Homosexuality

[Laurie_Gibson]

Hi Phooie

I am actually relying on my own experience and the experience of many other homosexuals. You are relying on your daughter’s testimony and that of many other gay couples. Both approaches are equally reasonable, and both have elements of faith (unless you have personally observed your daughter’s sexual relations with her partner while reading her mind).

But you do not explain why you think that your negative experience of homosexuality can be generalised to other gay people. Your view is not parallel to mine because I think (i) your gay experiences were negative – because I believe what you tell me and (ii) my daughter’s experiences are positive because I believe what she tells me. You however accept (i) and think it somehow goes against (ii) – it does not. Forgive me a personal comment. Do you think it possible that your negative experiences of gay sex is blinding you to other people’s positive ones?

Would you mind considering and answering this point please?

*So here is what I am attempting to say, please tell me if you disagree with any of the following:

1. People have free will and can choose whatever religion, belief or path they want (including no religion).*

Of course they can but the question is whether their choices are moral or not. Obviously I think that it is not moral to call sex between faithful gay partners an ‘abomination’. And that is what we are discussing.

2. People must follow the teachings of that religion and if they do, this has consequences, positive or negative for that person. This also has consequences for others as a person’s moral beliefs shape them and affect how they interact with others.

Correct

3*. It is okay for people to state a difference of opinion with one another based on their religious or moral beliefs.*

Correct

4. It is not okay when people’s religious beliefs cause them to become angry, judgemental or hateful.

Well the Catholic Church is pretty judgemental about gay sex. In one sense this is OK because if such sex is an abomination then it ought to be condemned because it would be very wrong. We are discussing if it IS wrong or not.

5. It is not okay to demand that another religion must change its beliefs because they disagree with yours and that bothers you.

It is OK if a religion or point of view advocates something that is very wrong

It is not my opinion that the Church will change on this issue, and it is not up to you or me to make that decision for the church anyway.

It is up to you to ask yourself if the Church is correct on this matter. If you wish you can blindly follow the church or you can look at the arguments I presented in my long recent posts and try to answer them. [By the way the reasons I gave were not peculiar to me – they are reasons why millions of people of good will do not agree with the Catholic Church on this issue. As one correspondent recently put it many Catholics in the West do not agree with the Church on this – usually because they know gay couples and cannot accept their physical relationships as being an abomination]

With good wishes

Laurie Gibson

 

[Laurie_Gibson]

Ladybri,

Adam & Eve were also gardeners then farmers - must we all be so?
They also had children - shall we condemn all childless couples and celibate people?

You cannot just pick the bits you like you know!

Laurie

PS I do wish though that you would answer my long post rather than just say it must be wrong because the Church…

 

[ladybri77]

It is up to you to ask yourself if the Church is correct on this matter. If you wish you can blindly follow the church or you can look at the arguments I presented in my long recent posts and try to answer them. [By the way the reasons I gave were not peculiar to me – they are reasons why millions of people of good will do not agree with the Catholic Church on this issue. As one correspondent recently put it many Catholics in the West do not agree with the Church on this – usually because they know gay couples and cannot accept their physical relationships as being an abomination]

With good wishes

Laurie Gibson

It depends on whether you want to accept what God says about it in Scripture in the NT or go by what you see based on your own limited human senses and perceptions as perceived in the natural world.

 

[Laurie_Gibson]

Nobody has dealt with my detailed arguments below except to say, ‘There must be a mistake because it goes against Catholic teachings’.

Is anyone willing to answer the REASONING??

Can we talk?

Of course I am questioning the attitude of the Catholic Church to gay sex between a faithful couple in a permanent union. So if your attitude is that the church is right PERIOD then obviously a conversation would be pointless. All I can say to you is that the position your church takes, namely that such sex is an abomination, causes much distress to many gay people.

However if you are willing to accept that the church might be wrong [It has been in the past] or if you are willing to discuss the reasons the church gives for its views then we are in business

Why is the church against gay sex?

Because gay sex does not allow, even in theory, the possibility of reproduction which is the function of sex. Plus it is claimed we must never have sex that frustrates this function.

1. For most people the main function of sex is to express love, reproduction is a secondary function. Infertile couples and women past child-bearing age are allowed to have sex even if they cannot reproduce. Why place such excessive emphasis on the biological side of sex rather than the much more important characteristically human values? Some natural law theorist agree and say the church is too ‘physicalist’ here.
2. Why should this consideration ‘trump’ all others? On the one hand having gay sex ‘frustrates’ the purpose of sex on the other hand it expresses love and causes nobody any harm why is the first consideration more important than the second?

[Answers please?]

Rules and love

**Jesus was very hostile to the Pharisees when they blindly stuck to their rules instead of looking sympathetically and with love at the situation before them. It was not the rules that were important but the attitude of the people concerned.

Two people love each other and among other things in the privacy of their own room they give each other physical pleasure. This is because we are bodies as well as minds, and sex expresses their love and gives each a deep happiness.

However because they are of the same sex the Catholic Church declares that this is sinful, contrary to Natural Law, prevents them reaching their full potential, impedes the goal of being a Christian etc. This seems totally incongruous! It is not clear why the fact that the sex cannot result in reproduction should mean it cannot be used to express their love. Infertile couples do it but ‘we expect a miracle’! What nonsense – we could expect a miracle with gays then.

If we looked as I am sure Jesus would, at the love that a faithful gay couple express through sex we would not rush in with a ‘rule’ to condemn it. Christians worship a God of Love not a God of Rules**

A final way of looking at the matter

At the end of the day most of you argue as follows

Natural Law says that gay sex is always wrong.
Laurie’s daughter has gay sex.
Therefore Laurie’s daughter is doing something wrong.

Whereas I argue.

Natural Law says that gay sex is always wrong
But the gay sex my daughter is having is not wrong
Therefore Natural Law is either a mistaken approach to morality OR its application here needs to be rethought.

Why do I reason in the second way and not the first? Because my daughter’s partnership has all the good things that an infertile loving married couple might have. As the latter is, according to the church fine and good, I’m concluding that so is my daughter’s.

Best wishes

Laurie - very colourful today

 

[phoooiee]

You said this - “It is not the job of any human being to define marriage- it is God’s job.”

Some of us have been defining marriage as being between one woman and one man, the way it’s always been, believing that that is how God ordained it to be from the beginning. See Genesis.

I hope that none of us have presumed to do this. I hope that we will be content to quote Scriptures and the Church.

 

[phoooiee]

Laurie,
I have to be honest about this one. I feel that you are not willing to respect my viewpoint on this issue. I feel criticized when you say that I am blindly following the Church without thinking about it. In fact I have done an enormous amount of reading and study on the subject of sexuality in general. I have read secular materials and Church materials. I have spent hours and hours of my life researching this subject. I have had homosexual experiences, I have had heterosexual experiences. I have known other people, wonderful people, who also happen to be practicing homosexuals. I have, after all these many hours of study over many years, come to the conclusions that I have stated over many, many posts.

No, I do not think that my negative homosexual experience is blinding me to anything. As a matter of fact, for years after I stopped practicing homosexuality, I clung to the belief that it had been wrong for me but it was up to each person to decide what was right for them. It is this last belief that I have come to reject, having seen what it leads to in myself and in others. Only after I came to this conclusion did I come to the belief that homosexuality is hurtful to all those who practice it. Frankly, I find the assumption that I wouldn’t have done this to be insulting.
It is impossible to directly answer many of your questions without a complete examination of the nature of faith, the nature of the Catholic Church, the nature of morality and sin, and how sin might hurt other people without this fact being obvious to the person committing the sin.
If you are interested or willing to read and understand the Catholic Faith, then here is a wonderful resource. It really does provide all the answers to an open mind, however one has to let go of a great deal to truly understand and accept what is there.
newadvent.org/

Any Catholic condemnation of homosexual behavior has to be understood in the context of the whole of the Catholic faith, which is very egalitarian about condemning masturbation and any other sexual act which is not ordered toward procreation.

**You have asked me to change my religious beliefs because of your perception of what they should be. **This crosses a line for me.

I cannot see how any offense someone might take as a result of the Catholic Church making a recommendation to Catholics who wish to follow the Catholic Church justifies this. It goes so much farther than the Church ever has by preaching against homosexuality to the faithful. (Incidentally, after years of attending several different Catholic parishes, I have never heard homosexuality mentioned in a sermon.)

I will reiterate that it causes no personal offense to me if you should conclude that your daughter’s sexual relationship with her partner is morally licit. As a result of this you cannot consider yourself a faithful, obedient Catholic, and you cannot gain the benefits available to faithful Catholics- and that’s the end of it. Neither of us can state on our own authority what God thinks, so it will be up to God to judge each of us for our beliefs and how we treat others.

It would not be right for me to insist that you become a Catholic- please don’t insist that I have to become a non-Catholic to be a moral person. What you are asking of me is no less than an admission that there is no objective right or wrong on this issue- that each person’s right could be right for them- or that because a lot of people have come to believe that something is right, it must be right. I can’t admit to this as it isn’t true.

Can you consider that this may be the real point we are debating here?

 

[Laurie_Gibson]

Hi Phooie,

I am sorry to have upset you. Please accept my apologies for any offence caused.

I am not suggesting that you cease to be a Catholic. I know lots of Catholics that do not accept the Church’s teachings on gay sex and I am suggesting they might be right. Of course they are not ‘orthodox’ Catholics but I’m sure your experience must be that there are few Catholics who think the Church is right on everything!

I placed my reasoning on this site because I wanted to discuss it with Catholics. Now if I were to raise it with a ‘Catholic in the street’ it would be quite fair for them to reply, “Sorry mate – I accept, by faith the Catholic line here” or “I have studied the matter in detail and have come to the conclusion that the Church is right but I haven’t the time/the matter is too complex to discuss right now/read this book/go to this site to study it in more depth." However is it not reasonable for me to expect those who engage me on a thread like this one to look at my reasoning on it and deal with that?

Let me deal quickly with the points you do make.

1. You say that you are not influenced by your negative experiences to condemn gay sex and that though for a while you did not think it wrong but now you do. **OK I am **genuinely sorry that I suggested you might be biased. But are you able and willing to give me a reason for your views and to answer my reasoning here?
2. You say that morality is not just a person’s opinion. I agree! I do not think that morality is ‘just a matter of opinion. I have concluded that it is objectively wrong to condemn gay people who express their love physically in a faithful partnership. I have given a number of reasons against the Catholic view and in favour of the alternative and nowhere do I say that this is simply a subjective matter.
3. You say ‘you cannot see how any offense someone might take as a result of the Catholic Church making a recommendation to Catholics who wish to follow Catholic teachings’
   But the point is that the church does NOT say ‘A good Catholic cannot have gay sex, but it is fine for non-Catholics who want to’ rather it says to EVERYONE ‘Gay sex is an abomination and anyone who reasons impartially can see this’.
   **
   Lastly, I repeat I do not wish to offend you.**

[If you are offended by my suggestion that your experiences have blinded you to the situation – think how much more offended I could be when the Catholic Church says to me that the wonderful love of my daughter has for her partner, when physically expressed is an ABOMINATION!]

Best wishes

Laurie

 

[phoooiee]

Hi Phooie,

I am sorry to have upset you. Please accept my apologies for any offence caused.

I am not suggesting that you cease to be a Catholic. I know lots of Catholics that do not accept the Church’s teachings on gay sex and I am suggesting they might be right. Of course they are not ‘orthodox’ Catholics but I’m sure your experience must be that there are few Catholics who think the Church is right on everything!

I placed my reasoning on this site because I wanted to discuss it with Catholics. Now if I were to raise it with a ‘Catholic in the street’ it would be quite fair for them to reply, “Sorry mate – I accept, by faith the Catholic line here” or “I have studied the matter in detail and have come to the conclusion that the Church is right but I haven’t the time/the matter is too complex to discuss right now/read this book/go to this site to study it in more depth." However is it not reasonable for me to expect those who engage me on a thread like this one to look at my reasoning on it and deal with that?

Let me deal quickly with the points you do make.

1. You say that you are not influenced by your negative experiences to condemn gay sex and that though for a while you did not think it wrong but now you do. **OK I am **genuinely sorry that I suggested you might be biased. But are you able and willing to give me a reason for your views and to answer my reasoning here?
2. You say that morality is not just a person’s opinion. I agree! I do not think that morality is ‘just a matter of opinion. I have concluded that it is objectively wrong to condemn gay people who express their love physically in a faithful partnership. I have given a number of reasons against the Catholic view and in favour of the alternative and nowhere do I say that this is simply a subjective matter.
3. You say ‘you cannot see how any offense someone might take as a result of the Catholic Church making a recommendation to Catholics who wish to follow Catholic teachings’
   But the point is that the church does NOT say ‘A good Catholic cannot have gay sex, but it is fine for non-Catholics who want to’ rather it says to EVERYONE ‘Gay sex is an abomination and anyone who reasons impartially can see this’.
   **
   Lastly, I repeat I do not wish to offend you.**

[If you are offended by my suggestion that your experiences have blinded you to the situation – think how much more offended I could be when the Catholic Church says to me that the wonderful love of my daughter has for her partner, when physically expressed is an ABOMINATION!]

Best wishes

Laurie

I really appreciate your kind reply.
The Church says that everyone should follow Catholic teaching because we believe that Catholic teaching is helpful to everyone- however, no one is forced to be Catholic, so those who choose are free to ignore both the teaching that says to become Catholic, and the teaching that says that homosexuality is an abomination, or any other teaching.

I know exactly how it feels to be a homosexual and to be told that homosexuality is an abomination. More importantly, I know how this causes those who are professing, but not practicing their Christian religion to quickly turn hateful, judgmental and prideful. This is so painful to all involved (including, in an indirect way, to the person who is doing the hating!)- I would like to reiterate the degree to which you and your daughter have my sympathy.

My short reasoning for my views is that anything that causes a person to become focused on pleasure rather than sacrifice causes harm, both to the person who is focused on pleasure and to others around that person. I think that if we are going to make any progress in this discussion we will need to focus on the validity of that statement alone as just about everyone in this day and age has very emotional views on homosexuality; these for the moment could actually cause either of us to jump to premature conclusions which could prevent us from coming to an agreement. For the present, if you want my complete reasoning on this belief, we’ll have to back up and just discuss the first sentence of this paragraph. Do you agree with it or disagree?

 

[davidv]

Hi Phooie,

I am sorry to have upset you. Please accept my apologies for any offence caused.

I am not suggesting that you cease to be a Catholic.

Actually in a round about way you did. Let me explain.
If the Church is wrong about its teaching on homosexuality, then I have no assurance that she is right about anything else. So, if you convince me the Church is wrong, why would I associate myself with an organization that is wrong.

I know lots of Catholics that do not accept the Church’s teachings on gay sex and I am suggesting they might be right. Of course they are not ‘orthodox’ Catholics but I’m sure your experience must be that there are few Catholics who think the Church is right on everything!

I placed my reasoning on this site because I wanted to discuss it with Catholics.

If this is true, why did you dismiss the critisism of your logic a few posts back?
{snip}
Best wishes

Laurie

 

[Laurie_Gibson]

Hello Phooie,

I am glad that we are back on an even keel!

You ask me to deal with your reaoning below.

My short reasoning for my views is that anything that causes a person to become focused on pleasure rather than sacrifice causes harm, both to the person who is focused on pleasure and to others around that person.

Speaking generally I would say it rather depends on the circumstances. If I am on holiday it would seem fine for me, other things being equal, to focus on my pleasure. But if I was teaching a class I ought to focus on teaching them well.

I am also do not quite understand what is meant by ‘focussing on sacrifice’. I understand that in some circumstances doing the right thing means sacrificing my own interests but I am not sure what more you mean.

Perhaps it would focus our thoughts helpfully if you could clarify the following.

A married couple, who cannot have children, express their love physically and I am sure you regard that as fine. They are not ‘focussing on pleasure rather than sacrifice’? However when a gay couple have sex then they are. You need to explain this.

I think you have a problem because there seems to be no difference between the two actions in terms of the love expressed and all the other qualities of the action - except the shape of their private parts - and it is not clear to me why that alone has any bearing on the morality of the action. However I wait for your reply.

All the best

Laurie

 

[Laurie_Gibson]

DavidV

Thanks for your brief comments

1] It is somewhat utopian to expect any human organisation, even one divinely inspired, to be right ALL the time. I am sure you know that the Catholic Church has been wrong in the past and it is surely unlikely that right now we are in the lucky situation where she is not in error anywhere!

2] I’m sorry if you think I ‘dismissed’ your reasoning earlier. Would you mind reminding me of where and I promise I will try to make amends? Thanks

Best wishes

Laurie

 

[phoooiee]

Speaking generally I would say it rather depends on the circumstances. If I am on holiday it would seem fine for me, other things being equal, to focus on my pleasure. But if I was teaching a class I ought to focus on teaching them well.

I am also do not quite understand what is meant by ‘focussing on sacrifice’. I understand that in some circumstances doing the right thing means sacrificing my own interests but I am not sure what more you mean.

The reason we have to deal with this piece by piece- it is a HUGE concept. I will get to the lower part of your post once I have explained fully all the background information/philosophy that is necessary to really make my answer clear.
I will give an anecdote. It is a true event that happened recently in my own life. I believe it testifies to the power of attachments, and how attachments often (perhaps most often!) functions to harm people without intent on the part of the sinner. I’m including this particular story both because it was very powerful to me when it happened, and because it is so ambiguous. To me it shows how innocent actions can in fact cause suffering.

My husband is a very sensitive, very caring man. His brother recently got married. They got married in a foreign country because they were excited about that and felt that it would be very enjoyable. We couldn’t afford to go because we have two young children. At first his brother was upset that we couldn’t go, then came to accept it, after a lot of stress in our family and a lot of pressure.
The week of the wedding, my husband became very depressed. He felt upset at missing his brother’s wedding and he felt shut out of his brother’s life. Because he was depressed, he stopped helping around the house- depression can do that to a person. Because he stopped helping around the house, I got overstressed and overburdened. This made me irritable for awhile. This affected my ability to be kind to my husband and my children. It made it harder for me to concentrate at work.
This is were all of the effects that people suffered over a period of weeks and months because, when my brother-in-law decided on how and where to have his wedding, he wasn’t oriented toward strengthening his relationship with those who were close to him- and this was such a seemingly small decision that wouldn’t seem to have any negative consequences for anyone!. When faced with the choice, he couldn’t see how these things affected other people, because to him the enjoyment that he would get from a trip to another country was the most important point of consideration.
My response to this is that of course no one can blame him. It’s his wedding and his right to do as he likes. We can’t expect him or anyone else to make all their decisions based on how we feel. However, there is no doubt that overall there would have been less suffering if the wedding had been close enough to allow loved ones to attend, followed by a foreign honeymoon.
Honestly, the point of this is not even whether it was right or wrong to have the foreign wedding. I don’t think that the Church would condemn the decision specifically. It is certainly not a sin to travel to a foreign country. The point is that when my brother-in-law made the decision, I am quite certain that he was legitimately unable to perceive that it might possibly hurt anyone to do so. This was because his mind was so focused on what would bring him the most enjoyment, that he was completely blinded to consideration of how the other people around him might be affected. He wasn’t able to make a completely informed decision about what he really wanted. I feel bad about including an example of something someone else did, but as I am a sinner just like everyone else, I am just as blinded to the effects of my sins. There’s no way I can see how far-reaching the effects are, and I’m sure that they are very far-reaching.
The Catholic Church teaches that one ought to lead as simple a life as possible, and rid oneself of attachments in order that those attachments do not blind us to the opportunity to experience deeper manifestations of love- sacrificial love. I can’t judge concerning what my brother-in-law should or should not do, but I can say that the Church says that sacrificial love is far more satisfying than any sort of material pleasure (this includes physical pleasure such as eating, or sexual pleasure, as these are of the flesh and not of the spirit). Every moment of every experience I have had on this earth resoundingly confirms this. Therefore, if I am to believe Church teachings, which I do, my brother-in-law would probably have been happier to have gotten married surrounded by the love and good wishes of those who are emotionally close to him, than to have gotten married in a luxurious, exotic place.
I could be wrong completely about this. It is also COMPLETELY unreasonable to expect my brother-in-law to have done anything other than what he did. It is his life and his free will.
However, for Catholics the situation is different. Jesus and the Catholic Church both teach that we need to give up our attachment to worldly things in order to find the kingdom of heaven. This is the whole point of the Catholic teachings on masturbation, birth control, and homosexuality. Since there is no sacrificial element, these practices can blind us so that we are not free to devote our whole selves toward sacrificial love.

What do you think about all this? Would the world be better if humanity were less oriented toward enjoyment and more oriented toward sacrificial love of neighbor? Are individuals happier if they are oriented toward sacrifice, or toward pleasure? Which is really more fulfilling?

Please bear with me even if these questions don’t seem directly relevant to the original point being discussed.

 

[davidv]

DavidV

Thanks for your brief comments

1] It is somewhat utopian to expect any human organisation, even one divinely inspired, to be right ALL the time. I am sure you know that the Catholic Church has been wrong in the past and it is surely unlikely that right now we are in the lucky situation where she is not in error anywhere!

Actually I know that the Church has never been wrong in her teachings on faith and morals. With God all things are possible.
What evidence do you have that the Church is, or has been wrong?

2] I’m sorry if you think I ‘dismissed’ your reasoning earlier. Would you mind reminding me of where and I promise I will try to make amends? Thanks

Best wishes

Laurie

From a prior post
Argument 1:
Laurie Gibson:

Natural Law says that gay sex is always wrong.
Laurie’s daughter has gay sex.
Therefore Laurie’s daughter is doing something wrong.

Argument 2:
Laurie Gibson:

(2) Natural Law says that gay sex is always wrong
But the gay sex my daughter is having is not wrong
Therefore Natural Law is either a mistaken approach to morality OR its application here needs to be rethought.

I previously stated the argument one is valid (that is, the conclusion follows if the premises are true). Do you agree? Please note this is just about validity. No decision has been made about the arguments soundness (truth).

I also stated that argument 2 is not valid. The reason I gave is that the way that it is stated, requires that one of the premises be false. This fails a basic rule of logic, namely the a valid argument is formed such that the conclusion follows if the premises are true. What say you?

 

[Laurie_Gibson]

Dear Phooie,

Thanks for sharing the experience of your bother-in-law’s wedding with me. I hope your husband has got over his very natural distress.

I think it illustrates your point very well. On many occasions we are faced with a choice. Some of the alternatives will give us pleasure but upset other people, other alternatives might give us less pleasure but be better for others. Often we focus far too much on our own pleasure and not on other people.

Let’s put the matter oversimply.

Sometimes we have to choose between.

a] An action that will give us pleasure.
b] An action that will benefit others.

It would be better, you say, if we were more self-sacrificing and choose b] more often in these situations. I completely agree with you.

But with the best will in the world I am not able to see the application to gay sex.

If my daughter has it then she does get pleasure of course. [Also it helps her to be a better person to those around her because it makes her happy] So this action is of type a]

If my daughter does not have it I just do not know who would be benefitted. And because she and her partner would be made very unhappy her friends and relatives would be unhappy too. So giving up sex is not a type b] action. Nobody seems to benefit from her sacrifice.

No doubt you will explain.

Best wishes

Laurie

 

[phoooiee]

It is now my turn to ask you a personal question.

Do you believe in God?

 

[Laurie_Gibson]

DavidV

You say that you know of no times when the Catholic Church has been in the wrong. How about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the condemnation of Gallileo, the time when there was two popes each excommunicating the other… I am not saying that these things are not explicable and possible excusable in the context of the time and that you can no doubt put a positive spin on them BUT they were wrong.

As to the arguments.

An argument is valid when IF the premises are true the conclusion follows.
An argument is sound if it is VALID and the premises are TRUE

Both of the arguments are VALID but which one, if any, is sound? For that we must look at the premises and ask if they are true. If you look at my post you will see that I give reasons for thinking that the premises in the second argument are true.

Regards

Laurie

 

[Laurie_Gibson]

Reply to Phooie,

The answer to your question is that I do not think that the evidence for the existence of a God is very strong.

However the Catholic view of Natural Law is that any person of good will can grasp the truth of the moral pronouncements of that Law whether or not they believe in a God. I am conversing under that assumption.

Where do you want to go from here?

Laurie

 

[davidv]

DavidV

You say that you know of no times when the Catholic Church has been in the wrong. How about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the condemnation of Gallileo, the time when there was two popes each excommunicating the other… I am not saying that these things are not explicable and possible excusable in the context of the time and that you can no doubt put a positive spin on them BUT they were wrong.

As to the arguments.

An argument is valid when IF the premises are true the conclusion follows.
An argument is sound if it is VALID and the premises are TRUE

Both of the arguments are VALID but which one, if any, is sound? For that we must look at the premises and ask if they are true. If you look at my post you will see that I give reasons for thinking that the premises in the second argument are true.

Regards

Laurie

Please explain how the second argument is valid. I don’t see it. As it was written, both premises cannot be true.

 

[phoooiee]

I want to explain how I feel in a way that will relate to your perspective, which is why I asked. If you are a nonbeliever, what you are looking for out of this conversation would be different than if you are a believer.

The belief in God is necessary to objectively prove that homosexuality is morally wrong. The lack of belief in God essentially negates any contention that an objective morality even exists, therefore there is no point in trying to prove anything objectively right or wrong, including this.

From this angle, the only thing that can be proven is that the Church’s argument is logically consistent, which is what I will attempt to do.

Here goes. Remember that NONE of these ideas apply or must be espoused by nonbelievers. They are for Catholics. The only reason that the Church states that they should be followed by nonbelievers is the Church’s stance that everyone should be a believer for their own good. However, if you are not a believer you also will not believe in the consequences of not being a believer, so there is no intrusion since there is no temporal or worldly consequence, other than not being in a state of grace.

1. Asceticism is good, because it removes attachments and keeps us more permanently oriented toward charity and love, rather than oriented toward the things we are attached to. Since attachments blind us and keep us from making informed decision, we are called to asceticism to elevate ourselves.
2. We will be happier as ascetics than as people who keep their attachments, because we will see clearly enough to find real joy.
3. There is a value in giving up control of one’s life to God. This is another very big concept which doesn’t need to be discussed unless you would like to examine at length whether God exists or doesn’t exist.
4. The only way that we can give up control of our lives to God is to acknowledge that every suffering that we endure has a purpose, to shape us more fully according to His plan. Let’s simplify and say that the quest of a Christian’s life is to reject the disorder caused by the Fall, and to reorient oneself toward the will of God, which will shape us more and more completely into a loving person. Through becoming a more loving person, we can discover that the more we become oriented towards love, the more suffering actually becomes a joyful experience. We ourselves are helped through this transformation, and those around us are helped through the benefit of our more charitable behavior.
5. Sexual relations simply distract us from this process when they are not oriented toward sacrifice. Masturbation is condemned just as much as homosexuality. Birth control is condemned. Even Natural Family Planning is condemned other than for the purpose of spacing children in sacrificial love for the children that one already has.
6. For a Catholic, homosexuality is immoral because it keeps one focused on sexual pleasure rather than on the process of self-transformation through continual sacrifice that is the calling of every person. This process of transformation is not possible without giving up the things that we are doing instead of performing acts of sacrificial love.

Homosexuality is NOT the same as sex between an infertile couple because we assume that the infertile couple is having sex in the joyful hope that children will result. If any opposite-sex couple has sex for the sake of pleasure alone, without wishing to trust that God will bless them with children if He so chooses, then this is the same “abomination” as a homosexual couple having sex. The real sin is the lack of trust in God and His design for our bodies. We must, as Catholics, believe that it is good to trust that if God made the male and female body to produce children through sex, and that our personal desires are the result of disorder that came about at the Fall.

The wonderful thing about this is that, even if it doesn’t make any sense at first, it is observable that truly faithful Catholics are capable of great good in the world. I read a news article the other day.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100330/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_brazil_amazon_defenders

Who could do this? I could not do this. I can’t imagine having that kind of courage. There are so many other examples in the lives of the saints, people who were able to do the sorts of incredibly good things with their lives that we almost discount as being impossible or not worth considering…except that the saints did them. So I have faith, because I have seen in my own life as well as in the lives of others, what ceding control to God can do. This is the evidence on which the existence of God rests.

(continued)

 

[phoooiee]

There are all sorts of other logical arguments that are out there which could prove that homosexuality is objectively not a good idea. I could quote experts. You could quote experts with the opposite viewpoint. There would be no reason to have this discussion, because in the end, you put your faith in the sources who support your viewpoint, and I put my faith in the sources who support my viewpoint. Both of us also use our personal experience and the testimony of other people whose opinions we trust to support this process. One can use this process to justify anything, because every human being has limited experience. There will always be an expert to testify to any point of view. There will always be someone’s personal experience to testify to any point of view. Only God sees the whole picture. And we believe that God speaks through the Catholic Church (particularly since the Catholic Church gave us the Bible).

Now I’m going to risk irritating some Catholics

If your daughter is an unbeliever, then it is quite possible that in this state of unbelief, there is a certain sense in which she is happier when she is having sex with her partner than when she is not.

However, there is a different kind of happiness that comes from a real trust in God. Giving up of control is gaining a freedom from oneself, which is the freedom to experience true happiness.

So I would argue that whatever happiness your daughter experiences is only a shadow of real happiness. Having experienced both, I would say that this shadow is much like what an addict experiences. When addicted to something unhealthy, the addict is indeed more functional while under the influence. But this does not negate the fact that the addiction keeps that person a slave, keeps them from higher things.
If your daughter has not experienced the real happiness that comes from God, then there is no way for her to judge whether I am right or I am wrong, because there is no comparison. If she were to give up sex entirely for a year and devote herself to charitable work, asceticism and prayer, then she would know. If not, then there is no way for her to compare.

I hope I do not offend in this post. I respect anyone’s decision to believe or not to believe. However, if you truly do not believe, then it should be very easy to dismiss all the claims about what happens through faith as pure delusion. As the call to avoid homosexual relations is faith-based, if you have no faith you can disregard it as no more than the paranoid rantings of a schizophrenic. The schizophrenic does not mean to offend; he has simply lost touch with reality. I can’t see how this could be truly hurtful to you or your daughter unless you are taking it seriously on some level. It is my personal hope that perhaps you are, as I remember what it was like not to. For me, it was like hell on earth, except I didn’t even notice at the time because I couldn’t see that there was anything different.

If nothing else, this all makes for interesting discussion .