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Comment by quantumofmalice | Hacker News Reader

That would be a tough situation, I'm not sure. My first thought is that the moral choice for me would be to accept celibacy and try to do the best I can for others in that role.

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Out of curiosity, why not select life? Everybody sins-- why not accept that maybe this sin is more likely and love the children that might be born to you?

That's a reasonable perspective. I would have to ask my children to remain celibate, though, and would it be fair to put that burden on them, even (maybe especially) if they didn't accept it?

It seems more fair to me if I bear the burden of my moral framework, given the proposed determinism.

Why do you have to go to sin? What’s sinful about being born any which way?

Because the people who would want to get rid of their homosexual children want to do so because they consider it a sin.

This is a common confusion. If homosexual attraction were found to have a genetic cause, it would be understood as a genetic or genetically-caused disorder. That in itself would not be a sin because sin only applies to voluntary actions and not conditions. So from this POV, someone with genetically caused homosexual attraction would not be sinning if he refrained from engaging in homosexual acts.

Even without genetic predisposition this is the Catholic stance-- that being gay isn't a sin, but having gay sex is.

Of course, this is sophistry; ask about whether two celibate gay men would be allowed a Catholic wedding and the answer will be no because they can't have children, nature of marriage, yadda yadda. Ask whether a man or woman without intact junk can get married and suddenly it's love that is really important.

If you consider homosexuality a sin (worth saying: I don't) and determinism is at play, the risk is that you go full Zvingli. That would be very unusual today, so it seems worth asking about.

What is the connection you've made between homosexuality, abortion, and celibacy? I fail to see it.

Celibacy means you won't have any children. Same reason why a carrier of the Huntington's disease gene may choose celibacy instead of reproducing.

Celibacy means sexual abstinence, not not having children. The latter is implied by the former, of course.

Not really, we're past requiring intercourse for reproduction.

Yes, but in the context of upholding traditional Christian moral standards that's not an option that's on the table, and neither is using contraception. Celibacy, or to be more precise, abstinence, is the only option.

You're talking about a very specific "Christian" society, which, you should bear in mind, has very few things in common with other Christian societies, like the orthodox for instance.

I know the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox do in fact practice things like abortion and contraception, but they are still highly controversial subjects and far from universally accepted in the hierarchy.

I still think it's a pretty fair generalisation of traditional Christianity and the vast majority of Christians (liberal western Protestants are a minority on the global scale, and even they don't universally accept abortion and contraception, take for instance Pastor Anderson)

Then perhaps I'm biased. Where I was raised (eastern orthodox), preaching in favour of contraception and abortion as divine mandate was/is seen as crazy. I certainly don't have numbers to compare.

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