Regarding Wallace Alcorn’s Monday, Oct. 1, column “Pope speaking to nuns on gays,” I was dumbfounded to think the erudite Dr. Alcorn would call homosexuality a “failing.” He states: “Neither Jesus nor any other voice in the Bible condemns either homosexuality or homosexuals. As so with all other failings (and it is this), it seeks lovingly and graciously to redeem the latter persons from the former condition.”

“Failings?”

“Condition?”

Apparently Dr. Alcorn with all his post-graduate studies has never enrolled in a college human sexuality course, where he would have learned that homosexuality is a biological phenomenon, not something chosen, or forced upon an individual. To suggest that biblical teachings or any amount of counseling, for that matter, can change a person’s sexual nature is archaic thinking that is no longer accepted by the fields of psychology or science or even ordinary common sense (unless you’re really stubborn).

To call homosexuality a “failing” is an inexcusable affront to gays and lesbians. Over the years I have known many wonderful people who I knew or later learned were homosexual. They seemed perfectly normal to me — honest, contributive, good people — whom I would never consider as having a “failing.” What a way to instill guilt in people who had nothing to say about who they were at birth!

Wallace Alcorn needs to come into the 21st century.

Dean Bishop, Austin