Q&A: On the Naturalness of Homosexual Behavior
On the Naturalness of Homosexual Behavior
Question
With God’s help,
I looked at an old column of the Rabbi’s in which he addresses the question of whether homosexual behavior is natural. He rejects the idea that homosexuality is contrary to nature and calls it nonsense. It seems to me that this conclusion is too hasty. The Rabbi treats the issue as a purely empirical matter (he writes that research would have to be done, and doubts whether that is even possible), and I think that is his mistake here. The claim that homosexual behavior is contrary to nature is not primarily an empirical claim (of the sort that can be proven or disproven only by observing what happens), but a teleological one. A homosexual makes improper use of his sexual organ. Here, of course, the question immediately arises: “And who determines what counts as proper use of the sexual organs?” It seems to me that this question can be answered even from an atheist perspective (for that purpose one would apparently enlist natural selection as a kind of “creator” and “guide”), but if we believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, then the answer is fairly simple. The Holy One, blessed be He, determines what counts as proper use of the sexual organs (which He created for us), and He determined that homosexual behavior is out of bounds.
A view like this is seemingly immune to the Rabbi’s objections. For example, the Rabbi asks, “Nature did not create pacemakers or dental implants for us; is that a reason to forbid them?” I would avoid speaking in terms of “forbidden,” but pacemakers and dental implants do not run contrary to nature, since they do not run contrary to God’s will, and He is the one who created nature and who did or did not create us in a certain way. He created our bodily organs knowing that some defect might arise in them, and He did not forbid us from healing ourselves; on the contrary, He gave us the intellectual tools to deal with various problems. The same applies to the comparison to a person whose height is statistically unusual. The Rabbi also rejects the claim that this is a relationship that cannot lead to procreation, because nowadays even a homosexual couple can reproduce. Very true, but that fact poses no difficulty for us, because a homosexual couple cannot reproduce in the way that the Holy One, blessed be He, intended, and that is the crucial point that makes the act unnatural.
I believe that the Torah’s words, together with the negative consequences of homosexual behavior (AIDS, psychological problems, etc.), are enough to testify to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He.
Thank you in advance for his response.
Answer
Greetings.
The arguments you raised do not pertain to the question of whether the phenomenon is natural, but to the question of whether it is forbidden. But that was not the discussion. The question of God’s will in no way follows from the definition of naturalness (as Rabbi Akiva says to Turnus Rufus: the works of flesh and blood are better). Natural simply means not man-made.
In short, there is no point at all in dragging the question of naturalness in here: you say the act is unnatural because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want it. And from there some have wanted to conclude that it is forbidden. I argue that naturalness is an unnecessary intermediate step. One can say it is forbidden because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want it, without introducing an incorrect definition of the term natural. It is both unnecessary and irrelevant, and also incorrect.
Discussion on Answer
Y., even if we assume you’re right, I don’t understand how you brought the atheist into this. Isn’t your whole argument based on God’s will?
Second, in your view is it unnatural to steal, to rape, to eat shrimp? How is prohibition connected to the concept of nature?
Third, even if it isn’t natural, so what? Dyeing your hair blond isn’t natural either. How is that relevant to any discussion?
(1) As a believer, I rely on the will of God, who created the organs in the human body and designated them for a certain purpose and not for other purposes, but I noted that this approach is not the exclusive property of believers. Atheists too may say, for fairly similar reasons, that homosexual behavior runs contrary to the way of nature. In that case, I assume, one would need to make use of natural selection. The atheist philosopher Michael Levin published such an argument in 1984 under the title “Why Homosexuality Is Abnormal.”
(2) Did I say that prohibition is connected to the concept of nature?
(3) Of course it’s relevant. One side of the debate makes it sound as though the very thought is an insult to common sense and deserving of ridicule, and that is not the case.
You’re just being a demagogue.
If you were honest, you’d argue that an illness a sick person has is God’s will, and that we are forbidden to intervene.
But you’re a demagogue: you assume your conclusion from the outset and ignore obvious contradictions.
And with your approach it’s very hard to distinguish between God’s will and your own will. You have made His will like your will. Or rather, maybe it’s actually you who decides what is proper and improper, what is natural and unnatural.
It seems to me that quite a few people would say you’re gay and still in the closet.
@The Last Decisor,
How does the conclusion that every illness a person has is God’s will follow from the claim that the Creator designated the male sexual organ for sexual relations for certain purposes, and therefore it is unnatural to make improper use of it for other purposes? The conclusion obviously does not follow.
The remark about the possibility that I am a closeted gay man is so tasteless that I see no reason to respond to it beyond mentioning it.
Hello,
From my perspective, the question of naturalness is not an unnecessary intermediary, because I believe that unnatural behavior is not necessarily forbidden behavior. At most, it may be undesirable (since it makes sense that it has negative consequences). To arrive at an actual prohibition, a divine command against it is necessary. In the present case there indeed is such a command, but the behavior would still remain unnatural (and perhaps even undesirable) even if there were no prohibition of male homosexual intercourse and everything else remained as it is. When I say that it is not natural for a male to do what he does to another male, I mean that it is not natural to use his sexual organ in that way, since that organ is intended—its purpose, the reason for its existence—for heterosexual sex for the sake of reproduction (a claim that in my view I can support even without appealing to the Holy One, blessed be He, though such an appeal does make the matter easier).
In any case, it is clear to me that there is a disagreement between us regarding the definition of the term “natural.” Since disagreements of this kind are inherently difficult to resolve (some would even say impossible), I thank him for addressing my remarks and will not take up more of his time.
Wishing you a peaceful Sabbath.