Rose responds to the post How to Disown Your Parents, in which I stated, “If desire cannot be trained or modified [in homosexuals], the same is true for heterosexuals and for pedophiles:” 

Friedman does not appreciate the traditional corollaries that accompany his biological determinism. Certainly if men can be born with inherently feminine natures and women with inherently masculine ones, it must follow that women can have inherently feminine natures and men inherently masculine ones. But that would be sexist. This is rather like the leftist contradiction that a male transsexual’s desire to wear a frilly dress and ribbons is congenital and instinctive and to be tolerated (or celebrated) for that reason but a woman’s desire to do the same is merely an arbitrary social construction. Friedman’s essentialism stands in stark contrast to the Foucauldian theories recently condemned at View from the Right. Gay activists and sympathizers tend to bounce back and forth between the two positions depending on which is useful to them at the moment.

Laura’s point about pedophilia is a good one and it is for this reason actually that I think conservatives should on principle refuse to argue about whether homosexuality is genetic. Successfully reformed pedophiles are rare but whether a desire is inborn or not has nothing to do with the moral status of its expression.

Laura writes:

Excellent point: “Whether a desire is inborn or not has nothing to do with the moral status of its expression.” It’s astounding that a professional psychiatrist, who every day witnesses human beings battling their base drives, believes that something is  good because it is natural. Does he feel the same solicitude for the rapist? Sadly, defenders of traditional marriage are disarmed by the argument that homosexuality is congenital even though marriage has always set itself against natural tendencies.

 To crave ice cream and pizza and Super-Gulps of soda is also genetically determined. All desires, perverse and harmless, have some basis in our natural inclinations. If human beings did not possess the ability to reign in nature, they would have succumbed thousands of years ago to gluttony and sexual deviance. 

It’s strange that homosexual activists such as Friedman fail to acknowledge that the natural desire to bear and raise one’s biological offspring may exist in those who are supposedly genetically determined to be homosexuals. If there are these two opposing biological drives in the same person, the question of what is ultimately good becomes inescapable. The homosexual sexual drive stands against nature as much as with it.

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