“A bigot’s mind is like the pupil of an eye. The more light you shine on it the more it contracts.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Many years ago when I was a guest blogger on another website, I got into a wee kerfuffle (not very badly) over an opinion piece I wrote saying that it really did not matter to bigots whether our sexual orientation is chosen or biological. Nobody doubts that skin color is biological and that hasn’t stopped racists from being racist. Homophobes, when they finally can’t deny the science any longer, will simply pivot to acknowledging we can’t change and that makes it even more imperative that society keep us separate and marginalized. Ex-gay therapy then becomes not a way of forcing change on us, as a way to shame us into self hate and celibacy and isolation. And also, to validate and exalt their own cheapshit prejudices, like it always was anyway. We have seen, since the collapse of the big ex-gay outfits, that drift into celibacy over change.

I think back then people mistook what I was saying as I thought the nature versus nurture argument didn’t matter at all and I have never believed that. Firstly, facts matter, and by that time all the science was saying our sexual orientation was a biological fact, and the only question remaining was is it determined in the womb or by way of genetics or some combination of the two. But on a personal level, ever since I came out to myself I just knew intuitively that my being drawn to guys had to be an innate part of my makeup, not something I drifted into because of family life or fear of the opposite sex. I could look back all the way to my preschool days and see that it was always there.

All this came back to mind as I was reading this May 2021 article in Baptist News Global about Southern Baptist theological dictator Al Mohler’s defense of conversion therapy. Here then, is Mohler’s current stance, being essentially what I’ve been telling people for decades now that it would be:

In We Cannot be Silent, Mohler argued that even if same-sex orientation is innate and immutable, it remains sinful. Even the discovery of a “gay gene” wouldn’t change his thinking. If the Bible calls something sin, that’s what it is. The fact that it might be “natural” changes nothing. Because we live in a fallen world, what is “natural” still may be wrong. The natural world, he says, is “tainted by sin.”

Therefore, if the case for banning conversion therapy implies that gay is good, Mohler’s against it.

See the pivot? Okay, yes, it’s natural and immutable, but so what? We live in a fallen world. Science only proves that, not that we have to stop tormenting them over something they cannot change. It remains our godly duty to keep sticking knives in their hearts. With love of course.

Because at bottom whether it is nature or nurture does not matter. And I tell you this: the bible does not matter either. If the day ever came they’d have to admit the “clobber passages” did not mean what they’ve been saying they mean, the pivot would be to other passages that they’ll say still uphold the godly duty.

Because what matters, the only thing that matters, is the mindless knee jerk prejudice. Nothing else. They’ll dress it up however they have to.

“An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.” -Eric Hoffer