So You Resent Being Called A Nazi? Tough.

I've seen a couple of mentions of this story and finally got a link to this at QueerSighted (thanks to Towleroad).

One of the nation's leading Southern Baptists has called for a policy that would support medical treatment, if it were to become available, to change the sexual orientation of a fetus inside its mother's womb from homosexual to heterosexual. This latest assault on our dignity and existence comes from no less a personage than Rev. R. Albert Mohler, the president of the prominent and influential Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Gee, Rev. Mohler, what if the "cure" is a benefit of stem-cell research? Wait, get this one:

The good reverend explains that "Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God's judgment."

And I thought Lamarckism was dead. Nope, it just became a Baptist.

Mohler says , of course, the possibility of discovering a cure is all our fault:

But now the picture is quite different. Many homosexual activists recognize that the discovery of a biological marker or cause for homosexual orientation could lead to efforts to eliminate the trait, or change the orientation through genetic or hormonal treatments.

As I always say, if you want to know what a wingnut is doing, listen to what he's saying while he's pointing at someone else.

I think it's highly instructive that Mohler either cannot see or refuses to acknowledge that gays may feel a certain moral outrage at the idea of hormonally mediating a condition that is not biologically harmful. I begin to see something here that I've never quite been able to articulate before.

Considering the conservative Christian attitude toward things like stem-cell research, genetic manipulation of crops, cloning, and the like, to see the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary jump on the hormone-therapy-for-gay-fetuses bandwagon is -- sorry, it's an overused term lately, but "hypocrite" seems to be the closest fit.

What happened to the idea that each of God's creatures is his own particular creation, and that mere mortals should not be second-guessing a being who is, after all, all-knowing?

Note, please, the insistence that scripture, written down and interpreted by frail mortals, is inviolable in the case of homosexuality (apparently not in the case of eating shellfish, wearing clothes made of fiber blends, associating with women who are menstruating) -- even if it's a biological imperative to love someone of the same sex and to deny that impulse does serious damage to your pschological health, it's a sin.

By the way, being a nutfudge Christianist is a choice.

I forget -- we're in the age of pick-and-choose Christianity. Read his whole essay (keep a barf bag handy). This guy is really out there, espousing a theology that totally creeps me out. This is really, really scary. That he even sees a question about the moral acceptability of tampering with something that is, by his own religious beliefs, a creation in God's image, is totally screwy. Get these two paragraphs from his summary:

6. The biblical basis for establishing the dignity of all persons -- the fact that all humans are made in God's image -- reminds us that this means all persons, including those who may be marked by a predisposition toward homosexuality. For the sake of clarity, we must insist at all times that all persons -- whether identified as heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, transsexual, transgendered, bisexual, or whatever -- are equally made in the image of God. . . .

8. If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

To me, those two points sound mutually exclusive. I guess I didn't have the benefit of fundamentalist, literalist brainwashing. (They tried -- it just didn't take.) The idea underlying this juxtaposition is, I think, simply that gays are something less than human, so it's OK -- like changing the sexual orientation of gay rams.

I think it's also a matter of the insistence on the complete inviolability of scripture having finally undercut completely the very human-centered message of Christ. There's no Jesus left in this brand of Christianity.

Sorry, but it's just too reminiscent of every self-serving justification for all the horrors perpetrated by every totalitarian monster since the beginning of time. Don't forget that one of Hitler's strongest allies was the Church.

So, how far is it from this to outright Nazism? About a quarter of an inch?

Update:

PZ Myers is his usual scathing self when he confronts this lunacy.