Question: Is gay marriage sinful?

[Benadam]

What you’re saying here is a religious argument, not a scientific one.

No it’s quite natural that animals form bonds for reproduction. The bonds are characterized by the nature of the animal. This is true for humans as well Humans are fundamentally different than any other animal. Their bond for reproduction is as well.

 

[PetraG]

Sorry I’m not obsessed with sex and neither is my partner? If you find sex to be the defining aspect of marriage I do wonder what would happen if your partner were rendered incapable of sex. Surely you would still consider your marriage valid? Maybe not?

When a marriage has been consumated between a man and a woman, the two become one flesh. Heterosexual consort is meant to set up a relationship for life, a relationship that is open to procreation. Society has an interest in defending social relationships that guard a child’s interest in being raised in the same home with both of his or her parents and keeping parents together as grandparents. That is why fornication and adultery are considered a serious offenses.

By your measure of marriage, if sex has nothing to do with it, how could you cheat on your spouse physically? You’re saying that if your spouse has sex with someone else, that is not a violation of the marriage vows? Sex is no big deal, so who cares? Yeah. Right. You all believe that?

Honestly, there are arguments here against marriage here that only go to show how much contemporary views of sexuality are out of touch with reality. What is marriage, they say? Why should marriage have a narrow definition or a particular purpose that doesn’t revolve solely around what is in it for the people getting married? Marriage is whatever makes someone happy! Marriage is what you want to make of it!! And so we have people pretending to marry themselves and what marriage becomes is a tax dodge.

Why, after all, should marriage as it is being defined–that is, to encompass any relationship the people getting “married” want it to–be worthy of any name at all? Why should society give married couples benefits that unmarried people can’t give to anyone they want to give them to? What’s the excuse? It does come to be a way to get advantages that married people get for reasons that ought to be very unclear to those not getting married and not getting those advantages.

 

[Thorolfr]

Thorolfr:

Quite a number of scientists believe that there is also a social function to sex (both homosexual and heterosexual) for the purpose of strengthening alliances and social ties. Harvard University professor Edward O. Wilson is one of them. And if sex is all about reproduction, how do you account for this:

Yes among animals. Humans are fundamentally different. Think of the environment that shape animals and form bonds between them. Not the same for human life. The animalsare subject to the environments that form bonds. humans are not. Human life is not subjected to environments like animals but change their environments to suit them. I bring this up to establish that humans are not subject to the environments they find themselves in. It follows that our life has a dignity that doesn’t allow for it to be subject to the bonds that form within them either.

Intellect is a sublime and powefull thing that distinguishes human life from the other animals. The reason. There is no reason for humans to have to resort to the survival mechanisms that the other animals do. There is a social function to homosexual behavior that’s appropriate in the animal kingdom. They resort to them because they can’t shape their environment to suit their needs. Humans deny their own nature when we succumb to behaviors that are unsuitable to an animal bestowed with intellect.

It’s really only fairly recently in human history that humans have been able to shape their own environment to any significant extent. And I don’t believe that humans and animals are fundamentally different, but that’s just my opinion and probably the opinion of many scientists as well.

 

[Benadam]

That’s not true. Human intellect burst onto the scene 70,000 years ago. The human animal has been shaping environments since then. Man left Africa immediately and began to explore the earth. The ability to ask , why, what , where, when and how, along with the ability to use symbols made human life a shaper of the world at the outset of existence on earth.

 

[Thorolfr]

Why, after all, should marriage as it is being defined–that is, to encompass any relationship the people getting “married” want it to–be worthy of any name at all? Why should society give married couples benefits that unmarried people can’t give to anyone they want to give them to? What’s the excuse? It does come to be a way to get advantages that married people get for reasons that ought to be very unclear to those not getting married and not getting those advantages.

I have a same-sex partner that I’ve been with for more than 20 years and except for the fact that we can’t reproduce offspring, I believe that our bond is just as worthy of recognition by society as that between heterosexual couples. We care for each other, depend on each other, love each other, and have lives as intertwined with each other emotionally and financially and socially as what heterosexual couples do. It is a deeper relationship than the kind that exists between friends or at least between any friends that I’ve ever had before. My partner has been accepted into my birth family in the same way that they would have accepted a wife if I had been heterosexual and had married a woman. And I’m glad that I was able to get health insurance in the past through my partner’s employer because we were seen as domestic partners. I would have had no health care otherwise which would have been a terrible burden on our household. Our relationship is not just a scam to get benefits.

 

[PetraG]

I have a same-sex partner that I’ve been with for more than 20 years and except for the fact that we can’t reproduce offspring, I believe that our bond is just as worthy of recognition by society as that between heterosexual couples. We care for each other, depend on each other, love each other, and have lives as intertwined with each other emotionally and financially and socially as what heterosexual couples do. It is a deeper relationship than the kind that exists between friends or at least between any friends that I’ve ever had before. My partner has been accepted into my birth family in the same way that they would have accepted a wife if I had been heterosexual and had married a woman. And I’m glad that I was able to get health insurance in the past through my partner’s employer because we were seen as domestic partners. I would have had no health care otherwise which would have been a terrible burden on our household. Our relationship is not just a scam to get benefits.

When there was a push for civil unions in Oregon, the Archbishop of Portland said it would be morally permissible to set up a civil means of establishing domestic partnerships of mutual care for adults who could not marry each other, provided that there was no right to sexual consort implied. Couples whose sexual relationship would be marital (which is to say heterosexual couples) would be required to marry to get those benefits, but those people who don’t have a marital sexual relationship (such as same sex partnerships or partnerships between people too closely related to marry) would still be able to provide each other with mutual care. The difference would have to do with the presumption that married people are exclusive sexual partners and automatically presumed to both be the parents of children produced by the union.

This means people could set up a household in which they would be able to conveniently establish each other as responsible for each other’s care, financial responsibility, medical decision-making, and so on. One adult could share work benefits with the other, just as married couples do…why not? There are, after all, many adults who are not sexual partners who could benefit from such an institution.

It is totally reasonable to allow people who do not marry to establish households in which adults see to each other’s care in an unselfish way. Why would this be a problem? It is only what convents and monasteries have always done. There wouldn’t even be a reason to restrict these arrangements to just two people, for that matter.

After all, if we are talking about a relationship between adults who care for each other that has no connection to sexual procreation by this couple, why would it need to be an exclusive partnership? I can see none.

Explain to me why the proponent of LGBT rights didn’t accept that this kind of union, one that would be open to two sisters to enter into, was not satisfactory (because that proposal was rejected here).

 

[Thorolfr]

When there was a push for civil unions in Oregon, the Archbishop of Portland said it would be morally permissible to set up a civil means of establishing domestic partnerships of mutual care for adults who could not marry each other, provided that there was no right to sexual consort implied. Couples whose sexual relationship would be marital (which is to say heterosexual couples) would be required to marry to get those benefits, but those people who don’t have a marital sexual relationship (such as same sex partnerships or partnerships between people too closely related to marry) would still be able to provide each other with mutual care.

What business does the state have in determining whether two people have a “right” to “sexual consort”? No one has a “right” to have sex with anyone. Even in a heterosexual marriage, one spouse does not have a “right” to “sexual consort” if the other spouse doesn’t want to have sex. It’s called “rape” if their is no mutual consent.

 

[PetraG]

So, would this mean that homosexual couples who intended to have a sexual relationship would have been barred from the kind of civil domestic partnerships envisioned by the Archbishop? And what business does the state have in determining whether two people have a “right” to “sexual consort”? No one has a “right” to have sex with anyone. Even in a heterosexual marriage, one spouse does not have a “right” to “sexual consort” if the other spouse doesn’t want to have sex. It’s called “rape” if their is no mutual consent.

Actually, if my husband is injured and cannot have sexual relations with me any more, I can sue the responsible party for damages for my loss, for loss of consort. Many states have eliminated their laws against alienation of affection, but there was also a time when someone who knowingly committed adultery with a married person or otherwise interfered with the marital relationship by turning one spouse against the other as a spouse could be sued by the wronged spouse for alienation of affection. In other words, marriage laws have recognized that spouses have made a vow of sexual exclusivity and that parties that interfered could be liable for damages. Under that understanding of marriage, telling someone in a same sex marriage that it is wrong to have homosexual relations would amount to alienation of affection.

From my understanding, alienation of affection laws are the reason the Catholic Church in the United States would not open investigations into the validity of a marriage under Church law until the marriage had been declared null or dissolved according to civil law. The process of investigating the marriage could have legally constituted alienation of affection. (The Church has retained that protocol, so that a couple whose marriage is in trouble will not have their future capacity to live the common conjugal life ruined by the process of investigating the validity of the marriage.)

More to the point, there are people who would like the advantages of a domestic partnership and by their care for each other deserve that recognition who do not want anyone to presume a sexual relationship that does not exist. Other people could make use of these advantages who would be barred because, for instance, siblings cannot marry each other. They want and deserve access to the legal recognition, but what they want is not a marriage.

So, once again: Explain why your partnership has to be deemed exactly the same as a marriage.

 

[Thorolfr]

Actually, if my husband is injured and cannot have sexual relations with me any more, I can sue the responsible party for damage, for loss of consort. Many states have eliminated their laws against alienation of affection, but there was also a time when someone who knowingly committed adultery with a married person could be sued by the wronged spouse for alienation of affection. In other words, marriage laws have recognized that spouses have made a vow of sexual exclusivity and that parties that interfered could be liable for damages.

Laws on “alienation of affection” don’t make much sense to me since anyone who commits adultery should be responsible for their own actions. No need to blame someone else beside the cheating spouse as if they are not able to control themselves. As for your first example, I don’t see why same-sex couples shouldn’t be able to sue for the same thing since sex is also an important component of their relationships.

 

[PetraG]

Laws on “alienation of affection” don’t make much sense to me since anyone who commits adultery should be responsible for their own actions. No need to blame someone else beside the cheating spouse as if they are not able to control themselves. As for your first example, I don’t see why same-sex couples shouldn’t be able to sue for the same thing since sex is also an important component of their relationships.

I think you can see that the Church does not want to find itself in the position where teaching that homosexual relationships are not marriages and homosexual activities are wrong could be a civil offense.

You’re saying that same-sex couples should be able to sue for loss of consort, but people here are saying that marriage isn’t about sex. Someone needs to make up their minds about what marriage means. Does it have to do with sexual relationships that society has an interest in legislating, or doesn’t it?

If a couple’s sex life is none of society’s business, then what responsibility does society have in protecting or encouraging it?

If it is society’s business, then why does society have no say in what is and is not the kind of sexual relationships it wants to encourage? Why should married couples have benefits that unmarried people don’t have? Why shouldn’t a brother be barred from putting his adult sister on his health insurance at work?

You can see that when marriage was a matter of establishing a framework that protected the possibility of paternity and maternity, the difference between homosexual and heterosexual relationships isn’t just a matter of partners who take care of each other. When marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with the possibility of establishing a permanent relationship between prospective biological parents, the nature of the institution is very different.

The Church has intended to protect civil marriage as an institution established for the sake of paternity and maternity. We have already seen that legalizing homosexual relationships has only encouraged surrogacy to a higher degree–and yes, this is a means of achieving pregnancy that the Church condemns even for heterosexuals. You may not agree, but grant that the Church is at least being consistent in its view of what marriage is. The Church has not denied marriage to homosexuals for reasons that don’t apply to heterosexuals, too.

 

[Thorolfr]

You’re saying that same-sex couples should be able to sue for loss of consort, but people here are saying that marriage isn’t about sex. Someone needs to make up their minds about what marriage means. Does it have to do with sexual relationships that society has an interest in legislating, or doesn’t it?

I think that people here are saying that marriage isn’t only about sex. The Catholic Church demands that sex must be possible in a marriage, but doesn’t demand that sex always be present. I’ve read about Josephite marriages where sex doesn’t have to occur if both spouses consent. And people who marry in old age might not engage much if at all in sex.

Even though sex is not the only important thing in a marriage and some marriages might not have any sex, that doesn’t mean that sex is unimportant, both in straight and in gay relationships. And yet many straight people seem to believe that their intimate relationships are fundamentally different than gay intimate relationships. They often seem to minimize the importance of sex in creating a deep emotional bond in many gay relationships, a bond which is stronger than the bond between two friends or a brother and sister. And this is something which it also does in many straight relationships. And some seem to believe that what happens in gay relationships doesn’t even have anything to do with “love” but only with “lust” which is kind of insulting to gay people.

 

[PetraG]

I think that people here are saying that marriage isn’t only about sex. The Catholic Church demands that sex must be possible in a marriage, but doesn’t demand that sex always be present. I’ve read about Josephite marriages where sex doesn’t have to occur if both spouses consent. And people who marry in old age might not engage much if at all in sex.

Even though sex is not the only important thing in a marriage and some marriages might not have any sex, that doesn’t mean that sex is unimportant, both in straight and in gay relationships. And yet many straight people seem to believe that their intimate relationships are fundamentally different than gay intimate relationships. They often seem to minimize the importance of sex in creating a deep emotional bond in many gay relationships, something which it also does in many straight relationships. And some seem to believe that what happens in gay relationships doesn’t even have anything to do with “love” but only with “lust”.

Yes, the Catholic Church undeniably deems the expression of affection between persons of the same sex in a genital way to be disordered because it never has a procreative aspect to it. That doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. That means that they do not have a genital means of expressing love. What happens in a genital way between homosexuals cannot have the procreative aspect to it. It cannot progress to a marital relationship. That is the moral problem with it.

Unlike many proponents of defining marriage between persons of the opposite sex as different than same sex relationships, however, the Catholic Church also teaches that it is disordered to separate the procreative and the unitive aspects of sex between heterosexuals, as well. This is a long-standing teaching, not something invented for this narrow discussion of this topic. Homosexuals are not being singled out, then. Even genital ways of unifying a marriage relationship between a man and woman that do not leave the couple open to the procreative function of the act are deemed to be disordered and not according to the Catholic understanding of marriage. Contraceptive sex within marriage is also spoken of as substituting the true meaning of love with an understanding of love that is more about exchanging physical pleasure, which the Church considers lust rather than love. In other words, this isn’t about glorifying heterosexuals generally as being loving and homosexuals as being lustful. It is deeming sex outside of marital sex as lustful, and marital sex must have both the procreative and the unitive aspect to it in order to be according to the Creator’s intention for human sexuality.

 

[Thorolfr]

What you say here is a very Catholic idea about sex. Before coming here to CAF, I had never read anything about the necessity of sex being both “unitive” and “procreative.” All of that kind of language is specifically Catholic and part of Catholic doctrine. I doubt that most Protestants or people of other faiths have thought about sex in this way. So, if Catholics think that this is what is required for sex to take place, then Catholics should do that. But they shouldn’t expect everyone else in society to believe this.

 

[PetraG]

What you say here is a very Catholic idea about sex. Before coming here to CAF, I had never read anything about the necessity of sex being both “unitive” and “procreative.” All of that kind of language is specifically Catholic and part of Catholic doctrine. I doubt that most Protestants or people of other faiths have thought about sex in this way. So, if Catholics think that this is what is required for sex to take place, then Catholics should do that. But they shouldn’t expect everyone else in society to believe this.

Protestants and many non-religious people do consider sex between heterosexuals to be substantially different than sex between homosexuals. They have their own reasons for believing that. I think the Catholic Church has a more internally-consistent view of why that is, but the general sentiment is widespread. I really don’t understand how anyone can fail to see that someone might believe there is a big difference. It is easier to wonder how someone can really say there isn’t a difference. That is the position that takes the greater leap of imagination. It takes such a leap of imagination that someone on this thread has even expressed surprise that someone thinks marriage has any connection to sex at all!! That says to me that those who can’t deny there is a difference between homosexual sex and heterosexual sex have to deny that sex is even important to marriage!!

My intention, however, was to explain that using the word “lust” is not meant to imply that homosexuals are terrible people and heterosexual attractions are all holy and perfect.

As for what Catholics ought to expect everyone else in society to believe, in a democracy everyone can believe what they want to for whatever reasons they want to and can ask other people to join them in believing it. It is no surprise that Catholics are just as intent on convincing others to see things their way as advocates of other ways of looking at marriage are.

 

[SeriousQuestion]

Aren’t there animals that cannablize each other. And I am pretty sure there is a species of monkeys that commits incest. Animals aren’t reliable.

 

[lolarose]

In all honesty, I am not sure that God would mind if someone was gay, and this is because he is all loving, benevolent and equally encourages all of his children as brothers and sisters in Christ to love one another unconditionally.
I take into consideration the elements of grave sin, but at the same time ‘Thou shalt not lie’ was one of the Ten Commandments. Therefore, if someone is gay and they refuse to admit this and act on it for fear of how they will be perceived due to something they did not choose in the first place but is an intrinsic part of them, this will encourage them not only to lie to others but, far worse, they will lie to themselves.
At the end of the day, God loves us. We are all, each of us, perfect to him as we were made in his image. Therefore, an all-loving God would accept any relationship be it man and woman, man and man or woman and woman, provided it is a genuine, all loving relationship. And in general, as long as each relationship is legal, consensual between adults I cannot see the problem. After all, there are marriages between men and women which are abusive and unequal, and I cannot see our all loving God seriously condoning those ones.

 

[PetraG]

In all honesty, I am not sure that God would mind if someone was gay, and this is because he is all loving, benevolent and equally encourages all of his children as brothers and sisters in Christ to love one another unconditionally.

I take into consideration the elements of grave sin, but at the same time ‘Thou shalt not lie’ was one of the Ten Commandments. Therefore, if someone is gay and they refuse to admit this and act on it for fear of how they will be perceived due to something they did not choose in the first place but is an intrinsic part of them, this will encourage them not only to lie to others but, far worse, they will lie to themselves.

At the end of the day, God loves us. We are all, each of us, perfect to him as we were made in his image. Therefore, an all-loving God would accept any relationship be it man and woman, man and man or woman and woman, provided it is a genuine, all loving relationship. And in general, as long as each relationship is legal, consensual between adults I cannot see the problem. After all, there are marriages between men and women which are abusive and unequal, and I cannot see our all loving God seriously condoning those ones.

When you say, “I take into consideration the elements of grave sin” and follow that immediately with a “but,” your initial premise is very much undermined.

What sin can we commit that we could say we weren’t in some sense born with a tendency to commit? Are you saying, then, that an all-loving God would have made us animals with no moral awareness rather than beings who have to choose to submit their wills to the Will of God? Sharks cannot be murderers; people can. Can rabbits have perverted sexual desires? Can an animal be a thief? The gift of moral awareness was distorted by Adam and Eve, who judged themselves competent to decide what was right and what was wrong. The forbidden fruit was “was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom.” (Gen. 3:6)

By your standard, what exactly was Eve’s sin? Why would God have been displeased with her? She was only doing what people do, which was seeing that a fruit was desirable and reaching out and eating it, as people will of course do. By your measure, God made the fruit desirable and he made Eve with the desire. Where is the problem? How could he forbid eating the fruit he placed right there in front of her?

Even from a secular viewpoint, societies cannot exist if the things that people are naturally prone to do cannot be forbidden. Your premise that all consensual sexual activity must be moral doesn’t even make sense from a secular point of view. Many countries and most states don’t have laws on the books against adultery. Does that mean it is OK? It is legal. It is consensual. What is the problem? Should everything that is immoral be encoded as a misdemeanor or a crime? If you don’t want to fine or jail everyone for every sin, then of course you are going to find that some sins are totally legal.

 

[theCardinalbird]

In all honesty, I am not sure that God would mind if someone was gay, and this is because he is all loving, benevolent and equally encourages all of his children as brothers and sisters in Christ to love one another unconditionally.

No one ever disputed whether or not God would want us to treat people who are attracted to the same sex as evil. He wants us to treat everyone with love and compassion.

I take into consideration the elements of grave sin, but at the same time ‘Thou shalt not lie’ was one of the Ten Commandments. Therefore, if someone is gay and they refuse to admit this and act on it for fear of how they will be perceived due to something they did not choose in the first place but is an intrinsic part of them, this will encourage them not only to lie to others but, far worse, they will lie to themselves.

Are you saying that people are lying to themselves if they do not act on their desires? Humanity is not perfect and people who experience this attraction did not choose this attraction. This doesn’t mean however, that they cant pick up their cross and follow Jesus who called us to deny ourselves and pick up our crosses in the Gospel.

At the end of the day, God loves us. We are all, each of us, perfect to him as we were made in his image. Therefore, an all-loving God would accept any relationship be it man and woman, man and man or woman and woman, provided it is a genuine, all loving relationship.

An all loving God would give people the compassion to speak the truth about what is right and wrong, what is good for you and what is bad for you. An all loving God would not change the truth for a lie, we cannot change marriage and God has only ordained marriage to be between a man and a woman (no such thing as a gay marriage in scripture). Humanity has created this idea that God created such a union between the same sex, and as a person who experiences this attraction (I experience same sex attraction) I can honestly say that I am happy God created marriage to be only between one man and one woman because this union speaks volumes of his love for family (which I will not allow be tainted by this degradation of this idea called same sex marriage).

By picking up this cross of same sex attraction I am finding peace and happiness in ways that I can’t put to paper yet (or text in this case), and by dying to myself, by crucifying my desires and fully submitting myself to God’s will I feel I will find healing. I may not lose this attraction, I may struggle but at least I can live by the strongest love known to man, which is sacrifice. Christ never said the road to holiness was easy, it is a narrow gate friend.

cont’d

 

[theCardinalbird]

Those who experience same sex attraction need brotherhood or sisterhood and various other things. What they do not need is gay marriage. Many people are picking up their crosses of same sex attraction and are showing the world that there is another way to find happiness, another way that doesn’t go against what marriage is truly, and it is another way that says no to the desires of the flesh and yes to Christ, and yes to pure love.

At the end of the day, God loves us. We are all, each of us, perfect to him as we were made in his image. Therefore, an all-loving God would accept any relationship be it man and woman, man and man or woman and woman, provided it is a genuine, all loving relationship.

We have something called a fallen nature, it does not logically follow that what we like is a good thing and that God accepts whatever our feelings classes as good.

 

[SeriousQuestion]

You can stick many bad desires such as pedophilia into that argument. Just because God is all loving doesn’t mean we are allowed to sin without remorse or repentance. We all ought to remove sin from our lives. I don’t understand how they are lying to themselves if they choose to not act on their desires. Even heterosexual people can not act of on those desires and not be lying to theirselves.