Is lack of the ability to procreate the sole reason homosexual activity is a sin?

  • Thread starter Thread starter WannabeSaint
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Maximian said:
No it means you can’t be a practising Catholic and a Practising homosexual at the same time.
Click to expand...
This isn’t correct. If that was the standard, then there would be no need for confession in the Catholic Church. You are saying a sinner can’t be a practicing Catholic. I hope that isn’t what you meant to say.
 
Research and socio-cultural support for so-called gender or sexual “fluidity”, both as an identity and orientation, suggest that this is not so “fundamental” or immutable. It is certainly not a mere choice; but beliefs, especially those that define one’s identity, are also not entirely volitional. That you find this “extremely offensive” to limit rights in one of these directions indicates you have an extreme bias.
 
Last edited:
Neithan said:
or sexual “fluidity”, both as an identity and orientation, suggest that this is not “fundamental” to nature.
Click to expand...
The fluidity that some evince is one thing. You are conflating terminology to try to equivocate between the deeply rooted inclinations of most people versus the extreme vaccillation of beliefs large numbers of people express through life.

A person who is gay does not choose to be straight or bi. Or gay. The attraction exists. The fact that individuals may have a range of degrees of attraction to different groups does not nullify the fact that that is still their nature. A bisexual is not a gay person or a straight person, no matter how much that person may wish to alter those deep seated attractions.

I have reached no conclusions on the science regarding transgenders, but I do know they would be the first to tell you that they are not altering their identity at all. The whole point of dressing or surgically altering themselves is to sync their physical form to their underlying identity.

And your apparently intended insult of my being “extremely biased” is an inane comment. Bias is the whole point. This sideline discussion was born out of Maximian’s own personal feelings of offense about someone daring to compare Catholicism to gay people’s issues. If he/she decided to share their feelings on this, I figured mine are just as valid.
 
Last edited:
QContinuum said:
Catholic teaching is not clear and consistent.
Click to expand...
Actually Catholic teaching is very clear and consistent but it is often not what people want to hear. Therefore there are always people who want to keep the Catholic brand while attempting to change the content. You can do that in industry and politics but it doesn’t work with eternal truth.
 
I’m afraid I’m too conversant with Catholic history and theology to agree with your statement. I also think it’s quite uncharitable of you towards your fellow Catholics here to say that the endless debates I have closely read and observed here for years, even before I joined, are all the result of them not wanting to listen to Catholic teaching. Traditionalists argue with conventional Catholics, conservatives with moderates.

But this is ancillary to the discussion anyway. Even if Catholics were 100% in agreement with the same exact interpretation of every given doctrine or teaching:
  1. Catholics are not the sole claimants of the privilege of “religious conscience.”
  2. People can and do change reject previously held religious beliefs all the time.
So again, I am appalled that a person’s expression of a deep seated sexual identity should be considered suborned to the something like religious belief of others, who can at any time jettison such an identity in favor of something more appealing.

I don’t certainly don’t observe gay people frequently changing their mind about who they are attracted to. I have seen the opposite very frequently, where even when they actively wish to change their attraction, it stubbornly persists. Because it is deeply rooted.
 
Last edited:
I agree. It would be especially useful to know the root of why it’s deemed sinful. Is it procreation alone? Another reason?
 
Another reason is the confusion, social isolation and depression created in teenagers who don’t understand the natural purpose of sexual impulse or the social necessity of marriage.

Anyone here involved in teen culture right now? I’ve got three, and they attend Catholic school.

These kids are way, way, way past the angst of the 1960’s. These kids struggle for meaning to live. The possibility of marriage and building a family is a cynical fantasy. They have few role models to look up to: loyal, faithful, self-sacrificing married people who welcome children over building wealth.

BUT, these kids have an unlimited number of ways to sexually ‘’get off’ with no social stigma whatsoever. They’re exploring any number of sexualities, genders, identities. Teachers, therapists, doctors encourage them to do so!

Sexual libertines everywhere should be pleased! Ask a teen: what’s the most important freedom in life? Getting to have sex with anyone, anytime, anywhere, as any gender.
 
jan10000 said:
deliberately denigrating another’s - especially when that lifestyle is based on love - is reprehensible.
Click to expand...
The Church teaches that those who identify as homosexual should be accepted with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity”CC 2358. Homosexuality is no more sinful than any heterosexual sex outside the bonds of holy matrimony. This would also include incest of any particular combination, even if the participants considered their lifestyle to be “based on love”.
 
QContinuum said:
And I find it offensive that something unfixed and so changeable as religious belief is elevated, and frequently even given precedence, to the rights of gay people.
Click to expand...
The Church’s views on sexuality aren’t based simply on some arbitrary command of the Church or of God. We aren’t voluntarists. They are based on natural law and the essences of things. Anyone, religious or not, can reason to this. It’s not simply a Catholic thing.
 
And yet humbleseeker assures me that there isn’t a “satisfactory” answer to my question outside of that provided by Catholic authority.
“If you’d don’t agree with the authority of the Catholic Church, why does it matter to you what it considers sinful? No answer will be satisfactory.”
-humbleseeker
Click to expand...
I’ve already looked at the natural law rationale. The problem is, that too rests upon certain premises that I do not accept. So pointing to natural law, is not a reasonable defense of the position of denying gay people their equal right to express their sexuality in a legally recognized relationship.
 
Last edited:
With that, I need to step away for a few hours at least. A parent of a friend of my son just found out her college age daughter needs to be picked up in a neighboring state. College is being shut down due to pandemic. So he’s needing a place to stay while they drive over to pick her up tonight.

I got some prep to do to get ready for his stay. I’ll respond later.
 
Yes, they do. Meaning a number of groups. To put it another way, they will tell you the Pope has got it wrong. There is still a level of dissent inside the Church.
 
QContinuum said:
And yet humbleseeker assures me that there isn’t a “satisfactory” answer to my question outside of that provided by Catholic authority.
Click to expand...
And they would be incorrect.
QContinuum said:
I’ve already looked at the natural law rationale. The problem is, that too rests upon certain premises that I do not accept. So pointing to natural law, is not a reasonable defense of the position of denying gay people their equal right to express their sexuality in a legally recognized relationship.
Click to expand...
Right. Most people these days don’t. They are either moral utilitarians, Kantians, or Rawlsians, or a mixture of those things. The next level of discussion would be a working out of what moral frameworks are workable and what are not (a task much to large for this thread). The issue of discussing sensitive or tricky ethical situations is that people often have different basic premises and end up talking past each other.
 
The men who wrote the Bible were ignorant goat herders. Scripture has God as its author. It was an insult.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top