Can homosexual behavior and the inclination at its origin be ordered toward a good life, a life that is complete, fulfilled, and happy?

[Melissa72]

May the Lord have mercy on all of you who joke about immoral sexual behavior. Read the bible and get obedient…where is your shame and fear of the Lord? Where is your love for Him?

 

[LilyM]

I’m always amazed at the Church leader’s ability to:

A) Discuss something they have not experienced
B) Discuss something in absolutes that is a unique personal experience

I feel it’s as if I, as a male, went up to a pregnant woman, and told here exactly what her labor was going to be like on every level. 1) I don’t know, I’m male and have never and will never experience labor 2) I don’t know, and no one knows, exactly what it will be like because it’s different for everyone.

As for the intimacy part. I am not buying it at all. I may not like it, understand it, etc. But I do believe their are gay and lesbian couples out there with a relationship that is as deep. meaningful, loving, and intimate as married couple who has ever lived.

My sisters have all had great male ob/gyns, some of whom have had children themselves. While it’s true men don’t personally go through labour, when you get that up close and personal with that many labouring women each and every day, you can’t help but get at least a fairly good idea of what it’s like.

Your argument is a bit like saying someone who hasn’t themselves had cancer can’t possibly know the correct treatment of it or the correct cure for it. Of course they can.

More to the point, it’s like saying that unless you’ve murdered someone you can’t possibly tell them that murder is wrong, because you don’t know what it’s like from the perpetrator’s pov.

Our legal systems are predicated on the basis that people who have never in their lives come close to committing a murder certainly can be nonetheless equipped to judge of its moral wrongness (in a religious or secular sense). And not just in general but in the case of particular murderers as well.

 

[edwest2]

The truth is the truth. On this topic, I often see denial, distortion and deception.

Let’s take it one step at a time.

1969 Stonewall Riots between police and gay activists.

1973 Homosexuality is removed as a disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual by the actions of gay activists.

traditionalvalues.org/urban/eleven.php

In the end, the truth will win out.

God bless,
Ed

 

[djeter]

My sisters have all had great male ob/gyns, some of whom have had children themselves. While it’s true men don’t personally go through labour, when you get that up close and personal with that many labouring women each and every day, you can’t help but get at least a fairly good idea of what it’s like.

Your argument is a bit like saying someone who hasn’t themselves had cancer can’t possibly know the correct treatment of it or the correct cure for it. Of course they can.

More to the point, it’s like saying that unless you’ve murdered someone you can’t possibly tell them that murder is wrong, because you don’t know what it’s like from the perpetrator’s pov.

Our legal systems are predicated on the basis that people who have never in their lives come close to committing a murder certainly can be nonetheless equipped to judge of its moral wrongness (in a religious or secular sense). And not just in general but in the case of particular murderers as well.

Thank you LilyM, some of the comments here are nothing more than thoughtlessness.It is as if no one has considered the obedient lover of God who suffers from same-sex attraction and is struggling with that addiction everyday.

Would these respondents counsel an alcoholic that one drink isn’t going to hurt you? Well here they are proclaiming the happiness and “deep, meaningful, loving, and intimate” relationships that can be gained by entering into the sinful acts of the gay lifestyle.

dj

 

[djeter]

I don’t see why not.

I’d think any loving, equal, committed relationship is fine-be it hetero, homosexual, bi, poly…why not?

I’ve had 2 heterosexual marriages, and managed to mess both of them up. So, hey.
Just b/c you are hetero, doesn’t give you a corner on a happy relationship.

Just sayin’

PART THE FIRST:

Well, I guess the “why not?” deserves a thoughtful answer. I notice that you are agnostic. Do you read Scripture or consider it as a source of wisdom? Catholics would answer that question yes and find in Scripture and Tradition the source for an anthropology that defines who we are. The following comes from a little book called The Christian View of Humanity by John Sachs

God the Creator
If we turn to the opening chapters of Genesis, we find two different creation stories, each with something to say about the meaning of creation and creatureliness. The first is part of the Priestly tradition (from the sixth century B.C.E.) and the second is from the earlier Yahwist tradition (tenth century B.C.E.). According to the Priestly account, creation is understood to be the work of the Spirit/Word of God. God’s Spirit is moving over the deep and God’s mighty Word goes forth to create.

In the Hebrew text, we find the word *bara *used to denote this unique, divine creative activity. It is used later to refer to God’s creation of a people in the Exodus out of Egypt and the Covenant on Sinai. In both cases we hear how God forms and gives reliability to what is dark, empty and chaotic. The Yahwist describes the Creator as one who planted a garden in Eden and brought forth human creatures to care for it.

The creation stories, therefore, are not talking about an almost magical act by which God makes something from nothing, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat or a bouquet of flowers from thin air. They focus, rather, on the divine power which forms, orders and sustains life.

Unlike many other mythical accounts of creation, Genesis does not offer us a picture of a great cosmic battle. There are no stupendous labors, no Herculean feats. God merely speaks and it is done. Because of the power of God’s Word and because creation is the expression of God’s desire and purpose, we can approach the world with confidence and hope in spite of the darkness and chaos which seem to threaten life. The world is reliable because it comes from God. It has a hope and a future because it is related to God.

It was later theology, appealing to 2 Maccabees 7:28, which said that God created the world “from nothing.” This means that the world receives its entire being and constitutive identity from God, not from itself or from anything other than God. We are utterly dependent upon God. To be is to come to be from and with others, hence the “ex” in existence. Just as I owe my existence to other persons, the cosmos as a whole owes its being and life to an other, God. Moreover, God is not merely the one who started it all going, but the one who at every moment holds it in existence. The most basic dimension of reality is this relationship..

The expression “creation from nothing” points to the mystery of being and of our contingency, which occasionally registers in our feelings of wonder and awe. In the last analysis, there is no reason why there is anything at all, except God’s gracious and free act. The cosmos of which we are a part is intended and desired by God. It is neither necessary nor arbitrary, a product of chance or chaos. The sovereign freedom with which God creates means that life is a gracious gift. I am invited to interpret my own experience of the indebtedness of existence as gift and grace.

But there is a second point which a bit of reflection on the notion of *creatio ex nihilo *reveals. In understanding reality as related to God in this radical way, Christian faith also believes that there is absolutely nothing in the nature of created reality which could be a constitutive principle of separation from or contradiction to God. While Paul’s words to the Romans were written in another context, they are nonetheless beautifully appropriate here:

For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38fl.

The Goodness of Creation
An attitude of realistic confidence and hope is rooted in the belief that because God created it and sustains it, the finite world is good. For God, and therefore presumably for us, it is good that there is something which is not God. The Priestly account of creation is like a litany. Over and over we hear a refrain which reminds us how good the creatures are found to be by their creator, until finally we read, “And God saw everything God had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Indeed, one of the first major theological tasks which faced the church in the second and third centuries was to defend its belief in the goodness of God’s creation against the gnostics. One thing which the many diverse forms of gnosticism share is the conviction that the created world, precisely as material, could not really be the work of God, who is pure spirit. Whether the result of a primordial battle in the spiritual heavens, or the work of a divine-like demiurge, the world is bad. Redemption is conceived of as liberation from the created world and its evil materiality.

dj (sorry this got lengthy…)

 

[djeter]

PART THE SECOND

For biblical faith, on the contrary, the world is a good place in which to be. It is precisely where God places us and it is where God wishes to be in relationship with us. God does not wish to save us from the world. God wishes to save the world, and us humans who are a unique part of it, from the sin which threatens to destroy it and for which we are responsible. This is the whole point of the story about the “fall” of the first humans in Genesis 2-3. Faced with the reality of suffering and evil, the Yahwist tells us that human sin, not an evil or indifferent God, is to blame. This is how the Bible introduces us to the real story it has to tell, the story of how God has been at work saving the world.

God also tells us in the course of this story more about our relationship with him and to others. “homosexual, bi, poly…why not?” Well because these things are not “good,” they are not, well, “Godly” I guess. But I fear I am wandering into territory here that you, as an agnostic, will say, I can’t relate to God or Godly.

At the least you may be able to see why believing in God as Creator actually signs you up for a whole worldview that is quite different from the worldview say of scientism, which is what the secular world believes in. To be honest, I don’t think anyone can prove that God is “maker of all things.” And I certainly cannot explain how God makes all things.

But if I deny this claim, I distort or even lose other truths about the nature of the world and our relation to it. Quite frankly using scientism we see the world as an instrument or maybe even a plaything rather than a gift to be received in gratitude and awe from a Creator. If it is not made by God, so the world becomes mine to construct according to my desires and projects.

This attitude is named in the Bible as idolatry. It leads to distortion of human relations and the use of the world. We accept the claim that God is “maker of heaven and earth,” in other words, not because we can prove it, but because we see the consequences of its denial for human existence and the good of the world. We see ourselves in certain ways, ways that cause us to flourish and love one another: marriage is between a man and a woman because that is how scripture and tradition have define it – it’s not something for us to carve out according to our wills but something for us to obey.

Well that’s a start. Hopefully it will give you something to consider and you will understand that most of us here (Catholics) don’t want to wing these things according to how we “feel” or (God help us) so that we can be “free.”

If you would like to read on concerning this topic. Sachs takes up the topic of how we were “created in God’s image” and what that means – particularly about

1. 
   *]Dominion over the rest of creation,
   *]Creation of male and female and
   *]The command to be fruitful and multiply.
   
   That’s all here:
   
   payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/10/29/human-beings-in-god%e2%80%99s-image-and-likeness/
   
   If you’ve never thought about this stuff before, you’d be surprised where thinking can take you.
   
   Regards phoenixrrt62,
   
   dj

 

[djeter]

II’ve had 2 heterosexual marriages, and managed to mess both of them up.

You might find this instructive. A commentary on a short story by Raymond Carver, his classic is on an Esquire list of 75 books that every man should read. What do they say about remarriage…the triumph of hope over experience?

dj