ath they were once on" (p. 133). Even though religious law has traditionally interpreted homosexuals as shameful, modern theologians with one foot more firmly planted in the secular world may disagree with those views. In addition, with regard to pronatalist theology, secular arguments may also be used to prove that large families were a protection against high rates of infant mortality. It is important to note that, in the early centuries A.D., the average life span was significantly shorter than today's. Large families meant a more plentiful, and thus more productive, work force. Could the Bible's command of "be fruitful and multiply" have an economic, rather than religious basis? Could religious laws have corollaries in secular law?
As Burtch (1994) notes, "in more recent times, homosexuality has become a subject for medical intervention. Various forms of treatment have been attempted with a view to reshaping homosexual feelings and behaviours toward a more acceptable, heterosexual model" (p. 44). The psychiatric community has been particularly unscientific in its reluctance to give up its perception of homosexuality as a pathological condition indicative of medical intervention. Burtch (1994) again cites Salamon's (1988) research to assert, "Even though the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its classification of mental illness in 1974, this tendency to label homosexuals as abnormal persists . . . a survey conducted of 2500 psychiatrists published in 1977 [showed that] 70% [believed] that a gay male's problems stemmed from personal rather than social stigmatization" (p. 44). In other words, three years after removing homosexuality from their own list of pathological conditions, psychiatrists were still regarding the homosexual's problems as internal, rather than external. In other words, society is normal, while the homosexual is deviant. The insidious manner in which "abnormal" becomes equate...