Editor:

The recent debate on gay marriage has provoked a careful inquiry into the morality of homosexual acts and relationships. Professor Deen Chatterjee wrote a very interesting column on Feb. 17 (“Is there a link between homosexuality and immorality?”) on this very issue, where he questioned the idea of sinfulness.

From a religious standpoint, it is easy to prove that sin and immorality are equivalent ideas. Allowing that sin is disobedience to God and immoral acts are disobedience to reason, the result follows. To act contrary to God’s will is clearly unreasonable; to act contrary to reason is sinful because God gave us reason in the first place.

Many Christians, following holy writ, believe that homosexual acts are wrong. While modern scholarship has questioned the meanings of the specific texts, we would be foolish to ignore the interpretations of their earliest commentators, who bear unanimous witness to immoral, homosexual acts.

Against this, the concept of “sexual orientation” has come into common use. The precise meaning of this phrase is hard to define, but it seems to imply two statements. First, people are born with a proclivity for certain sexual behaviors and second, they have no power over this proclivity. On the strength of these two propositions, many people have seen a parallel between sexual orientation and race. After all, race is something one is born with and one has no power over it.

As Christians base their beliefs on holy scripture, they are inclined to question these two ideas. To them, this debate on gay marriage has nothing to do with debates on civil rights.

Having said all this, there is no reason for such Christians to look down on their homosexual brothers and sisters. It is one of their core beliefs (also based on the Bible) that all are sinners before God. They have no reason to be proud. Before the Divine Judge, it is quite possible that bigotry will receive greater punishment than homosexuality.

Timothy Simmons

Senior, Mathematics