Homosexuality

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Sex and Love

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, sexuality is designed to be an expression of love between two people.

A selfish sexuality, a sexuality that’s just about using other people to get what I want, is sociopathic, plain and simple. Which is why, thankfully, most people, even secular people, don’t say that sexuality should be purely selfish. They want to believe in love too.

But love, if it’s actually going to mean something more than selfishness, has to involve real generosity, a real giving to the other person.

Now the rise of homosexuality is one of the most dramatic and sudden social changes of our time. But the Church has always said that homosexual activity is a misuse of our sexuality. And it’s for precisely this reason: because homosexual activity involves a fundamental failure to give.

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Failure to Give – Fertility

A gift loses its meaning when the other person lacks the apparatus to do anything with it. Almost nobody has VCRs anymore, so if I were to buy all my kids VHS tapes for Christmas, they would probably assume it was a joke. But they wouldn’t think it was a real gift.

And what if I gave somebody a present they lacked the physical apparatus to receive. That wouldn’t be a joke, that would just be mean, like if I gave a blind person a digital camera or if I gave a deaf person a set of speakers.

Again, a gift loses its meaning when the other person lacks the apparatus to receive it.

Now fertility is one of the core gifts associated with sexuality. We are designed to give the other person what we have so as to initiate the procreative process. But in the case of homosexual acts, the other person cannot receive what we have to offer, they lack the apparatus to receive that gift in a way that begins the procreative process. Which means that homosexuality is a failure to give, it gives a gift that the other is incapable of receiving. And that goes against the nature of the gift, the love, of human sexuality.

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Failure to Give – Complementarity

A gift also loses its meaning when it’s already possessed by the other person.

Imagine someone says, “I hereby give you all the cash that’s already in your wallet.” That’s silly. You can give somebody something they already have. Or did you ever go to a kid’s birthday party, and a bunch of people inadvertently got the kid the same gift?

It can be kind of funny at first, but then it gets sad and awkward. Because the kid only wanted one football, or one copy of his favorite movie. That’s all he can use. Once he already has that gift, all the others become redundant; they aren’t good gifts.

Now one of the core gifts we’re supposed to be giving the other person is the richness of our status as men and women. That’s why we use the same word for both: we call our status as man or woman our “sex” and we call the act between a man and woman “sex” – because we are giving the one when we perform the other.

But the whole point of homosexuality is that the other person already has the richness of being a man or being a woman, which means you can’t give them that richness in a meaningful gift.

Now there are ways in which two people of the same sex can be complementary. Two men can be physically complementary the way a small point guard and a large center on a basketball team are physically complementary. They can be physically complementary because there are two bodies. And two men can be personally complementary, one might be outgoing and talkative and the other more reserved and thoughtful. Which is great. The two men are personally complementary because there are two persons. But two men can’t be sexually complementary, because there aren’t two different sexes. So they can’t give to each other sexually. And it simply frustrates the meaning of the sexual gift when they try.

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Source of the disordered desire

If sexuality is about giving the other person the richness of your sex, and about receiving from the other the richness of their sex, then why would anyone want to give the other person what that person already has? And why would anyone want to receive from someone else what they already have?

Well, of course, the psychology of homosexuality is multifaceted. But we can still answer those fundamental questions in a general way.

More often than not, the only reason you’d want something you already have is if you don’t realize, deep down, that you have it. And there are many men, for instance, who have been led to believe that they are deficient in masculinity. They’ve never felt like they qualified as men, whether in their own home, or in their own peer group. They think they have a lack that needs to be supplemented. They don’t realize they have a richness that can be shared. And the only reason you’d want to give something to someone who already has it is if you don’t think you can find anyone else to appreciate what you have.

And there are many women, for instance, who have been told or shown very often by the men in their life, that they are unappreciated. That they are treated with contempt, and reduced to mere objects for the gratification of others. And in desperation they try to escape from the femininity that they feel has kept them in bondage, made them second-class human beings.

And this is precisely why the Church cannot condone homosexuality, because she refuses to reinforce the untruth at the heart of it.

She will not agree with a man who believes that he is inadequate as a man. The Church insists that every man is a true man, with an unrealized strength and a richness that can make the world a better place. She will not agree with any woman who believes herself and her femininity to be of little value. The Church affirms the goodness, and the beauty of femininity, something to be celebrated, not escaped from.

We cannot condone homosexuality, because we refuse to attack the deep goods of masculinity and femininity that homosexuality implicitly denies.

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Holy Lives for People with Same-sex attraction

Everyone has struggled with sexual temptations of various kinds. And the solution is always the same, whether those temptations are heterosexual or homosexual. Chastity, conformity to God’s plan, and a turning to Christ.

Christ shows us that sexual activity is not necessary for a fulfilled life. Christ shows us that bearing our crosses is the path to perfection. And Christ shows us that He is always there to help us back up whenever our sins get the better of us.

To all of us, whatever our sexual struggles, He makes the same offer. Come to Me, He says, and I will make you a hero of holiness. And I will, one day, heal your body and mind. And I will, one day, give perfect peace and happiness forever.