How to Make Your Baby Straight

Sometimes I think we should really invite Rev. Albert Mohler Jr to be a guest blogger here on faithhacker. The man is just an eternal spring of practical spirituality! Now yes, it’s true he’s not Jewish, that he’s in fact president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and that he likes to brag about how he’s been called “an articulate voice for conservative Christianity at large” which suggests that being articulate and a conservative Christian is something of a revelation (no pun intended). So okay, I can see how he wouldn’t be the first name to come to mind, even though he’s contributed to blockbusting anthologies like “Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment.” But Rev. Mohler’s recent writings make it pretty clear he’s dedicated to making sure spirituality can be practically infused into your family life. Specifically, Rev. Mohler is working on a plan to help you ensure that your baby won’t come out gay. I know. It’s a relief to know you’re not the only one pining away for a prenatal gayness vaccine, right? According to this article in the Washington Post, Mohler holds the somewhat liberal view that homosexuality may be an innate and natural condition, something you’re born with. This is in contrast to the majority of the Christian right, which likes to refer to homosexuality as a “life choice.” But instead of thinking to himself, “Hey, if they’re born with it, it might actually be something God intended for them. It might be an acceptable way to live one’s life,” Mohler decided to post something on his blog with the catchy title, “Is Your Baby Gay? What if You Could Know? What if You Could Do Something About It?” In the post he discusses the dilemma that’s been floating around the media for a few weeks now. If babies are born with a predisposition to be gay, and if we eventually develop a genetic test for homosexuality in the same way that we can test for Tay-Sachs or Down Syndrome, what does one do with a fetus that’s predisposed toward homosexuality? Abort it? Mohler weighs in by reminding his readers that because all people—even homosexuals—are created in the image of God, aborting a fetus that is known to be gay would be wrong and sinful. Then he says, “If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.” It’s hard to deny that this is a very practical view on the matter of homosexual babies. But, and I just hate to shoot holes in the theory of such an intellectual like Mohler, it seems to me that all babies have a little problem with sexual temptation when they grow up. Mohler, obviously, got trashed by a number of groups from both the left and the right who were angry at him for a whole slew of reasons. In his response, also posted on his blog, he reminds his readers that original sin really sucks: “Let's remember that all of us are born with a huge moral defect — we are sinners from the start. Christians who have responded with claims that God would not allow a person to be born with a bent toward sin miss the clear biblical teaching that all of us are born with a bent toward sin and with a sin nature. We are born marked by Adam's sin and already under God's just condemnation for that sin.” At this point I don’t care what Mohler has to say because he’s proven himself to be a windbag and a whackjob, but it’s interesting that the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is so despondent about homosexuals that he decided the only way to deal with them is to sanction genetic engineering.

It's an interesting take on practicality, I guess. And by "interesting" I mean "vomit inducing."