Djeter,
Thanks for your long and interesting post. Lots of it, at base, consists of the assertion that a gay partnership can never match that of a straight marriage.
However this argument is refuted by the facts. My daughter has been in a relationship with her gay partner for over 20 years. In every respect their partnership is as good and wonderful and flourishing as any marriage. Read Volente in this thread.
So this shows that your long and rather abstract argument MUST be defective somewhere. No matter how persuasive no argument can show that black is white.
Regards
Laurie
Hi Laurie:
I’m happy for your daughter but an anecdotal “fact” does not an argument make.
Although I haven’t read all the posts here, I felt that I could represent the Church’s teachings in her arguments for the sacrament of marriage being that between a man and a woman.
You should know that these are abstract arguments and impact public policy but do not negate any of the happiness, fulfillment or goodness that any gay couple is experiencing.
The true meaning, value, and significance of marriage are fairly easily grasped (even if people sometimes have difficulty living up to its moral demands) in a culture — including, critically, a legal culture — that promotes and supports a sound understanding of marriage.
Furthermore, ideologies and practices that are hostile to a sound understanding and practice of marriage in a culture tend to undermine the institution of marriage in that culture. Hence it is extremely important that governments eschew attempts to be neutral with regard to marriage and embody in their laws and policy the soundest, most nearly correct, understanding, which is the one that the Catholic Church advocates for.
The law is a teacher. It will teach either that marriage is a reality in which people can choose to participate, but whose contours people cannot make and remake at will, or it will teach that marriage is a mere convention, which is malleable in such a way that individuals, couples, or, indeed, groups can choose to make of it whatever suits their desires, goals, and so on.
The result, given the biases of human sexual psychology, will be the development of practices and ideologies that truly tend to undermine the sound understanding and practice of marriage, together with the development of pathologies that tend to reinforce the very practices and ideologies that cause them.
Somewhere the argument between gay marriage activists and those who support the traditional view of marriage has gotten off track. I think just because gays cannot fulfill the traditional view of marriage between the two sexes it does not detract from the relationships that they have. But unfortunately they (and you, as it turns out here) have come to view the traditional view of marriage as a way of cheapening gay relationships – a second class marriage or citizenship as it were. It doesn’t have to be that way but for some reason it is.
I see you sort of taking on the Catholic world here – I dare you to criticize my daughter’s same sex relationships – if your daughter is living a chaste life, then who are we to criticize her? And if she fails occasionally in her pursuit of that chastity, how is that any different from heterosexuals failing to be chaste in their lives? I hope that you have seen that the Church in no way views your daughter’s homosexuality as sinful or disordered.
Homosexual inclination is not itself a sin. Neither is the inclination to masturbation or fornication. We ALL sin when we act on any such inclination. It’s just the gay activist community that seeks a pass for their actions. And that will never be forthcoming. There are many Gay Catholics perfectly at ease with that fact of Church life and don’t feel picked upon or looked down on for the particular cross they have to bear.
How many heterosexual men masturbating to online porn feel they are committing a sin? They probably see the Church as hopelessly archaic. They see themselves as acting on good, old-fashioned healthy male impulses. Until one evening when a girl in a bar looks like a porn dream and they cheat on theiri wives and children. I wonder if your daughter had spent twenty years of her life practicing chaste living whether she might have found happiness in a straight relationship and borne you a grandchild. The Church demands hard choices for hard-won happinesses. Life is not easy. And for those of us who point such things out, please don’t see us as sanctimonious gas bags but as sinners who have learned the hard way and want to spare others the pain we have gone through.
Every person needs training in the virtues. To acquire a virtue — to become temperate, brave, just, or prudent — we must repeatedly perform acts that embody that virtue, acts that we accomplish with the help of the Holy Spirit and with the guidance and encouragement of our teachers in virtue. In our society, chastity is a particular virtue that requires special effort. All people, whether married or single, are called to chaste living. Chaste living overcomes disordered human desires such as lust and results in the expression of one’s sexual desires in harmony with God’s will. This is what the Church desires for your daughter. No one here or in the Church seeks to brand her as sinful or view her relationships as second class.
Yes, I made “the assertion that a gay partnership can never match that of a straight marriage” if you understand “match” to mean equal in nature and character. If you understand match to mean “as good and wonderful and flourishing as any marriage” then you have misunderstood not only what I have been posting here but what others have as well. Do you get the difference?
Regards,
dj
