The human rights of homosexuals:

...The Socratic sequence developed by Plato in his Republic remains valid: since the existential needs (not to mention higher aims and accomplishments) of human beings cannot be met in isolation, it becomes necessary for them to enter into mutually beneficial interaction with others of their kind...

...It seems appropriate, then, to open the matter to broader discussion concentrating not, as is too often the case, on the morality of homosexual preference and practice but, instead, on the inviolability of those persons' essential human rights...

...It implies a weakness of faith in the graces provided by the Holy Spirit in the unspoken assumption that a sincere acceptance and observance of the vows of priestly celibacy, which is taken for granted in the ordination of heterosexuals, is somehow beyond the spiritual capability of homosexuals...

...It is not, however, the basic unit of society...

...Any religious community that chooses to support such a denial of rights must accept a significant share of the guilt for permitting and perpetuating that terrible injustice...

...Given the tenor of public opinion and attitudes which account for the problem of prejudice and discrimination in the first place, it strains credulity to expect any elected legislature to write such encouragement into law...

...What is generally overlooked, however, is that most sex crimes reported in the daily press are committed by heterosexuals and this, I am confident, would be true even when corrected for proportion-controlled comparison...

...Such families are no less the "basic social units" of such misguided societies...

...Missionary experience tells us of family patterns in some social orders and cultural systems which permit the selling or abandonment of children, freely provide the sexual favors of its members as a mark of hospitality, and in many other ways abuse what we recognize as individual human rights...

...My exchange of correspondence with the bishops, though friendly and even gracious in tone, did not succeed in either side convincing the other of the validity of our positions...

...After reading his assessment, I decided to write to the four ordinaries and their auxiliaries who make up the Massachusetts Catholic Conference...

...The basic human rights of homosexuals, male and female, coupled with the refusal of the Catholic church to fulfill what should be seen as a moral responsibility to support legislation aimed at protecting those rights strikes me as one of those times...

...What I learned shocked me deeply...

...Episcopal arguments may not match the crudity of some debates heard in legislative chambers or the panic expressed by a Catholic woman in her testimony before a Maine legislative committee ("The minute the gay rights bill passes, they will come out of their school closets, propagandizing, brainwashing and indoctrinating our children and youth, and an increased number will begin brazenly to entice, recruit and in some cases even molest...

...Some of Catholicism's treasured achievements and moments of greatest heroism center upon the defense of the ultimate worth and dignity of the person when these are disregarded or violated by society and its institutions, including, at times, the institution of the family...

...The expectation that the passage of such legislation would result in an upsurge of rampant homosexuality is no less fanciful...

...A far more troubling aspect to this particular objection, however, deserves comment...

...In the sociological context, the family is the intimate network of personal interrelationships performing necessary services (nutritional, protective, educational, etc...

...The focus on the Massachusetts situation may set it apart from approaches taken by other dioceses in which similar legislation has been, or is, at issue...

...The Good Society" so dear to Catholic moral/social theory is one which enables all its members to meet those needs and fulfill their capacities...

...Even when these are reported and the guilty brought to trial, judges have been known to express such "understanding" in their sentencing practices...

...To focus our fears, as so many do, on homosexuals and to build and maintain social barriers against them is to settle on an easy target while ignoring the real evils that plague our society today...

...It is this that explains and justifies the emergence and development of what we call "society" with its division of labor, its institutions, its network of interpersonal relationships...

...In this, of course, religious leaders are no better and no worse than the majority of those they are called to lead...

...Be that as it may, I suspect that the position of the Massachusetts bishops-and, even more important, the arguments presented to support it-reflect a common opinion among Catholics...

...A personal note: the product of an innocent age and a "sheltered" childhood, my enlightenment about the issue of homosexuality did not come until, as a young man, I read the press reports of Hitler's 1934 Roehm putsch and der Fuehrer's dramatic broadcast justifying his drastic action in terms of the homosexuality rampant in the ranks of the SA...

...Catholic theology thrives on-might well collapse without-its finely honed distinctions...

...If we are to be true to our professedly democratic values and, even more, to our Christian ideals, such legislation is needed and should be supported...

...Nor can it justify the denial of other basic human rights...

...Any society which imposes, or even permits, structured inequalities to exist and interfere with those purposes is an unjust society and should be recognized as such...

...In my correspondence with the bishops and in their public statements, they explain their opposition to legislation aimed at eliminating the structured inequalities to which individuals of homosexual orientation are being subjected in our society in terms of the presumed threat such legislation presents to the institution of the family as "the basic unit of society...

...On the other hand, should a rampaging mob of irrational extremists take it upon themselves to mount a violent assault upon Fire Island, San Francisco, or one of the other reputed cesspools of depravity, I have little doubt that much of the respectable disapproval that would certainly be voiced would be tempered by hints of shared, though prudently unspoken, understanding...

...but the fears, though more subtly put, are there...

...They react with appropriate horror and indignation to reports of sexual abuse against children committed by homosexuals-as, indeed, everyone must...

...but these, too, are overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, heterosexual in tone, presentation, and appeal...

...But what was clear to me then, and remains just as clear today, is that no matter how serious a violation of religious values or public sensibilities homosexuality may be, it could never justify the wanton destruction of human life that marked that dreadful "night of the long knives...

...It begins with the frequently expressed fear that explicit recognition of the rights of homosexuals will be interpreted as an official endorsement of homosexuality and, by inference, homosexual practices...

...GORDON C. ZAHN is national director of the Center on Conscience and War, and the author of "German Catholics and Hitler's Wars (Notre Dame...

...Catholic social theory is rooted in what my old professor, Heinrich Rommen, called "the perennial philosophy...

...To rely instead on the continued denial of basic human rights is not an acceptable answer...

...for its members and, as such, is rightly regarded as the "basic social unit" and essential to the proper functioning of the greater society and the other social institutions...

...Worse still, to translate that logical failing into political activity, as it has done in this instance, is to betray an indispensable element of its sacred mission: the responsibility to seek justice, to teach justice, and, above all, to promote and practice justice...

...It is possible, too, that eliminating present restrictions on full and equal social participation for homosexuals could lead to the expression of previously repressed inclinations and exposure to temptations that could weaken cherished values and standards...

...THE HUNAN RIGHTS OF HOMOSEXUALS LET CATHOLICS BE CONSISTENT GORDON C. ZAHN Prudence might dictate that an already notorious Catholic peacenik should steer clear of getting involved in other controversial debates with ecclesiastical leaders, but there are times when prudence must give way...

...This was the outcome, a most beneficial outcome, of black integration in the aftermath of the civil rights crusade...

...The issue, again, is not whether one is homosexual in orientation or not, or even whether one's personal attitude toward homosexuals and homosexual practices should be compassionate, tolerant, or condemnatory...

...Joseph Craven described the situation accurately when he wrote recently in the Boston Pilot: "In near quixotic fashion, virtually alone in public opposition to the bill, stands the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, an organization which formally represents the four Roman Catholic dioceses of Massachusetts, and which has opposed the measure each time it has come before the legislature" (March 10,1989...

...No rational person, I am sure, would propose Hitler's answer, a "sanitizing" massacre of this nation's homosexual minority...

...Perhaps the most far-fetched argument offered in justification of the church's official opposition was the suggestion that, if such laws were to pass, seminaries might be forced to accept homosexuals as candidates for the Catholic priesthood...

...By stressing the categorical exclusion it also gives the lie to the pious affirmation that it is not the homosexual orientation but only homosexual practices that the church condemns...

...Genetic endowment certainly plays a part, but this does not mean that homosexuals are "born, not made...

...We must assume instead that the homosexual orientation is the product of the same complex of determinants that makes each of us the unique person he or she is at any point in the life cycle...

...The capacity or the potential is undoubtedly present from the earliest stages, but, for all we know, this may be true for most members of the human species...

...For the church and its leaders to miss so obvious and crucial a distinction is difficult to understand...

...The denial of housing, occupational, or any other opportunities essential to meeting one's needs or developing one's capacities simply because the disad-vantaged individual belongs to an unpopular "category" constitutes a failure of society itself to serve the purposes or perform the functions for which it exists...

...There is no denying, of course, that access to previously denied rights and equality will lead to broadened perspectives and associations...

...The pious affirmations that existing civil rights legislation provides protection enough for homosexuals simply do not stand up to the test of the empirical fact of frequent, though not always reported, episodes of "gay-bashing...

...After all, the existing laws whose protections would be extended to homosexuals do make explicit provision for women's rights, and there is no evidence that the strong and well-organized movement for the ordination of women has used these laws as a vehicle for advancing its cause...

...That distinction belongs to the person...

...This is not surprising when one considers the omnipresent emphasis on sex, often bordering on pornography, encountered in the entertainment media and the advertisements which assault our senses at almost every turn...

...If some specific proposal were worded even so as to imply endorsement, or if overly enthusiastic spokespersons of the homosexual community were to make such a claim, it should be a simple matter for religious leaders with the extensive legal resources available to them to come forward with a substitute proposal correcting that flaw while still accomplishing the necessary purpose of protecting human rights that are now being violated or denied...

...Quite apart from the obvious fact that, even without the benefit of the proposed legislation, homosexuals do become priests, there is no reason to believe that public authority would, or could, intrude upon a religious community's right to define qualifications for its ministers...

...Unless we are to subscribe to the biological determinism we reject in other contexts, reason tells us a more complex process is at work, involving all the forces of developmental maturation operating in a particular physical and social environment in combination with the individual's unique and unplanned life experiences...

...This argument rests upon a sociological fallacy...

...Teen-age pregnancies and their attendant social problems, not to mention the shocking escalation of cases involving young children-including infants-who are sexually abused, even raped, by parents, are, one might say by definition, the victims of heterosexual lust...

...A society which denies that person the free choice of decent and available housing, a job suited to his or her interests and qualifications, or any of the other privileges and responsibilities of citizenship is an unjust society...

...I am writing about a particular case, the opposition of the Catholic bishops in Massachusetts to present efforts in the state's legislature to amend the state's civil rights laws to add sexual orientation to the law's current antidiscrimination measures...

...To that extent the change would present a very real challenge to the church (and here the family does have a distinct role to play) to develop and undertake more effective programs of moral education and conscience formation...

...Until the agencies of public order extend the protection of existing legislation to the homosexual population, they will not be meeting their responsibility...

...If, as would almost certainly be the case, the Catholic church would do everything in its power to protect those members against such abuse, it would be acting in recognition of the truth that the persons so protected are more "basic" than the offending social unit to which they belong...

...It oversimplifies to regard homosexuality as the product of a permissive atmosphere or social contagion, to be controlled or quarantined...

...Nor is it the product of easily won "conversion," as the fears of opponents to the proposed legislation would suggest...

...But the problem goes beyond failed distinctions and slippery logic...

...Instead, what is involved in the opposition to the proposed legislation is best described as "classic homophobia" disguised by a thin veneer of sanctimonious rhetoric...

...It is the person, whatever his or her "orientation," who is entitled to the rights this legislation affirms and seeks to protect...

...it follows that the successes or failures of actual societies are measured by the extent to which they meet or fall short of that ideal...