The sexual aspect is disordered. Other parts aren’t.
If you can say that for one person to care for another’s needs and genuinely seek their well-being is disordered, then your conception of the good is itself gravely disordered.
Precisely the opposite of what I said.
I see.
Caring for another person in sickness is evil?
Asking them how their day went is evil?
Cooking food for them is evil?
Having a conversation about matters of common interest is evil?
Really?
You seem to be saying that all the myriad non-sexual aspects of a homosexual relationship are “tainted” by the sexual aspect. That’s what I’m describing as monstrous and contrary to reason and the natural law.
That’s not a credible position. It doesn’t make any sense. Are you really saying that a “long-term” relationship in which two people deeply care about each other, take care of each other’s needs, stand by each other in difficult times, etc., simply amounts to a succession of one-night stands with the same person?
That’s irrational. And there is nothing in the Christian tradition that requires you to take this inhumane and irrational position.
I’m following my own argument fine. You are the one having trouble–which may in fact be my fault, of course.
Once again, here’s my argument:
In a non-sexual relationship, a close friendship between two people, we praise such things as genuine love and concern for the other, care for each other’s needs, shared pursuit of various goods, and so on. We praise a friendship characterized by fidelity–that is, one in which each party maintains the relationship through difficult times and does not simply drop the friendship when it is inconvenient or when new friendships beckon. These are all clearly good things.
Now add disordered sexuality to that relationship.
You seem to be claiming that this addition makes the other goods of the relationship meaningless. I’m saying the contrary.
You are interpreting “fidelity” to mean a succession of sexual acts. I’m saying that that’s nonsense. Fidelity involves the entire relationship, the entire person. It could co-exist perfectly well with the relationship ceasing to be sexual at all–which in the case of a homosexual relationship, of course, is what in principle ought to happen.
OK, that’s a fair argument. My response is that I’ve known “gay” couples, and your description is simply inaccurate. They are not only held together by sexual interest. They are not people who behave like addicts. That just isn’t a believable description. And this is an important issue, because the fact that increasing numbers of people don’t find this to be a believable description is the reason why the conservative view is “losing.” You are trying to lump me in with folks who defend sexual acts between people of the same sex, when in fact I’m trying to make a key distinction that preserves the orthodox doctrine of the purpose of human sexuality.
Many Episcopalians and other liberal Christians have come to the conclusion that same-sex relationships are legitimate not simply because (as Lisa falsely claimed) they have “no standards except tolerance,” but because they have observed virtuous and holy qualities inhering in these relationships. The orthodox response to this challenge needs to take this into account in order to be persuasive, and more importantly in order to be true and just.
Furthermore, even if your analogy with drug addicts were correct, your argument would still not stand. If one drug addict cares for another in sickness (yes, even if their shared addiction has led to the sickness), remains in relationship with him even when it is unpleasant and unprofitable to do so, genuinely seeks his good (however misguidedly), this faithfulness is a good thing and can’t simply be reduced to “a series of shared fixes.” It may be that the addicts need to separate, at least for a time, in order better to overcome their addiction. (And that might or might not be true in a same-sex relationship, depending on the extent to which the addiction model applied.) But their fidelity to each other is monstrously misrepresented if it’s reduced simply to a shared addiction. (This isn’t just hypothetical–a childhood friend of mine was an addict for years and did in fact show this kind of fidelity to her fellow addicts.)
Since I never even remotely hinted that I believed such a thing, that’s an odd question.
Excuse me?
Because I think that telling the truth, in the ordinary sense (i.e., not saying that people have only one standard when they clearly have others) is important, my barometer for Truth is way off?
This is something I frequently worry about on these forums: many folks are so enamored of what they believe to be “Truth” that they neglect truth in the more basic and ordinary sense. The recurring pattern in this discussion is that folks don’t seem to think it’s important to tell the truth about people whose beliefs they disagree with. You don’t seem capable of seeing that there’s a significant distinction between “no norms other than tolerance” and “several norms which are good as far as they go, but insufficient given the distorted understanding of tolerance which leads Episcopalians to reject traditional norms when they seem ‘intolerant.’”
Similarly, you and others irrationally assume that if I’m taking care to make sure that the truth is told about liberal Episcopalians, I must agree with them; and/or that if I agree with them in part I must agree with them entirely.
Any commitment to “Truth” that causes you to neglect ordinary truth in such elementary ways needs some re-examination.
Edwin
