Oh, to have it all to do over! I was about a year into my Catholic adventure and I was in an Ethics class at Regis. I allowed myself to be silenced. I was too timid to speak out against the conventional wisdom “They are just in love! What’s wrong with that?” What indeed? Let’s take a sober look at truths so simple we take them for granted; that marriage must be between a man and a woman. I can say this without hatred and thus sans bigotry, just saying sheesh.
What is love? What is marriage and why? People assume so much of marriage; that it’s only a social matter involving visiting our loved ones in the hospital and receiving their benefits or their property. I say, “Stuff the benefits!” and I would still marry Melissa again tomorrow.
Marriage is a sacrament, only in the Catholic Church incidentally, but that only makes me more sure of the veracity of the Catholic faith. A sacrament is an outer sign of an inner reality. “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife; that they shall be made one flesh.” Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24, as recorded in Matthew 19:5 and Mark 10:7, as He spoke of marriage and our bodies bare out the expression of that spiritual reality. For just as man and women fit together “like puzzle pieces from the clay” (Iron and Wine, from the song “Such Great Heights”) so too do our souls, bonding us mystically together in a love like that of the Trinity. So too is that love fertile, like the Trinitarian model, children being the result through the will of God. If a man and a woman are infertile they must still be open to the possibility that children may one day arrive regardless of what anyone says to the contrary.
This openness to the possibility of life shields the couple from the temptation that one would simply use the other expressly for sex, thus depriving them of their human dignity and turning them into a vessel of self-serving pleasure. This is one example of what’s wrong with pornography, this is also an example of what’s wrong with contraception, and this is what’s wrong with homosexuality too. There I said it homosexuality is disordered, like contraception though so if you are gay and some Christian is giving you a hard time ask them if they use contraceptives. These two are morally similar, except contraceptives which are abortive are far worse, and most Christians are just like the rest of culture so most use contraception. Sex is given meaning and dignity in marriage rather than trying to find our meaning by a sexual act.
So many people try to define themselves as “sexual beings”; they beg to be used to attain some sort of self esteem. It creates a perversion of personality with sex, sexual attraction, superficial “sexy” fashion, and an overall compression of human existence into a Pandora’s Box of mischaracterized self-worth. When one runs up against the many limitations of this life style the answer must be, “I need to be sexier.” One comes to this conclusion easier it seems than a more rudimentary answer that, “I am not my sexuality!” there is no such thing as a “sexual being”. One is so much more than who one can possess in some infinitesimally small manner.
We are saved by our ability to give and not by what we are able to receive. We can never receive enough of what we think we need in order to be whole, for the more we seem to get the more we realize how much more there is which we lack, and so instead of filling a hole we dig one. We can only start to give of ourselves and that is where we find God. Marriages, and their resulting families, are made for this smelting furnace of human transformation.
These couples who live according to Church teaching are attempting to live in God’s will and learning to forsake their own. To choose to do God’s will is obviously basic Christianity; to do God’s will over our own is to love God and trust in His love of us. This is an expression of intimacy, to do the others will over your own because of love; anything else is simply playing at intimacy.
This intimacy, this opening of hearts, creates the seedbed in which the seed of children flourish. To create a family through this model is to create support and strength. This is the purpose of marriage to create human flourishing into future generations. The purpose of marriage is to draw us out of ourselves and into our most loving relationships. These are object lessons into the mystery of Trinitarian love and the very heart of the Christian faith.
Can a homosexual marriage cause human flourishing? Gay couples say yes, children of homosexual couples generally say yes. There is a fundamental issue with the homosexual experience however it is that sex, sexual orientation, and gender, are up in the air but also at the very center of the parental understanding of “self”.
So what we have are ideas basic to identity, though not exclusive to identity, which are both fluid and central. I have encountered parents of this parenting style who say “I am here to love and support my child in any of their decisions.” They say this though they are speaking of toddlers. The problem with this approach is that the hardest part of loving children is guiding them, this is called parenting.
Parenting effectively is the best way to minimize the skyrocketing trend of sociopathic behavior. Narcissism is no longer a psychologically applicable diagnosis due to its flourishing in the culture at large. Children need firm boundaries and self awareness in order to cultivate empathy. It’s good for children to be in touch with how they feel; but that is not the extent of their ability to feel, unless they are not parented.
This is not necessarily or exclusively a homosexual parenting problem, but in a household which would seem to cherish a child’s personal expression and introspection over and above providing definitive structure and traditional morays which sets that child up to be lost and ungrounded.
Many homosexual couples wish to create a child with as much of their own biological information as possible; this inevitably means IVF, In Vitro fertilization. This is going to offend some, but IVF is not a moral way to have children. The first issue is that people simply believe they are entitled to children simply because they desire them. This trend is indicative of the narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies of the culture at large. We are out of touch with nature but very much in touch with what is commercially expedient.
Our pride is not the most morally objectionable reason to be opposed to IVF; the big reason is that it is eugenics in action. The created embryos are separated into tiers of perceived genetic value and all but the top tier is flushed or washed down the drain. These are all not just genetic material we can do with what we will but outside the lab in a natural environment these are our sons and daughters. The cry will go up “not until they implant” but even before they implant these embryos are communicating chemically saying “I am here. I am on my way.” To which the body of the mother responds with activity which welcomes that new life. There is in nature a precursory chemical bond of communication well before a baby finds its home in its mother’s womb.
In an essay entitled “Gay Rights” by Martha Nussbaum she states that homosexual households have “a more equal division of labor”. This argument makes parity a virtue and totally discredits the importance that the sexes must adapt to in one’s spouse. Mothers and fathers have different strengths and weaknesses. This is not effectively countered by saying one partner is more masculine or feminine in their approach. This is ridiculous because they actually aren’t; what is advanced instead is simply the construct they have made to mask the short coming they perceive in their personality and the opposite sex should be offended by the caricature. There are actual differences between sexes. These should be seen as strengths in the relationship not an invitation to unequal division of labor.
Relationships between a man and a woman are intended to be places of giving and growth because we have such differences as sexes. Men believe they know what men need; men believe men need license to do what they want. Dan Savage has called for open sexual relationships; Mr. Savage asserts that the idea of men being faithful is not natural. He thinks marriage is a construct which keeps women submissive and directly under the thumb of their men and they would be much better off under the insecurity of an open sexual relationship in marriage.
What men truly need is not the license to have open sexual relationships! What men need is to learn to be devoted and dedicated husbands and fathers! Studies I’ve read have always confirmed that women and children are much more at risk outside of stable marriages. Men can be taught to be nobler beasts but not without a structure which makes them grow up. If men are given license in the most sacred area of the relationship license for the rest of it is just assumed. The resulting man-boy would have a free reign of terror over the household and the very man Dan Savage rails against would be created, a real misogynist.
Take Titanic for instance, women and children first except for the type of man no man should want to be, the man who places himself above everyone else and places himself pompously in the life raft amid the women and children and any other scoundrels. Real men die for their love and they die for what’s honorable and what’s noble; they will die for their families. They follow the example of Christ, but not out of their fallen human nature but because that Christ-like love has taught them discipline and respect and their love of the sacraments have given them the chances and grace needed on their journey to imitate Christ for the sake of their families.
Children are always blessings; parents however are not. The basis for what is good and true is not simply whatever is good for “me”. The basis for what is good brings us out of our own self-interest. This truth excludes some paths out of hand. Homosexual marriage falls under this category.
No comments:
Post a Comment