Are romantic homosexual relationships moral or immoral?

[Dakota_Roberts]

Dakota - sorry about your computer

Please cite what?

I’ve been coughing for hours and have quite a wheeze that won’t go away. I’m going to emergency because I don’t think I will make it until urgent care opens 6 hours from now. To be continued…

It was long and had images illustrating pretty much every concept (I can only have 6000 characters a post, but a pictures worth a thousand words right?)

please cite what document and where from the Council of Trent where they “declared infallibly the ONLY purpose of sex in marriage is procreative”

I’m very sorry for you, I’ll pray a rosary for your health

PS, your name kind of oozed Pole, (Jaroslav is a common Slavic name, but having the v as a w is rather Polish, it just sounds like the l has a slant too)

 

[x1980x]

The entire concept of a romantic friendship is a difficult one for me to fathom. Maybe it’s from my upbringing here in the west, but the thought that two people can kiss, cuddle, and sleep together and only be ‘friends’ is a difficult one for me. I know for sure that my wife would not consider it such if I were to kiss, cuddle, hold hands and sleep with another woman. I just find the entire concept… a difficult one.

It’s the 20th and 21st century speaking. There’s an older concept of a romantic friendship that can involve a great deal of physical and emotional intimacy that does not involve sex or sexual feelings. Abraham Lincoln is sort of well known for having one with his BFF Joshua Speed. 19th century British and American literature is replete with “bosom friends” - chaste same sex pairings that walk around holding hands and sharing innermost secrets, but DON’T jump into bed for some quick nookie.

From the novel “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, 1857, by Thomas Hughes (This is a “British Boarding School” classic, and a stylistic and thematic predecessor of Harry Potter. It’s available on Project Gutenberg)

"
…
It was evening when the housekeeper summoned him to the sick-room. Arthur was lying on the sofa by the open window, through which the rays of the western sun stole gently, lighting up his white face and golden hair. Tom remembered a German picture of an angel which he knew; often had he thought how transparent and golden and spirit-like it was; and he shuddered, to think how like it Arthur looked, and felt a shock as if his blood had all stopped short, as he realized how near the other world his friend must have been to look like that. Never till that moment had he felt how his little chum had twined himself round his heart-strings, and as he stole gently across the room and knelt down, and put his arm round Arthur’s head on the pillow, felt ashamed and half-angry at his own red and brown face, and the bounding sense of health and power which filled every fibre of his body, and made every movement of mere living a joy to him. He needn’t have troubled himself: it was this very strength and power so different from his own which drew Arthur so to him.

Arthur laid his thin, white hand, on which the blue veins stood out so plainly, on Tom’s great brown fist, and smiled at him; and then looked out of the window again, as if he couldn’t bear to lose a moment of the sunset, into the tops of the great feathery elms, round which the rooks were circling and clanging, returning in flocks from their evening’s foraging parties. The elms rustled, the sparrows in the ivy just outside the window chirped and fluttered about, quarrelling, and making it up again; the rooks, young and old, talked in chorus, and the merry shouts of the boys and the sweet click of the cricket-bats came up cheerily from below.
…
"

They AREN’T gay!

 

[Jaroslaw]

Dakota - Well, I’ve been home from the hospital for a couple hours now, and gotta get back to this before work tomorrow. Thanks for the rosary, but I have a slight hunch the albuterol, prednisone and alflovent helped a lot too. I have never been that short of breath in my life - it is pretty scary! And like an idiot, I drove myself to the hospital.

Apparently I don’t know how to search the internet very well even though I’m on it every day. It seems that there are tons of links to Council of Trent + procreation but when the link is selected, the sample text isn’t there. I can’t even find the Council of Trent to sift through the document myself. However, I will say this - I have read enough from sources that had the imprimatur, and nihil obstat in print form and the Church’s past emphasis on sin sin sin that even if that was not the absolute official teaching, I think probably the vast majority of people understood it to be that way. And the Church wasn’t exactly correcting the wrong impression it was well aware of, much like what I wrote about the policy on Gays getting harsher since 1973.

Yes, Hadrian, I have read the connection of “malakoi” with "effeminate - but again, the point being look how many millions were influenced by that completely wrong definition/translation/interpretation??

X1980X - I had a few very intimate male friendships, with guys who eventually married women, there was nothing sexual between us. I think we were open to the idea of working outside traditional male boundaries which allowed it to occur. I can’t recall if this was mentioned here or not - but in days gone by, life was much harsher, there was no unemployment, standards of living were much lower and death was a commonplace experience, especially for children (no antibiotics or immunizations) and pregnant women. It was very common in the 19th and early 20th centuries for men to have more than one wife, and for only 5 or 6 of 10 children to survive to adulthood. Under these conditions, it is easy to see how intimate friendships could occur. Now I will disagree in a major way about Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed. Granted, with the flowery language etc. of those times and lack of certain evidence we will never know for certain, but one review I read pointed out many many things of which these are only a couple samples: (a) Lincoln was lawyer, and while not rich early on, he hardly was poor enough to need share a bed (b) in the voluminous correspondence after they parted, Lincoln seems excessively interested in Speed’s marital affairs and writes many curious things which seem could ONLY be interpreted in a sexual way.

And darn it, I’m not attractive at all and you would be surprised how many married men have come on to me considering it is either at a completely innocent situation or less innocent, but still unexpected, the occasional straight bar night out. It just gets tiring that the knee jerk response for someone famous or admired “oh no, they could never be Gay.”…

 

[Jaroslaw]

Sorry, the “it” I mean at first is “Sex as procreative in the 1500’'s Council of Trent.”

“more than one wife” later in the post referred to wives commonly died in childbirth.

Dakota, yes, Jaroslaw oozes Polishness, Thank you!

Now, I have a question for you, in rereading one of your previous posts - you went into quite a bit of detail to say same sex people can be attracted, care for each other, love strongly, spiritual relationships are so much more (or can be you might have meant) than sexual ones (I’m only going to say age and to many health have tempered desire for me, but I mostly had self control prior , whatever the case though I won’t be debating that with you) butI have to wonder why it is just the “sex” (or not having it) that is so awful.

Reading all the various interpretation that I have over the years, and I don’t think you can completely dismiss every single pro (loving committed) SSA theologian over the years anymore than you can pretend the Church didn’t have huge controversies in the past that it had to deal with. I don’t think all disputes are caused by evil or the "devil’ or whatever. People come to the table with different viewpoints and different life experiences right?

Heres a novel thought - What if electricity have never been discovered? Would we have the lightbulb, telephone, radio etc. now? No, the discovery completely changed the thought process and (interestingly) two or three people were building on known inventions to come up with the telephone at almost exactly the same time in history. If Mr. Bell was just a coupe weeks later, we’d be talking on the “Gray system” and I think someone in France was only a week behind that. Could this possibly apply to anything else? I don’t know how people can be so 100% sure of things when sex was spoken of so vaguely, how words don’t even mean the same thing for 100 years let alone 2000. A prostitute in 1890 could have just as easily referred to the customer as the seller! I still maintain certain NT references of “unnatural sex” could have just as easily referred to the woman as not being passive. I think what makes loving homosexuality different (in my mind anyway) than all other sins, it just doesn’t compare to murder, stealing etc. People are doing already, just discreetly. I just get so furious when people think because they pass anti-Gay laws that somehow that makes it go away (or do they think because now Gay marriage is legal in Mass that everyone is going to Turn Gay? Hasn’t happened! ) and it is just either mean or hopelessly naive. (And remember, if you start letting people vote on moral issues, they can vote in ways you DON’T want them too if they get to be the majority) I’d also feel better if the Church hadn’t been so sex-negative all these years and took an objective look at all this stuff instead of just piling up justifications of its existing position. Or am I wrong, are there documents and books that do this? Well, I guess this has been beaten to death. Looking forward to responses if any.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

snip

You silly goose, you could have killed yourself on the drive!

full text of the Council of Trent, don’t worry, “it’s over 9000” pages long, it should only take you 42 hours to read

Y’know what, disregarding the fact that Pope Benedict XVI and Monsignor George Gaenswein are both from the same area, have similar theological outlooks and are both intellectual academics there’s probably a crude joke to be made about how the Pope has a rather handsome guy live in the same apartment as him and it’s the guy’s job to dress him too. Perhaps it’s best I forgot (something about how the Pope is quite possibly the most imploded gay evererer). People sure do like to mock Emperor Palpa- I uh mean Pope Benedict XVI.
feel free to gibbs slap me

It’s amusing that while you thought you were stepping outside traditional male boundaries you inadvertently slipped into older ones. Familiar letters between bosom friends could and did contain what we think of as homoerotic elements, in one letter a guy said he’d be the other’s Ganymede. Hadrianus would probably chastise me for ignoring the fact that in Neo-Platonic thought the rape of Ganymede was actually the ascent of spiritual perfection. If you want more info on that Hadrianus being our resident expert in all things long dead, (who probably wears three piece suits with pocket watch and uses a rotary phone if he hasn’t made a small concession to modernity while smoking clove cigarettes) probably could school you on it.

I really do think you’d enjoy The Friend and would find it enlightening as he actually explains about something like that, the body of the friend and allows you to see it without you looking through the perverse cracked lenses called modernity

Sorry, the “it” I mean at first is “Sex as procreative in the 1500’'s Council of Trent.”

“more than one wife” later in the post referred to wives commonly died in childbirth.

Dakota, yes, Jaroslaw oozes Polishness, Thank you!

Now, I have a question for you, in rereading one of your previous posts - you went into quite a bit of detail to say same sex people can be attracted, care for each other, love strongly, spiritual relationships are so much more (or can be you might have meant) than sexual ones (I’m only going to say age and to many health have tempered desire for me, but I mostly had self control prior , whatever the case though I won’t be debating that with you) butI have to wonder why it is just the “sex” (or not having it) that is so awful.

Reading all the various interpretation that I have over the years, and I don’t think you can completely dismiss every single pro (loving committed) SSA theologian over the years anymore than you can pretend the Church didn’t have huge controversies in the past that it had to deal with. I don’t think all disputes are caused by evil or the "devil’ or whatever. People come to the table with different viewpoints and different life experiences right?

snip
I think what makes loving homosexuality different (in my mind anyway) than all other sins, it just doesn’t compare to murder, stealing etc. People are doing already, just discreetly. I just get so furious when people think because they pass anti-Gay laws that somehow that makes it go away (or do they think because now Gay marriage is legal in Mass that everyone is going to Turn Gay? Hasn’t happened! ) and it is just either mean or hopelessly naive. (And remember, if you start letting people vote on moral issues, they can vote in ways you DON’T want them too if they get to be the majority) I’d also feel better if the Church hadn’t been so sex-negative all these years and took an objective look at all this stuff instead of just piling up justifications of its existing position. Or am I wrong, are there documents and books that do this? Well, I guess this has been beaten to death. Looking forward to responses if any.

I knew what you meant, the other interpretation didn’t logically fit.

Thank you? I’m crazy because every time I read your name I swear it has a slant in the l, stupid mental auto-correct! (and yes, I can pronounce grzywny!)

In a relationship when it has become expressed through sex, the relationship is basically tainted by it introducing the limitations of flesh in it’s depth. A bond of the spirit is infinitely deeper than a bond of the flesh as it transcends death and is in fact everlasting. The reason the friendships were consummated through the Eucharist is because at the the Last Judgment when our life is shown for all the saints and Christ would stand as witnesses for the fidelity of the pair.

People seem to forget that in the Catechisms that homosexual acts aren’t compared to murder and rape, they use similar terms like inordinata to refer to masturbation and fornication (IIRC)

The Church isn’t anti-sex, if you look at her teachings you notice that she is “vigorously” supportive of sex in marriage

 

[bmullins]

off topic, but ain’t it are job to convert sinners? just saying. God bless

No, it’s our job to show them the truth as it has been revealed to us. It’s the Holy Spirits job to convert them.

 

[Hadrianus]

Jaroslaw,

             Actually, 'effeminate" must be from a 16nth Century English translation. The Church, at Trent, made it clear that the Vulgate was the only text to be used for doctrine. The Greek text is obviously fine too, but vernacular translations cannot be held reliable in every particular. 
             Further research seems to suggest that malakoi may mean a male who takes the passive role in sodomy. This seems to be how Claudius Ptolemy uses it in about 150 AD.

Dakota,
No chastisement is in order for not mentioning rather obscure Neo-Platonic allegories. The whole point of them was to make some moral sense of the Greek myths.
In the Western tradition allegory became highly developed, but it seems now to have fallen from favor.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

Jaroslaw,

             Actually, 'effeminate" must be from a 16nth Century English translation. The Church, at Trent, made it clear that the Vulgate was the only text to be used for doctrine. The Greek text is obviously fine too, but vernacular translations cannot be held reliable in every particular. 
             Further research seems to suggest that malakoi may mean a male who takes the passive role in sodomy. This seems to be how Claudius Ptolemy uses it in about 150 AD.

Dakota,
No chastisement is in order for not mentioning rather obscure Neo-Platonic allegories. The whole point of them was to make some moral sense of the Greek myths.
In the Western tradition allegory became highly developed, but it seems now to have fallen from favor.

Either way it is rather curious for a man to say he’d be another’s Ganymede. In the Neo-Platonic sense it seems pious whereas in the more likely sense it’s rather bawdy and just a tad homoerotic. Then there is of course the third option which is both (Shakespeare anyone?). Stuff like this popped up all over England, a more famous example would probably be Shakespeare’s sonnets where is some cases a single apostrophe changes the meaning from pious to lewd and in the cases of sonnets to the Fair Youth the meaning can be somewhat “ambigious” with potential double and perhaps even triple entendres.

 

[Jaroslaw]

Dakota - well, believe it or not, I’m stilll wheezing a bit and coughing and night; not enough for hospitalization, but neither the steroid nor albuterol inhaler are offering any relief. Hopefully my primary dr. will have some ideas when I see him today. I was never under any illusions that hospitals were anywhere near the image of care they present but this last visit really was disappointing. In the ER (after 10 hours there) I dozed off and then actually awoke gasping for air, notified the nurse I had stopped breathing, and after finding nothing on the monitor (she said she would check later when she had more time), she proceeded to handle what seemed to be myriad minor complaints including getting someone a blanket because they were cold.

Well, I did want to say I skimmed the entire “Council of Trent” link above from you and read fairly thoroughly the section on matrimony. I didn’t anything specific to sexuality and I did work for an attorney firm for a while as a word processor and so I am aware that common things can be hidden in very obtuse, lengthy language and I still didn’t see anything but I’m not pretending I read that section carefully. If anything, it makes me somewhat confused. If an average reader didn’t know precisely what it was, and a few identifiers and historic specifics were removed, that document could have been written yesterday. One really has to wonder how actual practice in so many locales strayed so far from the theory expressed within that document, It is also sad in a way to me at least that it is written in such incredibly long, legalistic language. To some extent this is necessary to avoid any confusion but that being the case we’re back to one of my original points - how did things get to where they are today when documents of such precision and care could be produced? I’m not referring to deliberate selfishness and evil such as those who wish to break away from the Church for their own motives I meant the Church itself with its harsh dealings with its own members such as the various Inquisitions. I read a lot of phrases about holiness, purity; the are many references to conflict of interest, property rights, how things appear etc…

Well, last comment on Boswell - it has been a long time since I read “Same Sex unions in premodern Europe” but I did read a review by a Gay Anglican shortly after the book was written and he even said a watertight case had not been made. In Wikipedia, a much longer review reminded me that 60 examples were given; AND most importantly, he and Helminiak, at least in many many examples if not all, were careful NOT to jump to conclusions, which jived with what I remember in reading both of their books. Not to mention they gave many examples of BOTH or multiple possible interpretations. The Council of Trent document, for example, mentioned multiple wives are not permitted and was quite stringent in the language, punishments were quire severe but the OT clearly allows that. Notice that multiple husbands were not mentioned, so the cultural bias is there, that is my main point. So it is not “pure God” if you know what I mean. There was another lenghty section condemning concubinage, interesting in that "some men even live with their wife (/wives?) and concubines in the same house? This may have been referring to a local practice during a period of conversion or referring to a specific country or countries? Still, reading about it there made it seem quite commonplace for the times.

I guess after all this, I"m still at square one in some respects. Much like the SSM movement in the US, I recall in William Eskkridges book “the case for ssm”, many states didn’t specify man/woman, husband/wife on the forms or laws because SS couples weren’t conceived of. (the challenges started back in the 1970s believe it or not) **and I want to add a thought in here - reading the dry legal language and history belies how we actually FELT during that period, how you felt as a Gay kid growing up, what society thought of you. I think this is both impossible to quanitfy, to express to much younger readers and yet cannot be overlooked either. And sorry to repeat myself, but unless someone here wants to say that every pro SS Bishop, former Bishop, former priest, theologian is totally misguided, confused and/or a liar, (and continue to ignore huge conflicts in the Church’s past settledd by these councils) AND finally apparently overlook the obvious that sexual matters and psychology are the newest of the sciences), then I’m willing to take my chances with privacy of conscience. Thanks to all for a lively discussion.

 

[francisca]

It hurts me a lot on the inside when… Homosexuality is not classed as a mental disorder because it doesn’t show up on objective tests, much like masturbation doesn’t.

“Homosexuality is not mental disordered” is subject to be tested. Surely those who has fallen into it’s trap would believe that homosexuality is something good, otherwise why would they follow something bad.

To test whether homosexuality is a disordered condition is extremely easy. Males are created to mate with females. Just because an individual being led into thinking that he prefers same sex, doesn’t change the condition of his biological body. Just because a monkey thinks that it is a dog, this thought can’t change it into a dog. Psychology can’t defy biology.

Another example: the heart of a person is thumping healthily pumping blood throughout his body which is full of life. But the person thought “I want to die” then he hang himself in order to stop his breathing thus stop his heart. Can psychology then decide, that suicidal behavior is not disordered, It is ordered toward life and is healthy? No it can’t because suicidal thought and behavior defy biological healthy body which is trying hard to keep the person alive. However, the person-- in his disordered thinking-- decides to go against his living body.

In the case of homosexuality, the person go against his own sexuality.

Actually the concept of homosexuality is a fairly modern thing, previously it was believed any man could commit homosexual acts

You think this way, because you have accepted the lie being told to you. Maybe somebody has brainwashed you, or you were being exposed to bad information about human sexuality, or childhood experience, and so on. One or more of those may have caused you into accepting the wrong information as your truth.

The way that the world operate in order to trap young people can be summerized in three words: use low standard period. This “low standard” really speak to people as if it is alive. This is how it whispers to you, “It’s OK to do it, because everybody are doing it too”, or “Why would you want to keep yourself, when everyone is enjoying”, or “You do not need to be pure, nobody is pure anymore”, or “Homosexuality is a modern thing, you do not even need to check the gruesome consequences that comes with it”.

 

[francisca]

continue

Frankly speaking, I think the concept of "romantic homosexuality, and “romantinc frienship” are introduced by homosexual people to trap people into thinking that homosexuality is something “pure”.

Homosexuality use all the charms it can find to trick and trap people. People who fall into their “low standard” will say “it’s OK”, without checking the horrible truth about it. So many people have fallen into low standard will also say yes to homosexuality.

To the pure everything is pure; to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure (Titus 1:15)

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

“Homosexuality is not mental disordered” is subject to be tested. Surely those who has fallen into it’s trap would believe that homosexuality is something good, otherwise why would they follow something bad.

To test whether homosexuality is a disordered condition is extremely easy. Males are created to mate with females. Just because an individual being led into thinking that he prefers same sex, doesn’t change the condition of his biological body. Just because a monkey thinks that it is a dog, this thought can’t change it into a dog. Psychology can’t defy biology.

Another example: the heart of a person is thumping healthily pumping blood throughout his body which is full of life. But the person thought “I want to die” then he hang himself in order to stop his breathing thus stop his heart. Can psychology then decide, that suicidal behavior is not disordered, It is ordered toward life and is healthy? No it can’t because suicidal thought and behavior defy biological healthy body which is trying hard to keep the person alive. However, the person-- in his disordered thinking-- decides to go against his living body.

In the case of homosexuality, the person go against his own sexuality.

You think this way, because you have accepted the lie being told to you. Maybe somebody has brainwashed you, or you were being exposed to bad information about human sexuality, or childhood experience, and so on. One or more of those may have caused you into accepting the wrong information as your truth.

The way that the world operate in order to trap young people can be summerized in three words: use low standard period. This “low standard” really speak to people as if it is alive. This is how it whispers to you, “It’s OK to do it, because everybody are doing it too”, or “Why would you want to keep yourself, when everyone is enjoying”, or “You do not need to be pure, nobody is pure anymore”, or “Homosexuality is a modern thing, you do not even need to check the gruesome consequences that comes with it”.

Ignorance and bad theology makes me cringe, so does extreme lack of caritas.

When have I ever said homosexual acts are good or even morally neutral?

Those analogies are so bad they aren’t even wrong (if you don’t get it that’s because there are only 10 types of people in the world, those who get binary logic and those who don’t)

The terms are in fact modern inventions. I’m talking theology, the concepts simply didn’t exist hundreds of years ago.