I'm a gay guy. Should I marry a woman?

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Oh I’m not the one pairing the two: our society has done so.

“I identify as gay” is a common way to start these threads.

Too much.
 
Edward_H said:
“I identify as gay” is a common way to start these threads.
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One might say “I identify as a Trekkie.” That doesn’t make Trekkie their identity. The phrase “I identify as…” is an idiom for “I use the adjective (among other adjectives) _____ to describe myself”.

Some people do go way overboard in considering their attractions to define them. But many don’t.
 
SSA??? What is that? As for marrying a woman, don’t do it! You would be living a lie. You would just be stealing available women from single catholic men like me who can’t seem to find a christian woman who is even interested. lol The only ones interested in me are non-believers who would never step foot in a Catholic church.
 
Edward_H said:
We are not our mind.

We are a soul that has a body.
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What does that mean exactly?

The thoughts, feelings, moods, emotions, perceptions and attractions we experience are produced by billions of chemical reactions in various parts of our brains involving neurons and neurotransmitters and hormones. And as far as I know, the brain is part of the body.
 
No, the Bible never speaks against the modern concept of homosexuality as being part of a loving, monogamous relationship and only speaks of it in terms of what it meant from the 10th century BC to the time of Christ. We need to remember that there really weren’t delineations between gay and straight sex until about the 17th AD century in the west and at the time of Christ sex was essentially sex. There were certain contexts in which it was wrong. But, loving, monogamous sex wasn’t necessarily one of them. If for any reason the concept of romantic love wasn’t a thing until the 17th century. Until then, marriage was a means of business and keeping a bloodline going in the way a farmer would breed their sheep (seriously) and gay sex really wasn’t something that was considered beyond a rather broad and situational interpretation of what fornication meant. Which, again, in the time of Christ isn’t what many think as there really wasn’t even a word for it yet (sodomy just meant fornication and the English law against ‘buggery’ involved more than just anal sex as it also needed role reversal to occur}). The OT deals with gay sex, specifically on only three occasions and one of the three is in essence a repeat of one of the other two: Genesis’ Sodom & Gomorrah, Leviticus 18:22 (per the Holiness Code that reads between 17-26) and in Judges in the Battle of Gibeah where SD is in essence repeated as it wasn’t a real battle. In the case of SD the two male angels that were sent to Lot and his family the men of the town came to Lot’s door and demanded to be let ‘to know’ the two visiting men that had come to his home. What was the purpose for this? We see this in where gay sex is, sort of, addressed in Leviticus: at 18:22 we see in the Holiness Code (remember, Leviticus was essentially a rule book for the nomadic Hebrews when they were in the desert among the pagans after the exodus) where it is said “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.” In the original Hebrew the context here is more clear as the wording would give a better distinction (which we have the recent archaeological finds of the 20th century to thank more than existing Hebrew texts as much of them were destroyed in the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD and are largely a reconstruction wrought from Greek translations of them found elsewhere that are a bit lacking {the Septuagint}). However, we don’t necessarily need that as this part of Leviticus is framed quite nicely at the opening of the chapter right at 18: “The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘I am the Lord your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the Lord your God. Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the Lord.” That is to say, the Canaanites and the Egyptians practiced ritual sex and sex as domination as well as concubinic sex (sex slavery). (continued in reply below)
 
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In Canaan there was a fertility cult dedicated to the goddess Astarte in which one would commune with the goddess by paying to have sex with a temple slave dedicated to her. Sex as domination is common even today as it’s a man ‘owning’ another by way of forcing him into intercourse to declare that they are below them and many wealthy at the time owned a concubine or sex slaves for the purposes of just that, sex. All are terribly wrong as they are abusive. We have no real record of the Hebrews in Egypt. But, that’s not to say that they were never there and they may have had some influence in the 18th Dynasty there by merit of the Pharaoh Akenaten proclaiming a monotheistic religion using an earlier reference for inspiration. As they were outsiders, they were probably abused while there and knew all too well what it meant for such things to be forced upon them. By wanting ‘to know’ (the Hebrews used the term ‘to know’ a person to indicate sex, not to lay with as that’s a Greek interpretation) the angels God had sent to Lot, the men at the door were wanting to rape or dominate them to effectively say they were not welcome there. Which, kind of tells of how twisted the just, post tribal man could be as this was a kind of tribalism at work and not a proper, civil manner in which to be. (continued in reply below)
 
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Which, is why scholars (who you will find in very short supply here, sorry to say) today refer to the meaning of this action in the story as being in violation of the law of hospitality: you at this time were supposed to welcome a traveler. This wasn’t that. In Judges there’s a similar telling of this story (which, indicates it was a common narrative and probably wasn’t the only story of this kind circulating at the time) involving the raping of a concubine (slave) of a man from the tribe of Levi and causing a war. But, once you know the meaning of SD you can grasp the similar meaning there. Now, for fornication: fornication, believe it or now, was really only something a woman could honestly bring upon herself as a sin as it in essence meant a woman being penetrated outside the bounds of marriage. Were she to allow this to happen per her own will, she would be stoned. A man could engage in adultery, a far lesser crime by possibly causing children outside of marriage. But, in such cases the penalty for the man was paying the father or nearest patriarch a fine to sustain the woman for life if he raped her or was forced to marry her and look after her thereafter. Gay sex wasn’t really part of the scope of this until it became politically useful in the late middle ages when a number of kings had been realized to be gay. Prior to then, such as in the case of Richard I of England, they just simply confessed to having fornicated with a man to their priest and the matter was resolved. There were a number of abuses of, ahem, “passive” gay partners in history. But, such is more akin to sex as domination than sex as sin. The church as it is, is trying to grapple with this as the context of the matter has changed so rapidly in just the last half century that it’s having a hard time with its clergy per the matter. Even if a great many theologians, if not most, fail to see an issue with it. I would suggest you find a church that has an LGBT outreach such as Dignity USA and join it. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself living in an otherwise decent parish with a massive contradiction it is trying to grapple with. You as a gay man, are not a fornicator or an abomination: you’re a gay man. That is it.
 
But isn’t it notable that no other group of people do this with such predictibility?
 
We are children of God, we aren’t our feelings. Our most stable identity is relational, that is, children of God, not fluctuating based on the “meters” in our senses.

The reality of who we are exists independent of our feelings about it.

Are we not the person we are when we sleep? when we’re in a coma, under anesthesia…when the self reports of our supposed identity aren’t streaming?
 
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Edward_H said:
But isn’t it notable that no other group of people do this with such predictibility?
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Maybe “no other group” is too strong, but I appreciate your point. I think that if fewer people opposed their own description of their experience (“being gay”, as a mere adjective), they would feel less attacked, and thus feel less reason to make that central to their identity.

It’s similar to race that way. If you want black people to focus on race less, stop treating them differently because they’re black. Simple enough.
 
catholic1seeks said:
I’m pretty sure I mentioned more than once that I’d be having sex and open to children.

But if I wasn’t clear, I hope I am now!

Even more basic, neither would I marry a woman whom I had NO attraction to. I assume there would be some attraction. It wouldn’t be random, after all.
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I am really late to this thread and have by no means read all of it. However, this seems as good of place to jump in as any…

Yes, even with my quick review of the thread, you did mention this, along with not lying to the hypothetical woman, along with wanting to be attracted to her, etc, etc. People seem to be ignoring it all.

I take your side and the side of the priest who adviced you to consider marriage. If a woman knows about your SSA and you really love her and she loves you, I see nothing wrong with marriage. SSA is not an impediment to marriage. It seems ironic that Catholics who preach that SSA people should be chaste just like everyone else, would not support this situation. It would be horribly wrong to enter into such a union under false pretenses, but you have made it clear that would not be your intent.

It seems people are being quite unfair in their responses.
 
TL;DR means ‘Too Long; Didn’t Read’

Essentialy, take the 5 paragraphs you wrote and condense them, please 😃
 
Yes, we’re quick to find reasons not to be more generous minded or more sporting, more forgiving, taking little and big ‘offenses’ in more confident stride with God.

The devil wants us to think “it’s all about you”.
 
This thread is getting really busy, really fast.

Thanks for answering this. I know you said it before (you said you said it before) but this thread is so long that this information got buried.

I really can’t find anything wrong with your idea as long as you do what you say and 1) let the woman know about all this before marrying and 2) staying open to children. But I would advise, since marriage is such a big commitment with all kinds of very bad outcomes if it is invalid or goes wrong, to ask you to really ask yourself is this what you really want (and maybe talk to multiple priests too). Pray on it too.

I’ll admit it, I am a bit “emotionally scarred” (because my ex husband is gay, although he didn’t tell me before marrying me) and had a bit of knee jerk reaction to your original proposal.

Plus, I would say I am the last person to give advise on what is and isn’t a sin and what is and isn’t right (I am far from perfect myself). So maybe I should bow out.

Again, I wish you the best (and I wish you happiness).
 
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In short, don’t do that. The bible in reality isn’t against homosexuality as it simply didn’t exist in the time of Christ and the church right now is in the midst of coping with something scripture doesn’t address. Marriage at that time was about both business and the continuation of the Hebrew bloodline and had nothing to do with love as it does now. That, in kind with the development of homosexuality as a separate orientation is a 20th century affair and we only really started even having a recogntion of homosexuality 200 years ago when romantic love came into being. Before, it was two families agreeing to marry their kids off. This is also largely why the Apostle Paul writes against people being together at all as he viewed copulation as being a kind of using of one person for their needs. As a kind of abuse. Why he said that is really only able to be interpreted as being that as ‘Saul the Persecutor’ he frequently addressed cases like that. We don’t have sex as domination, revenge or pagan ritual anymore and the context in which the bible addresses it doesn’t exist today. Find a church with an LGBT outreach program such as one that is affiliated with Dignity USA and go with that. Don’t marry a woman out of some now outmoded concept that a bunch of old men are having a hard time reconciling themselves with. (but, please, do read my entry in full at some point, it covers a lot of details people aren’t considering)
 
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