"I was in my late thirties before I finally became pregnant— and then only because my husband was at NIH and knew all the right people with all the latest medical info. They used some experimental techniques which worked and now I’m in my third month. Everything was going well until last evening when my husband brought home the test results from my latest visit to the reproductive health doc that I’ve been seeing.

The good news was that our little boy (the sex of our munchkin was the first thing that we knew for sure) doesn’t have Down’s Syndrome, Huntington’s or a slew of the other conditions that they test for nowadays. But the bad news is that the genetic tests indicate he might be gay."

That scenario is the plot line of Twilight of the Golds, an early-nineties play by Jonathan Tolins, which I saw in its Kennedy Center run more than a decade ago. Marlo Thomas played the role of Mrs. Gold, wife of the NIH researcher. Sadly, neither the star power of Danny Thomas’ daughter, nor the clever staging that linked background lighting suggestive of the flames of hell and background music from Wagner’s opera Twilight of the Gods, was enough to save the play or the subsequent movie from the dust bin.

The play’s premise of a genetic test for homosexuality in the newborn and thus a parental choice for an abortion may have been ahead of its time. In the play, the pregnant protagonist and her NIH researcher husband choose to abort the fetus rather than bring another gay male into the world despite the fact that Thomas’ fictional brother, David, is

gay and has been her life-long confidant.

But it seems as if now reality is catching up with fiction.

In his early March blog, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY stated, "If a biological basis is found (for homosexuality), 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 would unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin." In later interviews he said he was referring to a possible hormonal treatment and not arguing for genetic therapy. He said that he would also support other hormonal modifications. "If we found out there was a prenatal test to show that a baby would have poor eyesight but a hormonal treatment…would restore full eyesight, what parent would not use that? That’s not genetic treatment. We do want healthy babies."

I find it absolutely astounding that a religious leader, the president of a prestigious seminary, would display his ignorance and his bigotry so blatantly in public. In Moehler’s view homosexuality equates to poor eyesight—a bothersome physical defect to be corrected. To him it’s preferable to mess around with a fetus in utero with hormones, as long as it can’t be considered abortion, rather than to accept the sexual orientation assigned by a Higher Power which Moehler claims to represent. Perhaps he’s forgotten, or chooses to ignore, the fact that in a previous use of hormones intended for a good purpose —to prolong pregnancies threatened by a spontaneous abortion—the female offspring ended up being at high risk of cervical cancer a generation later. But I suppose if your primary goal is the elimination of homosexuality, risk to the fetus is immaterial. I’m sure that Moehler would reject the possibility that naturally occurring spontaneous abortion might be construed as proof of divine approval of abortion in the first place.

In Moehler’s scheme of things Michelangelo, Tchaikovsky, Shakespeare, Lenny Bernstein, E.M. Forrester, Tennessee Williams and scores of church fathers would all go down the tubes, victims of a hormonal patch. Moehler wants "healthy babies" and is willing to risk the unknown side-effects of powerful chemical (hormonal) therapies in order to get what he wants. The possibility that sexual orientation, whether gay or straight, is a gift from the Creator to be enjoyed and used responsibly, is a concept beyond Moehler’s capacity. It’s okay to believe in Moehler’s God who does miracles but not in One who deviates from Moehler’s interpretation of the way the world should be. I find that approach astounding, if not blasphemous.

An alternative approach, and a more practical one at that, might be to divert all the research dollars dedicated to finding the so-called "gay gene" and redirect that cash toward discovery of the bigotry gene, the fear gene or the hate gene which would put future Moehler’s out of their misery. Or, perhaps more realistically, those research funds should go into programs that teach tolerance and acceptance of diversity—even to the faculty and students of Moehler’s Southern Baptist Seminary.