Grace & Peace!
Thank you for your welcome, Portrait. I do want to say, though, that I believe that there are some significant qualitative differences between bulimia and homosexual relationships. My 12-year relationship with my partner has not led to any deterioration of my health. My quality of life has improved. My church attendance and involvement have improved. Certain unhealthy spiritual tendencies I recognize that I have have been actively discouraged by my partner to my great (and I would not hesitate to say, eternal) benefit. My professional endeavors have blossomed under his encouragement and his support. My relationship with my partner has made me a better person, by God’s grace (I pray he can say the same!). And part of our relationship does indeed include giving ourselves physically to each other. Sharing ourselves has not destroyed our health, but has contributed to our intimacy, which has contributed to our flourishing together.
I don’t know that bulimia is capable of bearing these sorts of fruits, this kind of human flourishing. I’m not bulimic, though, so I wouldn’t be able to speak from first-hand knowledge. But I would imagine that the only real perceived good which comes from bulimia is the one you have already mentioned: cosmetic weight loss. I’m sure you didn’t mean to suggest, though, that cosmetic weight loss at the price of overall health is a value on par with actual human intimacy which has proved itself an avenue of grace. I’m sure you didn’t mean to denigrate my relationship by comparing it to a vomitting person who wants to lose weight. Which is why I wonder about the rationale behind the comparison to begin with, as, again, there seem to be some huge qualitative differences. If I were bulimic for the last 12 years, I would imagine I would be pretty happy a) to be alive; and b) have any enamel left on my teeth.
Perhaps if you can prove that my relationship and bulimia are indeed qualitatively indentical, then we could get some way towards eventually understanding why unnatural and immoral are believed to be equivalent when it comes to homosexuality.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
Dear Mark,
Cordial greetings and sorry I could not reply to your post last evening but I was feeling quite jaded and just had to take to my bed. Anyway, thankyou for your patience dear friend.
That homosexual liasons such as yours can be loving is something that I would not deny (although
a priori they cannot attain the same richness as the heterosexual mutuality God has ordained). However, the love-quality of such liasons is not sufficient to justify them. Indeed, I would have to add that they are incompatible with true love because they are incompatible with the moral law of God. Love is concerned for the highest welfare of the beloved and our highest human welfare is found in obedience to God’s law and purpose, not in revolt against them.
As regards my parallel between homosexual deviant acts and bulimia, I was not suggesting that they were on a par in terms of any qualitative element, merely pointing out that both acts are unnatural and wrong. As inducing vomiting to avoid weight gain is wrong because it is unnatural, likewise using one’s reproductive organs to engage in homosexual aberrant acts is also wrong because it is unnatural. Be that as it may, I apologise if you found the analogy distasteful; other examples could easily have been used, it is just that I thought the comparison with bulimia was quite compelling.
Another of those examples (and a more decorous one) that I could have used to make the same point is that of the eyeball. If one looked at the eyeball and did not know what its function was but could learn everything about its biology, then we could surely ascertain what that function was. It is nearly spherical and moves around in its socket. It has a clear opening that seems to enlarge and contract in response to the degree of exposure to light. It has a light sensitive inner lining connected to the nerves which go to the brain. This object clearly has something to do with receiving light and gathering light and converting it into signals. Perhaps it is for vision or something else.
The structure of the eye informs us what it is for. The eye is not the proper tool for catching a rugby ball; that is the hand whose structure is clearly designed for grasping things.
What is manifestly obvious here is that physical structure indicates purpose or “telos”.
Simply put the male body is sexually made for the female body and gamete are by their very design oriented towards the egg in the way that the eye is oriented towards light. Now homosexual liasons and any other aberrant sexual activity (e.g. auto-eroticism) other than vaginal intercourse cannot fulfill the purpose “written” into our physical form.
Therefore, just as it is wrong to forcibly sick up one’s food to avoid weight gain and to try and catch a rugger ball with one’s eye, so it is wrong to use one’s sexual organs contrary to nature in homosexual deviant acts. Now surely if all of these unnatural actions are deemed to be wrong, in the sense of applied to the wrong purpose or teleological function, then they manifestly cannot be right and normal - the fundamental issue is one of design and purpose.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
