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Comment by debatem1 | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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