[Apologetics] Questions about Gay Marriage

[Dianne Dawson]

Questions about “Gay Marriage”
06/29/04


 With all the recent media attention given to questions of homosexual unions and the possibility of “gay marriage” a number of Catholics — among them catechists and DRE's — have been asking how to explain and defend what the Church teaches about reserving marriage to a man and woman. This is an attempt to provide a few thoughts for you.

In This Article...
Know Where They Are Coming From
Respect for Nature
The Necessary Connection


Know Where They Are Coming From

The first thing to realize is that, given the culture in which we live, (a media culture generally sympathetic if not positively supportive of homosexuality) this is not an easy thing to do without seeming — or easily being made out to be — a heartless, angry judgmental bigot who is “homophobic” and generally wants to deny people the possibility of expressing their love for each other. Rule number one: understand this mindset and don’t let it disturb you. And remember that it is this (media) mindset that has been the primary influence in shaping the thought patterns of the people we work with. Rule number two: if you find you can’t discuss these questions without losing your cool, then don’t discuss them!

To try to find a way of responding here we will start by looking at how the proponents of “homosexual marriage” understand marriage (of any kind). This will help us understand why they think it’s not only perfectly reasonable, but necessary as a matter of “justice” and “equal protection under the law” that “marriage” be available for homosexuals.

Most supporters of “homosexual marriage” understand marriage in something like the following way: as a consensual union between two people who love each other and who wish to express that love through a formalized (ideally life-long) commitment to each other, which includes sexual activity as an expression of that love. It is this incomplete notion of marriage that causes the problems we now face. 

You will notice that there is nothing in this understanding of marriage that specifies (or requires) that the two people need to be of different sexes — just that they “love” each other and wish to formalize their love. Consequently supporters of homosexual marriage view questions of “gender” — maleness and femaleness — as incidental to love and consequently as incidental to marriage. A man can “fall in love” with a woman, but why, they ask, is that any “better” than falling in love with another man, especially if the only sexual attraction he experiences is “same-sex” attraction? 

Here is where our challenge lies: to show (with kindness and compassion) that heterosexual love is somehow different from homosexual love, that a consensual union between a man and a woman who love each other and wish to express that love through a formalized commitment is somehow different — and indeed “better” — than a consensual union between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. If we are unable to do this, we have no real case against the supporters of gay marriage! 

Respect for Nature

Until a few years ago this was a lot easier than it is today because we had a greater respect for nature than we do now. There was a time when we just looked at the natural design of the human body and saw in the relationship between male and female anatomy a natural harmony that simply does not exist between male/male or female/female anatomy. And we were willing to learn something from the natural harmony!

We also saw that this harmony between man and woman had a natural capacity that male/male and female/female sexual interactions did not have: namely that of bearing fruit — bringing forth new life, creating a family. Consequently we did not think about marriage as being just a celebration of two people who loved each other in some “private way” but as two people whose love for each other could actually create new members of society.

In other words we saw a natural — a necessary — connection between love and marriage and the possibility of bringing new life into existence. The very fact of sex and marriage opened you to the possibility of becoming “family.” Certainly marriage celebrated two peoples’ love for each other, but it went further than that. It celebrated two peoples’ love for each other precisely as a love ordered towards the possibility of creating a third, fourth, fifth…person.

Most people no longer see things this way! Over the last seventy years we have effectively severed (in practice) the connection between sexual love and the creation of new life. Most young people today see the decision to have sex and the decision to have a baby as two different decisions. Whether or not sex has anything to do with procreation is simply a matter of “choice”: if you get pregnant and never wanted to be, abortion is the answer. Ideally, though, you should practice “safe sex” so it’s not ever an issue. 

The Necessary Connection

A culture that has embraced “safe sex” is a culture that has embraced “sterile sex.” Contracepted sex is sterile sex. Homosexual sex is sterile sex. As long as there is “consent” (so this is not rape), what really is the difference between them? 

Here we find the real root of the problem over “gay marriage.” People who support it are really just being consistent with the view of sex that the culture has embraced — they’re just taking it to the next logical step. If heterosexual couples can have intentionally sterile sex and no one flinches at the prospect, then we have basically agreed (as a culture) that there is no necessary connection between “having sex” and “having children.” So why not let homosexuals — whose sexual acts are “naturally sterile” anyway — enjoy the same rights? Once possible fertility has gone from our relationships, then “gender” differences — the fact that this is a man and a woman, rather than a man and a man — seem largely arbitrary and consequently irrelevant. Take the possibility of children out of the equation and all you have are two people who love each other and who wish to express that love through a formalized (ideally life-long) commitment to each other, which includes sexual activity as an
 expression of that love.

The fact that we live in a culture that is completely acclimated to the legitimacy of “sterile sex” explains in large part why we live in a culture that “struggles” with something that should really be self-evident: that heterosexual love and marriage is fundamentally different from its homosexual counterpart.

All this goes to show that there are no “sound bite” answers to this question of “gay marriage.” This whole “debate” is ultimately a clash between two fundamentally opposing views of human sexuality. On the one hand there is the view proposed by the Catholic Church: that every act of sexual intercourse should be left open to the transmission of new life, necessitating that it be both heterosexual and non-contraceptive. On the other hand is the view proposed by the culture: that sexual relationships have no necessary relationship with the possibility of having children.

Whichever view of sexuality the culture adopts will be the final determinant of who is legally allowed to get “married”.

© Copyright 2004 Jeremy Pitt-Payne


Jeremy Pitt-Payne is the associate director for the Office of Family Life in Peoria, IL. 



Like a deer that longs for running waters so my soul longs for you, O God.

Ps 42:1
 
 



		
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