Gay, Catholic and Doing Fine

[Aractus]

Hi Aractus. Since Catholicism isn't in the business of fundamentalism, where we take everything in the bible completely literally, you'd have to look at the Catechism to see how we interpret certain things. 

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This is everything the Catechism says about homosexuality:

Chastity and homosexuality
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is not freely chosen, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

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I'll get to your "Catechism" quote in a moment. But first let's start with the fundamentals. You instinctively reject the fundamentalist view, but at the same time you sweep away the understanding of the New Testament characters including both Paul and Jesus himself. I'll start with Jesus. He doesn't specifically mention homosexuality, at least not in the gospels, however he does talk about other things he views as impurities or just "wrong" and that includes divorce, remarriage, and adultery. Furthermore he even quotes the tenth commandment which lists women as a man's property. So let's start there.

This is what is given in the Ten Commandments, I'm just quoting two commandments:

Ex 20:14 (Seventh commandment) You shall not commit adultery.
Ex 20:17 (Tenth commandment) You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

Now what we see here is purely reflective of the limited world-view of the proto-Israelites who began writing the Pentateuch. I can show you several instances where women are valued less than men in the Bible, and where most misogynistic of verses are. But for the purposes of brevity I'll concern myself with just these two:

Deuteronomy 24:1: If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something offensive in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house.
Leviticus 18:20: You must not have sexual intercourse with the wife of your fellow citizen to become unclean with her.

If I was to ask you Catholic_Lady what your definition of adultery is, you're quite unlikely to quote Leviticus 18:20 to me. But let's be clear about this, the ten commandments is given twice, and the prohibition against adultery is given in each list. And in fact, we don't learn what adultery is before Exodus 20, nor do we learn what it is in Exodus 20. Leviticus 18 gives us the only direct definition of it, but it can be further refined by the fact that married men are allowed to sleep with: their wives, their "concubines" (sex slaves), prostitutes, and unmarried women. The only women they're not to sleep with are virgins - however if they do that they are to marry them - and another man's wife because that's considered adultery. And even then, it has to be the wife of a Hebrew - if you have sex with the wife of anyone else that isn't a Hebrew it's not adultery, and not a sin.

Our modern western understanding of adultery is when a man or woman sleeps with anyone other than their spouse. As you see - this isn't the case in the Bible. It's not even a sin women can directly commit - it's a man's sin, and is refined to the point that's it's all but meaningless in today's context.

Nevertheless let me point out to you that Jesus delivers two teachings on adultery. So, let's concern ourselves with this one:

Matthew 5:27-28: You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.



So here we have Jesus talking about adultery. He has every opportunity to say "But I say to you that women must not sleep with married men either", but he decides against it. He has the opportunity to say "you know what, it doesn't matter if she's Hebrew or Greek it's still adultery". But he doesn't. Therefore we can see clearly that Jesus concerned himself purely with what the primitive and misogynistic Old Testament understanding of "adultery" is.

Then he has an even greater failure:

Matthew 19:9: Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another commits adultery.

Ah, again, he has every opportunity here to redefine divorce. In ancient Egypt both men and women could divorce their spouses, but according to the Bible divorce is only for men, and is something unavailable to women. He has every opportunity to fix that but he doesn't. But that's not the worst thing here. The worst thing is that he says there is only one acceptable reason for divorce - something the RCC followed to the letter for more than a millennia, and even though they may have mellowed their tone in recent times I want to point out to you that Jesus made a huge error of judgement here. He didn't include domestic violence. And if he really was the Son of God then he would have known the damage to be done of the centuries by families believing that what goes on behind closed doors is not the business of the civil authorities, and nor is abuse justification to leave one's spouse.

Now, you might try to claim I've gone off on a tangent here. Not true. What I've done is established what Jesus himself taught, and what he could have potentially taught in this area. And that while he did deliver some great messages and sermons, this was a terrible error of judgement, and it was probably unavoidable because he was a product of his environment.

You might say to me you don't take everything in the OT literally - but I've never met a Christian before who claims not to take what Jesus says as Gospel. He's the highest authority there is for Christians of all denominations.

Basically, we think it is immoral to have any sex that is outside of husband and wife, and that includes sex between 2 men/2 women. And we don't believe gay marriage or polygamy are real marriages in the eyes of God, even if they are legal, it is not something we can approve in the Church (marriage in our beliefs is a spiritual thing, not just a legal thing). However, we recognize that people don't freely choose to be gay, and so being gay is not immoral. Only the acts of having sex, are what we believe to be so. And we are also instructed not to treat them badly or to see them as any less human... since some of the bible verses about it come off as very dehumanizing.

Well here's the problem. The New Testament, in the section written by Paul and Associates says to treat them badly. It's not a matter for interpretation, I quoted it to you. It's just like that section on excommunication that the Church would rather bury and ignore.

Chastity and homosexuality
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is not freely chosen, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

What I want to highlight here is the fact that nearly all of this doctrine completely ignores the Bible, and gives incorrect information (claiming the psychology is unexplained). It's also self-contradictory. The Bible says, in the New Testament no less, that it is caused by disobedience in God. Make of that what you will.