The shifty phrase “sexual orientation” is an important obstacle to clear thinking. It spreads darkness over the law and popular discussions by hiding the distinction between emotional inclinations, dispositions, or interests and actual or conditional willingness. Willingness is, or results from, a choice — perhaps a conditional choice (“I am willing to do this if I find someone attractive and a safe opportunity…”), perhaps an unconditional and immediate choice. Emotional inclinations, dispositions, and interests, on the other hand, do not engage one’s moral responsibility unless they result from earlier choices or are allowed to lead one to such a choice.
The phrase “sexual orientation” is radically equivocal. Particularly as used by promoters of “gay rights,” the phrase ambiguously assimilates two things which that [the law hitherto has carefully distinguished: (I) a psychological or psychosomatic disposition inwardly orienting one towards homosexual activity; (II) the deliberate decision so to orient one’s public behavior as to express or manifest one’s active interest in and endorsement of homosexual conduct and/or forms of life which presumptively involve such conduct. …laws or proposed laws outlawing “discrimination based on sexual orientation” are always interpreted by “gay rights” movements as going far beyond discrimination based merely on A’s belief that B is sexually attracted to persons of the same sex. Instead (it is observed), “gay rights” movements interpret the phrase as extending full legal protection to public activities intended specifically to promote, procure and facilitate homosexual conduct.
St. Paul’s reflections on homosexual vice, in Romans 1: 19-28, make it clear that what matters is not inclinations but the will (the debased mind) and chosen conduct. With minds darkened, their inclinations mastering their reason, “women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way men…committed shameless acts with men…” (Rom. 1: 21, 26-28).
