A Christian homosexuality?
Vacek, Edward
IN THE LIGHT OF SCRIPTURE. AUTHORITY. & REASON A Christian homosexuality? EDWARD VACEK THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATES over homosexuality are heated up like a blast furnace. Ever since 1969...
...Some homosexuals exhibit these qualities as strikingly as any heterosexual...
...Thirdly, persons who are homosexuals are able to function and grow at least as well as heterosexuals...
...Those who are homosexual may remain single or celibate...
...No one, merely because of his or her sexual orientation, should be denied housing, jobs, or public office...
...The first is a fundamentalist attitude that protests, I take everything in the bible "just as it is written...
...For a son to see his father naked was tantamount to a crime...
...Every one of us spends decades if not a lifetime trying to accept and become comfortable with those "deep dark urges," as they have been called, that pop up to disturb our equilibrium at the most unexpected times...
...A third approach is to evaluate the scriptural texts even as they judge us...
...The desire never to act contrary to certain explicit statements of our Scriptures and tradition may itself constitute such a vocation for some...
...However one interprets these texts, it seems safe to say that our sexual ethic is at least partially different from the one (or, rather, the several) proposed in Scripture...
...Only in the late nineteenth century did "expression of interpersonal love" come to be recognized in church teaching as a reason for sexual intercourse...
...The basis for these judgments is set out in the early chapters of Genesis...
...No argument for homosexual relations should be construed as an argument for promiscuity, prostitution, mate swapping, infidelity, and the like...
...The world, however, would be a worse place if the vast majority had withered arms...
...The unknown and the unsuspected usually cause us to be uncomfortable...
...Homosexual orientation must be distinguished from homosexual activity...
...There are at least three ways to get at an answer to this question: Scripture...
...The first objection raised against homosexual activity was that it was "against nature...
...As a personal vocation 5 December 1980: 683 from God, it might well be that they are called to genital non-activity...
...But the homosexual act is not open to generation, and so to that extent it is deficient...
...A sexual act that helps to continue the human race is good...
...One of the first steps toward the light is a confession of some basic ignorance...
...Much to my surprise, all but two of my students thought homosexuality was like being left-handed...
...Frequently the change is from active homosexuality to a dormant, celibate homosexuality...
...In order to image himself, God made both man and woman...
...That process began in the Scriptures themselves...
...The most optimistic of therapists report only a 60percent "cure rate," and this cure is 5 December 1980: 681 reached only by those homosexuals most strongly motivated to change...
...The early Christian tradition showed an uneasiness with sexual passion, and procreation was in many cases thought to be the sole justification for marriage and sexual relations...
...The change is "morally impossible" because many homosexuals do not have the time or money to enter a therapy where there are no "sure-fire cures...
...The Scriptures legislate on a whole range of sexual behaviors that we do not consider to be sinful...
...Although homosexuality holds a very minor place in Scripture and is not mentioned by Jesus or the prophets, some terribly severe judgments are made against it...
...Similarly, some homosexuals occasionally experience heterosexual attraction...
...The major question is whether they should be bound to act as heterosexuals...
...There are a number of significant questions about the church's past attitude toward sexuality that make one wonder whether it too has been culture-bound and ought to be transcended...
...Roman Catholics have traditionally tried to bring all three to bear on perplexing moral issues...
...and they can, at least physically, engage in heterosexual acts...
...The harvest of the Spirit," Paul tells us (Gal 5:22-23) is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and selfrcontrol...
...On the other hand, engaging in heterosexual activity can alienate genuinely homosexual persons from themselves at the level of their psyche, mind, and spirit...
...Some evidence suggests that homosexuality is biologically based...
...Unfortunately, like a blast furnace, the issue has generated for most people immense heat and little light...
...It is hard to imagine penalties worse man loss of physical and eternal life...
...Still other scholars note that the sacred authors were unaware that some people are homosexual in orientation...
...Again this biological deficiency should be neither overestimated nor ignored...
...and human reason...
...Hence one is not morally responsible for having the orientation...
...This unnaturalness frequently meant that men were acting like women...
...and it continues today...
...A recent book title asks, "Is the homosexual my neighbor...
...These students are training to be future ministers, and I was consoled at the FATHER EDWARD VACEK, S.J., is assistant professor of Christian Ethics at the Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago...
...Women have rather regularly been seen, even by such luminaries as Thomas Aquinas, as naturally inferior to men...
...The question returns, are homosexual acts wrong...
...Those who are unhappy with their orientation are often encouraged to change...
...Recently I asked thirty-five of my students whether they thought that being a homosexual was more like having a withered arm or like being left-handed...
...The orientation is not externally visible...
...Put simply, some are quite happy with their condition, some confused, and some quite unhappy...
...It is experienced internally as an enduring, romantic, and sexual attraction to members of the same sex...
...So we are speaking of a dominant or prevailing pattern of attraction toward one sex or the other...
...In other cases, the "conversion'' is only short-lived...
...Celibacy was abnormal...
...In order to overcome Adam's loneliness, God created a woman, not another man...
...A number of articles and books have been written to explore this possibility...
...Homosexual actions are biologically deficient, but they may be psychologically healthy, the best available exercise of one's interpersonal freedom, and may even be a form of authentic Christian spirituality...
...I want to argue that to the extent that any sexual activity is closed to children, to that extent it is deficient...
...Homosexuals must exhibit the same personalist virtues as heterosexuals...
...Apart from this personal vocation, it seems a violation of humanness automatically to deprive homosexuals of the values that Christians have found in sexuality...
...The former position fails to reckon with some of the dubious reasons given for opposition to homosexuality...
...We can make no such assumption today...
...This is especially so when it deals with our sexual identity...
...One is responsible for what one does with this orientation, just as heterosexuals are responsible for how they express their own orientation...
...Their message would seem to be that it is all right to be a homosexual, as long as one does not express this orientation genitally...
...Even if someday it becomes crystal clear that homosexual persons should not "make love" to one another, it will always be Christianly clear that we should love our homosexual sisters and brothers...
...As with scriptural passages, one can take a fundamentalist attitude or a "who-cares...
...The second erroneous approach is to ignore the Scriptures, a tack that is also not acceptable for it would deprive us of the originating inspiration of our historical faith...
...Many, in fact, are married...
...It then tries to weigh these values and make a judgment within an ethics of proportionality...
...There are two approaches to the Scriptures that Roman Catholics should not take...
...Conversions in orientation due to special graces may occur, but many claims of these graced reorientations have been shown to be misleading or false...
...One biological deficiency then turns all too easily into biological, psychological, rational, and spiritual alienation...
...Good counselors usually encourage them not to make too much of a passing dalliance...
...Such values include pleasure, romantic feelings, companionship, mutual support, sexual outlet, ecstacy, intimacy, and interpersonal communication...
...For husband and wife to have sexual intercourse during the seven days of her menstrual period meant punishment...
...In examining homosexuality, I find myself confronted by Jesus's demand (Lk 12:57) "Why can you not judge for yourselves what is the right course...
...Secondly, homosexual relations may be psychologically healthy...
...The central unknown is why some people (somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the population) are exclusively homosexual...
...Put perhaps too simply, if there are positive values in a committed, loving sexual relation, then very strong reasons have to be given why anyone including homosexuals should be denied those positive values...
...Therefore, too, lesbianism has seldom been proscribed in our scripture or our tradition...
...bishops were to have only one wife, and so on...
...The Catholic tradition has always seen the need for an on-going interpretation and reinterpretation of the Scriptures...
...Paul tells us that they belong to the class of idolaters (Rom...
...The significance of that fact should be neither overestimated nor underestimated...
...Children, adolescents, and even some heterosexual adults quite commonly go through homosexual phases...
...But abundant evidence of these virtues in many active homosexualals leads one to presume that they are Spirit-filled...
...The biological deficiences do not seem in themselves serious enough in our time to justify that depial...
...Bad reasons, of course, do not invalidate a conclusion...
...With regard to human psyche and mind, human persons are so richly complex that they can often compensate (which need not mean overcompensate) for whatever deficiencies they have on the biological, psychological, or mental levels...
...Homosexuality was also judged sinful because it is not open to procreation...
...Is this a cross they are given by God, to be carried all their adult life...
...Commonweal: 684...
...How do homosexuals experience themselves and their activity...
...To those who are confused, gay alliances recommend that they accent the heterosexual aspect of themselves as long as they can, if only as a way of avoiding societal defamation...
...MY OWN APPROACH tries to discover the relevant biological, psychological, rational, and religious values...
...Has the evolution of culture meant only that people should not be put to death for such acts, just as we no longer stone people caught in adultery...
...The point of this comparison should be clear...
...but few of us think that left-handers have something wrong with their biological make-up...
...What they gain at the level of propagation, they lose in authenticity at the other levels of their being, thus, the disproportionate evil of insisting that homosexual persons, if they are going to have sexual relations at all, must have them with persons of the opposite sex, must be assessed...
...Homosexual activity also contravenes the complementary aptness of the male and female sexual systems for one another...
...They live or try to live, consciously dependent on the power of the Spirit...
...Their spirituality is, of course, basically like that of heterosexuals...
...We still judge adultery to be wrong, though we have changed the punishment...
...They are able to be creative, put in a hard day's work, act as citizens, help their neighbor, much like heterosexuals...
...We all know, for example, people who have lost a leg and are still great workers and extraordinary human beings...
...The first, faltering moves "out of the closet" have prompted "Save Our Children" campaigns and Protestant ordinations of homosexuals...
...Should the significant numbers who are homosexual remain permanently single or celibate...
...Within the past five years, church authorities have again taken strong stands against homosexual activity...
...Yet, at the same time, they have spoken clearly on the human rights of those who have a homosexual orientation...
...Homosexual activity, however deficient, does not keep homosexuals from human greatness...
...There is greater evidence that it results from early childhood experiences, though no one is sure what factor or factors lead to it...
...To be sure, we human beings are so complex that we can manifest all these virtues and still be sinful in some aspect of our lives...
...The best answer at present is that we do not know why people are homosexual...
...But just as grace, mind, and psyche penetrate their sexual orientation, so also this orientation affects their psyche, mind, and spirit...
...Let us look at each of these four levels of human existence...
...We must not ignore these factors...
...It seems to compound "unnaturalness" to insist that persons not heterosexually inclined must simply, without further consideration, be sexually inactive...
...The promise of the on-going presence of the Spirit is at the same time a command to interpret the Scriptures...
...authority...
...Since homosexual children generally are reared in heterosexual families, and since, in the studies made thus far, children reared in homosexual environments are as likely to be heterosexual as any other, there seems to be no solid foundation for discrimination...
...Few people are totally homosexual or heterosexual...
...The problem is, most will be unable to do so...
...Polygamy was permitted, even required...
...Scripture does not offer much comfort to those who engage in homosexual acts...
...but neither do they make it right...
...But are these texts literally valid for us, or are they culturally bound...
...compassion and understanding they will probably show to homosexuals they will meet...
...And yet, I still had to ask myself, Are they correct...
...This uncertainty has generated an intense hostility towards homosexuals, far out of proportion to whatever "sin" there may be in homosexual activity and far from the loving response one would expect from Spirit-filled Christians...
...In sum, when reading Scripture we see that some typically cited texts do not treat of homosexuality...
...Some scholars argue that what Scripture really condemns is the promiscuity that so much homosexuality involved...
...Most of us think that there is something biologically askew with having a deformed arm...
...Now to the question, is a homosexual orientation and consequent homosexual activity merely a different life-style, or is there something inherently wrong with it...
...There is some scant evidence that it can be learned in adolescence, either when one is frustrated at heterosexual activity or is initiated into homosexual activity by someone more experienced...
...others do, and do so in a very direct fashion...
...The American bishops have made it very clear that all persons deserve great respect, whatever their sexual orientation...
...Finally, since homosexual persons are presently highly discriminated against, they should be especially favored by all Christians...
...20:13) tells us that active homosexuals should be put to death, a practice.renewed in the form of burning at the stake during the late middle ages...
...The God we serve and cooperate with wants to conserve and enhance creation, bringing all things to their greatest possible fullness...
...Christians who are deeply alive to the parable of the Good Samaritan can only answer yes to that question...
...For example, many scholars think that the sin of Sodom was not primarily homosexuality, but inhospitality, gang rape, and even attempted sexual congress with angels...
...Finally, homosexuals can develop a form of authentic Christian spirituality...
...Somewhat surprisingly, they "make love" more humanely, largely because they are better able empathetically to feel what their partner is feeling...
...Together, the two sexes mirror God...
...Stated briefly, my judgment is this...
...The world would not be greatly altered if the majority of people were left-handed...
...They ask heterosexuals to imagine wanting to extinguish one of the great sources of their identity, namely, the heterosexual feelings that form so much of the way a heterosexual relates to the world...
...Now, to apply an ethic of proportionality...
...We often discover upon study that they mean something other than what we have always assumed...
...To those who are at peace with their homosexuality it seems an affront to demand that they change themselves...
...They do not...
...They believe and enact in their lives the Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection...
...Or does it mean that we "enlightened" moderns now see that at least certain cases of homosexual acts are as sinless as the touching of menstrual fluids, an act that once made a person rituaily unclean...
...Thus the human race has discouraged homosexuality because stable heterosexual unions are so utterly vital to its survival interests and because of its sense of biological fittingness...
...Homosexual couples cannot do, biologically, what heterosexual couples can do, namely, bear children...
...Hence homosexuality was roundly condemned for being sterile...
...Leviticus (18:22...
...Church tradition and ecclesiastical authority have continuously rejected homosexual activity...
...In the words of a recent Vatican Declaration, many are "incurable...
...It represents a failure to carry out one of the most basic and fulfilling tasks of the human race, namely, to propagate the race...
...Whatever is distinctive about their human existence due to their homosexual orientation offers a new possibility for life in the spirit, a possibility that heterosexuals do not have...
...Neither of these is acceptable...
...attitude toward church tradition and authority on the issue of homosexuality...
...Male homosexuality, on the other hand, was comCommonweal: 682 monly thought to be a more serious sin than rape, prostitution, or fornication, all of which are "natural...
...The latter position is untenable for a person who wants to be a member of the church...
...Various psychological tests show that — apart from the one characteristic of "adequate heterosexual development" — homosexuals are about as healthy as anyone else...
...1:18-32), and that they shall never enter the kingdom of heaven (1 Cor 6:9-10...
...Sexual orientation is not a habit like smoking...
...That is, the scriptural condemnations assume a conscious choice by a heterosexual to exchange a heterosexual partner for a homosexual one...
...Another facet of this third approach is to note the possible cultural relativity of the scriptural judgments...
...Homosexuals take encouragement from such tests because one would expect that, since they have suffered intense discrimination, they would score significantly lower than their heterosexual counterparts...
...It is not clear to me that every Christian homosexual is fated to such restrictions on his or her human expressiveness...
...A homosexual orientation would become synonymous with fate...
...Therefore part of the degradation involved in homosexuality was seen to be not so much a degradation of human nature, but a degradation of a man to the level of a woman...
...It should be clear in what follows that no one recommends the kind of activity that would be condemned if it were per* formed in a heterosexual context...
...Ever since 1969 when homosexuals began to assert gay pride, the solid iron ore of traditional sexual preferences has turned into a churning, molten mass...
Vol. 107 • December 1980 • No. 22
