circles
that many colleagues
asked why they had bothered to write this book at all.
"They tell us," they
said in the Guardian interview, "that all we are doing
is pointing out what
everyone already knows." Everyone, that is, who is not
homophobic and
therefore not open to the data that so deeply and
significantly challenges
this ancient, deeply held emotional prejudice.
I welcome this book precisely because it is not
written for the academic
world of science and medicine, where this issue is no
longer debated.
Rather, it is written specifically for those people
who still operate out of
an uninformed definition of homosexuality as either a
sickness or a deviant,
sinful, unnatural and depraved choice. More
importantly, it is written for
those who somehow think that this issue was settled
when the Book of
Leviticus was written in the sixth century before the
Common Era or by St.
Paul, who wrote between 50 and 64 C.E. It is written
to resource the
churches of the world that are increasingly seen as
the bastions of an
undying homophobia, which causes them to be at war
over an issue that
outside those churches has largely been settled. It is
written to place in
the clear relief of its own ongoing ignorance the
embarrassing rhetoric that
still
emanates from people like Benedict XVI, Pat Robertson,
Jerry Falwell and
their passionate acolytes of the Religious Right in
America. Negative words
also come from Christian leaders in the third world
who try to cover their
obviously uninformed opinions with the charge of
racism when those opinions
are rejected as simply ignorant. The evidence is so
clear. Homosexuality,
just like heterosexuality, is morally neutral. Both
can be lived out in
holiness or in degradation. Both are 'givens' not
'chosens.' The only "sin"
of homosexual people is that they are born with a
sexual orientation
different from the majority.
Dr. Rahman says that the impetus for this book was
that "over the last
decade or so, there has been an explosion of work on
this subject and we
felt that no one had reviewed it all or laid it down
in a way that was
accessible to non-academics." Noting that although the
scientific community
is convinced about the biological causes of
homosexuality, some parts of the
wider world still seem to have doubts. Perhaps the
fact is that this
knowledge has simply not been made accessible to them.
This book then
addresses the need to educate the masses, revealing
with clear and credible
evidence that homosexuality is a natural minority
_expression of the spectrum
of human sexuality. That insight alone has huge
ramifications for social
policy.
This book exposes the claim that religious conversion
and religious
counseling can 'cure' people of homosexuality. Without
equivocation, these
authors state that the data offered to support such
claims have been
debunked and dismissed as the medical fraud that it
has always been. We need
to embrace the fact that fraud perpetrated in the name
of religion is still
fraud and should be treated as such. Those who attempt
to practice medicine
without a license should be charged, convicted and
jailed.
Rahman and Wilson believe that the reason for
lingering confusion over this
issue in our society comes not from the lack of
scientific consensus that
biology is the root of homosexuality, but rather
because within that
biological data, the determining factors are still
debated. It is not
genetic in the usual sense of being an inherited
characteristic. Homosexual
persons presumably have straight parents, and the
children of homosexual
couples are no more prone to be gay or lesbian than
the children of anyone
else. Dr. Rahman's best guess at this moment is what
he calls "the sponge
model," which he defines as the presence of genes that
predispose a fetus
toward an orientation different from the majority.
These genes, he suggests,
affect receptors in the brain causing the brain "to
soak up testosterone
like a sponge." Admitting that this is just one
hypothesis, Rahman
believes, nonetheless, that it has promise and can be
tested. This is why,
he concludes, that "developmental biology and
neurogenetics are so important
in this field."
In the late 1980s, realizing that I knew almost
nothing about sexual
orientation except the unchallenged prejudices with
which I had grown up, I
looked for a place I could go to gain the necessary
intellectual and medical
background on this human phenomenon. I knew only that
my ignorance and
prejudice would make it all but impossible to be an
effective bishop in the
metropolitan New York area. My search led me to a
member of the faculty of
The Cornell School of Medicine in New York City. This
man, whose name was
Robert Lahita, had both a PhD and an MD degree. At
that time he was working
on the differences in the immune systems of men and
women, an interest that
had led him deeply into the science of the brain. What
impressed me most
then, and it is now verified by this new book, is that
the idea that
homosexuality could be adopted as a lifestyle of
choice or that it was
caused by some factor or experience in early childhood
was totally and
universally dismissed. No one on the medical faculty
at Cornell saluted this
idea. That fact alone changed for me the whole dynamic
in the debate going
on in the Church. For if sexual orientation is part of
what we are rather
than something some choose to do, then it must be
related to in the same way
that we have learned to relate to skin color, gender,
left handedness and
ethnicity. These things are neither good or bad, they
simply are. To
discriminate against a person because of who that
person is, is the essence
of racism, sexism and xenophobia. I was now coming to
the awareness that it
is also the essence of homophobia. It was the
'given-ness' of sexual
orientation that produced in me the sea change in my
own attitude. That is
also what is happening in both church and society at
this moment. A new
understanding of homosexuality is colliding with a
definition that is
uninformed, prejudiced and dying. Dying prejudices are
never revived and
they are never re-installed. Indeed the fact that a
prejudice is being
debated is a sure sign that it is dying. The only
question is how long will
it take and how many people will be hurt before this
prejudice takes its
place in the graveyards of human history alongside
other discarded
discriminatory practices that have marked the human
journey through history.
The fact is that heterosexual people cannot recall the
moment when they
chose their sexual orientation. I, for one, can only
remember that in my
very early adolescence, I decided that girls were not
obnoxious and that I
desired their attention. This awakening was
accompanied by behavioral
changes that were thought of by my parents as both
remarkable and
noteworthy. I took baths more frequently, combed my
hair, dressed better and
even used deodorant! My mother observing this behavior
said: "the sap has
risen!" I had no idea what that meant either. Now I
wonder why those of us
who did not choose to be heterosexual have always
assumed that homosexuals
in fact did choose to be gay!
I learned many things from my Cornell contacts. I
learned that scientists
believe that the percentage of homosexual persons in
the general population
is stable among all people, in all cultures and
throughout all history. I
learned that homosexual behavior is well documented in
the animal kingdom
today. I learned that the origin of all sexual
orientation is believed to be
connected with the presence or absence of the same
realities described in
Rahman and Wilson's book. Somehow both the levels of
testosterone and brain
formation are factors. I learned that the division
between male and female
in nature is not nearly as well differentiated as we
have always thought.
All human life appears to start as female and it only
develops masculine
identity if and when the "y" chromosome kicks in,
reshaping the developing
fetus. Following my work with Dr. Lahita and the
others at
Cornell my mind has been clear on this issue.
Discrimination against
homosexual persons is as wrong as discrimination
against people on the basis
of race, gender or ethnicity. It has no place in the
life of the Christian
Church. I no longer even want to debate this issue in
the various councils
of the Church. It is for me a settled issue. It is
time for people to adjust
their ancient prejudices to new realities. This
debate, for me is in the
same category as the debate between evolution and
creationism, whether the
earth is flat or round and whether the sun revolves
around the earth or vice
versa. Some issues are simply settled. If the Church
and its leaders from
the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope to the
evangelicals across the
world don't understand this, they reveal
Christianity's irrelevance. Church
unity is a bogus smokescreen. A Church united in
prejudice is not worthy of
continued life. Politicians who do not understand this
are either ignorant
or irresponsible. There is no other choice. It is time
to move both Church
and State into the 21st century.
? John Shelby Spong

(2) www.theaustralian.news.com.au