- "Few modern concepts have been as influential as the psychosocial construct of sexual orientation. The concept of sexual orientation was an intentional and quite successful attempt to redefine the debate over homosexuality, from same-gender sexual acts to homosexual identity—that is, from what homosexuals do to who homosexuals are.
Yet this concept is actually quite recent. Even within the past decade, the more common concept employed by the homosexual movement was sexual preference. The reason for the shift is clear. The use of the term preference implied a choice. The clinical category of orientation was more useful in public arguments.
The very notion of homosexuals as a category of people constituted by sexual identity is a recent invention. The argument would now be that homosexuals exist as a special class or category—a “third sex� alongside heterosexual men and women. The new notion of sexual orientation has pervasively shaped the current cultural debate. It is still the most effective tactical concept employed in the debate
Evangelicals must not allow this category to frame the debate. We cannot allow people to be reduced to any sexual “orientation� as the defining characteristic of their identity. If the idea of orientation is based in reality, then what is its cause? Biological destiny? Genetic factors? Cultural conditioning? Parental influence? Environmental factors?
No adequate scientific data exists to prove any one of these—or any combination thereof—as the source of homosexual orientation. It is important to note that the hypothesis preceded any scientific proof, and yet it has been accepted as virtually self-evident. Evangelicals must reject the category as a therapeutic construct employed for ideological and political ends.
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So, what do you think?
Have "few modern concepts . . . been as influential as the psychosocial construct of sexual orientation"?
Was "the concept of sexual orientation" an attempt to change the debate from "what homosexuals do to who homosexuals are"? And just who was debating what homosexuals do, anyway?
Is there a plot afoot to establish homosexuality as a "third sex"?
Why are evangelicals afraid to allow this "category" (sexual orientation) to frame "the debate"?
Is it true that biological destiny, genetic factors, cultural conditioning, parental influence, and environmental factors, are unlikely to be the source of homosexual orientation?
And why is it that "evangelicals must reject the category (homosexual orientation) as a therapeutic construct employed for ideological and political ends? Doesn't the category (right-wing evangelicals) employ its philosophy for ideological and political ends?
