Page Summary
- All forms of abuse directed at someone because they are attracted to members of the same sex are wrong. Sexual activity with a member of the same sex is also wrong. Both can be true.
- Both supporters and many opponents of same-sex relationships shared a common misconception: for opposite-sex couples, sexual activity is a manifestation of love if it is motivated by mutual feelings of affection and commitment.
- But feelings aren’t enough to constitute love, even for an opposite-sex couple.
- Only an act of the will to form a one-flesh union open to new life can constitute genuine sexual love. This action is fundamentally impossible for a same-sex couple.
- If this is not necessary for marriage, then there is no reason to exclude non-sexual loving relationships from marriage.
Why is married sex different from sexual activity between two men or two women?
Because sex can only realize unity, which is the goal of love, when it is open to life.
Ok, but what does that actually mean?
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Jason couldn’t keep it secret any longer. He wanted to talk openly about his relationship with Alan, but feared his dad’s reaction. Jason shouldn’t have had to be afraid, but there was a real chance his dad might withdraw love and support if he didn’t like how Jason identified.
People who experience same-sex attraction still face situations like this, and far too many Christians overlook their wounds. Coercive efforts to change a person’s feelings of attraction, bullying, and unjust discrimination are wrong and should be rejected. On the other hand, sexual activity with a person of the same sex is also wrong and should be avoided. Both can be true. While these two kinds of actions differ, it is a disservice to the individual if we obscure the truth about either one.
There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of same-sex couples who express an equal degree of romantic commitment as opposite-sex couples. The feelings of one couple are not automatically more valid than another because of the individuals’ status as male or female. Actually, the feelings of neither couple are enough on their own to constitute love.
The phrase “love is love” assumes, however, that these feelings are enough. It seems to imply that:
A) same-sex sexual relationships (the first use of “love”) should be recognized as morally and legally equal to opposite-sex marital relationships because…
B) same-sex couples feel the same level of affection and commitment (the second use of “love”) as opposite-sex couples.
Many opponents of same-sex relationships made two mistakes in response. They believed they had to reject B in order to reject A. They also implicitly accepted an assumption, which proponents also accepted:
C) for opposite-sex couples, sexual activity is a manifestation of love if it is motivated by mutual feelings of affection and commitment.
If there was mutual agreement on C, and proponents demonstrated B by their public example, then A necessarily had to follow. Perhaps our culture has taken C as a given, in which case, it has been misled.
Note: these diagrams concern the goodness of actions within a relationship, not the goodness of persons.
The root of the issue is the role of feelings in determining whether an action is loving, for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Abusers often defend their actions by reporting that they were done out of feelings of love. This is not to equate unchastity with abuse, but only to show that feelings don’t automatically make an action loving. We sell love short when we pretend as if feelings are enough, even for opposite-sex couples. Feelings depend on the actions they move us to do.
Only the act of the will to form a one-flesh union, open to the gift of children, can constitute real sexual love. A husband and wife affirm this act of the will whenever they have chaste sex. When that same married couple, with the same level of romantic feeling, has contraceptive sex, they violate chastity and the love which sustains their relationship. When that same man and woman have sex before getting married, they similarly violate love.
Absent the promises of marriage, they close themselves off to the unity which grounds the entire relationship. Two men or two women cannot in principle engage in sexual activity which is open to that unity, because they will an action other than the one which is unitive by its nature.1
If the openness to communion is not necessary for marriage, what reason is there to exclude non-monogamous relationships, sterilized incestuous relationships, or non-sexual domestic relationships? That last option isn’t even wrong. They all share lives, experience feelings of love (whether romantic or not), and mutually consent to their arrangements.
Or perhaps marriage really should be extended to these relationships as well. In that case, marriage, which started out as a necessary condition for sex to be good, would become emptied of its meaning. It would still be incumbent on those who would redefine marriage to offer alternative conditions for sex to be good, which was how this exercise started. Otherwise, sex cannot be good at all. (search keywords: gay, lesbian, homosexual, lgbt)
I think first and foremost of the stable union of man and woman in marriage. This union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God’s own love, and of the acknowledgment and acceptance of the goodness of sexual differentiation, whereby spouses can become one flesh (cf. Gen 2:24) and are enabled to give birth to a new life…
Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei 52 (emphasis added)
1) Explicit content warning: the desire to engage in anal, oral, or non-penetrative genital stimulation is fundamentally a desire to bring pleasure to one or both individuals and not to be united conjugally. In these cases, the genitals of one or both individuals are being used for some goal which is contrary to (not just different from) their actual purpose. By contrast, chaste sex is the use of the sexual faculty for its purpose: to unite the husband and wife in one flesh. If they perform an act which rules out the procreation of a living embodiment of their love, they aren’t willing to be united.