Reconciliation: Day Nine

 I’m not quite sure why, but there is lots of controversy today about our LGBT brothers and sisters. Seems everyone has an opinion. I know that I have mine. And I will try to understand yours.

Mine isn’t based on religion. I think religion should be limited to a spiritual examination of one’s own self and not of others. Again, I learned that from The Galilean.  That said, my opinion, if that’s what we may call it, derives from science. If Watson and Crick led us anywhere, they led us to a glimpse of how vastly complicated is the human genome.

Although I’m not smart enough or educated enough to understand the makeup of the DNA structure, I can, barely, glimpse its marvelous complexity, and see how a minor connection here and there can determine our sexual preferences.

It’s that simple, again in my opinion. Some of us are born one way and some another. We all, as fertilized eggs, start out as female. In fact, Stephen Jay Gould wrote that all mammals start as amazingly similar fetuses. Phsycial diversity occurs with devlopment, as should mental diversity.

 Anyway, a less fortunate (as ranked within our household) fetus will undergo a fold here and a wrap there and eventually produce a male of the species. I don’t find it hard to believe at all that somewhere in this amazing process, a sexual preference is formed that transcends the male-female preference orientation. Moreover, I can easily imagine how a fetus of one gender becomes transplanted as that of another gender. Don't know why. It just does.

It is just science, I believe, not sin, not a conscious choice, and certainly not a fit subject for the judgement of others. It is a wondrously complicated Universe in which we are fortunate enough to exist for a brief millisecond, and the quiet contemplation of it, it seems to me, is much more satisfying than spending time nourishing our prejudices, whether from the Bible, the locker room, or the coffee shop.

You may believe differently. I will try to understand that, to the extent that your belief is based on sound analysis, and you don’t allow your belief to escalate into some sort of hegemonic torment—physical, legal, or mental.

Marriage among the similar sexes? If you wish to attend a church that doesn’t allow that, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution allows it. Remember though, marriage between two people is a fairly recent idea. Will and Ariel Durant suggested that marriage was originally devised, in Western civilization, as a mechanism whereby a man could possess a legal claim to, and protection of, his harem.

I don’t think my wife would buy into that concept in this day and time. My point? Ancient concepts of morality can, do, and should change.

Finally, for those who may find their images of what same-sex partners do in the privacy of their bedrooms distasteful, think of something else, like, maybe helping the poor, or the least of those among us. It is accepted dogma that one can’t think of two things at once. We should all try to choose wisely.

As for distasteful acts, consider how the orchids must feel when they contemplate what goes on in your bedroom under the guise of procreation.

And, for the individual who once reported the claim by a professor at a major central Arkansas university (no, not mine), I have found absolutely no evidence whatsoever that one can actually determine if someone is gay by a bump in a certain spot on their forehead. Sorry.

Just thinking.