I haven’t read through the entire thread, so I apologize if I’m rehashing anything, but the whole “Making out” topic that has come up does raise some interesting questions…
I have same sex attraction–although I am married to a woman.
Still, I can say that, for me, even before I ever met my wife, I would have considered it wrong for me to have made out with a male friend.
The way I measure it is this: If making out is in no way inherently reserved for a relationship oriented toward marriage, then hypothetically the only reason it should be wrong for me, a married man, to make out with a guy should be because my wife didn’t sign on for that when she married me OR because I felt that it would sexually arouse me or tempt me to do “more” with the man.
But what if my wife were to say to me, “Honey, as long as it doesn’t arouse you or tempt you to do more, you may make out with a guy if it’s just to show each other how much you care.”
Would that mean that it was okay for me to make out with guys, as long as it wasn’t a temptation to do “more” and it didn’t sexually arouse me? If not, the question is: “Why not?” If making out isn’t somehow inherently reserved for a relationship at least oriented toward marriage, then there is no reason that making out with a guy would inherently be “cheating” on my wife, anymore than hugging a guy should be considered cheating on my wife.
For me, personally, even if my wife DID say “have at it, honey,” and even IF I could somehow do this with no temptation to do “more” whatsoever, I just couldn’t convince myself that it was okay…
And thus, for me personally at least, my conclusion would be that it would be wrong for me to make out with a guy even if I was single, because the fact that I would consider it a type of unfaithfulness to my wife even IF she was okay with it and it wasn’t a near occasion of sex, says to me that there’s something special to me about that action, that means that it should be reserved for two people who are courting for marriage or already married.
So I can’t personally offer you any black and white answer, at least not without deeply researching every possible Church reference to the hypothetical “making out without being at all sexually aroused” scenario, which seems just specific enough that I’m not confident it’s occurred to any Church authority to write on it explicitly; I can only ask you this: If you WERE married (whether to a man or a woman–in a hypothetical world where it was okay to marry somebody of the same gender, just so that it can perhaps make it easier for you to imagine): Would you be able to feel okay making out with a close and dear friend other than your spouse IF your spouse gave you the go ahead and IF you weren’t sexually aroused by it? If so, then while I am still not comfortable telling you that makes it right, I admit you have a better case for arguing that it’s “just affection” and not something reserved for courting/marriage. Because, at least under safe circumstances where infidelity is guarded against and lust is not aroused, I sincerely believe it should be hypothetically possible for two friends who are married to other people to legitimately share any type of affection that two friends who are UNmarried (and not courting) could share, as long as their spouses are okay with it.
But if you would NOT feel okay in that scenario, I ask only that you consider that maybe that’s because somewhere inside you yourself feel that “making out” is something that goes beyond what two people who are just friends should do…
I hope you find your answers. By the way, you have my prayers, because my heart does go out to you. As someone who has SSA, I know it can be hard enough a cross to carry even IF one is able to get married to someone of the opposite gender–because just because I have a wife doesn’t make the SSA go away, nor does it mean that having a relationship with a woman can ever “be the same” as having a relationship with a man would have been. So I can imagine that it’s even harder if you are not able to marry a person of the opposite gender at all. May Christ help and comfort you, dear one.
. That’s just playing with my emotions. She does it for the erotic delight, I do it for her, then she jumps the next day to a male ship. Not my idea of a healthy activity. If both people do it for good reasons, though, good things result.
