Homosexuality and Evolution

First of all, if you don't know why I'm against homosexual activity, please read this post.

Everybody up to speed? You read the whole thing, right? Ok, good.

Let's argue. An imaginary critic will be given opportunity to rebut my points. And there's always the comment box below.

According to a recent document from the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, "Procreation is the means of transmitting life by the loving union of man and woman." For those of you unfamiliar with basic human anatomy, this shocking revelation means that homosexuals cannot reproduce.

"Ah, but wait," my eager critic retorts. "Not all straight couples can reproduce either, due to physical inability such as a low sperm count or a medically necessary hysterectomy. Yet you let them marry."

True. But the difference lies in this: the straight married couple are not in opposition to the possibility of life by the mere fact of being together.

"Why all this fuss on procreation, anyway?" says my critic. "Marriage is about more than just having babies."

Is it? Is it really? Is marriage something so shallow as a fruitless union?

"Do not forget, my dear Doogie," snaps my critic, "that Christ has redefined marriage to reflect his own mystical union to the Church. He stated nothing about babies." Ok, smart guy, does Christ's marriage to his Church reduce fruit to a mere option? Are we as a Church called solely to enjoy his company and his providence and not have any real growth? We were sent to make disciples of all men; that is the new life of the Church. We were sent to baptize them Trinitarianly; that is the rebirth of the Gospel. Intimacy with God that lacks mission is pointless. Faith without works is dead. The Church must make new disciples. That "making" can be metaphorical, in the case of winning converts, or literal, in the case of starting those disciples in an embryonic stage. That embryonic stage must be started in marriage. Therefore only a paired man and woman can enter marriage.

"Ok, you've rambled on," interjects my critic. "Now it's my turn. Sure, only a man and a woman can reproduce. So why does that have to be within marriage? Reproduction works just as well outside of marriage."

I could cite countless studies, had I them at my fingertips, to prove that marriage is a better, more stable environment for children to be raised in. But that will never convince my critic. So instead, let me write what I know: If I have learned anything about life from anybody in my ancestry or in my own narrow life history, it is that children need a stable home. Childhood is a tumultuous time of growth and discovery, and it needs a stable environment to make that growth and discovery complete.

Remember back in grade seven when you dissected a worm in science class? Remember how carefully you had to manipulate the scalpel, how you had to pin back the opened skin from clitellum to prostomium, and how you had to peer into the mechanics of the creature's digestive tract and circulatory system? That's what it's like to grow up. You are analyzing the world around you, bit by bit. You are experimenting. You are peeling back the layers of self-awareness and discovering what makes you, and the world around you, tick.

Now imagine doing that when the floor is heaving like the deck of the H.M.S. Compass Rose in an Atlantic gale. The lab floor, by contrast, is unshaken. That floor is your home life as you grow up. Anything that disrupts the stability of your floor interrupts your experiment. You may be able to resume it once the disruption settles, or you may not. The reality of unmarried parentage is astonishingly unstable.

"Ok," says my critic. "So you're able to pull a few earthworm anatomical terms from Google, and you've read The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat. I concede the point that marriage is a more stable environment for children to be raised in. But you're a long way from convincing me that gays can't tap into that same stability."

What I've tried to show, my honest critic, is that marriage means something. It means something unitive, yes, but more and more our society is missing the procreative element. As the aforementioned document says, "The Creator wished human beings to be two-in-one; the Redeemer assumed the familial condition in Nazareth reminding everyone of the nature of the family since the beginning of the divine plan: two in a single flesh." That single flesh is the new child. The unity causes the procreation. The procreation, too, causes the unity. They spring from each other.

If homosexuals bring children from previous heterosexual relationships into their state-marriages, the odds are already against those kids receiving the upbringing they need. Their lab has been turned upside down; Compass Rose has been torpedoed and is split in two.

As well, homosexuals are missing one thing that heterosexuals are not: complementarity. Man and woman have evolved to "fit" together. What sort of sense does homosexuality make in an evolutionary context? Would natural selection, in its cruelty, bless an infertile pairing? Obviously not. Homosexuality is an evolutionary dead-end, and everything we have been taught about evolution says us that genetic changes must be carried on to the next generation, or they will be lost to the fossil record (if we're lucky).

"But is it not possible that evolution, in its wisdom," interrupts my critic, "would deem to spin a few unproductive tangents off just for the heck of it?" He then thinks to himself, and says, "Let me retract that, as it would imply that gays are mistakes which should be removed from the gene pool." He thinks for a bit more, and says, "Could not Natural Selection have been waiting until evolution had spawned a technological society capable of overcoming the shortfalls of homosexual reproduction?"

My critic appears to need a shot of Red Bull, for why would Natural Selection ever prefer artificial procreation to its own perfectly fine organic method? Why would it strive to develop a society which could wean itself from its creator? It's like a roller coaster suddenly being freed from the constraints of its track as it approaches the apex of its roll.

That alone is proof to me that inasmuch as homosexuality is not a choice for many people, neither is it something genetic and undefeatable by act of will. It has always been with us. Recorded instances of sodomy go back as far as recorded records go back.

Accordingly, gay state-marriage, would such a thing actually work, makes as much sense as mortaring two bricks together before not using them in your construction project. Mortar has a better purpose than that. Only the opponents of stable homes per se would propose broadening the uses of mortar to include wasting it.

Marriage, too, has a better purpose than to display one's current thoughts of springtime fancy. Only through stable and fruitful relationships can society continue. If "gay" people wish to indulge in their urges, I can't stop them. I can only stop myself from doing so. But I must protest the redefinition of marriage, as it makes no sense from a secular viewpoint, and is blasphemous from a religious one.