Choice and sexuality

I saw a post on Facebook this morning by a religious bigot arguing that homosexuality is a choice of lifestyle. A moment's reflection is all that is required to see the falsity of this view. Since it is one of those posts that I cannot comment on I'll use my blog to do so instead.

The basic point is simple, one we can all recognise by simply looking at ourselves and our preferences for a moment or two. No-one chooses what they like, no-one has any control over what they are attracted to. I used to prefer red wine. These days, probably for biological reasons connected with my taking Allopurinol for a long period, I tend to prefer white. The reds I do still like, are, annoyingly, very expensive. At that point, but not before, I seem to have a choice. I look at my financial circumstances and decide I'd better do without the very expensive reds, and since I mostly don't like the cheaper ones any more, I buy a bottle of white that I do like. It used (before I was taking Allopurinol) to be the other way round – the only whites I liked were the expensive wines of Chablis, but I was happy to settle for an inexpensive Claret. I have absolutely no control over this – I put the wine in my mouth, and I either like it or I don't.

That is the way human beings are. I happen to be interested in the Hellenistic philosophers, but my friend finds them boring and loves to rebuild valve radios. These hold no interest for me, even though I can appreciate the beauty of his finished work and the skill involved. I'd no more want to do that than swim with a school of sharks. But there are people who do enjoy swimming with sharks.

One of my friends is distressed by the mere thought of eating meat, another finds a vegetarian diet repulsive. Neither of these is a choice. My vegetarian friend cannot help her reaction to meat. I am utterly infuriated by the junk on TV called the Jeremy Kyle Show. I happen to know someone who finds it interesting, attractive, good entertainment and a perfect way to relax after a stressful day. While both of us may rationalise what we call our choices, in neither case is it a choice – we have no control over whether we like it or not, any more than we can choose whether we love or hate celery or garlic.

You like to wear red, I prefer greens and browns. Even if I think you look great in red the idea of wearing it myself is, well, unthinkable. You may say that you choose red, but it's a loose use of language – you find red attractive to wear and have no control over that at all. In exactly the same way I can choose whether I will visit Rome or Athens – but that I want to visit both of these cities is not a choice. I can rationalise why I want to visit them and do not want to visit Washington or Delhi, but there is no choice involved, it's a want I happen to have, connected to the interest in the Hellenistic Philosophers that I also happen to have. I can choose to stop reading their writings (at least I think I can, but I might get withdrawal symptoms if I do) but I cannot choose whether or not I am interested.

And in exactly the same way, none of us choose to whom we are sexually attracted. You might ask your father why he chose your mother, and he may give you cogent reasons – her cooking, her laugh, her eyes. But the real reason is that he found himself to be attracted to her, a fact of life over which he had no control whatever. He might have been able to choose whether or not he acted on that attraction, but he could not choose whether he was attracted or not. Equally we do not choose the gender of the person to whom we are sexually attracted. My friend Fred is bisexual – but he is not attracted to all men, or all women. He finds some men and some women attractive and is currently in a relationship with a particular individual. This happens to be someone of the opposite sex, but over the years I have known Fred he has also had long term and committed relationships with people of the same sex. From my point of view, I like Fred a lot, he is very good company, and I am delighted he is happy and in love. Some of his partners over the long time I have known him I have liked and got on with more than others, irrespective of their sex. Just as in the rest of life there are people that I like more, and people that I like less. I choose to spend time with the former rather than the latter, but which ones I like is beyond my control. I cannot choose whether I like someone any more than Fred can choose whether or not he is attracted to them.

To assert that someone's sexuality is a choice is about as ignorant a thing as I can imagine, because to see that the truth is otherwise is simply a matter of a moment's reflection about oneself.

What's getting at me?

It's easy really. I still can't quite forgive myself for a bum decision made when I was a theology student. Many of those that know me will have heard the story. In its bones it goes thus: the Principal took me aside, casually during a coffee break, and told me that he didn't think I was cut out to be a clergyman, but that I would make a good academic. And he had an opening for me. I simply wasn't interested. But he was right on the first point and may have been right on the second. I like to think so.

I know enough about the kind of job he had in mind for me to think that it might have led me away from theology into philosophy. At the time I was interested in St John's Gospel – there are some questions about its date and the background it arises from. And the person I was dating at the time knew the greatest authority on St John, Charles Kingsley Barrett, at Durham. So the dream goes that I might have gone to Durham to be supervised by Barrett in a study of St John's background. That, unavoidably, would have taken me deep into the philosophy of the Greco-Roman world that so interests me 40 years later. There are connected questions of liberty and democracy that are also a big interest of mine, so who knows where that might have led. And instead of that I was not much good as a clergyman, far too interested in the meaning of things to be any use at all in an average parish. I was seen as a threat by a lot of the clergy I worked with because I believed in educating the parishioners. I had to get to 65 before I found room to explore my academic talents and realise how much catching up there is to do. I did at least spend 20 years doing some sort of teaching, but it was of computing skills, and not anything to do with those questions of meaning that have bugged me for as long as I can remember.

An aside: I set up a group when I was a curate in Kingston to criticise my sermons. One comment made was that they were very educated and sometimes not too hard to follow, but what people really wanted was answers to questions to save them thinking for themselves. I was making them think for themselves, so I had it the wrong way round. An absolutely correct assessment of the situation!

In my mind I have revisited that coffee break several times. It is hard to see how the person I was then could have acted any differently. I'd had dreams of becoming a clergyman and studying theology since I was a child. I had the mistaken idea that people interested in religion were interested in it the same way I was – an exploration of meaning. I was on a track towards becoming a leader in that search. Only the search didn't actually exist in Church of England parishes, or anywhere much else apart from the dreaming spires of academe and in my head. None the less, that was the track I was on, I had got a long way down it after many years of trying, and I cannot see how I could have been deflected by a casual remark over coffee. And certainly not by Gerald – he taught New Testament, and by my 3rd year I had realised how much more about the New Testament I knew than he did. So he had the odds against him for changing my mind about anything. I won a University prize and was presented to the Queen Mum as a result, and Gerald had expressed surprise. “I knew you were good Oliver, but I didn't know you were that good.” And he called me Oliver, which everyone knew I hated. No, he hadn't impressed me, so how could he influence me?

Maybe there was a way. I was devoted to one of the teaching staff, Dr Cecilia Goodenough, who had supervised my prize-winning effort. I had total respect for her. She was indeed formidable. Nothing crossed her lips that she hadn't thought about long and hard. If she was convinced about a matter she said so. If there was doubt she explained the issues. Indeed, “issues” may have been the word she used most often.

Maybe Cecilia could have influenced me. In fact, even in a matter to which I was dedicated, she could at least have made me stop and think. But that never happened, and if it had done then the outcome might have been the same. I did wonder why Cecilia, who didn't believe in ordination, was training ordinands. But the point was that she too was engaged in a journey into truth and meaning which she couldn't let go.

I thought I had seen all this long ago. What else could have happened? So I thought I had forgiven myself. But I haven't. It is still irritating me like an itch I cannot scratch, a dull ache that will not go away. I can't get away from the thought that I had talent and a chance, and, in this one and only go I have at life, I wasted one and missed the other.

It is time to go back to the Stoics who had a unique and admirable understanding of ethical life in a deterministic world. Perhaps a short trip to Athens is called for to walk where Chrysippus walked, or to Rome to stand where Seneca stood and enjoy the view, especially as I have never been to either.

Midsummer Memory

Some years ago, on 22 June, I was travelling in to work by train and reading The Times and came across a photo of the previous day's celebrations at Stonehenge. At the time I was interested in ritual (I still think that ritual is an important part of life too easily neglected) and I wondered if the Druids simply expressed in their ritual of Father Sun and Mother Earth something self-evident (that we depend on the Sun and the Earth) or whether they hypostatised them as deities as primitive man once did.

I tend to follow up on ideas and questions, and that led me to getting to know a prominent Druid, a lady of great personality and much style. After a long email exchange we met, I joined in some festivities at Stonehenge and other sites and wrote some pieces for one of the Druid magazines. The ritual at Stonehenge at midwinter, in the cold and dark among the standing stones, under a brilliant starry sky, was especially moving.

What I learned surprised, and later shocked me. The answer to my first question was a clear yes - and I found it surprising that so many people could regard our celestial neighbours as gods when the physics is available for all to know. They just ignored it. I am always slightly nonplussed by people who opt to ignore the discoveries of science. But it happens. Creationism depends on it, for example. In that case a powerful emotional commitment outweighs scientific knowledge. The most dramatic example of that I ever came across was an Astrophysicist I knew once who was also a believer in the biblical account of creation. For her, biblical authority was more important, carried more of an emotional investment, even than her vast knowledge of how the universe actually works. So if someone like that can be effected in that way, then I suppose I should not be surprised when others who are less well informed fall under the same spell.

But there was more. The ritual evoked the spirits of the four directions, and of the ancestors, and while the former seemed nebulous and mysterious (but somehow powerful) the latter were quite simply the dead still living in some other parallel life, walking about, clothed as normal (but normal for a Druid may not be what is normal for most of us) who could be called upon in various ways. Apart from the rather strange idea of bodiless spirits wearing ghostly clothes, which seemed just silly, and the breach of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, it was the seriousness with which all this was taken that most bothered me.

Finally, over a meal, my Druid friend revealed that she was a shape-shifter. I am in no doubt that this woman, to all appearances elegant, charming, and sane, really believed that she could go into the woods at night and adopt the shape of, say, a fox or an owl. Those that know me will not expect me to take that without comment. As politely as I could I said I thought that was crazy and completely unbelievable. The conversation moved on, the meal ended, we parted on good terms and I never saw or spoke to her again.

Unhappily the lady I was then married to was not so skeptical as I - she remained in touch with the Druid lady and consulted her about some issues in her life. She was persuaded to have Past Life Regression Therapy - in which the troubles of the present are understood and healed by discovering what lives the person had lived before. The actual treatment was never discussed, but I did gather that my wife had learned that in a past life she had been a deer. She, an educated person, a talented therapist employed by the NHS, took this on board. In retrospect it is not a surprise that her mental health deteriorated rapidly soon after.