Is Terry Wogan a Nature?

[earmuffin]

Discuss

[humndislocation]

Voted zippy for teh win

[gabrillowise]

At about the age of thirteen I began to notice girls -- or should I say, it was then that I began to notice little else. Twenty-five years later the inclination is a bit more refined, a bit more controlled -- but only a bit. Wherever I am, I notice women, and I notice particular parts of women. I often entertain fleeting thoughts -- at times lingering thoughts -- of how I might enjoy having sex with women I have never met. It is, after all, only natural.
Or is it? Was I born with an inclination to have sex with several different attractive women each day, an inclination that merely remained dormant for thirteen years? Did my father, whose desires are very similar to mine, train me to think about women in a certain way? Am I the product of lifelong exposure to advertisements, films and popular music? Did the trauma of my parents' divorce when I was three, or my mother's actions during my infancy, create in me particular sexual needs and desires?

All of these questions I find genuinely interesting. They are not however, moral questions. Moral questions have to do with the rightness or wrongness of my actions, regardless of the source or strength of my desires. Whatever I may attribute to my genes, or to my parents, or to my culture, none of them can force me, at the crucial moment to turn a glance into a fantasy, or a fantasy into a flirtation, or a flirtation into a sexual act. At that moment my will is involved, and precisely such moments define my obedience and growth as a Christian. However good I may feel about my conduct or however deeply ingrained is my desire to act in a certain way, neither of those factors is the measure of obedience. In fact, more often than not they are measures of self-deception.

This of course is not a fashionable notion today. The overwhelming message of the popular culture, which a thousand films and ten thousand love songs drill into us, is that to find a full life we must seek adventure, drink the cup of passion, follow our heart. "Loving you can't be wrong," the voice croons, "because it feels so right." We want to believe this. We may even get a vicarious thrill from watching it work out happily ever after on the silver screen. But in our better moments, we know otherwise. We know, even without Scripture to tell us, that "the heart is devious above all else" (Jer 17:9), that positive experiences and strong desires can never legitimize immorality. We know it when a pedophile describes his nurturing relationships with children. We know it when an adulterous wife complains of her boring husband. We know it when a pornographer proclaims his rights of free speech. We know it when a stripper rationalizes her exploitation.

Explanations and Justifications
We also know that we cannot justify our behavior by an appeal to our nature. A comic no-good husband in a Woody Allen film says to his wife, "Sure I beat ya -- that's my way -- it don't mean I don't love ya. And I always warn ya first." But there is nothing comic about the growing epidemic of domestic violence, gang bloodshed and interracial strife. Whatever the causes, we cannot excuse violence on the part of a person who claims, "This is just the way I am."
Certainly we want to work at the big picture to reduce the factors that contribute to violence, and certainly we want to work with the individual to encourage self-control. But if in the end the violent person is "Just that way," we lock that person up for everyone's good.

This is not an argument to criminalize or imprison homosexuals, but an analogy to the relation between strong inclinations and moral responsibility. We could easily apply the "Just that way" defense to a number of social problems that may involve deeply ingrained (even biological) causes -- violence, substance abuse, racism, schizophrenia, pedophilia -- but we do not, because we recognize that an explanation for the behavior is not a justification for the behavior.

It is frustrating, almost unnatural, for a violent man to seek an outlet for his rage other than harm to another person. If the inclination is deeply ingrained, he cannot gain satisfaction by other outlets available to him, such as talk or exercise. It is similarly unnatural for a pedophile to seek meaningful relationships with adults, for a substance abuser to face problems with a clear head, for a racist to look beneath the skin. Likewise, it is unnatural for me to be faithful to one woman.

But the word natural in the sense that I have just been using it has nothing to do with morality, and it is the moral sense in which Paul uses natural in Romans 1. We must make this distinction clear and not allow others to confuse the issue by shifting back and forth between meanings. Natural may refer to something that happens repeatedly in nature -- that is, in the world -- in which case we assign no moral judgment to it. Events occur in nature: for example, spiders kill and eat other spiders, including their mates.

But as a moral category natural refers to something that is in accord with God's intention. Actions are good or bad: for example, people sometimes kill and eat other people. But the fact that cannibalism happens in the world -- perhaps in satisfaction of deeply held religious beliefs or peculiar culinary tastes -- does not make it natural in the sense that it conforms to God's will. In summary: that which is natural to human experience or human desire is not necessarily natural in God's moral design.

The reader should understand that this chapter considers the naturalness of homosexual desire and behavior in the first sense, asking simply why it occurs in human experience. I hope to raise the discussion of causation above the smoke of battle caused by confusion on both sides over the word nature where one side proposes certain theories of causation to justify homosexuality ("see how natural it is") and others try to refute those theories in order to preserve their condemnation of homosexuality ("it isn't caused that way, so it is an unnatural evil").

Because I separate the explanation of the behavior from the morality of the behavior, I do not feel a need to prove or disprove any single theory of causation. In fact -- and it may be helpful to reveal this here -- I think there are probably several factors that combine in various strengths to account for Terry Wogan.

[RealR]

A good arguement but i must disagree on the basis i can't be fucked reading all that.

[Rebelius]

Originally Posted by Develion

A good arguement....

i got that far thinking HOLY SHIT... HE READ ALL THAT!!!

i didnt even read line 1

[gabrillowise]

You should because it's important.

[RealR]

The opening line did grab my attention i must say that....

[earmuffin]

Originally Posted by Terry Wogan

Was I born with an inclination to have sex with several different attractive women each day, an inclination that merely remained dormant for thirteen years?

Aww.

[TNF]

although george and sam are both perfectly acceptable answers, i decided 'yes'. As I survey this impressive competition, my lingering hopes for my own egg ('Rainy Easter'- a clumsily felt-tipped drawing of a man holding a giant umbrella under cotton-wool clouds and orange glitter lightning-strokes) begin to dwindle. I console myself with the thought of the leading role I am due to play in the staging of the event, which is to be scored this year following the model of the Eurovision Song Contest, with the contestants divided into juries, me mam playing Katie Boyle, and me taking the part of Terry Wogan.

[Johnny]

I actually read it all. Then passed out.