Any argument that is rooted in assumptions about homosexuality (or any other trait) being “against nature” are ludicrous on their face. We went “against nature” 2.5 million years ago the first time one of our hairy ancestors chipped a rock into a crude knife and started a fire to roast his dinner. If we still “obeying” nature, we would still lost most of our offspring in the first year (and kill and eat some of them from time to time). Most of us would not live past our early 30s. And for all that, we’d still have homosexuality because it is rampant throughout nature and seems to have evolutionary value in certain circumstances.
You have a poor understanding of what constitutes nature my friend. Any reference to Natural Law doesn’t exclude any action’s existence in the natural world. It’s like going to the dentist. I am scared of the dentist, I know it hurts to have a filling, but as a human being I am cognisant of the fact that going to the dentist will stop my teeth from hurting and so I overcome my natural instinct and go.
Being human is often about overcoming natural instinct for your betterment.
The “nature” used by the anti-gay crowd exists nowhere in the real world. It is a fantasy construct based on their reading of the Bible and their own preconceptions of what nature should be.
Again, let me try to explain. What you have misunderstood here is the concept of Natural Law, that is, a perceivable design which dictates optimum performance for any being, species or indeed, even inanimate objects. To use an analogy, washing machines are designed to operate in a certain way. They come with a manual which explains the optimum method for operation. If you insist on putting engine parts in your washing machine, you will find it doesn’t work very well, it is, in fact, not designed for this function.
For Catholics, this is understood as according to Aquinas, i.e. the natural law is “nothing else than the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law” (I-II.94).
Among the Roman jurists natural law designated those instincts and emotions common to man and the lower animals, such as the instinct of self-preservation and love of offspring.
We can observe that all things are subject to a directive norm of all movement and action.All things are ordained and directed towards an end.
In the very constitution of our nature, we too have a direction. The rule, then, which God has prescribed for our conduct, is discernible in our very nature itself.
Those actions which conform with the tendencies of this “rule”, lead to our destined end, and are thereby constituted right and morally good; they make us happier and more fulfilled. Those at variance with our nature are wrong and immoral. They are destructive to our very nature and have the consequence of making us feel unhappy and unsettled.
The norm, however, of conduct is not some particular element or aspect of our nature. The standard is our whole human nature with its manifold relationships, considered as a creature destined to a special end. It is ontologically linked to our essence, our “
what-ness”. Actions are wrong if, though subserving the satisfaction of some particular need or tendency, they are at the same time incompatible with that rational harmonious subordination of the lower to the higher which reason should maintain among our conflicting tendencies and desires.
For example, to nourish our bodies is right; but to indulge our appetite for food to the detriment of our corporal or spiritual life is wrong.
Self-preservation is right, but to refuse to expose our life when the well-being of society requires it, is wrong.
It is wrong to drink to intoxication, for, besides being injurious to health, such indulgence deprives one of the use of reason, which is intended by God to be the guide and dictator of conduct.
Theft is wrong, because it subverts the basis of social life; and man’s nature requires for its proper development that he live in a state of society.
There is, then, a double reason for calling this law of conduct natural: first, because it is set up concretely in our very nature itself, it is intrinsic to our being, and second, because it is manifested to us by the purely natural medium of
reason. In both respects it is distinguished from the Divine positive law, which contains precepts not arising from the nature of things as God has constituted them by the creative act, but from the arbitrary will of God. This law we learn not through the unaided operation of reason, but through the light of supernatural revelation.
I think your problem here is that you subscribe to a more relativist philosophy and therefore no longer recognise absolutes of good and evil.
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