Steph:

The question you raise, that such desire is innate, is an important one. I noted at the end of my Post 4, as well as in Post 1, that this is a key claim in the dialogue. I am planning a post to address it directly as a single issue to focus on. It is that important. My goal up to this point has simply been to challenge the framing of the discussion by Newsweek as if religion did not matter for some people who object to gay marriage and their claim that a better Judeo-Christian approach was to neuter what the Bible says about the issue, while ignoring key pieces of what the Bible does say.

So what about the claim of being innate. I will say more about this in the planned post, but for now let me just say this. That something is or might be innate does not make it right. You did not like the equation of homosexuality with either addiction or sin. I am not surprised. To acknowledge this opens the door to a more complex discussion of the issue. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that you think my "bad analogy" begs the point by suggesting such sexual desire is a sin.  I do not think that was my point, so let me explain. Let's go with your OCD or another example innate to many, lust. My mere point was two-fold: (1) being an innate desire does not mean something is a moral desire and (2) certain people do have proclivities that make them more susceptible to go in a certain direction and engage in a given practice than others (certain addictions). A moral choice in part is a disciplined response about what to do involving tendencies in us that may take us in a potentailly destructive direction. Let's take your OCD. Now why not just say your OCD is innate (ie, it is a natural personality element created by God) and so you should just go with it? Well, it is because something else in you says, this is destructive and needs to be controlled. Lust works similarly. A question to raise then is, whether sexual desire for another person of the same sex operates in the same kind of way. What makes this tricky is that heterosexual desire (also innate) is also often very destructive and needs to be controlled as a conscious moral act. This is why we reject adultery as morally defective. Part of what people are debating in homosexual practice is whether it is inherently immoral. Does accepting it without blinking an eye mean embracing something that ought to be disciplined as a moral response? In other words, is the issue as distinct as you claim? Some say it is innate, so the discipline is to keep it in a faithful context. Others say it is unnatural, an offense to creation in terms of gender differentiation (and thus unlike OCD or mere lust), so there is more to this act than others. I think this is where our differecne lies. 

By the way I never said homosexuality was seen as immoral in all cultures, only in most. I place the writing of Genesis and Leviticus several centuries before the time of Christ. Its roots go back to the monotheism of Moses. But the range of time involved in all the texts that address the topic in the Bible covers more than a millennium.  

Now I am spending a lot of time in responses correcting how you characterize what I say (Fundamentalist in the previous post; homosexuality is seen as immoral in all non-Jewish cultures; certain readings not possible now. Exaggerating someone's position does not help engage the real position). For example, you say I take a certain reading (ones you take) as not possible. That is not correct. I see the various readings we debate as possible, that is why I do not just dismiss them, but engage them. However, I do not find all possible readings compelling or likely for reasons I present.

If you find yourself next to me at an SBL, by all means introduce yourself. I'd love to chat.

dlb