by Zach Bigalke

Created on: March 11, 2008   Last Updated: May 05, 2008

What is sin? As defined by Merriam-Webster, sin is "an offense against religious or moral law; an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible; an often serious shortcoming"...

So to determine whether or not homosexual acts are sinful would require a set moral/religious code by which to judge these acts. Christianity determines that homosexuality is sinful... as do most monotheistic religions. But not everyone ascribes to such dogmatic thought. Perhaps we must look at this more from a humanist standpoint, from the prevailing viewpoint of our society as it currently stands. This is where the second and third determinants of the definition come into play...

Is homosexuality an act that is felt to be "highly reprehensible"? Do people in our society view homosexuality as "an often serious shortcoming"? Certainly... we would not have debate ongoing in our legislative houses about the sanctity of marriage as the union between a man and a woman if there was not a societal stigma against homosexuality. The problem in evaluating this is that there is no ONE set standard by which ALL Americans, and indeed all humans, judge what is reprehensible or what constitutes a shortcoming...

While working at Camp Anytown, a human-rights camp organized through the National Conference for Community and Justice to help promote diversity and tolerance among high-school students, we were introduced to a mother who had lost her son to AIDS. Her son had been a homosexual... and had been raised Mormon. This mother had come to us with a thick stack of scientific field study into the effects of chromosome patterns and their link to inborn homosexuality. This mother, raised since birth with the religious understanding that homosexuality was a sin, had come to realize that her son was not a sinner - he was simply born with the desire to seek love and companionship from members of the same sex. It was a real eye-opener for me to view firsthand how personal circumstances can cause one to step beyond their codified dogmatic stances to really INVESTIGATE what is true in the world...

Science springs new information into the field every day. Different chromosome patterns on the X and Y chromosomes are being found to have different combinations in heterosexual and homosexual individuals. Homosexuality - and thus acting on homosexual urges - is as natural as it is to seek out a member of the opposite sex. One does not wake up one day and determine to be gay any more than I woke up one day in my adolescence and determined to be "straight". Different societies throughout the ages have not had our current moral qualms...

It is easy to look within one's personal morality and indiscriminately determine that a person is immoral or sinful for their acts. But no amount of religious upbringing can prevent one from feeling the urges of homosexuality if they are inherently inborn. That Mormon son, even with his wholesome upbringing, could not deign to prevent his homosexuality from manifesting itself. Homosexual acts are perfectly natural; no amount of arbitrary declarations of "sinfulness" can prevent that fact...

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