{"id":43352,"date":"2017-07-10T08:21:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T14:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=43352"},"modified":"2017-07-12T00:42:46","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T06:42:46","slug":"born-way-way-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/07\/born-way-way-complicated.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;&#8216;Born this way&#8217;? It&#8217;s way more complicated than that&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_36702\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-36702\" style=\"width: 597px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/09\/800px-Flyingrainbowflag.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-36702\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-36702\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/09\/800px-Flyingrainbowflag.jpg\" alt=\"The rainbow flag, this one in Taipei\" width=\"597\" height=\"448\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-36702\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rainbow flag (Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/2017\/06\/16\/born-way-many-lgbt-community-its-way-more-complex\/395035001\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/2017\/06\/16\/born-way-many-lgbt-community-its-way-more-complex\/395035001\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"asset-headline\"><\/h1>\n<p>Well whaddya know?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that, typically speaking, homosexuality isn\u2019t merely something that happens to people (although, in some cases, it may be largely that), and that behaving as a homosexual person (just like behaving as a heterosexual person) entails choices. \u00a0That life as a homosexual isn\u2019t simply a matter of inborn drives but, inevitably also, of morally significant decisions. \u00a0And that the <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/mormonism' target='_blank'>Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, like many other religious and ethical traditions, is correct to distinguish between engaging in homosexual acts and merely being homosexual.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I might also add that it seems likely that, while they\u2019re not exhaustive or wholly determinative, social and cultural factors \u2014 approval\/disapproval, encouragement\/discouragement, and so forth \u2014 play a role in decisions regarding sexual behavior, just as in other decisions. \u00a0(There was, for instance, probably no massive genetic mutation that made sexual relations between adult men and younger boys so prevalent in classical Athens. \u00a0While a few Athenian men and boys might have been naturally predisposed to such relations, most were presumably influenced much more by cultural and societal role-expectations than by genetically-driven urges.)<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This shouldn\u2019t be earth-shattering news, but, in some circles nowadays, I have the sense that it might be received as such.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/2017\/06\/16\/born-way-many-lgbt-community-its-way-more-complex\/395035001\/ \u00a0 Well whaddya know? \u00a0 It turns out that, typically speaking, homosexuality isn\u2019t merely something that happens to people (although, in some cases, it may be largely that), and that behaving as a homosexual person (just like behaving as a heterosexual person) entails choices. \u00a0That life as a homosexual isn\u2019t simply a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;&#039;Born this way&#039;? 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