Yesterday I gave the scriptural/authority version of why homosexual acts are sinful.  Today I'll look into why that is.  Some of this gets into theology.  Usually theology gives me a headache, which I cure by drinking vast quantities of gin and shooting my guns at Frenchmen.  However, I am out of gin.  So I will try and go easy.

There are three basic reasons (that I know) that Christianity holds homosexual acts as being wrong. 

The first reason is that such acts are contrary to the natural law.  Natural law is a huge element of Catholic teaching, and it's a big topic that I don't want to delve into deeply here.  The short version is that God has implanted every human with an innate sense of what is good and right for life.  What is or isn't compatible with natural law, however, isn't always obvious to everyone, which is why we have revelation and divine grace; the ten commandments are one revelatory expression of the natural law.  However, the natural law isn't always readily observable, and from a certain point of view the natural law represents just another argument from authority.

The second reason is that homosexual acts close the sexual act off from the gift of life.  Not all heterosexual acts are open to the gift of life, but all homosexual acts are closed.  No new life can ever be created from the biological union of two people of the same gender.  Sexuality is a gift from God with many purposes and many functions, but its underlying reason for being is that it is the way new life is brought into the world.  (Arguments that marriage = procreation often attempt to drill down to this level for justification, but here we're just talking about homosexual acts and sinfulness.)  Accordingly, sexual acts that are deliberately closed to the possibility of new life, or in which new life is simply impossible, are selfish and hedonistic, and sinful for that reason.

The third reason is the most important one.  God created men and women with complementary natures.  We aren't the exact same beings.  One major reason for this complementariness is that He wants us to learn to love things that are not like ourselves.  Self-love is selfish love.  As many gay men will freely acknowledge, it is easier to love another man than to love a woman.  Women are difficult and annoying.  The converse is also true; it's harder for women to love men than to love other women.  (Just ask my wife; I'm a nightmare.)  God, who is about as different from us as He can be, loves us all the same; to spiritually love someone who is different than us is to take a step on the path that leads to God.  Sexuality is one way to energize spiritual love in the physical realm.  Directing one's sexuality towards creatures that are like us, rather than unlike us, breaks God's intention for us.  Thus, homosexual acts are against God's will, and thus sinful.

OK.  That wraps up (admittedly on a superficial level) why the churches say nyet to homosexual behavior.  In the next few posts I'll start to bring this around to what it all means for public policy and law in a world where not everybody accepts the premises I've laid out.  Next essay is here.

Robert @ 12:13 | | | . | E-Mail This Post