Last updated on March 27, 2023
Question:
Hi Mr. Hamilton,
I’m 22 years old. I’ve felt a vague attraction to men for as long as I can remember. It only clarified as a sexual attraction and became more pronounced during puberty, which is, from what I understand in your answers to others here, a phase where reportedly half of all men go through.
It was early on during puberty I regrettably and voluntarily grew addicted to gay pornography. At the time I didn’t believe God even existed but did believe homosexuality was an innate, invariable, irrefutable quality. Of course, you’ve already addressed the issue of pornography and how it objectifies people as sexual objects. You may have also addressed this, but it stands to reason that gay pornography consolidated my attraction and extended the phase.
One thing in particular concerns me is: What if that initial vague attraction is innate? How can it mean anything else but a sexual attraction, since it didn’t go away? I believe science and biblical beliefs are meant to be harmonious. Homosexuality, as I see it, would be a self-defeating evolutionary quality, and especially so if it is genetically-linked or is argued as such and is also sin. I’ve held the former belief until I saw a video that shattered my belief.
My mom was in an abusive relationship while pregnant with me. Her severe prenatal stress has been proven to be a strong precursor and epigenetic trigger for homosexuality, which the epigenetic markers have proved to be 70% accurate. And I am the second son, increasing my odds. What am I to do if my homosexual epigenetic switch was turned on as an unborn child fueling my same-sex attraction?
Answer:
I try to keep up with the studies on the causes of homosexuality, out of curiosity regarding what excuse people will come up with next for it. The fads seem to go in cycles: It is environmental; no, it is a chemical change before birth; no, it is genetic; and then the cycle repeats because people forget that the earlier theories were disproved or someone is certain that they missed some essential point. Unlike the fads, the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin (Romans 1:26-27; I Corinthians 6:9-10). Sins are due to people choosing to go against God’s law (I John 3:4). Thus, from the Bible’s viewpoint homosexuality is simply a bad choice. The fact that there has been no proof of a cause, despite a lot of looking, merely supplies further evidence that it is a choice.
You mentioned epigenetic markers, which a recent study in 2015 touted as being able to predict a person’s sexual preference. But that study was only done with a sample size of 37 identical twins, which is quite small. “Others noted the small size of the population studied and stressed that such findings often fall apart when applied to larger groups of people” [“Experts Cautious about Study Predicting “Gay” Orientation”, Scientific American]. The reason for the caution is reasonable. All similar past claims have been disproved when the studies have been broadened to the general population. “The field of epigenetics is littered with the corpses of statistically underpowered studies like these, which simply lack the numbers to produce reliable, reproducible results” [“No, Scientists Have Not Found the ‘Gay Gene’“, The Atlantic].
To be clear, I use the biblical definition of homosexuality. It is the act of having sex with a person of the same gender. It is not an attraction. Attraction is what you see as desirable. One person might desire apples over oranges. Another person might see cats as better pets than dogs. We all have preferences resulting from a variety of reasons. Thus, to see the male form pleasing to the eye is merely a personal preference. As you noted, boys tend to go through a phase of admiring older men. It gives them targets to model their behaviors after and it tends to fade during adolescence. But it is also during adolescence that boys are awakened to sexuality, so it isn’t surprising that some boys get their signals crossed for one reason or another and turn to have sex with other boys. Even here, according to past studies, the experimentation with same-gender sex tends to disappear as boys get older. It is just recently that there has been a concerted effort to convince boys that they are permanently homosexuals — not from the time they have sex with another boy, but to insist that it starts from any attraction to males.
Your own note agrees with this conclusion. You started out with a vague attraction to males. That is actually quite common. However, in adolescence, you got involved in homosexual pornography and that warped the vague attraction into a sexual attraction. You accepted the lies being told and convinced yourself that you were homosexual even though, I assume, you have yet to have sex with another male. When a person justifies a sin in his mind, from the biblical viewpoint he has crossed into the realm of lust. When a person does what he lusts for, then he commits the actual sin. Both lust and sin are equally wrong. “But I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:28).
What the Bible tells us about sin is that no choice is permanent. What you choose can be unchosen. Among the Christians in Corinth were people who had committed sexual sins, such as fornication, adultery, and homosexuality. Paul reminded them that when they became Christians, they left those sins behind. “Such were some of you, but you were washed. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God” (I Corinthians 6:11). Of course, if you are convinced that you can’t change, then you won’t even try. But if you realize that you are a normal male, just like every other normal male, and that sin does not have to rule in your life if you reject it, then you can change both your behavior and your acceptance of sin. Sure, you probably will always see the male form as attractive, but no one has to sexually act on their attractions. You can realize that your future wife is also attractive in your eyes in her own unique way.
The journey starts by no longer feeding your mind with trash. You have to give up pornography — not just homosexual pornography, but all pornography — so that you can start seeing people as people and not potential sex objects. As you stop feeding the monster, it begins to fade away. With its dying, you’ll realize that desires for sex and attraction to women that were always there but hidden by the huge monster you created, will begin surfacing. It is not that you need to do anything about it. You merely need to accept that they are real and a part of you too.