Is Homosexuality Genetic?

DAVE MILLER

          You face it everywhere. In movies and on TV. In the news. Maybe even in school. More and more people are talking about homosexuality—being “gay.” For most of America’s history, almost everybody believed homosexuality to be sinful. It was even against the law. Nevertheless, more and more Americans have come to believe that homosexuality ought to be accepted as okay. Even though homosexuality is wrong, someone probably has told you that you are supposed to accept homosexuals as normal. You are probably being made to feel that if you do not accept homosexuality, then you are not compassionate or kind. You may even be called ‘homophobic, which means you fear homosexuals.

          You have probably also been told or heard people say that a person cannot help being “gay.” Many people today say that homosexuals are born that way. They claim that homosexuals do not choose to be gay, in the same way that we do not choose our skin color or our nationality. In fact, many people today believe that homosexuality is genetic----that it is due to a person’s genes. They say homosexuality is hereditary which means a person inherits it from his parents or grandparents.

          That is not true. The actual evidence shows that homosexuality is due to the decisions that a person makes. Did you know that scientists recently mapped out the complete human genome (GEE-nome)? That means that they identified every gene that is found in the cells of the human body. In addition, guess what? They found no "gay gene." Think about it: if homosexuality is genetic and homosexuals cannot produce children, then the “homosexual gene” would gradually die out. There is no scientific evidence that homosexuality is genetic.

          We know from the Bible that homosexuality is not a matter of genetics. Here are three reasons: First, God would not condemn a person for something that he or she could not help (read 1 Corinthians 10:13). The Bible would not condemn an action over which a person has no control (like breathing or being born as a brown person or white person). Second, when Paul wrote Christians in Corinth, he mentioned that some of them had been homosexuals before they became Christians (
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