Taking Congressman Paul Ryan to school

In part 2 of this series I referred to the foolish and uninformed statements on the topic of homosexuality made by Congressman Paul Ryan and Allen West. Here they are—first, Ryan from a few years ago quoted in the Wisconsin State Journal:

Ryan also considers himself a social conservative; he opposes abortion rights. But he says he‘s against regulating personal behavior. Last year, he voted for a bill outlawing discrimination against gays and lesbians in the workplace. Most Republicans opposed the bill.

‘I’m not a Big Brother Republican,’ Ryan said.

What? That makes no sense to anyone who understands the true nature of homosexuality or the First Amendment to the Constitution. One definition of the phrase “big brother” is this:

A person or organization exercising total control over people’s lives.

This is a free country and homosexuals are free to live their lives. The rest of us are free to make judgments about what constitutes moral and immoral behavior. If there is any “big brothering” being done in this controversy it comes from those who would seek to control others by shutting down critical thinking and doing away with religious liberty.

Clearly Ryan’s thinking is confused because he has accepted arguments that are fact-less, emotional and based on false premises. Like everyone else who refuses to exercise critical thinking, Ryan needs to learn that homosexuality is not like race. Let’s review what the Illinois Family Institute’s Laurie Higgins has written:

  • Race is 100% heritable, homosexuality is not.
  • Race is immutable in all cases, homosexuality is in many cases mutable (capable of or susceptible to change).
  • Race has no behavioral implications that are legitimate objects of moral assessment; homosexuality is centrally defined by subjective experiences of desire and volitional acts that are legitimate objects of moral assessment.
  • Whereas there are no former blacks, there  are scores of people who have at one point self-identified as homosexual, renounced homosexuality, and gone on to live successful heterosexual lives.

If Congressman Ryan still can’t quite grasp the simplicity of this, here’s more of what Higgins has written:

  • Homosexuality is not analogous to skin color, biological sex, hair color, or disability.
  • Homosexuality is analogous to many conditions that are defined by powerful persistent desires and volitional acts.
  • There is no evidence for the claim that homosexuality is genetically determined. Every study that has suggested a correlation between some biological factor and homosexuality has been refuted or criticized for any number of test-design flaws or faulty conclusions.

Congressman Paul Ryan has shown that he understands the immorality of our federal government’s economic spending policies. Now he needs to learn about morality in general. The discussion of morality is a discussion about human behavior. If Ryan thinks homosexuals were born that way, well, he needs to put down his calculator and learn:

The American Psychological Association says this about homosexuality causation:

Most scientists today agree that sexual orientation is most likely the result of a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors.

The fact that same-sex attraction is persistent and seemingly intractable does not make it like race any more than the persistence and seeming intractability of pedophilic impulses make pedophilia like race.

As I’ve noted, he should read Arthur Goldberg’s book “Light in the Closet: Torah, Homosexuality and the Power to Change.” Ryan can get the Cliff Notes version here:

What causes homosexuality?

The “homosexual rights” agenda is based on bad science

The bottom line is, Paul Ryan, despite all of his ability, he’s fallen for “the born gay hoax.”

Up next: Allen West.

Read the entire series here.