It's Not the Orientation; It's the Vehavior:

Straight AheadAs I continue to try to clarify the issues in the situation regarding the ordination of gays and lesbians in the PC(USA), I need to say that it isn't a matter of sexual orientation, but of behavior. I hope that these thoughts will not only help clarify the issue for me, but may help others as well. I am not a sociologist, biologist, geneticist, or psychologist; so I do not know to what degree sexual orientation is inherited, nurtured, chosen, or acquired by some still undefined process in each individual. I do know that I never consciously chose to be heterosexual. I also tend to believe that there is some kind of continuum or sexuality scale, and that few of us are probably altogether heterosexual or homosexual. We may all hvae some traits of both, with one orientation as dominant. In the overwhelming majority of cases, that sexual orientation is heterosexual. It isn't primarily the orientation that concerns me, however, but the behavior that is the subject of the debate. In the Presbyterian Church, (USA), the Book of Order requires that ordained officers live in fidelity if married and in chastity if single. Our sexual orientation, just like other proclivities, may be a fact of our lives that we cannot change. Even the best scientists and medical experts are still not certain on this point. What is certain is that we can choose how to respond, how to handle the behavioral patterns of our lives. A heterosexual does not have to give into lust. A person prone to addicition must learn how to control or deal with that addiciton. This is what the "fidelity and chastity" amendment is all about. People often claim that therapies which seek to convert or reprogram homosexuals are not successful--that the sexual orientation cannot be changed by any kind of psychological or spiritual therapy. (I have seen conflicting evidence on this point; but in one sense, it doesn't really matter whether various types of therapies change the sexual orientation of the individual.) The question would be whether or not such therapies can alter the behavior of such individuals. On that point, the conclusions are more apparent. Work has been done by Christian groups and others that suggests that the sexual behavior of such people can be modified--even if the orientation may not be. What our Book of Order forbids is the ordination of practicing, unrepentant, self-avowed homosexuals. If this standard is not upheld, it will also open the way to the ordination of heterosexuals who are openly and unapologetically living together without the benefit of marriage. This is certainly not the kind of lifestyle we want to encourage--if for no other reason than the message it sends to young people in the church. Whether we are talking about heterosexuals or gays and lesbians, the issue is the practice of a lifestyle that is beyond the bounds of biblical Christianity. This represents a serious departure from historic Presbyterianism and biblical Christianity.