From: daves@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Dave Stow)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Homosexuality and the so-called "Christian biblical stance."
Date: 23 Jul 92 07:31:20 GMT
Organization: Department of Computing at Lancaster University, UK.

In article <Jul.22.02.38.24.1992.19133@dumas.rutgers.edu> GAVIN@phdlab.commerce.ubc.ca (Gavin Chin) writes:
>On a different thread, does anyone know FIRST-HAND of any homosexual
>who, after accepting Christ and becoming a well grounded Christian,
>renounce their homosexuality and become heterosexual?  

Sorry - I have no first hand experience of this - but there exist 
several groups who claim to have 'cured' homosexuality by getting
the person involved to accept Jesus...

True Freedom Trust are one such group - I'll mail you the address if
you want it - I'll have to dig it out from home.

>If you don't
>have any first hand stories, can you please share some from RELIABLE
>sources?  Some people say that homosexuality is genetic, and
>there is nothing that we can do to change that.  I haven't formed
>my own opinion on that but I am a little skeptical.

Okay - First off - there has been recent evidence that homosexuality
has its 'cause' in genetics. Let us rephrase that: ALL sexuality has
its cause in genetics... There has also been some evidence for it
being socially caused. 

I would surmise that it is a mixture of the two, but I wouldn't like to guess
at the proportions.

Sexuality has been studied closely though, (Kinsey surveys of sexual
behaviour in the human male and human female - 1950s). The most reputable
studies, (ie the Kinsey reports), show that sexuality is not a black and
white issue, but follows a distribution curve.

The Kinsey scale starts at 0 (entirely heterosexual) and goes to 6 (entirely
homosexual), with varying shades of gray in between.

The studies showed that only 4% of people fell into either catagories
0 or 6. And a further 6% fell into catagories 1 and 5. (Hence the oft
quoted 10% of the population is gay figure - 6% in cat. 5, and 4% in
cat. 6.  The same is hence true of heterosexuals - only 10% 'really are').

[Sidenote: The Kinsey studies were extremely carefully done, in total
around 8000 people were surveyed, from all walks of life, from all social
classes, from all areas. Due to the startling nature of the results, (most
of us are basically bisexual), they had to be sure that the results could
not simply be thrown away as worthless due to some technicality. The
results have been repeated in many other reputable surveys. ]

However - as a race we love to compartmentalize people into either gay
or straight - and so everybody in the middle (80%!), are pushed into 
exhibiting either completely heterosexual behaviour or completely homosexual.

Obviously in our society most exhibit completely heterosexual behaviour - 
you have to be very very definitely gay to go through all the oppression
and hatred that comes as part of the package.

So - yes - it is possible for people who fall onto the gay side of
the Kinsey spectrum to be gay for many years, and then 'convert' or be
'cured' and behave heterosexually. Not that this is necessarily a good
thing.

And - yes - it is possible to 'cure' people who fall pretty close to the
end of the Kinsey scale, and they can force themselves to behave hetero-
sexually. But this is even worse!

Yes - it is possible to pervert people's natural sexuality into something
else [in both directions] - but the psychological damage done in the process
is terrible.

In short, attempting to change one sexuality is dangerous and damaging. And
if Christians are trying to make out that homosexuality is in any way less
good than heterosexuality - then they are wrong.

Dave