You wrote:Did I make that argument?
When you say something is not good for anyone, it implies diocesan priests, too.Not good for anyone to be alone. We are made for relationship.
When did I say that sex is required for a loving and faithful home? Nevertheless, I do think that sex by its very nature can make love between two people deeper and more profound, because it can be such an intimate and powerful experience.Feelings that come and go are not a basis for public policy decisions.
At CAF, we’re very clear on the difference between a house where there is sex and a house where there is love.
If sex were required for a loving and faithful home, that would leave out the Holy Family as the model.
Our society would be better off if marriages weren’t immediately imperiled the moment that a couple cannot say “I’m just as in love with my partner now as what I was…”
Let’s get back to my point: Why can’t people who do not have a sexual relationship have what homosexual couples have claimed is their right? Sorry, but heterosexual couples can say, “we belong to that class of sexual relationships that can produce children.” This has historically been society’s interest in making marriage into a societal institution. Marriage established rights of heredity and made family connections formal and a matter of public record.When did I say that sex is required for a loving and faithful home? Nevertheless, I do think that sex by its very nature can make love between two people deeper and more profound, because it can be such an intimate and powerful experience.
And as for feelings, there has to be some positive feeling for someone for love to still be present. Even if someone is temporarily angry with a spouse, there is hopefully still some positive feeling there, too, and the ability to still see some redeeming quality in the person someone is angry with. When there is no longer any positive feeling at all, that can hardly still be called love.
They can still be open to life “Infertile” couples have had children. The openness to life is an interior condition.Infertile couples, by definition, do not “belong to that class of sexual relationships that can produce children.”
I agree. I have never liked that argument. As to the exceptions to infertility, my son was born of a woman diagnosed as infertile.If you want to just say it has to be two different genders, that’s fine, but when you talk about reproduction that opens up arguments to exclude infertile people.
If the commitment has nothing to do with sex, I don’t think the Church has an issue with giving adults in a situation of mutual care legal protections appropriate to their state in life.If it’s about commitment, why isn’t commitment sufficient for same sex couples?
I think the widespread incapacity to see any difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals required the groundwork of separating marriage from procreation and (perhaps more importantly) separating parenting from marriage. When children are an “add-on option” and parenting became something that could be done equally well by any one or two adults who happen to be in the home, marriage became solely a matter of what seemed desirable to the partners. The message to children is becoming: If you have parents who take care of you, you have no complaint if your biological parents don’t live with you. Be thankful you have parents at all! Worse yet, no-fault divorce put marriage on a footing with less legal protections even than a business partnership.The children of the created out of thin air, No-Fault Divorce were resilient and would bounce back. Many did not. It was painful. Some now saw marriage as something their parents, who loved them, turned their backs on and it didn’t matter, or it was not worth the risk. So cohabitation was one answer, followed by playing house where at least the woman refers to the man as her husband. No promise before God and man. In existence until one or both decide otherwise.
I continue to be amazed at the level of denial that there is any difference between marital relations and any other act that seems pleasurable, “intimate,” or what have you.It is not infertility that is an impediment to marriage; rather it is the permanent and antecedent inability to have marital relations. Most infertile couples are capable of marital relations at the time they are married.
If it’s denial, then the whole society is in denial and conservatives are losing this battle. There is an article in the New York Times this morning which says that “Young Voters Keep Moving to the Left on Social Issues, Republicans Included”:I continue to be amazed at the level of denial that there is any difference between marital relations and any other act that seems pleasurable, “intimate,” or what have you.
As a self-described political conservative, Reagan Larson might seem to be a natural fit for the Republican Party. The 19-year-old college student from South Dakota grew up in a Catholic household that objected to same-sex marriage, and she remains firmly opposed to abortion.
But in many ways, that is where the ideological similarities end. Ms. Larson, a dual major in biology and Spanish at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., does not oppose the legalization of marriage equality. She views climate change as undeniable, believes “immigrants make our country richer,” and disagrees with her parents on the need for a border wall.
Ms. Larson is part of Generation Z, one of the most ethnically diverse and progressive age groups in American history. People born after 1996 tend to espouse similar views to the age cohort just ahead of them, the Millennials, but they are far more open to social change than older generations have been, according to the findings of a new report by the Pew Research Center. The findings mark a shift that could substantially reshape the nation’s political and economic landscape.
Each succeeding generation of Americans tends to be more progressive than those that came before, Ms. Bennion noted, a trend that potentially poses a long-term threat to the Republican Party’s power.
Young Republicans are also more likely to approve of same-sex marriage and accept transgender people.
Michael Schaefer, 18, a politically conservative college freshman from Youngstown, Ohio, said he was in the sixth grade when some classmates came out as gay, and had a number of transgender students as friends in high school.
“For over half my life, I’ve been shown the other side of sexuality and gender,” he said. “I don’t care about their sex or gender, I just care about the individual.”
More than one-third of Generation Z respondents said they knew someone who preferred to be addressed using gender-neutral pronouns, the Pew study found, compared with 12 percent of baby boomers.
You write this as if I doubt that society as a whole is in denial about sexual ethics and sexual reality or the premise that “caring about the individual” means accepting whatever self-assessment the individual chooses as if it were an objective fact.If it’s denial, then the whole society is in denial and conservatives are losing this battle. There is an article in the New York Times this morning which says that “Young Voters Keep Moving to the Left on Social Issues, Republicans Included”:
But if gay people were encouraged more to get married and be in monogamous relationships, then this would be less of a problem. Some people think that gay people don’t experience discrimination any more, including from their own families, but they do, more so in some parts of the country than others. That has an impact on self esteem and makes people more likely to engage in reckless behavior.Politics is not relevant. People’s lives are. Right now, there is an STD epidemic going on in the US. It’s been going on for 3 years. The most impacted group is “men who have sex with men.”