Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary believes that Christians should support pre-natal screening to "treat" gay fetuses in utero.

Mohler sparked controversy with a blog post called Is Your Baby Gay?.

Not surprisingly, non-bigots took issue with Mohler's assertion that homosexuality is a disease that requires treatment.

There's a long and reprehensible history of doctors forcing dangerous and ineffective hormones on gay people in an attempt to modify their sexual preferences. It's nothing new to conceal coercion by framing a disapproved behavior as a disease and offering to "cure" it. Some countries still use coercive hormone injections as a weapon against gays.

I'm certainly not surprised that Mohler would like to inflict these treatments on non-consenting fetuses, and I might add, their mothers. Any "treatment" that might be inflicted on a suspected gay fetus would almost certainly have side effects for the mother. In Mohler's estimation, homosexuality is such a blight that it must be stamped out before the fetus even enters our world. If he thought through the implications of homosexuality "treatments" in utero on the mother, I'm sure he'd think that it was a woman's responsibility to absorb the risk. Convenient. I wonder what he'd say if it were discovered that fathers who take pre-conception hormones are less likely to sire gay offspring?

What's more interesting is the controversy that Mohler's remarks generated among fellow conservative evangelicals. They are outraged that Mohler would even suggest that people are born gay.

It's interesting that so many conservative Christians cling so strongly to the idea of voluntarism in sexual orientation. Do they have any theological arguments to bolster this reflexive assertion, even to other believers like Mohler? It seems like the extent to which biology influences sexual orientation is a purely empirical question. People who put too much emotional stake in nature/nurture questions are usually trying to shirk the harder work of making a defensible value judgment.

If you believe as a matter of principle that all sexual orientations are equally compatible with human flourishing, and that free choice of sexual partners is a human right, then it doesn't really matter whether people are born with their orientation or not. It's an interesting empirical question, but there are very few moral implications.

Likewise, as long as Mohler and his ilk cling to the idea that homosexuality is wrong or bad, it doesn't really matter whether some people are more predisposed to want things they "shouldn't" have. We've always assumed that every human is biologically predisposed towards lust, gluttony, anger, sloth, and a variety of other purported sins. So, why are anti-gay Christians squabbling amongst themselves over the empirical details of one particular disposition?