Homosexuality: A Chosen Harm

My aim here is neither to coerce nor to persecute. I have no personal hostilities toward homosexuals, any more than I have personal hostilities toward casual marijuana users. I believe that both practices ought to be legal and free from state intervention, but that both are colossally deleterious to the health and moral integrity of the individuals practicing them. I shall seek to persuade, civilly and rationally, as befits intelligent debate, of the verity of my three-pronged thesis: that homosexuality, in every variant thereof, is a practice volitionally chosen by the individuals engaging in it, and is harmful to its practitioners both physically and morally.

First, homosexuality is a practice that those engaging in it undertake of their own free will, and not an orientation that is somehow inherently pre-determined. The very nature of the human mind will imply such a conclusion. In his 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the British philosopher John Locke, whose theories were fundamental in the creation of the American Republic, wrote "No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience." This implies that, until an individual has experience with the reality in which he lives, he cannot have any knowledge. Until he has any knowledge, he cannot have any principles or inclinations, for those are themselves formed only through the use of the knowledge that the individual has already gained, as well as the principles of reasoning that he has discovered through his exposure to the external world. In other words, man's mind must be born tabula rasa, a blank slate, incapable of any innate "orientations" whatsoever. Therefore, one cannot be a homosexual, a heterosexual, a basketball enthusiast, or exhibit any other personality, behavior, or inclination without having at some point acquired this trait. Nobody is born desiring to have intercourse with members of the same gender; as a matter of fact, just about every child anyone has ever known was not born with any desires for intercourse whatsoever!