A Blog Post For Adults: Why Same-sex ‘Marriage’ Does Not Make Sense -Updated

I, and all Catholics, would be among the first to demand that homosexual persons be treated with respect and given the same right to life, shelter, education, health care, employment, a just wage, inheritance, freedom from violence etc, as anyone else. My cousin is homosexual who shares her home with another woman, and I would not want either of them treated badly in any way, shape or form. All people, homosexual and heterosexual; young and old, black and white, Christian and Non-Christian, share the same world, and we must get along with each without violence or oppression but care and concern, so that the peace and happiness of heaven may penetrate this world and the lives of all who live in it. But we Catholics are in a difficult place in today’s society in that we cannot support the homosexual person’s engagement in homosexual acts; as such, we cannot support homosexual ‘marriage’. We recognise that the homosexual inclination is a disorder for which the individual is not responsible and for which they cannot, therefore, be judged responsible, but homosexual acts are intrinsically at odds with the will of God and souls who wilfully practice such acts place themselves in danger of hell by refusing to adhere to the will of God. We also need to be clear that homosexuals are not excluded from the life of the Church: by quietly living a celibate life (as all unmarried Catholics are called to do) they can obtain the consolation and strength of the sacraments, take a full part in the liturgical and social life of the parish, establish wholesome friendships and find salvation. We must, however, remain clear that homosexuality is a disordered inclination; homosexual acts an unnatural use of the reproductive faculty and homosexual ‘unions’ and ‘marriages’ social constructions outside the natural order; constructions which destabilise society by destabilising and disregarding the natural family as the natural foundation of the human community. The rearing of common offspring necessitates the unity of the parents, thus marriage is by nature the permanent union of a man and a woman in that on-going, collaborative rearing of their common offspring; a union which provides the bedrock necessary for societal and individual stability. All extra-marital sex is a threat to the stability of society and the individuals within it by reason of it being a series of non-committed, temporary encounters, and by the fact that sexual diseases increase as promiscuity increases.

Since homosexual activity of its very nature is nothing more than mutual masturbation (a non-procreative use of the procreative act) it cannot be equated with the copulation of marriage. It is true that sterile heterosexual couples cannot procreate either, but such couples are of an entirely different order in that they are emotionally and physically complimentary; only a physical ailment prevents the couple bringing children into the world. The homosexual pair, on the other hand, deliberately employ the procreative faculty in a non-procreative manner. Fundamentally, no real union can be achieved by homosexual acts. As such, even the idea of a homosexual union is nonsense, even more so is homosexual ‘marriage’. Passing a law which ignores this reality is like passing a law which pretends gravity does not hold things down: such a law cannot change reality: Governments can no more rewrite the laws of biology than they can rewrite the laws of physics.

What about the union of homosexuals as persons, which transcends the union of bodies? Can this idea justify homosexual marriage? It cannot, because persons are not disembodied beings; disembodied beings are ghosts, and we don’t marry ghosts. Marriage is for the living and is the union of the whole nature. It is absurd to pretend otherwise.  

What about the marriage of a transsexual? This too is nonsense, because even by undergoing plastic surgery the transsexual is only helped to simulate being a member of the opposite sex. God forbid, but should a transsexual lose his or her life in a fire, their remains will not be identifiable as to their simulated sex: their DNA will identify them as the sex of their conception and birth. Governments might pass laws requiring us to acknowledge that a person has changed their sex -they may even allow for their sex to be changed on their birth certificate- but such laws only deceive society at large about a person’s objective sex reality, while simultaneously facilitating the transsexual’s continuance in subjective error as to their gender. In reality, transsexuals remain for all eternity the sex of their conception and birth.

Governments which pass laws facilitating homosexual ‘marriage’ must admit that they might be seen as either so intoxicated by their (temporary) political authority that they have lost awareness of the limitations to that authority (which is powerless to rewrite the laws of nature) or as supremely arrogant in their disregard for those laws. It is not easy to see them as pursuing inclusivity or diversity when they allow the oppression of those who see homosexuality as abnormal (such as clergymen) and of those who cannot in conscience facilitate homosexual activity (such as owners of Guesthouses).  As laws are passed allowing homosexual pairs to acquire the designation ‘married’ Governments must, to ensure they are truly inclusive and valuing of diversity, enact laws that:

(a) protect the religious person’s conscience in the exercise of their professional lives

(b) protect freedom of speech so that those who disagree with homosexual ‘marriage’ can say so without fear of being persecuted and/or prosecuted for voicing that opinion

(c) protect religious institutions from being forced to provide religious Rites to same-sex pairs;

(d) protect religious schools from having to present homosexuality as biologically and socially normal.

On the latter point, it is my belief that no school, religious or otherwise, should teach that homosexuality is normal: they may as well teach that one can achieve good a hold with two bolts or two nuts as one can with a nut and bolt. Presenting homosexuality as normal not only flies in the face of common sense, but it may produce an artificial upsurge in homosexuality in that children exposed to such teaching might consider themselves homosexual (and block their psycho-social development) at the pre-adolescent age when boys have no interest in playing with girls and girls no interest in playing with boys. Surely children have a right to be taught about the natural biological and psychological complimentarity of the sexes, and to have false information kept out of their classroom? Where Governments demand that their contrived social construction be taught, they should have the integrity -or at the very least the decency- to allow schools to present the natural law too, if only for the sake of freedom of speech, respect for conscience, and freedom of religion.

Too conclude, Catholics are among the first to demand that homosexual persons be treated with respect, but so too must the laws of nature and common sense, to say nothing of the laws of God as found in Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition.