Thinking Straight About Being Gay: Why It Matters if We're Born That Way

Imagine a future scenario in which prospective parents will have the option to decide the sexual orientation of their offspring in the privacy of a doctor's consultation room. In the past, liberals dreaded the intrusion of a paternalistic state apparatus into the minutiae of people's private lives. In the future they may have to fear the reverse: that private reproductive decisions will impact the very demographic composition of future generations that make up 'the public'. Nowhere does this book claim that the ability to isolate a 'gay gene' or similar genetic marker for homosexuality currently exists. Rather, it demonstrates how Christian bioethicists and liberal eugenicists have so far anticipated and addressed the seemingly implausible scenario just described and provides a liberal critique of the their arguments, should pre-natal selection for sexual orientation ever become a genuine possibility. Murray provides an unprecedented survey of Christian bioethicists' responses to the 'gay science' of the 1990's, and shows where they fit in a long religious tradition of stigmatizing and pathologizing homosexual people that stretches back to first century Christian communities. This book contains no assertion that all people who identify as homosexual, gay, lesbian, bi, or transgender are born that way. Nor does it suggest that being 'born that way' is a necessary condition for granting full legal acceptance of homosexual behavior. Rather, it reveals how religious teachings about human sexuality have both misrepresented the facts of human nature and misjudged their ethical significance.  Murray's analysis provides an opportunity for the universal and global church and those who object to homosexuality as less than innate to reconsider and learn new perspectives. - Reverend Rowland Jide Macaulay, Founder & CEO, House Of Rainbow Fellowship, Lagos, Nigeria and London, United Kingdom A fresh, informative and challenging contribution to the scientific and ethical issues concerning homosexuality, which debunks traditional Christian objections and tackles the emerging debate around the potential of 'genome editing' to eliminate same-sex behaviour. - Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner