Observation about SSA

[90Domer]

Thank you for all the replies to my post! Enlightening, to say the least! Have a blessed week and, if you can, please pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

 

[Elizabeth502]

You and I understand ALL that, because we have the foundation. The people I’m talking about (and I never said “all”, I used “many”) do not have the blessings of that foundation. I also don’t believe that everyone who visits here has that kind of foundation. We understand what “disordered” means, and we understand that our inclinations to sin are not our identity. For me that came from lifelong, excellent Catholic education, something that I think we all can agree is not the norm in society. The “secularization” you refer to is a pure example of that.

If you had asked me years ago if my relationship was “fulfilling” I would have given you a definitive YES. I had very few relationships in the life, and they were monogamous and committed. We didn’t cheat on each other, that would have been just as wrong to us as if we were married. Our “gay lifestyle” included going to school, work, grocery shopping, dinner with friends, household chores…exactly the same as the straight couples we knew. We knew people who weren’t monogamous and committed, (both gay and straight) but they weren’t part of our inner circle, because we didn’t approve of that behavior. No matter who you are, that stuff just causes pain.

What led me out of the life wasn’t really about the quality of the relationship, it was a deeper thing, something that’s really hard to put into words. It was that restlessness that Augustine describes, I guess.

Thank you for such a complete and forthcoming answer, Seeker. I have no issue with anything you say, except to clarify my remark about “the gay lifestyle.” I did not mean it to be a caricature (not to include shopping, working, etc.). I meant it as a sexual behavior of a similar category as a fornicating cohabiting behavior of heterosexuals. (And that’s why I applied the term “lifestyles” to both !)

Let me clarify further: Fornicating, cohabiting heterosexuals will also swear up and down that they’re “committed.” Saying it doesn’t make a commitment. A commitment is an internal and external acknowledgement of mutual permanence for the long-haul, reinforced publicly. It’s not about “playing house” but just avoiding “the piece of paper” or “the M word.” (chick-joke )

And while I appreciate that you may believe that homosexual “marriage” would allow formal “commitment,” the Church sees any such notion, of course, as an impossibility and an invented construct. The friendship is real and has value, as all self-sacrificial relationships have. But the sexual dimension of it is not a part of that noble aspect, naturally.

Again, thanks for your full disclosure, which hopefully is valuable to many here.