(Click on the logo to return to the main blog.)
My Bottom Line on Homosexuality
08/10/2002
I'm sure that this will come up, so I thought I'd best address it while I've got a moment: my bottom line on homosexuality (honestly, no pun intended). This is intended to be a base statement from which discussion would ensue, not a presentation of an argument.
I believe that homosexuals would be better off if they strove to follow the Catholic Church's teachings regarding their behavior. I'm not speaking purely with respect to dogma and the personal and social stigma of not following it, but also in terms of individual psychological and spiritual well-being. As with any behavior to which we are inclined but that we strive to avoid, lapses are likely, and it is rationally foolish and emotionally contrary to Christian principles for individuals or society to give them the weight of utter and irreconcilable failure.
Those people who find their attraction to be inalterably toward others of the same gender ought not to be deprived of the opportunity for the love and emotional closeness that acts as an earthly representation of God's love. However, such a relationship ought to be one in which both partners help each other in striving toward the ideal — a more-familial, albeit coupled and private, affection — while seeking to understand the demands and proper expression of their personal faith.
Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:34 PM EST
13 comments
Translation: Guys kissing (and more) makes me uncomfortable. Why can’t they just have great relationships with women like the rest of us normal folks? They are just so damn promiscous. The fact that something on the order of 50% of our relationships with women end in divorce and that, again, 50% of married spouses cheat with someone outside the relationship, doesn’t mean that we can’t even follow our own much vaunted ideals, but rather proves how great normal heterosexual relationships are.
Jody @ 08/12/2002 02:34 PM EST
Insert "promiscuous" in lieu of the misspelling above. (No pun intended.)
Jody @ 08/12/2002 02:40 PM EST
Ummm... Jody... are you addressing what I've written, or just some imaginary argument that you like to bring out because it's easy to refute?
Note the sentence: "As with any behavior to which we are inclined but that we strive to avoid, lapses are likely, and it is rationally foolish and emotionally contrary to Christian principles for individuals or society to give them the weight of utter and irreconcilable failure." This would include marital infidelity and divorce. In other words, homosexuals' "lapsing" ought to be seen as more of a kind with our treatment of similar heterosexual lapses (and please note that there are degrees to this). In other words, it is normal to fail, throughout an entire lifetime, to live up to "vaunted ideals," no matter our orientation. Heterosexual marriages ought, also, to be joint efforts to strive toward the Christian ideal.
You may take issue to my use of "lapse" in this instance, in fact I expect you to, and that is a good discussion to have. However, it is a mistake for you to push me further into fundamentalism than I actually am. I suspect that many folks who agree with me on much else from a religious standpoint will think my position on homosexuality to be pretty radical.
Justin Katz @ 08/12/2002 02:52 PM EST
You are coaching your issue as the only normal thing is heterosexuality – something that is plainly not the case. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality – we’ve known that for the last 50 years.
Granted, 3000 years ago in the Levant they didn’t understand that, nor 1500 years ago in Christendom. Then again, neither group understood bathing, germs, and that the Earth was round (squashed ovoid….)
Heterosexuality is no more an ideal than homosexuality is. Love is an ideal, commitment is an ideal, trust is an ideal. Liking guys over girls or girls over guys? Those are just the colors you have to paint with.
Jody @ 08/12/2002 05:47 PM EST
For the record, at the societal level, heterosexuality is "normal" inasmuch as it is the "norm" or "usual circumstance." On an individual level, homosexuality can be "normal" inasmuch as a person may find that it is his or her "natural" state.
That said, this point has no bearing on my base statement (in fact, I carefully worded that statement to avoid such conflict). I defy you to explain where I relied upon heterosexuality's being "normal."
The "ideal" to which I refer is "a more-familial, albeit coupled and private, affection." In other words, "love," "commitment," and "trust." The sex is incidental to these ideals and constitutes the "lapses." Homosexual couples may "lapse" frequently on this count, as do heterosexual couples, but the key is the striving toward chastity.
As an atheist, you'll likely disagree with my notions of chastity, but that issue is obviously beyond the bounds of a statement that seeks to reconcile religious teaching and homosexuality. I.e., you do not seek reconciliation.
Justin Katz @ 08/12/2002 07:58 PM EST
My point Justin, is that you are begging the question.
You've taken a norm -- which simply means "most recurrent value" -- and assigned characteristics of primacy, idealism and benefit to it that simply are not in evidence.
There is nothing in heterosexuality that makes it more familial, more capable of love, commitment or trust. Further, you are advocating for a higher standard of behavior than even your own priests or parishioners are able to follow. Why? Because of beliefs removed from us by culture and two millennia of time.
You are in effect saying that because dark hair, dark eyes and right handedness are the usual circumstance of Human beings, it is therefore the shape, form and use that all those who aren't so inclined must conform to.
It's a meaningless argument.
Jody @ 08/13/2002 08:14 PM EST
Jody,
Do you actually read what I write? Let me repeat part of my previous comment:
The "ideal" to which I refer is "a more-familial, albeit coupled and private, affection." In other words, "love," "commitment," and "trust." The sex is incidental to these ideals and constitutes the "lapses."
Homosexual couples may "lapse" frequently on this count, as do heterosexual couples, but the key is the striving toward chastity.
(emphasis added)The ideal is the "more-familial, albeit coupled and private, affection" for both homosexuals and heterosexuals.
My argument is only "meaningless" because you aren't reading what I write. Your digs at my religion (here and elsewhere) only make you seem like a very bitter, insecure man who is too churlish to address what others state when it is easier to dismiss them based on your anti-faith. And spare me your "telepathy of the believers" nonsense; I'm not reading your mind, I'm reading your words.
Justin Katz @ 08/13/2002 10:40 PM EST
Justin, do you comprehend the chain of your argument, including the assumptions that like there-in, or do just like “finding” bitterness because it suits your other assumptions about the psychology of non-beleivers?
You said: “I believe that homosexuals would be better off if they strove to follow the Catholic Church's teachings regarding their behavior. I'm not speaking purely with respect to dogma… but also in terms of individual psychological and spiritual well-being.”
If you want to argue that the only appropriate physical sexual expression of love between two homosexuals is within the confines of a sanctioned, committed (married) relationship – as is the case for heterosexuals – fine. I don’t really have much of argument with that.
But that’s not what you’ve done. As two homosexuals are not allowed by your faith to have a married relationship where such sexual expression can occur, they are always unchaste and never have an opportunity enter into the same type of relationship with each other that heterosexuals are entitled to.
You then bonk them on the head by declaring they are being unchaste, psychologically and spiritually deficient whenever they lapse into behavior that is perfectly acceptable, and free of such judgment calls, in a relationship to which Catch-22 like they are forever denied.
Justin, that is silly.
Jody @ 08/14/2002 01:51 AM EST
Jody,
Alright, let's break this down into the bluntest terms. All that I've said is that homosexuals ought to strive to be celibate. In fact, Catholic teaching suggests essentially that married couples ought to be celibate inasmuch as they are not procreating. (There is the whole "natural family planning" thing, which I don't find to be an extremely convincing argument on its own terms.) This being the case, there would be no justification for Church-sanctioned homosexual marriages. On this count, I'm being almost equally harsh, except that married heterosexuals get a temporary pass for procreation.
However, I don't believe that "lapses" of monogamous sex between committed couples (of either orientation) are grievous, insurmountable sins. As expressions of mutual love, they even have some psychological and spiritual value, but that does not mean that there isn't a higher goal to shoot for, even if we continually fail to reach it.
Jody, since you believe that my faith is a sham, this argument needn't concern you. Obviously, it would be foolish of me to attempt to change your behavior based on a belief that you don't hold.
Justin Katz @ 08/14/2002 08:51 AM EST
We've now gone from a named but unqualified psychological and spiritual benefit for homosexuals following the Catholic Church's teachings in this subject to your personal view that gays and lesbians should be chaste as it's just an article of faith, no qualification needed.
There is a wide gulf between what you first wrote and what you just wrote. Thank you for clarifying your remarks.
Incidentally, this does concern me. I've had to pick up the pieces of countless people who turned out the worse for following what is, rather objectively, a boneheaded belief.
Jody @ 08/14/2002 04:34 PM EST
Jody, I haven't changed my statement. I merely became more specific, which is what it means to lay down "a base statement from which discussion would ensue, not a presentation of an argument." You read (past tense) into my original statement what you expected to be there, and I have refined it so that you would understand, this is what I designed the statement to do.
By the way, has it occurred to you that those people whose pieces you pick up might bear some responsibility, considering that the vast majority of believers of any faith feel themselves better, more whole, for their beliefs? Maybe if you weren't so boneheaded, you'd see that faith keeps many people out of the offices of philanthropists such as yourself and that I'm trying to help mend a rift that does hurt some.
Justin Katz @ 08/14/2002 06:37 PM EST
No Justin, you put down your "...bottom line" argument, which is "...the essential or salient point : CRUX b : the primary or most important consideration..." which, in turn, was rather definitively saying that Gay People would be better off psychologically and spiritually by following church teachings.
The clarification of your view was your belief that Gay people should just strive to be celibate, unstated psychological and spiritual arguments discarded.
That is a difference.
And yes Justin, I have thought about the fact that the "..vast majority of believers of any faith feel themselves better, more whole, for their beliefs." I especially thought about it as good feeling believers slammed planes into large, imposing trade towers or took to cleansing their neighborhoods of others who also felt better and more whole for their, different, beliefs.
In the end, it was the actions and policies of those who "felt better" that led some of those who didn't to finally stop trying to feel like everyone else, go to my (or another's) office, and put those perfectly good and responsible pieces back into place, so they could at last freely feel like themselves, "feel better"-ers be damned.
Jody @ 08/15/2002 06:55 PM EST
Perhaps bottom line was a bad choice of phrase (just couldn't resist the pun). However, I did try to clarify by stating that "This is intended to be a base statement from which discussion would ensue, not a presentation of an argument." The idea was to vaguely state a middle position and then try to draw people of differing opinions toward a middle ground by answering "what do you mean by that" questions. Anyway, the Church, as far as I can tell, only states that gays should not have gay sex (celibacy); it doesn't teach that gays are to be forbidden close relationships. Admittedly, this is an area that many Catholics would argue, but again, that is the point: to draw people to a middle.
Jody, I'm very sorry that you have such anger toward those with faith (I won't say God lest you accuse me of telepathy). Anybody who is not as intransigent as yourself will see the folly of what you say. However, I want to point out, first, that atheists are not free of the stain of horrendous acts. Second, I would ask: What's your thinking on blaming all of Islam for the acts of fundamentalists? All culpable? If not, then how can all who believe in God be culpable?
I sympathize that you spend much of your time dealing with a horrible side of society (not meaning the people, but the situation), and I applaud you for your courage in that respect. But this anger cannot be healthy. To whose office will you go when it tears you apart?
Justin Katz @ 08/15/2002 09:06 PM EST