Is another reason really needed? We have reproductive systems, not entertainment systems - those are for a wall in the family room.
Except even the church recognizes there are non-reproductive purposes to sex, such as unity.
Only if you think it’s a moral imperative that every member of a species reproduce.
Procreation is a huge aspect of it. It’s what God designed human sexuality for anyway. Another aspect is simply complementarity. God designed man and woman for each other. So sexuality outside of that union will be disordered.
It is not. It is, however, a moral imperative for married couples to be open to life.
That’s probably a fair statement. It’s just that a considerable proportion of folks find what is put on show at some of these parades distasteful. I’m not sure it’s fair on same sex attracted people to say this represents their culture. I guess it does for some of them.
Marriage is a relationship presumed to have a sexual element. In some sense, it is the defining element. Which is a large part of why SSM (which entails state endorsement) is an affront to many people.
No - that doesn’t follow. If a man chooses not to reproduce - how does that make reasonable the engagement of his sexual capacity with another man? A short consideration of the nature of his sexual capacity makes clear it does not.Hume:
Only if you think it’s a moral imperative that every member of a species reproduce.
That doesn’t follow from ‘naturally immoral’ as Hume was arguing.
Agreed, the amount of drinking going on at St Patrick’s day parades is absurd. It would just be hard to get from here to ‘being Irish is immoral’.
How is two people you don’t even know having a sexual relationship an ‘affront’ to you?
The argument I was responding to suggesting rejecting the model by which we perpetuate is naturally immoral. A man having sex with another man is not rejecting that model, he’s abstaining from it, the same as a heterosexual couple who chooses not to have children.
Catholic ethics isn’t Humean. Hume creates a false dilemma with the “is/ought” gap.
I might be wrong, but this sounds like a very Kantian perspective. There is no universal requirement to reproduce, but there is a final cause for those who choose to use their sexual faculties. Human sexuality is intrinsically linked to procreation, so it’s fairly simple to reason what that final end to sexuality is.
Just as a sterile couple can be “open to life”, so can a gay couple. If by some miracle, God wants to bestow new life on a gay couple, and they are willing to accept it, how is that any different than the couple who have lost their reporoductive organs through illness?
The difference is that heterosexual activity is naturally ordered towards procreation. A disorder or some other health problem that affects this in some way does not change that fact. Therefore, sterility, old age, etc. are not barriers. (Interestingly enough, impotence is a barrier to marriage).
Cooking food is also not ‘open to life’ in that you can’t have a child result from cooking food, but no one would ever argue the contrary because the purpose of cooking food isn’t to produce children. Likewise the purpose of homosexual sex (or heterosexual sex that doesn’t involve inseminating the female partner) isn’t to create children. It does however create emotional connections between couples, relieve stress, and plenty of other medical and emotional benefits. If you want to argue homosexual sex doesn’t provide the same non-reproductive benefits that heterosexual sex does that’s fine, but I’d need to see some data not just an unsupported claim.
Not all Christian denominations agree with this.
Sorry, I literally meant @Hume
I don’t see where one can derive the argument that something with multiple uses must only be used for one, even if that one is deemed ‘more important’ than the others. At least not only citing natural law, which is what I was pointing out, ‘natural law’ is always heavily influenced by non-natural moral codes. E.g. reproductive systems may be ordered towards procreation but we don’t generally find it moral for a 12 year old to use them for such, even if they’re capable of doing so.
According to the church, heterosexual couples don’t have a baby by just their own means, either. God is always involved in it, and has a hand in it. So what about gay couples? Now we are putting limitations on God?
I think it is worth expanding on this that when Paul condemned those who commit homosexual acts, he included the young boys (i.e. “boy prostitutes” in the NABRE, or “effeminate” in the DRC1752). It’s an aspect of the passage that people tend to ignore, almost acting as if Paul were simply condemning pedophilic acts, not homosexual acts. Notably, the culture of the time probably meant Paul viewed the young boys as fully consensual and therefore culpable, and it doesn’t make much sense that his view would change just because the young boy would be replaced by an adult. Ironically, this means an attempt to seem culturally aware about sexual dynamics of the time actually looks somewhat culturally ignorant, or at least almost intentionally ignorant of the text.
No more so than heterosexual couples.
So? You could find the same from a heterosexual perspective around the Internet if you looked (obviously, I’m not linking anything here, since it probably violates guidelines), and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Spend any time on a forum where sex isn’t taboo, and you’ll probably read some really bizarre stories about what heterosexual couples do in private.
To add: Even where they can openly talk about their lives (which isn’t everywhere), they’re often stigmatized.
Oh, so like how some women are exposed to unwelcome advances by men?
You’re shifting the goalposts now. Your original contention that people took issue with is that homosexuals are somehow louder about what they do in private than heterosexuals, and all you’ve offered in support of that is stuff that heterosexuals also do, such as pointing to gay men who wear skimpy clothing despite heterosexual men and women doing the same.
For a man and a woman, releasing semen in the right place can be harmful, so perhaps it’s not the act itself which is somehow evil?
Why would the unitive aspects of sex, which the church fully acknowledges and encourages in heterosexual married unions, not apply to homosexual couples?