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POPE FRANCIS, GAY COUPLES AND LAITY
#1
The strong inhomogeneity is typical of all human aggregations that are constituted and recognized on the basis of a single characteristic. One might think that if it is evident that gays differ from each other in thousands of characteristics, ethnic, physical, cultural, educational, social condition, etc. etc., it can at least be assumed that they are similar in the only characteristic they have in common, that is, in sexuality, if this is true as regards the identification of the object of love, or rather of the sex of the object of love, it is certainly not, if we consider sexuality in all its implications, including affective ones and in all its behavioral manifestations.
 
Among gays, the ability to integrate deriving from having the same sexual orientation doesn’t necessarily prevail over disintegrating elements of a social or cultural or even political or economic nature. Gay guys often dream of reciprocated love with another gay guy, but the famous “GAY + GAY = LOVE” theorem has never been proven and in most cases is very far from reality. The personalization of being gay is so strong that there are no standard ways of being gay and incompatibilities are absolutely not predictable.
 
Despite everything, however, some stable gay couples exist, even if they are certainly not the norm of gay sex life, most gay couples are not stable and are above all a means to realize a sexual experience more or less based on a deep emotional dimension. Cataloging the experiences of unstable couples is virtually impossible because their variability is extreme.
 
I have only heard one thing repeated almost constantly by those who had lived the experience of sexuality within an unstable couple, and that is that things, in the first experiences, were completely different from expectations, not better or worse, but simply different, almost always much simpler and even banal, in some cases more ritual and complicated.
 
In subsequent experiences, the more superficial and less personalized the relationship was, the more a standardization of behavior emerged. This means that the trivialization of the relationship deprives it of its essential characteristic, that is of relationality, and transforms it into a predominantly selfish and banally repetitive way of gratification.
 
In the vast majority of cases, in the evaluations of the first experiences a phrase recurs: "He was not as I had imagined him." The conflict between expectations and reality appears to be the most common basis of the frequent disillusionment and sometimes, much more rarely, also of the discovery of unexpected worlds and completely new forms of gratification.
 
We are inclined by nature to believe that we are the model of reality and to think that the world of others is necessarily similar to ours but over the years we discover a much more articulated and complex truth of which we are not the center neither the unit of measure but where there isn't any center neither any unit of measure, we discover that differences go far beyond appearance, that individuals are intrinsically different even in terms of dreams, desires, drives and sexuality, and that also sexuality, if it is true sexuality, has nothing standard and is probably the most typical expression of an absolutely individual dimension, because nothing like sexuality is substantiated and fueled by meanings rather than gestures, interpretations rather than behaviors, in a plurality of attitudes which is all the more varied, complex and unpredictable the more an individual's life is problematic, difficult and unsatisfactory.
 
One of the fundamental problems of sexuality, which in some way suffocates it, consists in attributing to it meanings and functions that are foreign to it, as if sexuality were almost a magic wand to solve the unresolved problems, to allay anxieties, remedy frustrations and to make us enter a mythical world of love and understanding mediated by sex. Sexuality very often is a substitute value that should make up for lack of affection, lack of gratification and disillusionment of practical life, a kind of parallel world in which to take refuge when there is a stormy air. In this way, however, sexuality becomes a strictly individual patrimony that doesn't find its realization in a real relationship with a concrete person but in an exercise of fantasy that gratifies us because it distances us from reality.
 
True sexuality is expressed in a relationship, not in a fantastic projection, and must be built in two, in the search for a possible balance that is sometimes found even starting from very distant positions and sometimes cannot be reached even starting from apparently very nearby positions.
 
Relationality, or individual aptitude for relationships, is an extremely complex dimension, essentially instinctual in which emotional and sexual components can meet and mix in various ways and degrees, extremely different gratification mechanisms can coexist, and selection criteria are often used of which no rational motivation can be found.
 
A relationship arises from the meeting of two harmonic relationalities, that is, mutually compatible. A couple relationship (I am obviously talking about gay couples), is a reciprocal and basically symmetrical relationship, obviously equal. In this definition of couple neither exclusivity (monogamy) nor indissolubility appear in a necessary way, and strictly speaking, sexuality doesn't appear either, which is not a necessary component of the couple relationship, reciprocity and symmetry are instead explicitly needed according to the definition, and also the condition of equality, concepts that require some clarification. There is a reciprocal but not symmetrical relationship between parents and children, in the sense that the type of involvement that the parent feels towards the son is different from that which the son feels towards the parent, while the two partners of a gay couple live a basically symmetrical condition. The condition of equality consists in the fact that A must recognize to B the same rights that B recognizes to A. In a hetero relationship reciprocity and the condition of equality are needed but the element of symmetry is missing, which is replaced by that of complementarity.
 
These arguments may seem like abstract puns, but they are well rooted in real life. It has happened to me often and still happens to talk to guys who have come out of a couple relationship or who have transformed their relationship into something else and I tried to understand with them why the couple relationship had gone into crisis. In the vast majority of cases the essential requirements were lacking, first of all reciprocity, the relationship was experienced as a couple relationship on one side only, while the other partner didn't substantially correspond to the feelings of the first, that is, the relationship was basically unilateral, and unilateral relationships are not true couple relationships. In a smaller number of cases there was no real symmetry, in the sense that the type of involvement experienced by one of the two partners was different from that experienced by the other, as it happens for example when one of the two partners feels attracted both at emotional and sexual levels, while the other doesn’t feel deep a emotional or sexual involvement. Only in a limited number of cases did the breakup of the couple derive from the breaking of the equilibrium between the partners, that is, from the fact that one of the two tends to independently determine the rules of the couple, demanding that the other adapt without questioning.
 
When the fundamental elements to constitute the couple are missing from the beginning, that is when there is no real couple relationship, the unilateral fantastic projections make up for the shortcomings more or less efficiently and something is created that resembles a couple, but it is not. In this "improper couple" various types of discomfort are produced that wear it down and lead it to break only after a long time, fueling states of frustration and discomfort that last for years.
 
Often couples, despite having all the requisites to be true couples at the beginning, see this condition change over time. In these cases the state of discomfort becomes particularly serious and highly dissymmetrical. Classic is the case of carrying on, for reasons of opportunity or even in order not to traumatize the partner, a relationship in which one no longer believes, it is clear that these two reasons have a very different moral meaning, but the result is still the same: sooner or later the other partner will realize the situation and feel cheated.
 
I have to strongly underline that the discomfort of the couple life breakup doesn’t come from the breakup itself, but from the fact that one of the two partners feels deceived. Saying to your partner: "I loved you but I fell in love with another guy and it is right that you know" is very different from pretending that on your part nothing in the relationship has changed, trying at the same time to blame your partner for the breakup. In this case it makes sense to speak of "betrayal" which is not essentially a betrayal of sexual fidelity, but of the partner's trust.
 
As it happens in the straight world, so also in the gay world, the preconceptions and mythologies related to sex and love heavily condition the approaches to love life and sexuality. The story of the Charming Prince totally in love with Cinderella can also be declined in a gay version and can very easily convey completely inadequate and misleading patterns of reading reality. In a more or less conscious way, the model of the marriage relationship is improperly extrapolated to the gay dimension and carries with it the idea of exclusivity and the substantial indissolubility of the couple bond. These ideas are now so radically and frequently contradicted by reality, even in the hetero field, that the marriage itself as institution is questioned, which for many couples no longer represents an aspiration but a useless and harmful bond from which it is good to keep away.
 
The emotional life escapes any institutionalization and takes place according to its paths that cannot be defined a priori. An institution, which, like marriage, tends to regulate the emotional life, is judged good or bad not because it applies right or wrong principles, since about emotional life there are a lot of opinions and points of view and nothing can be considered a priori right or wrong, but because it produces good or bad results. The legal institution that recognizes the couple bond is not the substantial component of the couple. A couple, if it works, works because it has the necessary resistance to overcome difficulties and this regardless of compliance with any a priori rule. Two people are a couple if they love each other, the fact that they are married is a pure circumstance that should legally recognize a couple bond that actually pre-exists marriage, but sometimes formally declares the existence of a couple bond that, substantially, doesn’t exist at all, and only takes concrete form in a pure legal fiction which, even without any basis, still creates expectations and obligations.
 
Marriage is a traditional institution that has undergone historical wear and is on the way to becoming a legacy of the past, too binding to be acceptable, also for straight couples. The gay world is interested in a civil recognition of the couple bond, but certainly not in its legalization in the forms of marriage which, if they are difficult to accept for straight people, are certainly very far from the mentality of the great majority of gays. Civil unions have nothing in common with marriage, they are no more than civil unions from which people expect a series of legal consequences aimed at creating legal effects between the partners of a gay couple for some aspects similar to those that marriage produces between two spouses.
 
The emotional life of gays not only doesn’t aim at para-marital institutions but tends to guarantee people maximum freedom. Among gay, except in cases still very exceptional, there are no problems related to the protection of children and, in relations between free and consenting adults, it is not clear how the State can claim the right to interfere. This, at least, according to the Italian legal tradition. In the Report on the first Penal Code for the Kingdom of Italy [1887], Title VIII "Crimes against morality and the order of families", Zanardelli, Minister of Justice at the time, a man with with an openly secular mentality, wrote:
 
"In determining the facts to be inserted in this Title, the current Project, in accordance with the previous ones, is inspired by this fundamental concept: if it is necessary on the one hand to severely repress the facts from which an obvious and appreciable damage to the families can result or that are contrary to public decency, on the other hand it is also necessary that the legislator does not invade the field of morality. Consequently, the criminal sanctions of the Project don't indiscriminately affect the facts that offend the morality and the order of families, but only those that are expressed with the characteristics of violence, insult, fraud or scandal, the repression of which is most strongly claimed in the social interest. So the actions that don't have those characteristics, and the investigation of which would make the legislative work transcend beyond its just borders, are not incriminated."
 
The Zanardelli Code knew and applied the distinction between law (objective facts and rules valid for everyone) and morality (subjective, questionable judgments and rules that cannot be imposed on everyone). I emphasize that the Zanardelli Code abolishes the death penalty, guarantees the freedom to strike and never considers homosexuality either as a possible crime or as an aggravating circumstance for other crimes.
 
Gays, in their behavior, despite all possible hesitation and weaknesses, tend anyway to follow a morality and this morality recognizes three of the four fundamental principles of the Zanardelli Code: for gay morality, violence, insult and fraud are never acceptable, because violent, insulting or fraudulent behaviors are not only harmful to the legal order but are repugnant to the individual conscience. A separate discussion can be made for the scandal. Giving scandal to minors who are not yet prepared to understand the meaning of certain speeches and behaviors is very different from speaking and behaving freely in front of adults who use their proclivity to feel scandalized as a means for the repression of those who have other points of view and other ways of life. Gay morality can be summarized in two fundamental principles: in the guarantee of everyone's own individual freedom and in the unacceptability of violence, insult and fraud and in some cases of scandal.
 
Judging an action moral or immoral depends exclusively on the criterion one chooses for judging. If we assume, as the Catholic Church does, that the only legitimate couple is that between a man and a woman, united in the bond of Catholic marriage, and that the use of sexuality is legitimate only for procreative purposes, we tend, more or less directly, to limit people's behavior on the basis of what a specific vision of morality assumes to be the Law of God. Without prejudice to the freedom to believe and therefore to conform to any doctrine as long as it doesn't limit the freedom of others, the Catholic believer is obviously free to follow the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as long as he feels Catholic.
 
And here I come to the fundamental point of my speech. Gay morality, intended to guarantee one's own individual freedom and that of others, in the total rejection of violence, insult and fraud and in some cases of scandal, presents completely different and substantially "secular" criteria of morality, i.e. not dependent on faith. Secularism represents the fundamental condition of erga omnes validity of the norm. Gay morality certainly doesn’t prevent a Catholic from conforming to Catholic doctrine, but it cannot tolerate that Catholic doctrine, or any other doctrine, may be imposed on those who don’t share it or may in any way, directly or indirectly, limit their freedom and their rights.
 
I don’t feel Catholic and I don’t claim or even expect that something in Catholic doctrine relating to sexuality change. Whoever wants to be Catholic is free to be such. What I can’t accept at all and which I consider profoundly immoral is trying to limit the freedom of others, that is, of those who don’t feel Catholic (as it usually happened with Pope Ratzinger) attempting to moralize the whole population in the Catholic manner, limiting their rights and freedom.
 
Pope Bergoglio recently spoke out in favor of the legal recognition of homosexual unions, and he did not do so by entering into issues of Italian politics, because in Italy this legal recognition already exists, but he did so by expressing a global judgment, not referable to any particular country; it is an evaluation that has nothing to do with doctrine, but only with common sense and with a substantially secular vision of the recognition of gay civil unions, a recognition that doesn’t in the least affect Catholic doctrine, which can only bind the consciences of believers. But if some gay couples wish to have legal protection, which is not and absolutely doesn’t want to be a Catholic marriage or anything like Catholic marriage, why deprive these couples of a legal guarantee that doesn’t reduce in any way the freedom of Catholics to follow Catholic doctrine and doesn’t devalue from any point of view the marriage bond as the Catholic Church understands it? The problem doesn’t concern Catholics but the rights of those who don’t feel Catholic and on whom it is not legitimate to "impose" any limitation of freedom or rights deriving from the faiths of others.
 
Pope Francis has expressed a judgment in favor of the secular nature of the State. The State and the Church are two completely different entities, with completely different functions and purposes. According to the Constitution of the Italian Republic, “The Republic recognizes and guarantees the inviolable rights of man, both as an individual and in the social formations where his personality takes place, and requires the fulfillment of the mandatory duties of political, economic and social solidarity. " (Art. 2); and again: "All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal in front the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions." (Art. 3). The obligation of the Republic is to guarantee the exercise of freedom of all, certainly not to limit the guarantees and freedoms of a group according to the convictions professed by another group, even if it were a majority group, because articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution are a constitutional cornerstone of the State from which all legislation must be inspired and constitute the fundamental criterion on which the legitimacy of the Laws is measured.
 
It should be emphasized that Pope Francis has not changed anything in relation to Catholic doctrine, he has only shown that he gives a meaning that is not purely formal to Art. 7 of the Italian Constitution, according to which "The State and the Catholic Church are, each in their own order, independent and sovereign". I add that Cardinal Martini, bishop of Milan from 1979 to 2002, also a Jesuit like Pope Francis, had expressed substantially identical judgments.
 
Pope Francis is not the protector of Gays, who don’t need protectors of any kind, but he is a person who demonstrates that he understands that homosexuality exists and that the Church should not worry about promoting homophobic crusades but should finally consider as brothers even homosexual people who don’t consider themselves Catholic, to try to build a better world together with them and for them too.
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