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JimG
Guest
“This means that non-genetic factors - such as environment, upbringing, personality, nurture - are far more significant in influencing a person’s choice of sexual partner, just as with most other personality, behavioral and physical human traits, the researchers said.”
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Thorolfr
Guest
Just because non genetic factors can play an important role doesn’t mean that someone’s sexual orientation is a choice or that this orientation can be changed once it’s been established. Nor does it necessarily have anything to do with how someone was raised. For example, as the Washington Post points out:
According to Wikipedia:
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ZMystiCat
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Yeah, frankly, there seems to be very few surprises, at least among what’s mentioned in the linked article. At most, it just verified a few things with the largest sample of people we’ve had to date. That said, I don’t see this study suddenly making us see homosexuality as a choice or as something that can be changed, considering we were already working with these assumptions in the first place.
With that said, I am a bit surprised to not read anything about the effects of hormones in the womb, considering how much of an affect it may have. Maybe that just wasn’t reported on in the article or outside the scope of the study?
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0Scarlett_nidiyilii
Guest
Off topic, but I’ve wondered about the phenomenon of men engaged in sexual relationships with each other in the absence of women, like on shipboard or in prisons, but then when they’re back in society they have relationships with women again.
Women seem to do this, too.
Women seem to do this, too.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
People are on a sliding scale of sexuality. At the extreme ends are people who absolutely can’t work up an attraction to anybody who isn’t the opposite gender (at one end) or the same gender (at the other end). Many people fall somewhere on the spectrum. Somebody who falls in the middle would be bisexual and equally attracted to men or women.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of sexual relationships in prisons, on ships etc might not be based on sex, or at least not for both people. One person might be interested in the sex, the other person might go along with the sex in order to get something else like companionship or money or protection.
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Opal0427
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I don’t think it really matters in regards to sin.
Being wired a certain way isn’t a choice.
We’re called to make choices in our behavior to follow God. He knows what’s best for us and loves us.
There’s resources to help Catholic lgbt people live the faith. It’s not an easy cross to carry, but its more than worth it. God’s will brings beauty to life.
Being wired a certain way isn’t a choice.
We’re called to make choices in our behavior to follow God. He knows what’s best for us and loves us.
There’s resources to help Catholic lgbt people live the faith. It’s not an easy cross to carry, but its more than worth it. God’s will brings beauty to life.
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buffalo
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Thorolfr
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Lisa Diamond’s research mostly involves women, so her conclusions might not apply to men. It’s been shown that male sexuality is different than female sexuality and doesn’t show fluidity to the same extent. Moreover, Diamond’s research has often been mischaracterized to mean that people can willfully change their sexual orientation. She makes clear, however, that although some people, mostly women, do experience some shift, it’s something that happens on its own, usually over an extended period of time, and not something that someone can just make a decision to do. Diamond herself has said that same-sex attraction cannot be removed with conversion therapy.
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FiveLinden
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There are genetic factors in all sorts of things the Catholic Church considers sins: hatred, violence, theft, and probably even attitudes that can lead to atheism. Neither does the Church say that everyone has the same sort of tendencies, or temptations as it would put it. So discoveries of this sort will not change the Church’s teaching. What they do, rather, is make the teachings much harder to defend to non-Catholics and wavering Catholics as ‘choice’ is easier to oppose than ‘instinctive tendency’. And the God portrayed as behind these teachings will appear less just and less loving. For the Church it’s a PR problem, not a problem of moral theology.
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LilyM
Guest
It isn’t the orientation that is the problem from a Catholic pov, rather the behaviour. in acting on it.
As an analogy, I may be born with some genetic predisposition to, say, alcoholism. But I still have at least some choice to start drinking and keep drinking.
To the extent that I have the choice to not drink to excess and choose to do so anyway, I am responsible and cannot plead not guilty.
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buffalo
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Correct. Catholics understand self mastery.
Homosexual advocates push the idea that a person is a slave to their condition and we should therefore encourage acting on it. Catholics seek what is truly good for the person.
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Thorolfr
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A person can go their whole life without having a drink of alcohol and be just fine. But having an intimate companion in life is a much more basic need for most human beings. That’s why God says in Genisis, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” For someone to live their whole life alone without intimate companionship deprives them of something that is one of the most important parts of most people’s lives.
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chessnerd321
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And yet, God doesn’t give us crosses too big for us to carry. Many Catholic men and women are celibate for many years while looking for a spouse. Priests, brothers, and nuns are celibate their whole lives. Anyone can live a chaste life, whatever that means for them. Chastity looks different for a married man than for a single one, but they both have a call to chastity.
Don’t sell people short. Nobody should be so dependant on sex or a partner that they couldn’t be happy otherwise. God can give anyone joy in whatever their circumstances are. People can be happy in the face of extreme trial.
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Thorolfr
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This notion that all people can joyously bear whatever adversity befalls them just isn’t true. Not having adequate health care is something that many people can’t bear and they die as a result of it.
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ZMystiCat
Guest
At the same time, both Jesus (Matt. 19:11-12) and Paul (1 Cor. 7:7) recognize that remaining single and celibate is both permissible and, in some cases, even preferable. Jesus even acknowledges that biological and environmental factors can render someone unfit for marriage, which obviously has some correlation to the subject at hand.
Even getting down into deeper matters of the Genesis passage, it’s not as simple as saying intimacy is always good. Paul, for starters, recognized that such intimate relationships bearing the same marks of Adam and Eve’s can be sinful (1 Cor. 6:15-16). Jesus called attention to the male/female aspect in His own recounting of the passage (Matt. 19:4-6). Paul saw in it a reflection of Christ and His Church (Eph. 5:31-32), which, if you’re at all familiar with his writings, always requires a male (Christ) and female (Church). As our understanding of the Trinity became more well-established, other writings found a clear relation to the Trinity, where the love between the man and woman is life-bearing, just as love between Father and Son brought about the Holy Spirit.* Obviously, this has some relation to being image-bearers of God and is only possible between a man and a woman.
So really, even on Genesis alone, there’s a lot more than just sex, and that “lot more” only solidifies that this “good” can only come between a man and a woman. With all that said, non-sexual yet intimate relationships can exist beyond a husband and wife. They just won’t fully embrace all the good that exists between husband and wife.
* It should be obviously, but just to be clear, the Father/Son relationship was not sexual. We, as humans with our human bodies, need sex to bring about new life. God obviously doesn’t.
Being able to “bear your cross” is about being able to live righteously regardless of what befalls you. It has nothing to do with whether or not your body can bear something.
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chessnerd321
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Tell that to St. Maximilian Kolbe. Or St. Lawrence. Or the other Martyrs.
Perhaps they can’t, but with God’s help they really can. It’s a primary conviction of the Catholic Church. “In this world you will have troubles, but take heart. For I have overcome the world.”
Our most basic need is finding God. If that is met we can have joy through starvation, torture, and yes, even not being able to have sex–as unbelievable as that may seem.
Perhaps they can’t, but with God’s help they really can. It’s a primary conviction of the Catholic Church. “In this world you will have troubles, but take heart. For I have overcome the world.”
Our most basic need is finding God. If that is met we can have joy through starvation, torture, and yes, even not being able to have sex–as unbelievable as that may seem.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
A whole lot of people in the world never meet anyone with whom they can be intimate. There are many people who would like to be married and never had the opportunity, or the person they planned to marry became unavailable - got sick and died, chose to leave the relationship or marry someone else, was killed in a war, etc. There are still other people who marry but for whatever reason end up not being able to have sex in the relationship because the other person becomes sick or unable or unwilling to do so.
Nobody ever died from not being able to have sex. It can be difficult and perhaps lonely, but sexual relations are not a necessity of life. Society in general nowadays cannot seem to comprehend this, but it is true.
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Thorolfr
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It’s true that sexual relations are not a necessity of life, but it’s not very easy or common in my experience for someone to be able to find a companion who wants to live with them and have a non-sexual relationship that is only emotionally intimate or close instead.Thorolfr:
A whole lot of people in the world never meet anyone with whom they can be intimate. There are many people who would like to be married and never had the opportunity, or the person they planned to marry became unavailable - got sick and died, chose to leave the relationship or marry someone else, was killed in a war, etc. There are still other people who marry but for whatever reason end up not being able to have sex in the relationship because the other person becomes sick or unable or unwilling to do so.
Nobody ever died from not being able to have sex. It can be difficult and perhaps lonely, but sexual relations are not a necessity of life. Society in general nowadays cannot seem to comprehend this, but it is true.
In the case of the married couple who can’t have sex, at least they can have a relationship that is emotionally intimate and close. The young woman who never found a marriage partner or whose intended marriage partner was killed in a war or got sick and died and who became an old maid might have been able to live with her brother and his family or a nephew and his family. Extended families, including older unmarried members, living under the same roof were more common in the past.
In my family, my great grandfather’s brother and sister never married and lived with their parents on the farm until their parents’ deaths and then with each other for about the next thirty years. On my mother’s side, I know of two old maid aunts, my great grandfather’s sisters, who lived together for years. I rarely hear of situations like that any more where unmarried family members live with a brother or sister or nephew and their families. Nowadays, families are often much more fragmented and spread out with their members living long distances from each. Our society in general is much more fragmented. Some people don’t seem to mind living alone, but I’m not one of them.
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