Twice each day, I pop a minuscule “pentagram” into my mouth, and swallow with it all responsibility for my behavior. Well, not a pentagram, per se, (although some might think it devilish not to use exorcisms to cure mental ailments) but a pentangular tablet of an anti-depressant. But even worse than abdicating responsibility for the apathy, anxiety, and despondency which had made me question why I was even born, I do so with no shame.

Although I should- I must - show complete responsibility, say the most extreme advocates of “shame,” whose condemnations spring from the supposed absolute responsibility each individual has for their state in life.

Little wonder, that when I look at my family tree, and see that my greater susceptibility to melancholia was self-evident from the number of my relatives who succumbed to affective illness, I shrink back from simplistic notions of human nature being a “blank slate”- tabula rasa. I further give little credence to morality of the monochromatic variety, with its emphasis on punishment in this life and the next, instead of treatment and attempts to better understand human frailties.

While at its most extreme, this moral position consists of a late-night Christian fundamentalist television host declaring vigorously that suicides are doomed to hell, even the more moderate advocates of “increasing responsibility” in our society are likely to hold logically inconsistent standards when it comes to the basis of human behavior.

Advocates of shame, at times, seem completely oblivious to the growing body of evidence suggesting a large genetic component to a full spectrum of human behaviors, both the maladaptive and advantageous. What would be obvious as a logical corollary to someone inured in evolutionary science is a threat to fiercely held notions of behaviors that constitute “sinfulness.”

In recent months, much has been made of “former homosexuals” by the religious right, as if anecdotes were somehow substitutes for statistical data indicating heritability, or neuroscientists probing anatomical differences in brain structure. But make no mistake about it, when you finally started seeing that girl who sat in front of you in class as a goddess, that was the moment when you chose your sexuality. It’s mere coincidence that observable physical and biochemical changes were occurring simultaneously, which some in their folly would call a natural process- puberty.

Still other shame advocates, while not wholly denying a genetic component to homosexuality, would also claim it should be treated, just as one would want to treat alcoholism or depression. Perhaps they would do better to have themselves seek treatment for intolerance, as it is only the largest stretch of the imagination which would confute them. While alcoholism and depression are suffering in and of themselves, it is threats of damnation, and the adjoining accusations of “perversity” which are more than enough to help explain alienation and discontentment “stemming” from homosexuality.

Like most assertions of dogma, it is never satisfactorily answered why homosexuals need to change their sexual identity in the first place- myths supplant evidence. While those whose grasp of natural history amounts to a literal belief in a man named Adam, and his wife Eve, call homosexuality “unnatural”- it is no accident that rather than evidence for a six-day creation and its ramifications, they can only come up with slogans. “God created Adam and Eve. Not Adam and Steve.” The other usual rote answer, of course, is the necessity of saving homosexuals’ souls and/or preventing their “immorality” from “spreading.”

And what of “souls?” The very advent of DNA science was a death blow to vitalism as a biological “theory.” In the realm of eternal “truth,” however, upgrades are few and far between, and facts of science immaterial.

From studies of neurological defects, injuries, and abnormalities, there is no end of evidence suggesting that personality is dependent upon brain function. Even the common experience of imbibing alcohol, with its subsequent effects on cognition, constitute evidence that there is little reason to posit a “soul” as the primary driving force behind the human person.

But don’t expect that to stop the drive for “souls” anytime soon- even if for the condemned it means damnation on earth- atrocious rates of suicide among teenage homosexuals. Human nature must be bent into innumerable contortions- or else.

The inflexibility of some political and religious ideologies in accepting new evidence about the sources of human behavior, is one thing, and one thing alone. It’s a shame. But it is the shame truly deserving of the name, at least until proper treatments are found for reason-phobia.