Homosexual Acts are Not Against the Natural Law

[Prodigal_Son]

My partner and I have been in a totally monogamous and caring relationship for almost 18 years and neither one of us is an atheist. We both go to church every Sunday, attend weekly Bible study and are active and involved members of our church.

If most gay couples were like you two, Thor, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

 

[Thorolfr]

How low to the ground are you willing to bend to accommodate the sodomites

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

Calling people “sodomites” is so respectful, compassionate and sensitive

 

[Rau]

I agree that God loves us just the way we are and, in my opinion, for those of us that are gay, that includes the gay part.

God’s love for us is in his desire that we follow him, be with him, and in his infinite capacity to forgive the contrite. Does he look upon our frailty and say, how beautiful is that pimple! How wonderful that you desire sex with a range of partners! No! Those things are not the “us” that God sees. He could not care less about the frailties, for they are not the real us. He sees what we can be and loves us unconditionally, which means he will welcome us back, no matter what. We just have to choose him.

To take your statement at face value, that God loves all our inclinations, what flows from that? That we are called to fulfill them all?

 

[Crow_and_dove]

No, I am not conflating the two.

If the means of bonding of which we speak were appropriate for two men, why is its attainment tied to an act that delivers sperm?

The relevance of sperm in man+woman bonding is apparent. It plainly has no place in man+man.

What is the relevance of sperm in woman+woman relations? Why is sperm the critical factor when it is at best half the equation in heterosexual behaviors? Surely the ovum is equally significant, yet it releases independently of the sexual act.

 

[Crow_and_dove]

No, I’m not conflating the two. I am pointing out that the presence of sperm in the sexual act is a bright road sign which declares something about who is the natural partner for the act. That sex has many fruits explains that sex is not solely for procreation.

Exactly! And if it has other purposes, and those purposes are not evil, and they are not solely present in heterosexual bonding… You see where I’m going with this?

But we cannot imagine a world where a man seeks out the bonding attributes of sex with another man, and then seeks out a woman should he desire to procreate.

We don’t have to imagine it, didn’t you study Greek and Roman history in school? Not saying they were exemplars of right living, but such things are far from unimaginable.

 

[Thorolfr]

God’s love for us is in his desire that we follow him, be with him, and in his infinite capacity to forgive the contrite. Does he look upon our frailty and say, how beautiful is that pimple! How wonderful that you desire sex with a range of partners! No! Those things are not the “us” that God sees. He could not care less about the frailties, for they are not the real us. He sees what we can be and loves us unconditionally, which means he will welcome us back, no matter what. We just have to choose him.

To take your statement at face value, that God loves all our inclinations, what flows from that? That we are called to fulfill them all?

Do you believe that heterosexuality is also just an inclination, a frailty or something comparable to a pimple? In my opinion, our sexuality (including our sexual orientation) is a pretty important and integral part of who we are.

 

[edwest2]

Do you believe that heterosexuality is also just an inclination, a frailty or something comparable to a pimple? In my opinion, our sexuality (including our sexual orientation) is a pretty important and integral part of who we are.

But homosexual acts are still not ordered.

Ed

 

[Rau]

What is the relevance of sperm in woman+woman relations? Why is sperm the critical factor when it is at best half the equation in heterosexual behaviors? Surely the ovum is equally significant, yet it releases independently of the sexual act.

I am not seeking to raise sperm to the level of a critical factor. I am simply making observations of male sexual acts and drawing what seem to me to be compelling conclusions. Observations in regard to lesbian acts are different because women are simply different. The observations may not prompt the same conclusions.

The ovum releases to a nominally fixed physical cycle and positions itself so that it might await the arrival of…sperm. It may arrive, or it may not.

 

[Rau]

Do you believe that heterosexuality is also just an inclination, a frailty or something comparable to a pimple? In my opinion, our sexuality (including our sexual orientation) is a pretty important and integral part of who we are.

I think that can be answered on a few levels. A man absent any attraction at all to females suffers a biological frailty - in that he lacks what is central to the propagation of his genetic material. There is no moral question here however.

As a male sexually attracted to women, I would suggest that God would also not love a frailty of mine that expressed itself as a desire to engage in premarital sex or to have sex with multiple partners (were these in evidence).

Yes, our sexuality is a more prominent and driving factor in our lives than a pimple.

The sexuality of gay persons is not under discussion (some would say attack). What is under discussion is the decision to engage in sexual acts with persons of the same sex, and to further declare this to be in accord with the Natural Law, justified on the (baseless) belief that God designed us with the intent that we would do just that.

 

[Rau]

Exactly! And if it has other purposes, and those purposes are not evil, and they are not solely present in heterosexual bonding… You see where I’m going with this?

Have you forgotten that all the fruits are bound together? The bonding of sexual relations occurs bound up with transfer of genetic material. Why would that be? What do you think the reason might be? Could it have something to do with procreative potential? Perhaps the homosexual man chooses the inappropriate bonding? Joie has spoken of the extraordinarily close relationships of same sex persons in the past which were not formed through sexual relations. There was not less love.

We don’t have to imagine it, didn’t you study Greek and Roman history in school? Not saying they were exemplars of right living, but such things are far from unimaginable.

History of wrong acts is not the point. Do you advocate sex with another man as part of “binding” that relationship, then sex with a woman in order to procreate, then reversion to the man?

 

[Thorolfr]

The bonding of sexual relations occurs bound up with transfer of genetic material.

That is a statement of doctrine and faith but is not necessarily one based on science or what occurs in nature.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

There is something really odd in this view about “not supporting celibacy” as if the good of a celibate life lies in the fact of celibacy. That isn’t it at all. A person may choose a celibate life for the sake of pursuing a life of heroic virtue, but what makes that life a “higher calling” is NOT that it is celibate but that it is entirely focused on living out the higher virtues.

In other words, the life is not heroic BECAUSE it is celibate. Celibacy or not is entirely forgotten if the life is, indeed, a virtuous one. It is not as if the person has to keep reminding themselves that their “giving up” sex is what has made their life virtuous because that isn’t what has.

In fact, if you want to insist otherwise, then it is you who are treating sex as an addiction and further insisting that the person’s heroism requires bolstering from time to time by being reminded that they are being heroic BECAUSE they have given up sex – similar to the manner in which smokers or alcoholics need to be encouraged to continue giving up their pet addiction by being reminded that overcoming their addiction was such a laudible act to begin with.

I will note that Jesus had his priorities in order because he pointed out that the merit in “following” him – the merit that would be rewarded – was in giving up “mother, father, sisters, brothers and children” for the sake of following him. In other words, that which is truly valuable in life in order to labour for the KIngdom. Notice he didn’t even mention giving up sex as an act which carries with it special merit. The truly significant loss in a celibate life are those relationships which would have been carried forward in married life, not the fact that sex wasn’t to be had.

The distortion isn’t in the Church. The Church recognizes that having or not having sex, in itself, isn’t that huge a deal. It is our culture that makes it the ultimate good. Merely because the Church doesn’t follow suit and treat it as if it were by pretending that giving up sex is the ultimate sacrifice anyone can possibly make does not mean the Church has “catastrophically failed.” It has only “catastrophically failed” if we accept the premise that sex is the ultimate sacrifice and that celibacy is the highest calling because those who choose the celibate life have made the ultimate sacrifice possible.

The Church, rightly, merely smiles at that misconceived suggestion and reminds us that we should get on with our real and important mission of being Christ to the world rather than being so self-absorbed as to require that kind of fawning and narcissistic self-reassurance.

I didn’t reference sexuality or sex at all when talking about celibacy so your entire post is wholly irrelevant to my post.

Yes, but…

Peter, you need to understand that people with SSA are specifically under attack in this culture. It DOES require some level of heroism to stand against the powers and principalities that are at work here. It’s not that chastity, on its own, is the heroism. The heroism, rather, is the courage to stand up for one’s conviction that right is right and wrong is wrong, when the battlefield of right and wrong is a group of people who are fighting over your own body.

Make no mistake: the ideology of homosexuality lays claim to my body. It does not lay claim to the bodies of straight people in the same way. No one is offended when a straight person merely says how they would like to handle their own body. But if I admit my SSA, and say I choose chastity and/or marriage, people ARE offended. Their offense is like a way of trying to claim my body for their own confusion. Those who stand against the tide are fought over; their very existence is a outrage to those who have subsumed their identity under the rainbow flag.

Those people are very much a minority in the LGBT community in real life. They do however tend to a bit touchy when people who are heterosexual or mostly heterosexual start pontificating about gay people must be celibate and they treat it as if it were a drop in replacement for the whole ex-gay shtick which makes it abundantly clear that they have no idea what celibacy is.

…

For those gay men who have forgiven themselves for being gay and who do not think that they are defective or disordered and have truly come to accept and love themselves and truly believe that God loves them just the way they are, sex with their partners or spouses can, in my opinion, be just as positive as between heterosexual spouses. As Desmond Tutu says (pp. 47-48), “God just wants us to love each other. Many, however, say that some kinds of love are better than others, condemning the love of gays and lesbians. But whether a man loves a woman or another man, or a woman loves a man or another woman, to God it is all love, and God smiles whenever we recognize our need for one another.”

Love between two men can very much help with human flourishing however sex adds nothing to it and can only detract from it.

 

[Rau]

That is a statement of doctrine and faith but is not necessarily one based on science or what occurs in nature.

I didn’t say “should be”. It is an observable, physical fact! The fruits of sexual relations are bound together. To deny this is akin to declaring black to be white.

Sexual relation between two men are out of place. The nature of the act is clear. The quality of the relationship, the love, is not lessened by its exclusion, quite the reverse!

 

[ericc]

For reparative therapy you have to come up with a narrative, if you don’t have one you’ll get told you have to if you want to get better and don’t you want to get better? That is emotional blackmail.

 

[LisaA]

Your contempt for animals which you call “stupid” shows how little you know about them.

I do know quite a bit about animals having grown up on a farm with biology professor parents. Homosexuality in animals is generally not about sexual bonding at all. In some cases the animal mimics breeding to indicate estrus. If you look at a group of cows and heifers and you see one of them mounting another, she is in heat. She is not looking for a good time with Daisy. There is also aggressive homosexuality. You see this in birds for example, particularly with paired birds. Mr and Mrs Duck are waddling by the stream…Daffy takes a liking to Mrs Duck and in effect “rapes” Mr Duck who flies away. Similarly there might be situational homosexuality such as entire male animals in too small of an area. Animals also masturbate, particularly males. As rather crudely put, they will hump each other, your leg, or a fence post.

Don’t kid yourself, it’s not “Modern Family” among the bovines and equines.

Homosexuality is by definition abnormal behavior. All species are designed first to survive and second to procreate. Many adaptations occur to allow both. Nature would not have an intentional design for a dead end sexual relationship. It neither promotes health (in fact the opposite) nor does it allow the species to survive.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

Is this the Inquisition?

Not at all. Just a simple question.

How would you answer it?

 

[LisaA]

Love between two men can very much help with human flourishing however sex adds nothing to it and can only detract from it.

One of the other unfortunate consequences of the “out and proud” meme is that close friendships between men are looked at with some suspicion as if some sort of Brokeback Mountain encounter is going on behind the scenes. Our history since the beginning of time…maybe beforehand is filled with stories of men whose friendship was an unbreakable bond, allowing them to each be better for the relationship. We think of the original Gilgamesh saga, David and Jonathan in the Hewbrew Bible and more recently CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein. If you want to read an amazing book about male friends, read “The Gift of Friendship.” In the hierarchy of loves, friendship is considered a higher form because there is no biological basis for the relationship. A sexual component is not necessary to have that Soul Friend closeness that can bring out the best in both parties. Sex in fact detracts, causes jealousies and puts the relationship on a more biological basis.

I do know that men are very sensitive to being viewed suspiciously if they have and maintain close friendships that are thankfully still accepted among women. There are few more lasting and deep relationships than two long time, close friends but by sexualizing male relationships we discourage the great Platonic friendships that added so much to the lives of those who have experienced this relationship.

 

[LisaA]

Hey, answers are provided in one thread, then a new one pops up, and another. All coming from different angles but with the same questions asked and answered, and answered and answered again.

Ed

Indeed, I took a tour of “Today’s Posts” and voila! Here are the usual suspects (me included) saying the same thing as on the other six threads on the same subjects.

 

[Thorolfr]

I do know quite a bit about animals having grown up on a farm with biology professor parents. Homosexuality in animals is generally not about sexual bonding at all. In some cases the animal mimics breeding to indicate estrus. If you look at a group of cows and heifers and you see one of them mounting another, she is in heat. She is not looking for a good time with Daisy. There is also aggressive homosexuality. You see this in birds for example, particularly with paired birds. Mr and Mrs Duck are waddling by the stream…Daffy takes a liking to Mrs Duck and in effect “rapes” Mr Duck who flies away. Similarly there might be situational homosexuality such as entire male animals in too small of an area. Animals also masturbate, particularly males. As rather crudely put, they will hump each other, your leg, or a fence post.

Don’t kid yourself, it’s not “Modern Family” among the bovines and equines.

Homosexuality is by definition abnormal behavior. All species are designed first to survive and second to procreate. Many adaptations occur to allow both. Nature would not have an intentional design for a dead end sexual relationship. It neither promotes health (in fact the opposite) nor does it allow the species to survive.

I’m thinking of more intelligent animals than cows and ducks. Take dolphins, for example, which like humans are a big brained species with more complex behaviors. According to Wikipedia:

Dolphins of several species engage in homosexual acts, though it is best studied in the bottlenose dolphins.[3] Sexual encounters between females take the shape of “beak-genital propulsion”, where one female inserts her beak in the genital opening of the other while swimming gently forward.[76] Between males, homosexual behaviour includes rubbing of genitals against each other, which sometimes leads to the males swimming belly to belly, inserting the penis in the others genital slit and sometimes anus.[77]

Janet Mann, Georgetown University professor of biology and psychology, argues that the strong personal behavior among male dolphin calves is about bond formation and benefits the species in an evolutionary context.[78] She cites studies showing that these dolphins later in life as adults are in a sense bisexual, and the male bonds forged earlier in life work together for protection as well as locating females to reproduce with.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals#Bottlenose_dolphins

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

Calling people “sodomites” is so respectful, compassionate and sensitive

Chastity and homosexuality

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christ.

Unlike protestants, I like to include the ENTIRE quote.

While the term “sodomites” may be a bit un-pastoral it is non-the-less accurate. Sodomy is unquestionably the most popular form of deviant sexual behavior enjoyed by the homosexual community. Although, unpleasant to accept for gays, the majority of society find it repulsive.

So, to be as respectful, compassionate and sensitive as possible let’s just stick to terms like **“acts of grave depravity”, “intrinsically disordered”, “contrary to the natural law” **and remembering…“Under no circumstances can they be approved”.

I think that gets the point across…without calling anyone a sodomite.