The Fay and Free Will

Mr. Ferrar's blast in the May issue assumption that (1) homosexual acts contained nothing less wholesome than are crimes; (2) they are or are not under the bright light and fresh air of comvoluntary control; (3) if they are, then mon sense. Coming from a sympathetthe person is fully responsible for them ic outsider, such opinions are especially and must take the consequences. valuable, particularly because so infrequently aired in print. Nevertheless, it is probably asking too much of a member of the Minority' (to use the rather snobbish expression for the gay world which has too often appeared in your pages) to accept Ferrar's opinions even in large part, at least while its members have reason to feel persecuted. No, Mr. Ferrar, it is not "beside the point whether you're born or made gay". In the misguided opinions of most of the semantically untrained public, it makes all the difference in the world. The statement that a person has become homosexual, that the condition is environmental in origin, immediately exposes the person to the judgment that he has exercised his free will in either becoming or remaining so, and that in having sexual gratification with another male he is again exercising his free will. Whereas the statement that a person was born gay leads to the assumption that it not a matter of free will, but of incurable illness, mental illness. The person is then considered not responsible for his condition and thus escapes the obloquy which would otherwise be It all is postulated on the

his part.

Naturally the above does not represent either my opinion or the truth, but simply the dualistic and absurd thinking practiced at least subconsciously by the general public. The question of free will is tacitly assumed even where it is overtly denied. It could not be otherwise in a Christian or formerly Christian society, with its ethical codes formulated in "Thou shalt not" language, which itself tacitly assumes power of choice to "sin" or not, i.e. free will; this appears to be a semantic reaction so basic and so deeply rooted that it is almost impossible to make people aware that they are using it. Under the Christian theory of free will, nobody is responsible for a given allegedly antisocial act (e.g., a homosexual act-though the assumption that one of these performed between two mature and consenting individuals is "anti-social" is, to say the least, highly questionable) except its perpetrator-the victim of his "free will". All of which "justified"-in the eyes of church and modern law alike-the obloquy, inquisitions, prison terms, denial of civil rights, persecutions by courts and vice squads, etc.,

page 13