Are Christians afraid to speaking against homosexual agenda?

[Mannyfit75]

I am afraid that the options are not so black and white as you seem to portray them my friend. Why so passionately against homosexual individuals? Why so angry? Encouraging protest and spouting that we live in a godless society, straight after quoting the incorrectly comparative 2.2 billion people who follow Christianity, strikes me as somewhat bemusing also…

Encourage protest without the need of violent act. The protestant should be modelled after Martin Luther King Jr’s Civil Rights Movement.

As of 2001, there are 2.1 billion Christians world wide according to World Christian Encycopedia, which make up 33% of the world population.

Perhaps it is all this turmoil and anguish that you clearly harbour, which is distorting how you see things and disabling you from speaking common sense?

I do not condone civil unrest nor any form of any violence against homosexual persons.

Sincerely you cannot be so anti-gay as to actively advocate protests against homosexuals who have done you know harm, through this forum? Is that what you are doing?

First of all, I am not anti-homosexuals. I am against homosexual behavior, not homosexual persons. The Church basing itself on Sacred Scripture and Tradition have always condemned homosexual behavior. That sin itself is comparable to other sins that offends God such as fornication, masturbation, adultery, rape, pedophilia.

The institution of marriage is God’s gift to us. Marriage is not man-made. From the beginning, God created us, “male and female. A man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife. The two shall become one flesh. So what God has join, let no man put asunder.”

Homosexual marriage produces no life. It serves gives a false since of what a love is. It is based nothing more than sexual lusts, or in in Greek, “eros.” Homosexual persons should abstain from all sexual activity and be chaste. Their actions are immoral and sinful. God forbids it and it will never be accepted. Homosexual behavior is a sin.

As far how we ought to treat individual who have same sex attraction. I will sum up my view based from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

**2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition. **

 

[Realist]

Homosexual marriage produces no life. It serves gives a false since of what a love is. It is based nothing more than sexual lusts, or in in Greek, “eros.”

Your religion teaches you that homosexuality is wrong. That is what it is. There’s no point in wading into that topic, but why do you think homosexual marriage is based only on sexual lust? I mean, that just doesn’t make sense. Do other people here believe what Manny said, too?

 

[DanteAlighieri]

Your religion teaches you that homosexuality is wrong. That is what it is. There’s no point in wading into that topic, but why do you think homosexual marriage is based only on sexual lust? I mean, that just doesn’t make sense. Do other people here believe what Manny said, too?

Sexual intimacy is virtuous and right only in the context of a valid marriage. It is the consummation of a life-long self giving; it mirrors physically what the couple does spiritually.

Any other use of sex is inherently lustful, because it is the use of sex for purposes other than those for which it is intended or outside of its only acceptable context.

There is no such thing as homosexual marriage – it is an oxymoron. Thus, homosexual sex – no matter how much affection is involved – is inherently lustful.

Peace,
Dante

 

[Realist]

Sexual intimacy is virtuous and right only in the context of a valid marriage. It is the consummation of a life-long self giving; it mirrors physically what the couple does spiritually.

Any other use of sex is inherently lustful, because it is the use of sex for purposes other than those for which it is intended or outside of its only acceptable context.

There is no such thing as homosexual marriage – it is an oxymoron. Thus, homosexual sex – no matter how much affection is involved – is inherently lustful.

Peace,
Dante

I was using the terminology of the previous poster when I mentioned “homosexual marriage”. I would have been perfectly happy saying homosexual relationships. It’s one thing to disagree with homosexual relationships. It’s another thing to deny they are predicated on more than mere lust. That’s all.

 

[Sophia86]

Your religion teaches you that homosexuality is wrong. That is what it is. There’s no point in wading into that topic, but why do you think homosexual marriage is based only on sexual lust? I mean, that just doesn’t make sense. Do other people here believe what Manny said, too?

Your religion teaches you that homosexuality is wrong. That is what it is. There’s no point in wading into that topic, but why do you think homosexual marriage is based only on sexual lust? I mean, that just doesn’t make sense. Do other people here believe what Manny said, too?

Although I do not agree that being homosexual is wrong, I do wholeheartedlyshare in Realists query here regarding if Manny and any others believe that gay marriage is based only on sexual lust? Surely if two people were purely displaying lust for one another, that would mean they would likely not bother with wanting to get married anyway. Surely to get married would denote two people in love in the binding pursuit of happiness? Does Manny therefore not think that two people of the same sex can even be in love, or be allowed the right to civil marriage?

NB - The constitutional guarantee of the pursuit of happiness, should mean that everybody should have the right to marry the person of their choice and be happy in that marriage.

Despite this, homosexuals are not being treated with respect. We are being told that our relationships are disordered, that they are not worthy of the same legal certification of others. See mannys post:

mannyfit75:

Homosexual marriage produces no life. It serves gives a false since of what a love is. It is based nothing more than sexual lusts, or in in Greek, “eros.” Homosexual persons should abstain from all sexual activity and be chaste. Their actions are immoral and sinful. God forbids it and it will never be accepted. Homosexual behavior is a sin.

As far how we ought to treat individual who have same sex attraction. I will sum up my view based from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

Marriage is not a new concept. It has also been declared a civil right by multiple court rulings. There is a difference in the rights of heterosexuals and homosexuals, many simply seem too narrow-minded to see it - The right to marry the person they are in love with. Mannyfit this has nothing to do with lust…

First point: Despite comments from posts such as DanteAlighieri 's saying “homosexual sex – no matter how much affection is involved – is inherently lustful.” Marriage has been deemed a fundamental right by multiple court rulings. Clearly this “lust” concept is not shared by all.

But lets get to my second point: the constitution guarantees the pursuit of happiness. Do you think that happiness can be found by marrying someone that one does not love? This is the key point.

 

[Mannyfit75]

Although I do not agree that being homosexual is wrong, I do wholeheartedlyshare in Realists query here regarding if Manny and any others believe that gay marriage is based only on sexual lust? Surely if two people were purely displaying lust for one another, that would mean they would likely not bother with wanting to get married anyway. Surely to get married would denote two people in love in the binding pursuit of happiness? Does Manny therefore not think that two people of the same sex can even be in love, or be allowed the right to civil marriage?[/QIUOTE]

Gay marriage promotes homosexual behavior and make it normal, which is not true. Homosexual behavior have been condemned numerous times in Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers since the creation of the Church 2,000 yrs ago.

Marriage is only between a man and a woman. Any lust either it be heterosexual or homosexual is an sin in the eyes of God;.

NB - The constitutional guarantee of the pursuit of happiness, should mean that everybody should have the right to marry the person of their choice and be happy in that marriage.

The Law of God is above the Constitution. The state may issue gay marriage licenses but the God nor his Church will ever consider it valid.

Despite this, homosexuals are not being treated with respect. We are being told that our relationships are disordered, that they are not worthy of the same legal certification of others. See mannys post:

Marriage is not a new concept. It has also been declared a civil right by multiple court rulings. There is a difference in the rights of heterosexuals and homosexuals, many simply seem too narrow-minded to see it - The right to marry the person they are in love with. Mannyfit this has nothing to do with lust…

First point: Despite comments from posts such as DanteAlighieri 's saying “homosexual sex – no matter how much affection is involved – is inherently lustful.” Marriage has been deemed a fundamental right by multiple court rulings. Clearly this “lust” concept is not shared by all.

But lets get to my second point: the constitution guarantees the pursuit of happiness. Do you think that happiness can be found by marrying someone that one does not love? This is the key point.

Let me put it this way, man does not have the RIGHT to redefine marriage. It is God’s gift to us. Marriage is the union between a man and a woman. It sole purpose is for the pro-creation and promote the survival of the human race.

I’ll inform you what the Vatican teachings says concerning same sex unions.

**5. Faced with the fact of homosexual unions, civil authorities adopt different positions. At times they simply tolerate the phenomenon; at other times they advocate legal recognition of such unions, under the pretext of avoiding, with regard to certain rights, discrimination against persons who live with someone of the same sex. In other cases, they favour giving homosexual unions legal equivalence to marriage properly so-called, along with the legal possibility of adopting children.

Where the government’s policy is de facto tolerance and there is no explicit legal recognition of homosexual unions, it is necessary to distinguish carefully the various aspects of the problem. Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons. Therefore, discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.

In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.**

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html

 

[Mannyfit75]

**III. ARGUMENTS FROM REASON AGAINST LEGAL
RECOGNITION OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS

1. To understand why it is necessary to oppose legal recognition of homosexual unions, ethical considerations of different orders need to be taken into consideration.

From the order of right reason

The scope of the civil law is certainly more limited than that of the moral law,(11) but civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its binding force on conscience.(12) Every humanly-created law is legitimate insofar as it is consistent with the natural moral law, recognized by right reason, and insofar as it respects the inalienable rights of every person.(13) Laws in favour of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason because they confer legal guarantees, analogous to those granted to marriage, to unions between persons of the same sex. Given the values at stake in this question, the State could not grant legal standing to such unions without failing in its duty to promote and defend marriage as an institution essential to the common good.

It might be asked how a law can be contrary to the common good if it does not impose any particular kind of behaviour, but simply gives legal recognition to a de facto reality which does not seem to cause injustice to anyone. In this area, one needs first to reflect on the difference between homosexual behaviour as a private phenomenon and the same behaviour as a relationship in society, foreseen and approved by the law, to the point where it becomes one of the institutions in the legal structure. This second phenomenon is not only more serious, but also assumes a more wide-reaching and profound influence, and would result in changes to the entire organization of society, contrary to the common good. Civil laws are structuring principles of man’s life in society, for good or for ill. They “play a very important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behaviour”.(14) Lifestyles and the underlying presuppositions these express not only externally shape the life of society, but also tend to modify the younger generation’s perception and evaluation of forms of behaviour. Legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.

From the biological and anthropological order

1. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involv- ing a grave lack of respect for human dignity,(15) does nothing to alter this inadequacy.

Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.

As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.

**

 

[Mannyfit75]

**From the social order

1. Society owes its continued survival to the family, founded on marriage. The inevitable consequence of legal recognition of homosexual unions would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in its legal status, an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to heterosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children. If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good. By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties.

The principles of respect and non-discrimination cannot be invoked to support legal recognition of homosexual unions. Differentiating between persons or refusing social recognition or benefits is unacceptable only when it is contrary to justice.(16) The denial of the social and legal status of marriage to forms of cohabitation that are not and cannot be marital is not opposed to justice; on the contrary, justice requires it.

Nor can the principle of the proper autonomy of the individual be reasonably invoked. It is one thing to maintain that individual citizens may freely engage in those activities that interest them and that this falls within the common civil right to freedom; it is something quite different to hold that activities which do not represent a significant or positive contribution to the development of the human person in society can receive specific and categorical legal recognition by the State. Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase.

From the legal order

1. Because married couples ensure the succession of generations and are therefore eminently within the public interest, civil law grants them institutional recognition. Homosexual unions, on the other hand, do not need specific attention from the legal standpoint since they do not exercise this function for the common good.

Nor is the argument valid according to which legal recognition of homosexual unions is necessary to avoid situations in which cohabiting homosexual persons, simply because they live together, might be deprived of real recognition of their rights as persons and citizens. In reality, they can always make use of the provisions of law – like all citizens from the standpoint of their private autonomy – to protect their rights in matters of common interest. It would be gravely unjust to sacrifice the common good and just laws on the family in order to protect personal goods that can and must be guaranteed in ways that do not harm the body of society.(17)
**

 

[Mannyfit75]

**IV. POSITIONS OF CATHOLIC POLITICIANS
WITH REGARD TO LEGISLATION IN FAVOUR
OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS

1. If it is true that all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians. Faced with legislative proposals in favour of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are to take account of the following ethical indications.

When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.

When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is already in force, the Catholic politician must oppose it in the ways that are possible for him and make his opposition known; it is his duty to witness to the truth. If it is not possible to repeal such a law completely, the Catholic politician, recalling the indications contained in the Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, “could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality”, on condition that his “absolute personal opposition” to such laws was clear and well known and that the danger of scandal was avoided.(18) This does not mean that a more restrictive law in this area could be considered just or even acceptable; rather, it is a question of the legitimate and dutiful attempt to obtain at least the partial repeal of an unjust law when its total abrogation is not possible at the moment.

CONCLUSION

1. The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.

**

 

[Mannyfit75]

Reality:

Your religion teaches you that homosexuality is wrong. That is what it is. There’s no point in wading into that topic, but why do you think homosexual marriage is based only on sexual lust? I mean, that just doesn’t make sense. Do other people here believe what Manny said, too?

Who says the teachings of Jesus Christ’s Church is wrong? Do you have that authority? Are you above God? You who are a finite creature who’s understanding in the universe is very limited. As far as I am concern God establish a Church to give us moral understanding on how human beings ought to behave according to the precepts he made in accordance with the Ten Commandments. Since the beginning, God creae us male and female, he did not created “Adam to be another another man.”

I believe homosexual marriage personally as beyond lusts. I believe it is “special rights” mainly for monetary benefits. Society have no right to redefine marriage. Many man often use the excuse, “I love my partner I should have the right to marry whomsever I please.”

Really? Now, if homosexuals are allowed to marry, why not allow cousins who are closely related to marry? Or how about brothers and sisters? Or a man who loves his pets. Should we allow them to marry too? Believe me, there are a lot of people who think love.

I recall a former homosexual David MacDonald who uncle said to him once, “I am bisexual. I love men and boys.” Should we allow him to marry boys?

Since humanity came into this world millions of years ago, societies have always marriage as between a man and a woman. You can go to the Amazon jungle and see tribes who’s culture have a family consisting of mother and father, their childrens, their grandparents.

Another thing, we might as well, legalized polygamy.

 

[Mannyfit75]

Jimmy Akin wrote an article about this issue. Consider this article:

The fight about “gay marriage” isn’t going away any time soon. Even in an age of activist judges, it is ultimately the votes of ordinary Americans that will determine whether “gay marriage” is forced upon the nation. If pro-family individuals do not argue the issue well and allow pro-homosexual rhetoric to remain effectively unchallenged, we will lose this fight.

We have lost much ground already. Homosexuality is far more accepted by society today than it was just a few years ago. It is common for television shows not only to have gay characters but to have gay main characters or even to center entirely around homosexuals. There are gay cable networks launching. Bookstores have “Gay and Lesbian” sections. And public schools are indoctrinating a generation of American youth with the idea that homosexuality is an acceptable “alternative lifestyle.”

How has all this been achieved?

The Strategy

Basically, through a single strategy: Framing the homosexual lifestyle as a civil rights issue. Homosexual activists observed the gains achieved for black Americans by the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, followed by the gains achieved for women by the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and ’70s. They want the similar benefits, and so they are following the same strategy.

At the core of this strategy is portraying homosexuals as victims in search of fairness and equality. Americans are suckers for those three things. We loathe victimization, esteem fairness, and insist on equality. Any group that is represented as victims in search of fairness and equality has a recipe for achieving its goals in American society.

As long as the debate is framed in these terms, pro-family advocates will lose. There are no two ways about it. Full acceptance of homosexuality in American society, including “gay marriage,” will be a foregone conclusion.

Source: catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0411bt.asp

 

[Mannyfit75]

Reframing the Debate

The only way to avoid this defeat is to change the terms of the debate. It doesn’t matter how many bad effects of “gay marriage” pro-family advocates point to. Americans have shown that they will accept social evils on the grounds that those perpetrating the evils are “hurting only themselves.” They will even allow their own self-interest to be harmed in order to protect the goods of fairness and equality. Neither does it matter how much human intuition tells the average voter that homosexuality is wrong. We have seen the success of the “I’m personally opposed, but—” strategy in our society.

A key part of getting Americans to partition their own convictions is the victimization dynamic. We don’t want to be victimizers, and we don’t want to be seen as victimizers. Our instincts are on the side of the downtrodden, and we cannot allow ourselves to be portrayed as oppressors. We cannot tolerate that as part of our self-image or our public image, and to avoid it we will partition our personal convictions.

We are now in a time when opponents of gay marriage are being depicted as prejudiced. This tendency will increase. Soon efforts will be made to portray opponents of the gay agenda as the contemporary equivalent of Klansmen and male chauvinist pigs. Once that image of pro-family advocates can be sold to a sizeable enough chunk of the American public, the culture war over homosexuality will be over.

Dark Days

Thereafter, we will enter into a dark time in American history. No matter how much sunshine and prosperity there might be on the surface, a corruption that strikes at the heart of society will have been introduced.

It will be a dark time for the Church as well. The Church’s influence in American society is considerably less than it was fifty years ago. It stood with the civil rights movement, retaining and perhaps even enhancing its influence. But when the claims made by radical feminists began to clash with the Christian faith, its marginalization was accelerated.

Nobody wants to join or remain a member of “the Church of the Klansmen,” and if advocates of homosexual marriage can sell the American public on the idea that faithful Catholics are the modern equivalent of KKK bigots, then the Church will be in for hard times.

The good news is that this eventually will pass. Though the Church may lose many members, the core faithful will remain and—due to their fidelity—within a few generations they will begin to outpopulate the secular mainstream of America, including the advocates of homosexual unions. The same will be happening to our Evangelical brethren, and eventually there will be a Christian renaissance in America.

But it will not come in our lifetimes, and, if we lose the battle now, we will have a long, hard row to hoe before that happens. It is imperative, therefore, that Catholics and other persons of good will learn to debate the homosexual issue in an effective manner. Now.

The key to this is reframing the debate as something other than a civil rights issue, and the key to that is identifying its central issue.

 

[Mannyfit75]

The Central Issue

Here is the key point we must make: Homosexual marriage is impossible.

Over and over, pro-family debaters fail to make this point. They allow the question to be discussed of whether society should redefine marriage to include homosexual unions.

This concedes to the other side that society can redefine marriage if it wants to, that it has the ability to do so, and this is a fatal concession. As long as marriage is conceived of as a social construct that society can redefine, the rhetoric of fairness and equal access will ensure that pro-family debaters will lose the day.

The only way to avoid this is to refuse to make the concession, to point out that society does not have the ability to redefine marriage because it is not a social construct. It is something that flows from human nature itself.

Society can’t enable men to marry men or women to marry women any more than we can enable men to turn into ducks or women to turn into geese. Denying people these abilities is not a matter of fairness or equal access. It is not a matter of discrimination or bigotry. We simply do not have the ability.

This can be seen by considering the nature of marriage.

You don’t have to appeal to anything religious in order to make this point. The argument can be constructed entirely along the lines of natural law, avoiding the “separation of Church and state” canard.

What Marriage Is

It is obvious to all that sex is about reproduction. That’s what it’s for in animals, and that’s what it’s for in us. We may find it enjoyable, but from a biological perspective, that is motivation to get us to engage in it and thus reproduce our species.

Sex is about babies, and there is an important fact about babies: They are helpless and require an enormous amount of care and attention. It’s a full-time job more than one person can handle. Even when they grow out of the infant stage, children still need two parents to take care of them and provide for the family.

Children also take a long time to mature. They won’t be biologically mature for around two decades, and they may not be socially mature and able to serve as functioning, independent members of society for even longer. When more children come along, that only prolongs the period of investment parents have to make in raising their offspring.

Raising children is a multi-decade effort that needs the involvement of both parents. The fact that human offspring require so much care and take so long to mature means that their parents need to be joined in a stable union. This union even extends beyond the childrearing years, because by the time the offspring are grown the parents are in their declining years and need to start taking care of each other (as well as receiving help from their offspring).

Thus, as the Code of Canon Law points out, “marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation” (CIC 1096 §1). This is the reality of what marriage is and what it has been understood to be in all human societies in history, even those that have been otherwise tolerant of homosexuality.

Human nature thus leads to sex, which leads to offspring, which leads to the reality of childrearing, which leads to marriage—an institution found in every human culture and understood in the way just described.

 

[Mannyfit75]

A Legal Fiction

Given the fact that marriage is a reality of human nature, we cannot change it. We don’t have the ability to alter human nature.

The most society could do is institute homosexual marriage as a legal fiction. That is to say, we could create laws requiring those in society to treat those in homosexual unions as if they were married. People could be required to refer to homosexual unions as “marriages,” to refer to people in such unions as “spouses,” to alter forms so that people in such unions can present themselves as such, and to give them the status of married people regarding adoption, housing, taxes, insurance, divorce, and inheritance.

But while the law could be rewritten to coerce society into treating people in homosexual unions as if they were married, this would not give them the reality of marriage. It would not change the nature of their union to correspond to what marriage actually is. All society would be doing is playing a word game, stretching the term marriage so that it no longer picks out a particular human reality that has existed and will continue to exist—unaltered—no matter what word games are played around it.

Why Marriage?

One might concede what we have said and yet argue that society should stretch the term marriage in the way just described. What merit would this argument have?

Not much.

The reason that societies recognize the natural law institution of marriage and treat it differently from other unions is that doing so is to their benefit. Marriage alone, of all possible unions that people may form (partnerships, friendships, tribal alliances, etc.), gives to society the one thing it needs most to survive: new members. Marriage alone is capable of generating and bringing to maturity productive new members for a society and thus enabling it to continue. No other union does this.

It is theoretically possible to sever the link between the generating of offspring and the raising of them—the latter being something of which those in a homosexual union would be at least semi-capable—but why should any society want to engage in such a dubious, cumbersome workaround? The union of marriage does both by nature. It’s the way humans and human societies are designed to work.

Because marriage uniquely benefits societies and enables them to continue, societies extend to marriage special recognition and benefits in order to encourage it. The more stable and successful marriages that exist in society, the stronger it is and the better it can survive.

What would be the effects of creating a legal fiction that forces society to extend the same recognition and benefits to other unions—one that, like homosexual marriage, do not contribute to society in the way marriage does?

The Effects

Here—in this framework—is where the negative effects of homosexuality and homosexual unions come in.

For a start, extending recognition and benefits to homosexual unions would encourage them, just as they do marriage. This would result in more people engaging in a dangerous and destructive lifestyle that is a net cost to society.

The lifespan of homosexuals is shorter than that of heterosexuals (and it was so even before the advent of AIDS). This lifestyle results in more diseases, more psychological problems, more suicides, and more general misery than in heterosexuals. Increasing social acceptance of homosexuality has not changed this; it is intrinsic to the behavior. Further, since homosexual unions are notoriously unstable, the cost that society already bears through divorce would increase as the courts are flooded with cases of homosexual divorce.

The problems of homosexuals don’t just affect themselves. They affect others, including adopted children of homosexuals and members of the community at large. Homosexuality is a net cost to society. Like other self-destructive lifestyles, such as alcoholism or drug addition, homosexuality places a greater burden on the community, and it does so without returning tangible benefit to society in the form of new members.

Another result of forcing society to treat homosexual unions as marriages would be the devaluation of actual marriage. The institution of marriage has been devalued in our culture, creating a wave of single-parent families, unwed mothers, economic hardships, abortions, divorces, juvenile delinquency, and misery for many. Devaluing marriage further by detaching the term from the reality of marriage and applying it to non-productive homosexual unions would only further these trends.

There are thus ample reasons for society not to force people to treat homosexual unions as marriage.

For a society to be successful and function smoothly, its social policy needs to be in line with reality, and treating homosexual unions as something they are not will defeat that goal.

Winning the Debate

Putting matters in these terms has a much better chance of carrying the debate over homosexual unions than strategies currently in use. It brings the discussion back from abstract, sentimental considerations and reminds us of why we treat marriage differently in the first place.

It also makes clear to people what is really being asked of them. We are not talking about being nice to gay people. We are talking about forcing people to treat homosexuals as if they were in a different kind of union than they are, about forcing on the public a social policy that is out of touch with reality.

People may want to be nice to gays, but they don’t want themselves and their children to be forced to behave in a way contrary to reality. Neither do they want themselves and their children to be forced to bear the costs that a social policy like this would create.

It is on these terms, if any, that the debate can be won.

catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0411bt.asp

 

[Mannyfit75]

I like to post one more article to clearly the issue of gay marriages.

Source: catholic.com/library/gay_marriage.asp

**Gay Marriage

Copyright © 2004 Catholic Answers, Inc. All rights reserved. Except for quotations, no part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, uploading to the Internet, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Catholic Answers, Inc.

PART I: INTRODUCTION

Do Catholics oppose same-sex marriage because they think sex is dirty? Do they not want others to have fun?

The Catholic Church takes a very high view of marriage and human sexuality. As the account of Genesis shows, marriage and sexuality were created by God and given to mankind as gifts for our benefit. Scripture records God’s statement that “it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18). As a result, “a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Some may forego the good of marriage to serve a higher calling (cf. Matt. 19:10-12), but it is a good nevertheless.

Marriage is a conduit through which God’s grace flows to the couple and their children.1 The Catholic Church understands marriage between a baptized man and woman to be a sacrament, a visible sign of the grace that God gives them to help them live their lives here and now so as to be able to join him in eternity.2 For Catholics, marriage is social as well as religious, but its religious.aspects are very important. The Bible repeatedly compares the relationship between man and wife to that between God and Israel (cf. Hos. 9:1) or between Christ and his Church (cf. Eph. 5:21-32). For Catholics, marriage is a holy vocation.

Since the Church sees marriage as holy, it believes it must be treated with reverence. It also recognizes that marriage is basic to the health of society and therefore a public institution that must be defended against harm.

Marriage is a public institution. Consequently, proposals that could harm the institution of marriage must be subjected to the same sort of objective analysis that we give any public policy question. Marriage is not just a private matter of emotion between two people. On the contrary, its success or failure has measurable impact on all of society. Rational analysis yields solid, objective reasons for limiting marriage to one man and one woman-reasons anyone can agree with on purely secular grounds.

Our analysis will show that prohibition of homosexual marriage is not just a “fairness” issue, nor does it require anyone to “force religious dogma” down anyone else’s throat. Nor is it a manifestation of hatred, as proponents sometimes suggest.

How do you answer the charge that the Catholic Church or opposition to same-sex marriage is “homophobic”?

The term homophobic refers to fear of homosexuality. This term often is used by homosexual activists to end rational discussion of the issue by accusing their opponents of having an irrational fear. This is unjust. One can disagree with and be critical of a behavior without having a fear of it. When the charge of “homophobia” is made, it signifies that those making the accusation do not have reasoned responses to their critics, so they switch to portraying their critics as irrational rather than responding to their arguments.

While the Church does recognize homosexuality as disordered, this does not mean that the Church is uncompassionate to those who suffer from the disorder. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies . . . must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided."3

We have to remember that all people are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated as such, no matter what their behavior. We make a distinction between person and behavior, sometimes expressed as “hate the sin, love the sinner.” The Catechism describes homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered”: "They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved."4

So we deplore acts of discrimination or unkindness against homosexual persons, but we insist on speaking the truth about the nature of homosexual acts. This is not a phobia. It is compassion together with frank recognition of the nature of a disordered condition.

The Catholic Church opposes homosexual activity because it is intrinsically disordered, an abuse of our human nature. But legalizing same-sex marriage would also have harmful effects on society, as we will see in the remainder of this special report.**

 

[Mannyfit75]

**PART II: HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE

What kind of impact does heterosexual marriage have on society?

Recently, Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher reviewed the published literature on marriage and presented their findings in a book entitled The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially.5 The evidence is clear. Married people are better off than single or divorced people. The better the marriage, the stronger the “marriage effect” on physical and mental health, longevity, and prosperity. Let’s look at this in detail.

Thirty years ago, Harold Morowitz of Yale observed that divorce is as hazardous to a man’s health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.6 The same is true for women. Unmarried women are 50 percent more likely to die in any given year than are married women; unmarried men are five times more likely to die in any given year than married men at any age.7 Being unmarried shortens a man’s life by ten full years.8 Marriage is a major public health issue, because its absence shortens people’s lives.

Unmarried people are sick more often, stay longer in the hospital than married people with similar problems, and are two and a half times more likely to end up in a nursing home.9 Unmarried people are even several times more likely to get the common cold than are married people.10 That probably happens because unhappiness weakens the immune system.11

Scientists have shown that these health advantages are not merely accidental. Studies consistently show that marriage itself improves people’s health.12 Sick people who married got healthier. Healthy people who married got healthier still. Marriage itself made the difference, and the happier the marriage, the greater the health advantage. The health benefits of marriage have been observed around the world.13

If marriage has such benefits, why not let same-sex couples share them?

Heterosexual marriage has these benefits, and it is what the scientific studies have looked at. There is no data showing similar benefits for same-sex couples. We don’t know whether same-sex couples would enjoy any of these benefits, and there are reasons to think they would not. This is a subject we will deal with more in Part IV of this special report. For now we are looking at the benefits and public impact of heterosexual marriage.

What is it about marriage that makes people healthier?

Psychologists have discovered several factors: On the trivial end, single men do stupid things. They drink too much, take drugs, get into fights, drive when drunk, and take unnecessary risks. And when they marry, they do fewer stupid things. Women benefit less from this effect of marriage, because single women do fewer stupid things than single men do.14

Another minor factor improving the health of married people is having a spouse who monitors their health. This benefits men more than women,15 since men tend to be more careless of their health than women are, but the biggest reason for the health advantage of marriage-a reason that benefits both men and women-is the emotional satisfaction of a happy and fulfilling marriage. Studies consistently show that as marital happiness increases, so do objective measurements of health and longevity for both husbands and wives. Stress levels, blood pressure, cholesterol, immune function-many objective measures of physical health improve as marriage improves.16

These advantages work to the benefit of both men and women. There were studies in the 1970s that suggested that marriage benefits men but hurts women, but those studies have long since been repudiated, even though some marriage and family textbooks still quote them. Badly executed studies die hard, it would seem, when they serve an anti-family agenda. But all the modern evidence shows that marriage greatly benefits the health and longevity of both men and women.17**

 

[Mannyfit75]

**

Are these the only factors by which marriage produces greater health?

No. Psychologists tell us that much of the health and longevity benefit of marriage comes because married people have a greater sense of life purpose. Married people are happier, more optimistic, and more energetic than singles, and they are less likely to become depressed.18 Proponents of same-sex marriage have sought to debunk these statistics as self-fulfilling prophecies, reflecting that happy people are more likely to get married than unhappy people. But careful studies have found that marriage, in itself, improves mental health just as it improves physical health.19 It isn’t just avoiding “stupid bachelor behavior” or making more trips to the doctor that is at work here. Marriage itself makes people healthier and happier and therefore allows them to live longer.

Married people have sex considerably more often than single people do, and they enjoy it more. Studies consistently show that both married men and married women enjoy sex much more than single people do-especially single women, who, in most studies, don’t seem to be having much fun.20 But it isn’t just women having better sex: Studies show that men find sex in a committed relationship far more satisfying than casual sex. Despite all the myths and television shows, men value commitment nearly as much as women do. Researchers also have observed that sexual infidelity hampers sexual satisfaction and general happiness in both sexes.21 Fidelity makes you happier and improves your marriage, and, as we have seen, people in happier marriages live longer.

Heterosexual couples who cohabitate-who live together without marriage-do not enjoy most of these benefits of marriage.22 Their lack of commitment to one another and their preference for autonomy and separateness deprives them of most of the emotional and sexual benefits of marriage and most of its health and longevity advantages. Marriage matters.

What other benefits does marriage have?

Marriage, unlike cohabitation, also makes people richer.23 After men marry, they work more productively and make more money than they did when they were single.24 Women also become more productive workers when they marry and earn more money than they did when they were single,25 although they do leave the workforce from time to time to bear and raise children. Marriage overall has a positive financial impact on both sexes.26

Married couples tend to specialize, dividing household tasks according to the talents and interests of each spouse. Specialization makes them more efficient, so they have more time for each other, for parenting, or for other activities.27 Further, since two can live almost as cheaply as one, household overhead decreases with marriage, and savings increase.28**

 

[Mannyfit75]

**Many people fail at marriage. What does it take to be successful?

Social science, philosophy, and common sense have discerned a number of requirements for successful marriage. People have needs that must be satisfied if they are to be happy. These needs are not just a matter of taste; they are built into our nature. They are universal and change little from one person or culture to the next.

One universal feature of human existence is the need for relationship. The expression of this need may vary from culture to culture and between men and women, but the need seems universal. Man is a social creature. We were created to be in deep and loving unity with other persons. Our need for unity is intense, and it is not easily satisfied. It insists on a profound relationship and will not settle for less. But relationships come in different intensities, different degrees of significance, and different depths of satisfaction. Belonging to a club is nice, but it’s not deeply satisfying. Having friends is important, and being part of a community helps our sense of well-being, but none of these types of relationships are intense enough to satisfy the deepest needs of our souls.

We can get there only through profound loving union with one other person-and only one other person. The deepest relationship can involve only two people. It cannot be the work of a committee. Not everyone is called to marriage, but everyone has the desire for deep relationship. And the deepest relationship can be between only two persons. If two persons wish to merge their individual “I’s” into a shared “we,” they must exclude all others. Introduce a third person into their union and you sow competition and jealousy, and you reap disunity. You destroy the union. Only two can tango. Three step on each others’ toes.

To obtain maximum satisfaction, one must build an exclusive relationship with one other person that excludes all others. There is no other way to do it. Affection spread among many people may give short-term pleasure, but such relationships necessarily will be superficial and not satisfying in the long run. And as we have seen, superficial relationships are less fulfilling than committed ones. This is why marriage must be exclusive, that is, with just one other person. There is nothing arbitrary about this need for exclusivity: Our nature as human persons requires it.

After couples are married, they continue to deepen their union. That takes a while. The mature union achieved by people who have been married for years does not happen overnight. It develops between them as each is free to reveal his or her true self and to find that true self accepted and loved. It requires a lot of confidence to risk self-revelation. There’s always the fear that your loved one may stop loving you. That’s why so many people put up “a good front” to impress a person of the opposite sex.

One of the first shocks in marriage is to discover that your spouse is not quite the person you had imagined. A wife finds that Prince Charming doesn’t really wear shining armor around the house nor ride a white charger; worse yet, he’s got some amazing and disgusting habits. A husband finds that Cinderella’s foot doesn’t quite fit the glass slipper, and, worse yet, she’s got a terrible temper. So there are reasons people hide behind a mask. But to grow closer as a couple they have to be willing to risk self-revelation. That takes a lot of confidence in the relationship.**

 

[Mannyfit75]

**There is a price to that level of confidence: Each partner has to be sure that the other is totally committed. Commitment has two features: intensity and permanence. A halfhearted commitment will not do. Neither will a temporary one. Unless each spouse is confident that the other is committed unconditionally and for life, neither will trust enough to risk self-revelation. But without that, a couple will never achieve mature marital unity.

To be successful, marriage needs to be exclusive, unconditional, and permanent. Without these qualities, it will not thrive. We have not chosen those three features arbitrarily. People know that love must be exclusive, unconditional, and permanent in order to trust enough. Psychologists never tire of telling us that marriages die for lack of exclusiveness, unconditional mutual acceptance, or commitment to permanence. Couples who fail to develop these features often fail at marriage.

There is also a fourth quality needed for long-term success. It also is dictated by the nature of the human person. That feature is sexual complementarity. For the deepest unity, you need one man and one woman.

What is the evidence that sexual complementarity is necessary?

There is both positive and negative evidence. We will consider the positive evidence here and discuss the negative evidence in Part IV. On the positive front, explanations for the need for sexual complementarity vary, but experience from every world culture shows it to be true. The Russian existentialist philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev tried to explain the need for sexual complementarity by saying that loneliness is part of the human condition and that loneliness occurs because, deep down, we all realize that neither a man by himself nor a woman by herself is biologically completely human. Each lacks the perfections and capabilities of the opposite sex, and in that sense each is incomplete-and lonely-without the other.29

Men and women are different and in many ways complementary. The differences between man and woman are obvious to all but the most ideologically blinded deconstructionists. Men and women have been found by psychologists in every culture to differ in aggression and general activity level, types of cognitive strength, sensory sensitivity, and sexual behavior.

These differences matter both spiritually and physically, for without the complementarity between a man and a woman on all these levels, the deepest forms of union are not possible. The unity possible to two men or two women will be necessarily lopsided, both spiritually and anatomically, and therefore ultimately unsatisfying. Two men together cannot capture the fullness of human personhood, and neither can two women; for that, you need one man and one woman. However exclusive, unconditional and permanent same-sex relationships may.aspire to be, they lack the complementarity that the deepest fulfillment requires. This fact may explain some of the amazing sexual behavior in the homosexual subculture.

Sexual complementarity between man and woman makes possible another feature of marriage: the giving of life. The love between man and woman is designed to call new human life into existence and in so doing make the shared life of the couple more abundantly fulfilling. It does not always produce new life, but that is what it is designed to do. So marriage, to succeed, must be exclusive, permanent, unconditional, and open to new life.**

 

[Mannyfit75]

**What about childless heterosexual couples? How does an infertile heterosexual marriage differ from a same-sex marriage?

One big difference is that the heterosexual couple enjoys sexual complementarity, and the fullness that brings into their relationship, even if they cannot have children. Though the situation of an infertile couple is very different, there is a disturbing parallel to same-sex marriage in the situation of couples who simply choose not to have children.

Such couples are still able to have sex, the fullest physical expression of love between husband and wife. But they are doing something that profoundly disturbs the nature of the sexual act. Sexuality has two.aspects: the procreative (bringing forth children) and the unitive (strengthening the union of the couple). Artificially separating the unitive from the procreative brings discord to a marriage, distorts the relationship between husband and wife, and ends up harming their unity as spouses.

Pope John Paul II explains this with what he calls the “language of the body.” He observes that in the sexual act, man and woman implicitly give themselves totally to one another. That is what their bodies are saying, both symbolically and literally. Sexual expression, by its very nature, implies total gift of self to the other. The language of the body says, "I give myself to you completely, without reservation or condition."30 But sometimes that statement is a lie. Sometimes one or both do not give themselves completely to the other but instead use the other selfishly, as a pleasure object. Treating the other as an object is divisive rather than unitive.

There are several ways men and women can reduce one another to the status of object. Sex between couples who are not married and therefore do not bring a total commitment to their union are, in the Holy Father’s terminology, telling a lie with their bodies, because their bodies speak a language of total, unconditional, and permanent self-giving when in fact they are doing nothing of the sort.31 In that sense, their sexual expression becomes a lie, because it misrepresents their relationship. Regardless of their feelings for each other, their sexual expression promises more than it objectively delivers.

Fornication and adultery are not the only ways couples can lie with their bodies. Married couples who are committed to exclusive, permanent, and unconditional love may also tell a lie with their bodies when they separate the procreative aspect of sex from the unitive through contraception. Here, the failure to give oneself fully is more subtle but nonetheless real. Deliberately frustrating the procreative.aspect of a sexual act creates a condition that makes self-giving only partial and reduces the spouse, in some degree, to a pleasure object used for selfish purposes.

This does not mean that sex can be truly self-giving only during fertile parts of a woman’s cycle. The Church has never taught that couples must have as many children as possible. Rather, it means that interference with fertility both arises out of spousal selfishness and increases it. The Church approves natural family planning, in which couples abstain during fertile periods when they prayerfully have determined that there is a need to avoid pregnancy. In these cases the spouses are not separating the unitive and procreative.aspects of a sexual act; they are simply refraining from performing the act. Similarly, sex after menopause or when suffering from other forms of infertility do not divide the unitive from the procreative. The couple’s act is still ordered toward procreation; it is simply that procreation will not occur.32

Are you saying married people have to have children or it’s not a full-fledged marriage?

No. The key to understanding this teaching is to realize that the deliberate separation of the unitive from the procreative.aspects of the sexual act makes sexual self-giving conditional, which is contrary to the unconditional requirement of successful marriage. Doing so reduces the spouse to the level of an object, whose body is manipulated artificially for selfish pleasure. Pope Paul VI predicted in Humanae Vitae, back in 1968, that contraception would produce marital discord.33 Experience of the last thirty years shows that he was right: Studies show that the divorce rates of couples practicing natural family planning is less than 1 percent, far lower than couples using contraception, whose divorce rates run between 13 percent and 50 percent in numerous studies.34

The procreative, life-giving.aspect of marital love necessarily implies that sex will be between a man and a woman. Sex between two men or two women is never life-giving, for it is biologically incapable of producing children or enhancing the health and well-being of the participants (see Part IV).

Thus, marital love must be exclusive, unconditional, permanent, and open to life. The absence of any of these qualities constitutes an abuse of human sexuality. It also affects society adversely, as we will now see.**