Actually, We're Pretty Much All "Born That Way"

There is an interesting opinion article on The Daily Caller about how the actual intellectual-scholars of LGBT(Q?) history states decisively that Nobody is "born that way." Most of these scholars are themselves members of the LGBT(Q?A?) communities themselves. An excerpt:

But scholars don’t think the ancient Greeks had a gay minority. Rather, that civilization thought homosexuality was something anyone could enjoy. In addition to a wife, elite men were expected to take a younger male as an apprentice-lover, with prescribed bedroom roles. The system was so different from ours that to describe specific ancient Greeks as gay or straight would show profound disrespect for their experiences, and violate the cardinal historical rule against looking at the past through present-colored lenses.

Another example in which evidence of same-sex relations has been misinterpreted to depict a gay minority involves 18th-century upper-class female romantic friendships. Even those women who probably had genital contact with each other in that context thought about sex, gender, and intimacy in such culturally specific ways that scholars have spurned the viewpoint (nearly universal among non-scholars) that any two females who wrote each other love letters and shared a bed were obviously lesbians.

Interesting reading, to be sure. However, there is another way of looking at it. The problem is not that some people are born that way and some are not. Rather, with some few exceptions [1] we are all to some extent "born that way." It's called "Original Sin" (or "the effects of the Fall"). In some cases, that leads to some proclivity (willed or not) towards the particular sin of sodomy (gay or straight), or towards illicit romantic involvements (whether between a married woman and a man who is not her husband, or between two single women, or two siblings, or a man and several women all of whom he attempts to wed). It could also be towards some other sin, such as gluttony (in particular, alcoholism) or sloth (for example, drug addictions).

And many of these other sins cannot really find licit satisfaction, either. Some alcoholics are so badly addicted that a single sip ends in drunkenness (and worse) every time. The kleptomaniac cannot steal even one purse, nor the man whose blood boils with wrath swing even one punch against a defenseless target.

Everybody is tempted by something. We all experience some kind of appetite or some passion or some desire which cannot be satisfied here. We all need temperance, and fortitude, and justice. We all need to die a little to ourselves, because we all have some desires which not only won't, but can't, be satisfied in this life.

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[1] The New and Old Adam and Eve.