The Church’s teachings are not hurtful, it is the swines who pass off their opinion as teaching that do the hurting.
Their objection was apparently to the following line:
*“Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”*This isn’t quite exactly what’s in Catechism but it’s a pretty accurate paraphrasing of it. Now perhaps it’s the case that there are “swine” who phrase this less charitably but they’re not complaining about such people. They’re complaining about the people who wrote the above paragraph, simply because they wrote the above paragraph.
So clearly the objection on the part of these “Truth Wins Out” folks is not that some people forcefully and uncharitably present the Church’s teachings on homosexuality. Their objection is the Church’s teachings on homosexuality full-stop. And their objection is that it makes some people feel bad. This is a bad argument on its face, and more importantly, a bad way of arguing, as if truth were contingent on someone’s feelings.
I competely disagree. While it is not always compassionate to use such labels, there are cases where it is necessary. Take, for example, the label “male.” (This is of course a much more easily verifiable attribute than “homosexual,” but that is why it is a good example.) I am male, my dad is male, my brother is male. This is, in most ways, a positive thing. So, in most cases it does not detract from our humanity to be referred to as men. However, it can be used in a very dehumanizing way when used to make bad generalizations (ie, a rabid feminist claiming that all men are womanizing pigs, so all three of us must be, too). Similarly, while “homosexual” can be a dehumanizing label (“homosexuals go to hell”), it can also be a very useful and benign one (“male homosexuals are at an increased risk for HIV”). As another example, I personally do not consider myself homosexual (I am slightly attracted to women) or gay (I do not in any way resemble the people in the dance clubs), but I find both labels to be very useful when I want to explain why I do not eat at chik-fil-a or why my date is male. I only find them offensive when they are intended to cause offense.
I think that when Catholic theologians use the term “SSA” instead of “gay” or “homosexual,” they are (conciously or not) trying to use the language to promote the idea that homosexuality is a disease. And, regardless of the intentions, this has some very bad consequences. I remember that when I first realized that I “have SSA” that I began to think of my sexuality as an unwelcome, separate part of me, like a cancer that I wanted to rip out if only I could find it. The idea that I needed to cure myself of my desires, and the intense feelings that I could not be a complete person until I did so, caused years of internal torment and incredible frustration. Once I realized that my sexuality is an inseparable, apparently unchanging part of me, all of this unnecessary guilt left. As good as the intentions of these theologians are, the fact is that their language and attempts to explain homosexuality through theology cause more harm than good.
I actually don’t think it’s useful at all to talk about homosexuality as a
thing you are rather than a
thing you do. The Catholic Church, it seems to me, shares that assessment, and it doesn’t necessarily imply a view of homosexuality as a disease or anything of the sort. It’s simply the only way to really make sense of the phenomenon we call “homosexuality,” because the modern use of the terms tend to give rise to really weird phenomena.
Interestingly, the distinction “homosexual/heterosexual” as we use it didn’t exist anywhere in the world until about 100 years ago, and even then it was used for purely medical reasons. It wasn’t popularized as an identity until more recently than that. All previous societies knew that there were men who liked to be penetrated by other men, but they distinction they employed was more equivalent to “manly man / girly man.” Interestingly, they regarded it as shameful to be the girly (i.e., penetrated) man but merely unwise, imprudent, or regrettable to be the manly (i.e., penetrative) man. The latter man was just an intemperate horn dog, but the former was positively morally unsound.
The distinction is especially useless given how plastic the heuristics are that we use to identify objects of sexual desire. Thus, normatively “heterosexual” men (the ones with large harems and lots of babies with different mothers – you know the kind, the ones with neck tattoos and lots of DUIs) often resort to sodomitical rape when you put them in prison. What’s going on there? Are they “gay,” and if so, why didn’t they act like it until they came into this environment? Are they “straight,” but if so, why are they having sex with other men? The only way to explain this is to introduce extra concepts, like “bisexuality” or “egalitarian homosexuality” or “opportunistic/predatory homosexuality.” In other words, the hetero/homosexual schema only works (to the extent it actually does work) because it’s so protean it can accommodate virtually anything.
One of the surefire signs that this schema is bad is that it makes it difficult to talk about reality in meaningful ways. Thus, for instance,
you get a married man who was fruitful (three kids) and enjoyable sex with his wife (they have “an extremely healthy and robust” sex life) telling everyone he’s “gay.” Sorry, but this is just not a meaningful way of talking about reality at all.
So again, we’re left with viewing “homosexuality” not as an identity but as an activity. It’s what you do, not what you are. Hence phrases like “same-sex attraction” are probably more accurate and appropriate representations of what we mean by “homosexuality” than “homosexuality” as it is used by “homosexual” activists themselves. The disconnect in what Catholics mean by “homosexual” and what homosexual activists themselves mean by “homosexual” therefore result in odd things, like the latter claiming that the former are saying that they are evil just for having SSA, when that’s clearly, obviously not the case.
