God’s perfected plan for humanity hit another speed-bump yesterday when a group of scientists released a report in the latest edition of “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” proving that there are fundamental differences in the way gay and straight men experience scent.

Uh-oh. This is perilously close to saying that there are basic differences between the two groups.

The report demonstrates that “sniffing a chemical from testosterone, the male sex hormone, causes a response in the sexual area of gay men’s brains, just as it does in the brains of straight women, but not in the brains of straight men.”

“It is one more piece of evidence that is showing that sexual orientation is not all learned,” said Sandra Witelson an expert on brain anatomy and sexual orientation at the DeGroote School of Medicine in Ontario, Canada.

Warning! Warning! All fundamentalists to your bunkers; ignore the misleading, atheistic teaching of science.

But, seriously, these new findings put a real wrinkle in the convictions of many fundamentalist Christians who erroneously believe that homosexuality is a choice. (Does anyone really remember choosing their sexual preference when they reached puberty?)The reason they insist on this point of view is that if homosexuality isn’t a choice, then it must be a “natural” expression of one’s sexuality; suggesting that God made gays the way they are. This is an admission that, I expect, is not forthcoming form the ultra-religious community.

The science implies that men and women are predisposed in their sexual attraction. It is supremely arrogant to think that we control our basic instincts. (To quote the Bible, “All is vanity”) Man has no such power over his environment or his character. In fact, the same rule applies to religious belief. Man does not choose the ideas to which he gravitates; he is either naturally inclined towards those ideas because they appeal to his intellectual sensibilities or because they resonate with his emotional makeup. In other words, our beliefs are a manifestation of our intellectual or emotion predisposition and, as such, are mainly subjective. They do not necessarily reflect a reliable grasp of reality.

So, fundamentalists are in a real pickle. On the one hand they’ve combed the Bible for passages that seem to condemn homosexuality as an “abomination” but, on the other hand, they’re increasingly confronted with more and more scientific proof that their assumptions are just baseless mumbo-jumbo.

Presently, all eyes are on the war being waged in a Kansas courthouse, where the updated version of the Scope’s “monkey” trial is unfolding. Fundamentalists are trying to prove Darwin got it all wrong with his evolutionary “theory” of natural selection. This new report on homosexuality suggests that fundamentalists will have to battle on a second front; denouncing the science that implies that men may be “naturally” gay.

Bummer. Either God really slipped up when he slapped creation together or gays are actually a vital part of his eternal design. Of course, if gays are just expressing their God-given, natural inclinations then we’ll have to forgo our condemnations and try to develop a sense of tolerance and compassion.

It reminds me of when playwright George Bernard Shaw was asked what he thought of Christianity. After a lengthy pause Shaw opined, “I don’t know; it might work if anyone ever tried it”.

Here’s a chance to look at the new science and “try it”.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: [email�protected]