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markeverett49
Guest
I went off no rails. I said that “conversion therapy” should be judged as other therapies treating sexual behavior are judged. How else should one judge it? I never said the Church required it or endorsed it.G
Here’s where you go off the rails. The Church does not appear to see homosexuality (understood as same-sex attraction) as a sexual disorder analogous to something that should be treated by a psychiatrist or a physician (the disorder of the homosexual inclination as understood by the catechism is that it runs counter to a “natural” sexual appetite ordered to procreation–this is the diagnosis of moral theology, not medicine, which is right and appropriate for the catechism). Nor does the Church see homosexual sexual behavior as an instance of sexual disorder, but views it as an instance of moral disorder. Otherwise, we would be justified in seeing erectile dysfunction (a sexual disorder) as somehow analogous to homosexual sexual behavior (a morally disordered act according to the catechism). But such an analogy just won’t stand up, pardon the pun.!
We agree that homosexual acts are morally depraved. If some people who suffer from this disorder are helped by conversion therapy, I should think that would be cause for joy all around. But back to homosexual acts being morally depraved—this makes it much WORSE than a ‘psychiatric disorder.’ A man who is, say, afraid of the dark may need the help of a therapist to deal with that matter but it is unlikely to corrupt his thinking about darkness is, or what the good life is for a human being, but a man who tells himself that it is good for one man to sleep with another will soon find himself making all sorts of errors, such as about the nature of marriage, the value of children, and the definition of hate. It deeply corrupts the mind. (Heterosexual fornication does this too, and the results are plain to most of us.)