Bishop Little Joe Powell Jr. said during an NAACP forum, “God made Adam and Eve. He didn’t make Adam and Steve.”
This literal interpretation of Genesis may or may not be true, but God certainly did make Roy and Silo, two male penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo who have been in a monogamous sexual relationship for six years now, completely ignoring potential female mates.
God also made female Japanese macaques, which have an extremely high incidence of homosexuality in their species because the females use it as a means to control reproductivity. God made flamingo males, which are known to pair off into couples and raise nests of adopted chicks that are larger than their heterosexual counterparts because the two males are able to secure a larger territory.
God also made giraffes, chimpanzees, right whales, apes, ostriches, mice and 1,500 other species that have all been observed in homosexual relations. According to the Oslo Natural History Museum’s exhibit titled “Against Nature?” homosexuality is well documented in 500 of these species.
This overwhelming body of evidence does not mean we can call homosexuality in homo sapiens natural, but it does mean we cannot call it unnatural either. The terms are simply inapplicable to this debate. This leaves the Albemarle’s lobbyists who oppose homosexual free speech with only their theological arguments, which are inadmissible in a country where we are free from religious oppression.
As for “Adam and Steve,” I will leave it to Bishop Powell to reconcile his interpretation of a God that considers homosexuality a sin, and yet fills its creation with so many homosexuals. I’m certain his irrational prejudice will find a satisfactory rationalization to ease whatever cognitive dissonance this contradiction between his beliefs and reality may cause.