Re-building a bridge: the link between contraception and the LGBT community

[JimG]

A show of hands, please: How many of you know that the term “heterosexual” was originally used to describe a condition that was considered, in clinical terms, like the term “homosexual,” to be “morbid” or “pathological”?

That’s right. These terms were first brought into use in the last decades of the 19th-century by psychologists seeking to classify sexual attractions, emotions, and acts—not persons, not “identities”—associated with sexual abnormality. Of course, this begs the question—if even “heterosexual” was pathological, what was considered “normal” sexual attraction, emotion, and act?

Normal sexual desires and behaviors all had procreative sex as their focus. Acts and desires that directed a person toward procreative sexual activity (acts that properly could lead to procreation) were considered “normal.” Acts and desires reflecting a “morbid passion” for non-procreative sex acts with someone of the other sex were classified as “heterosexual.” Similarly, acts and desires reflecting a “morbid passion” for obviously non-procreative sex acts with someone of the same sex were classified as “homosexual.” How many people are aware of this?

–Jim Russell writing in CWR

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

–Jim Russell writing in CWR

I don’t think the words in that article can get out of their own way. If heterosexuality is morbid and pathological, where does that leave us? It is true that “homosexual” as a term was devised by European psychologists in the 19th century. It is equally true that the orientation was known in Biblical times. It’s a label devised in the century before last. Not sure what that fact adds to the current discussion except a McCarthyite “guilt by association” kind of thing in linking the origin of the two labels.

 

[JimG]

I don’t think the words in that article can get out of their own way. If heterosexuality is morbid and pathological, where does that leave us? It is true that “homosexual” as a term was devised by European psychologists in the 19th century. It is equally true that the orientation was known in Biblical times. It’s a label devised in the century before last. Not sure what that fact adds to the current discussion except a McCarthyite “guilt by association” kind of thing in linking the origin of the two labels.

The two terms were both originated to describe sexual desires directed toward non-procreative sex. They only differed in the object of the desire, which in either case was considered a pathology. Neither word described what we call an “orientation,” but rather a tendency toward certain kinds of non-procreative sex, no matter the object.

The birth control movement untethered the idea of sex from procreation, a connection which exists in nature. Thus the two terms came to be associated not with tendencies and feelings but with personal identity.

Now we have come full circle, wherein there are those who wish to engage in procreation without sex. Thus IVF, same sex adoption, surrogacy, sperm donors, rented wombs.

The basic idea is the same as was made in a First Things article entitled “Against Heterosexuality,” but this author makes clearer the link to contraception.

I think the point is that there is no “heterosexual” and “homosexual.” There are only men and women, with whatever variety of sexual desires they possess.

 

[mathematoons]

I’m not sure it even makes sense to talk about sexual preferences… there is only what will get babies made and what will not.

 

[Otar_Mendes]

Normal sexual desires and behaviors all had procreative sex as their focus

Back then everything, every aspect of human lives, was affected by Judeo-Christian ideology from politics to 'science"
.
Thankfully we, humanity, managed to get rid of this terrible and misleading influence when dealing with out quest for knowledge and research of our species and the world itself as it should be in true, proper science
.
The Mother nature is much more complex when it comes to animals(bonobos, dolphins etc) and humans sexuality. And sex’s role in procreation is not at the top as per natural facts.It is much more complex than some desperately try to paint it.

 

[ATraveller]

Back then everything, every aspect of human lives, was affected by Judeo-Christian ideology from politics to 'science"
.
Thankfully we, humanity, managed to get rid of this terrible and misleading influence when dealing with out quest for knowledge and research of our species and the world itself as it should be in true, proper science

Too bad all scientists right now in chemistry, biology and physics won’t abandon Presbyterian Michael Faraday’s contributions to electrochemistry, Evangelical James Clerk Maxwell’s equations, laying the foundation for modern quantum mechanics and his statistical model of gas distribution, Catholic Antoine Lavoisier’s empirical confirmation of the conservation of mass and stoichiometry and other things that are still in use in today’s science because they have Christian influences. It would seem humanity hasn’t really rid itself of Christian influences in proper science. Proper science is running on Judeo-Christian influences.

 

[mathematoons]

Back then everything, every aspect of human lives, was affected by Judeo-Christian ideology from politics to 'science"
.
Thankfully we, humanity, managed to get rid of this terrible and misleading influence when dealing with out quest for knowledge and research of our species and the world itself as it should be in true, proper science
.
The Mother nature is much more complex when it comes to animals(bonobos, dolphins etc) and humans sexuality. And sex’s role in procreation is not at the top as per natural facts.It is much more complex than some desperately try to paint it.

Or maybe, just maybe, they were right and you’re wrong?

Who says humanity has gotten rid of this influence? We’re still around, you just don’t see us in your social circles.

Your own theory of evolution should tell you that since people of faith have larger families, we will eventually make up the majority of the population once again. Even as you (I mean the plural you, not you personally) relentlessly work to convert us to your religion of atheism (a religion is any set of ideas about God; your idea of Him is that He does not exist), you mostly get those whose faith was never strong to begin with, thus ensuring (by natural selection again) that our ranks only become stronger (and then have even larger families on average). In addition, though you (plural you again) attempt to convert our children to your religion, we develop better methods of inoculating them against it. Your low birth rates (religious influence is the reason the US has a fertility rate higher than Europe’s 1.3 children per woman) ensure that secularism cannot last.

Lastly, why are you preaching against our faith on a Catholic message board? Do you really think you’ll convert us, when we who have Internet access can find all kinds of information defending our faith?

 

[SusanneT]

I’m not sure it even makes sense to talk about sexual preferences… there is only what will get babies made and what will not.

Absolutely and the point is that unless the act is capable of and open to conception it is essential immoral and sinful.