Q&A: Homosexuality
Homosexuality
Question
I just read interviews conducted with you in the past on this subject, and you noted there that neither the Torah nor anyone else has the ability to determine whether this matter is natural or not. But as far as I know, the phenomenon exists among animals as well, where the psychological explanations are a bit less relevant. And anyone who wants to say that in humans the situation is different bears the burden of proof.
Additionally, you compared Sabbath desecrators to homosexuals, both in terms of the attitude that should be shown toward them in a religious society and in terms of opposition to the surrogacy law for them. The latter I do not understand at all. After all, legal permission to bring children into the world would certainly encourage, increase, and legitimize members of the gay community, and it is directly connected to couplehood and therefore to committing a transgression, unlike other transgressions. Besides that, this is the only transgression regarding which everyone bands together in an official declaration and even holds parades for it—it is this transgression. I am sure that on the day they hold a parade for Sabbath desecrators, there will likewise be extremely fierce opposition.
Answer
I did not say that no one has the ability, nor did I say that the Torah does not have the ability. What I said is that, to the best of my knowledge, at present we do not have the full scientific information on the matter, and I also said that no conclusions on this issue can be derived from the Torah.
Your proof from animals is not a proof, since it may be that in some cases it is innate and in others it is acquired. Beyond that, among animals it is almost nonexistent, and if anything, that would be evidence to the contrary.
I explained the difference between Sabbath desecration and homosexuals. Sabbath desecration is done without the distress that homosexuals have, and therefore Sabbath desecrators are greater offenders. Raising a child in a home with Sabbath desecration will lead him to desecrate the Sabbath, and that is a full-fledged prohibition, but raising him in a home of homosexuals will not cause him to be homosexual, and there is no prohibition in that at all.
The question whether to fight them or not is a tactical question, not an essential one. In my opinion, this fight is what brings the pride parades upon us. If they were given equality, there would be no parades.
Discussion on Answer
If so, that was a mistake in wording. The Torah can have such a statement, but in practice it does not. And no one else can have such a statement at present, given the current state of knowledge.
Reasoning is a fine thing, but information requires empirical findings. Beyond that, I can raise contrary arguments.
I do not really understand what the discussion here is.
Does anyone think this is supernatural and violates the laws of physics? No.
It is as clear as day that it is natural, and there is no dispute about that.
(Anyone who says that “it is not natural” means it in the normative sense, out of a view that proper values are part of the nature of the human soul, or means identifying the biological purpose [reproduction] as the definition of what is “natural”).
And if in your words “natural” = “genetic,” then it is indeed proven from identical twins that in most cases it is not genetic, though there is no way to rule out a minority of cases where it is.
(What is clear is that if homosexuality is not genetic, then heterosexuality is also not genetic. It is the other side of the same coin.)
And to the questioner: among animals too there may be non-genetic homosexuality. There is no reason to think otherwise.
The acquisition of sexual orientation is a complex process.
Suppose a baby boy is born, who is “supposed” to be attracted in the future to women. After all, he is not born with a picture of a woman in his head. How will he know to whom he is attracted? He has no innate image that he is supposed to compare things to.
The answer is that there is apparently a complex learning process here, in which the baby learns to connect appearance and complex traits to primitive sensations (which later atrophy), such as, for example, certain scent molecules emitted by men or women that act on the sexual centers in the brain, and so on.
And such a complex learning process (most of which is unknown to us) can fail. In animals no less than in humans.
“The Torah cannot have anything to say about whether it is natural or not, just as no one else can have such a statement”…
That is the wording you used… one can discuss it…
By the way, if among humans this is an unnatural phenomenon, you are making two assumptions: both that the matter exists in nature and that as a psychological phenomenon it exists—so it turns out that the innovator here is you.
Also, it seems more reasonable to me to draw an analogy between two species in which the phenomenon is found and exists than to draw an analogy between humans and kinds of animals in which it does not exist.