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| GAYS BETWEEN PREJUDICE AND RELATIVISM |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 07:25 PM - Forum: Gays and religion
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On April 18, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in the Homily for the Mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff that preceded the opening of the conclave in which, the day after, he was elected pope, said:
“Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.
Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine”, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires”.
This sentence opens ideally the pontificate of Benedict XVI in the sign of contrast against relativism. According to the future Pontiff the relativism is “letting oneself be tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine” and its “ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires. “
I don’t enter into the merits of the statements of the pope. I would just like to mention and to develop an Indian legend told by Max Scheler in the first part of “Formalism in ethics and the ethics of material values” an extremely interesting book, published exactly 100 years ago, in 1913, which was intended to clarify what is relativism by treating the matter very seriously. The work is in German, but the Protestant and Jewish cultural influences, perhaps even more than the contents of the book itself, does not make it enjoyable in Catholic circles.
Max Scheler alludes to an Indian legend that I have to expand because it has a considerable explanatory meaning.
Many years ago, in India, a group of blind “wise men” were allowed to approach an elephant and they were told that it was an elephant, each of them touched the elephant only for a few seconds, then they were asked what an elephant was: one said it was a hard object such as marble, because he had only touched a tusk, another said it was like a very big snake capable of writhing in coils, because he had only touched the trunk, and another said it was a big paw.
According to the metaphor it’s obvious that each of the blind “wise men” realized that his point of view was relative and that to better understand what an elephant is it’s necessary to know and understand what others deduced from their own point of view. The truly wise men understand that relativism is not exceeded with the apodictic affirmation of a single point of view but only with a collaborative vision that enriches everyone and allows a better understanding of reality and at least a relative overcoming of the initial relativism. So far Max Scheler and I would say that it is already an illuminating metaphor.
Now let assume that among those blind wise men there was one that had got to stay a long time with other elephants, that certainly would have had a much better knowledge of what an elephant is, certainly a relative knowledge but much less relative than that of those who had could touch the elephant just for a minute, and the wise men, to understand what is really an elephant, would certainly be listening to those who had more experience about elephants.
Obviously if those same blind men were then taken next to a turtle and none of them had ever had contact with other turtles, none of them could have helped “a priori” to understand more and better than others what a turtle really is.
It wouldn’t certainly occur to me, since I’ve never ridden a horse, to explain to an experienced rider which positions are more “natural” to stay in the saddle, because talking about what you do not know means only show your ignorance of that topic, so anyone who is not gay, and does not live being gay from inside, should realize that he has a concept of being gay comparable with the idea of an elephant that can have a blind man who has approached an elephant only for a minute.
Mine is not a defense of relativism and I make explicit reference to Max Scheler if you want to get something serious about these topics.
Strongly assertive and dogmatic positions are supported not by their greater reliability derived from more experience or more rationality but only by a principle of authority. The concepts of “God’s law” or “natural law” are also presumptions, i.e. acts of faith, certainly respectable in themselves, but that in no case can be the basis of visions involving the devaluation of other points of view, or worse the restriction of the freedom of others. This would be like trying to impose the view that the elephant is a huge tusk because one of the blind men, particularly influential, has only touched the tusk (assuming that he has really touched it). If those blind men submit to the authority of one of them, they would not be wise because they would reject the idea of working for a better understanding of the things, that is not compatible with the idea that someone is right by definition. This is not like the Pope says “the dictatorship of relativism” but an elementary principle of common sense for which freedom is not compatible with any ideological dictatorship.
Gay men know the reality of their lives and yet have to see every day, imposed by the violent force of law, as is happening in Russia, or by the abuse of the name of God, as the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church usually do, the points of view of those who does not know what they are talking about.
It is not the relativism reductively understood, according to the words of the Pope, the basis of democracy that must form the foundation of the States, but the principle of mutual respect and collaboration, to guarantee the higher level of awareness for all, assuming that everyone is free to judge as he wants but if the judgment is not based on a real knowledge of the topics but on a mere prejudice, no one can claim in the name of that prejudice to limit the freedom or the rights of others.
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| GAYS AND MASTURBATION BETWEEN SIN AND NORMALITY |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 07:22 PM - Forum: Gays and religion
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This post is dedicated to a comparison between the positions of the Catholic Church on the masturbation and the reality of the phenomenon, as it appears through a simple analysis of the facts.
The definition of masturbation given by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Part Three, Section Two, Chapter Two, art. 6, n. 2352) (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P85.HTM) is: “deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure“. The English text uses “sexual pleasure”, but the Latin one uses ”veneream voluptatem” (venereal lust). The use of the adjective venereal, now obsolete in everyday language and even in medical terminology where the expression “venereal diseases” has been replaced by the more accurate expression “sexually transmitted diseases”, is indebted to Thomas Aquinas, who, in the “quaestio” of Summa Theologica dedicated to lust (Summa Thelogica II^ IIae, q. 153), frequently uses expressions that refer to “venereal lust (ἀφροδισιαστικός)” such as “delectationes venereae”, “voluptates venereas”, “actus venereus”, “usus venereorum”.
The point n. 9 of the Declaration Persona Humana on masturbation is one of the most typical examples of closed dogmatic structure of Catholic morality.
The Declaration Persona humana approaches the topic “masturbation” recalling that: “The traditional Catholic doctrine that masturbation constitutes a grave moral disorder is often called into doubt or expressly denied today. It is said that psychology and sociology show that it is a normal phenomenon of sexual development, especially among the young.” The Church opposes these psychological or sociological theories only with its authority stating that “according to someone” that the Church considers certainly in error, in masturbation “there is real and serious fault only in the measure that the subject deliberately indulges in solitary pleasure closed in on self (“ipsation”), because in this case the act would indeed be radically opposed to the loving communion between persons of different sex which some hold is what is principally sought in the use of the sexual faculty.” Beyond the fact that the text expressly speaks of “persons of different sex,” it introduces a distinction, in the context of masturbation, between “heterosexual” affective masturbation and “ipsation”. The term “ipsation” (from the Latin “ipse” = myself) was coined by Magnus Hirschfeld and was used in the psycho-biological questionnaire to be filled from patients of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin founded by Hirschfeld himself in 1919.
The question. 35 of the questionnaire was as follows: “Do you ever let yourself go to ipsation, i.e. to the satisfaction achieved through onanism? When did you start masturbating? How did you contract this habit? Have you been encouraged by people of your age or of different ages? From people of your same sex or different sex? Up to what age? With what intervals and what mental representations and how did you masturbate? If you are a woman, by external caresses or through the introduction of foreign objects in your body? Have you ever struggled against this trend? If so, by what means (vows, prayers, etc.) “.
The document Persona humana uses the term ipsation (now very rarely used by sexologists) to indicate a “solitary pleasure closed in on self” that would be the reason for the immorality of this “only” kind of masturbation. Obviously the Declaration does not consider any psycho-sexual topic and merely judges morally irrelevant the distinction between “heterosexual” affective masturbation, which implies at least a projective couple dimension, and ipsation i.e. the non-affective masturbation, as if it was that there is a dividing line between the two, and as if the question of the moral legitimacy of masturbation was reduced to this. The document points out that masturbation is still and always condemned by the Church for constant tradition and that whatever the reasons that induce certain indulgence toward affective masturbation:
“This opinion is contradictory to the teaching and pastoral practice of the Catholic Church. Whatever the force of certain arguments of a biological and philosophical nature, which have sometimes been used by theologians, in fact both the Magisterium of the Church – in the course of a constant tradition – and the moral sense of the faithful have declared without hesitation that masturbation is an intrinsically and seriously disordered act.”
The Document specifies the reason behind this judgment: “The main reason is that, whatever the motive for acting this way, the deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside normal conjugal relations essentially contradicts the finality of the faculty. For it lacks the sexual relationship called for by the moral order, namely the relationship which realizes “the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love.” All deliberate exercise of sexuality must be reserved to this regular relationship.” Whatever the value of the arguments to the contrary, the sentence is therefore bases its unfailing motivation on the teaching and tradition of the Church that legitimizes the use of the sexual faculty only in “normal conjugal relations“.
Very interesting is the evaluation of the significance of sociological research on the topic of masturbation, as proposed by the Vatican document: “Sociological surveys are able to show the frequency of this disorder according to the places, populations or circumstances studied. In this way facts are discovered, but facts do not constitute a criterion for judging the moral value of human acts.”
The Congregation in practice only paraphrases a document of Pope Paul VI, “If sociological surveys are useful to know the mentality of the environment and the concerns and needs of those to whom we proclaim the word of God, as well as the resistance that human reason could oppose in the modern age, with the widespread notion that does not exist outside of science, any legitimate form of knowledge, the findings of such investigations could never constitute in themselves a determinant criterion of truth.”(Paolo VI, Esort. apost. Quinque iam anni).
The Congregation goes to the identification of the causes of the frequency of masturbation as follows:
“The frequency of the phenomenon in question is certainly to be linked with man’s innate weakness following original sin; but it is also to be linked with the loss of a sense of God, with the corruption of morals engendered by the commercialization of vice, with the unrestrained licentiousness of so many public entertainments and publications, as well as with the neglect of modesty, which is the guardian of chastity.
Then the document mentions the “modern psychology” although it is not clear to what it refers specifically:
“On the subject of masturbation modern psychology provides much valid and useful information for formulating a more equitable judgment on moral responsibility and for orienting pastoral action. Psychology helps one to see how the immaturity of adolescence (which can sometimes persist after that age), psychological imbalance or habit can influence behavior, diminishing the deliberate character of the act and bringing about a situation whereby subjectively there may not always be serious fault. But in general, the absence of serious responsibility must not be presumed; this would be to misunderstand people’s moral capacity.”
It follows that masturbation is always objectively a serious fault but not always subjectively and it is for this reason that modern psychology can be useful to discern case by case. Clearly, modern psychology is regarded as legitimate as instrumental and compatible with Catholic morality. The Congregation provides also other criteria that go beyond the “modern psychology”:
"In the pastoral ministry, in order to form an adequate judgment in concrete cases, the habitual behavior of people will be considered in its totality, not only with regard to the individual’s practice of charity and of justice but also with regard to the individual’s care in observing the particular precepts of chastity. In particular, one will have to examine whether the individual is using the necessary means, both natural and supernatural, which Christian asceticism from its long experience recommends for overcoming the passions and progressing in virtue."
But let’s consider only the facts leaving aside moral prejudices.
The fact that masturbation concerns basically all guys in adolescence is generally known and confirmed by all serious surveys carried out in this field. Masturbation in adolescence is very important: gradually leads guys to the consciousness of their sexual orientation, determines the sexual archetypes, i.e. physical types of the people who induce in us a clear sexual response and also determines sexual behaviors that will be considered to be the more exciting all life long, creates and stabilizes the association between masturbatory fantasies and physiological reactions of erection and ejaculation.
Inducing feelings of guilt related to masturbation in adolescents through moral prejudices means:
1) severely and negatively interfere with the maturation of their sexuality and with the formation of their moral sense,
2) push them to neurotically react (with a completely unnatural rejection of the masturbation) to consider masturbation as a vice of which they must try to free themselves,
3) build a morality based on repression rather than freedom.
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| GAY LOVE WITHOUT GAY COUPLE |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 07:16 PM - Forum: Gay couples
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Dear Project,
I got to talk to you several times via msn but I think you cannot easily remember me without a more precise reference. Twenty-eight y. o. madly in love with a guy twenty-three with whom I believed to have built a great relationship, then I was abandoned by this guy last summer but in a way that I could not explain, I talked to you for a whole night in the month of September (Nick name: sad). I called you because I needed to get out but talking to you instead gave me a strange feeling, I realized that your way of reasoning and seeing things was extremely different from mine or maybe different from how I had tried to figure out my relationship with that guy.
The thing that struck me most was your vision of couple’s life. I have kept logs of conversations:
Sad wrote: Hello Project, are you busy?
Project wrote: Hello Sad, nice to meet you!
Sad wrote: Maybe you remember, I had written at the end of June, twenty-eight y. o. madly in love with a twenty-three, (he and I had been together in the mountains for Christmas)…
Project wrote: Ah yes … and he had lost his wallet at the hotel and they had given it back to him?
Sad wrote: yes yes exactly! Just that!
Project wrote: Yes, I remember now! A good story, a story that struck me very much. And now, how are you now?
Sad wrote: now I’m single again, the story is over!
Project wrote: but what happened? It seemed that everything was fine…
Sad wrote: he behaved with me in an unworthy manner, treated me with no respect, I had tried to do everything for him and make sure he was okay but he left me as if I were worth nothing to him
Project wrote: but now he’s with another guy?
Sad wrote: no, I do not think
Project wrote: so why is gone?
Sad wrote: I do not know, I did not understand, he told me that he felt too tight, that he did not feel able to make choices, I asked him to meet me but he said no and there was nothing I could do to make him change his opinion, then we just had a fight badly and I sent him to hell and I also think that he took it very badly, but with me, if you want to do something serious it is fine but, if you are just dithering even over fundamental choices, it does not sit well with me at all. It is as if he had used me when he needed me and then had only just left me when I was most in need of him. I thought that at least between us there was a strong relationship, I thought I could rely on him but things were different.
Project wrote: but when it happened?
Sad wrote: more or less a month and a half ago
Project wrote: and after you broke up did you meet again or he disappeared altogether?
Sad wrote: yes he called me, he seemed to want to go back, he told me he loved me but when I asked him if he wanted to go back with me he told me that he did not feel so and that he had not called for it but to know how I was and then I lost my temper and told him to go to hell.
Project wrote: and that was it?
Sad wrote: no, sometimes we also talked on msn but I cannot be on a roller coaster this way, I cannot be exposed to his mood swings, because he basically does not want to be with me and this seems clear to me, I need stability and to him this is not good, that is, the stability seems to him to be a way to give up other things, like if he was closing himself in a trap, and so things cannot go on. I know he is younger than me and maybe he wants to have his experiences but at some point he must also make a clear choice, the fact that now he is alone depends only on him and I do not give a damn, I cannot ruin my life running after him and after everything that comes to his mind. He has a vision of things too different from mine
Project wrote: but is it really true that you do not care about?
Sad wrote: however I cannot tolerate the fact that I have been treated with no respect, let’s face it, Project, now I’m really bad, for me it’s a failure, I need stability, if he doesn’t care at all, I will try to find another guy so that it could be something stable, quiet, with him it would not be so in any case, what do you think about, Project?
Project wrote: are you sure that he wants to break the relationship??
Sad wrote: No, but now I want to close the matter, I cannot go on like this! I’m tired, Project, and I’m disappointed, I had overrated him, I thought that he really cared and instead he proved to be selfish. When he needed me I was there all the time but when I needed him, he didn’t care at all
Project wrote: things you told me long ago about this guy were very positive, just at the level of person, and I’m sorry if, I tell you, but at that time I had the impression that you had a very rigid way of seeing things.
Sad wrote: what is it?
Project wrote: wait, I’ll try to explain, you had in mind a model of close couple and probably the mentality of this guy is not compatible with that model. When you are in love with a person, there is always the risk of actually seeing only some aspects and to complete other aspects according to our desires, but falling really in love means to love a guy for what he is, that is love him even in the aspects that we cannot understand, that usually have deep motivations and are not stupid attitudes, it is possible that couple’s life is not good for him, or not good as you imagine it in the sense of close couple
Sad wrote: it means that he really does not love me! Because he is not willing to give up anything for me
Project wrote: no! Do not say so, really love each other does not mean having to give up something necessarily neither to accept a model of close couple; it’s a whole different thing. I think you could find yourself choosing between the model of close couple and this guy. I would not give for granted that you should give up on this guy and even that the story is over, maybe it’s over the possibility of living with him a story in the way you imagined it and on the other hand does not make sense to think that one must adapt to another, it is possible to find a balance for both but if I have to say what I think, I do not think the story is really over and anyway you do not seem really disappointed.
Sad wrote: I don’t know what to tell you, Project, but now at least for a while, I don’t want any more to know anything about him, then what it means to love one another if you do not feel comfortable as a couple?
Project wrote: I do not know, it’s all to be verified; sometimes we pretend that people adapt to our models, but people and not our models are the absolute value. It is true that this argument should also apply from his point of view, but I think he too may have felt very uncomfortable. Maybe he thought he was accepted as he really was, with all his uncertainties, his contradictions and his need for freedom and not as a guy who had to adapt to what his partner wanted, I will say, however, not to keep rigid positions with him. A relationship doesn’t exist when there is no affection, not when things don’t go according to our plans and here I don’t think that there is no affection and even love.
Sad wrote: well … basically I love him, but it is too difficult for me, no, Project, for me this is not good. I need a minimum of security.
This was our conversation of September and since then many things have happened, I tried to be with other guys, but practically it was impossible because I always had him in mind. Our contacts were not interrupted, he called me several times and was talking to me very seriously, but never wanted to get back together not to deceive me, he said, not to let me think that things could come back as before. He treated me with respect and affection, what I did not expect, even if he did not want to go back to a couple’s relationship with me as before. I do not know if he is in love with another guy, but I don’t think so. With me he is very clear, as he always has been, never good statements and positions always very clear, we have also met in person and more than a single time.
Undoubtedly when I see him I’m taken back to the idea of living with him as a couple, and sometimes it was difficult to accept that it would not happen. He tells me that he needs freedom, to try to live his life, whatever it could be, but that he loves me and I begin to think that it is true, indeed I do. Sometimes we hug and this causes me a strange feeling but it’s a positive felling, I feel that I have not lost him; however, certainly I have to resize my dreams. It’s a bit as you said, Project, I find myself deciding between this guy and the kind of life that I had imagined with him. It still seems very difficult to me to accept that he could be free and could love me even though he fell in love with another guy.
This summer it seemed to me quite inconceivable, now I find it difficult to accept but I do not see it as an absurd hypothesis. In fact, if a guy loves another guy and therefore he doesn’t love you at all because he only thinks of the other guy, then certainly you cannot maintain any relationship, but if the guy could as well continue to love you, even though he is in love with another guy, it would make sense to say that it is better to send everything to hell? I really don’t know, Project.
Evidently, they put us in mind behavior models according to which love must be exclusive, i.e. either with me or with another, but perhaps these models are complications that are not needed at all to love one another. Maybe now it seems to me that I could adapt because in fact now he has not another guy, probably if he had one I could not accept it. In practice, I hope to be everything for him, so he would not need anything else and I would find my peace of mind, in practice a bit as before. That is, now, even if he went away from me, he is still in love with me because really there is not anyone else. Or maybe it could work well even if he really was in love whit another guy? I really don’t know.
With me he was always sincere and I feel that we are really good together. Probably I’m not really everything for him, I’m not enough for him but not in the sense that he devalues me but in the sense that he also needs other things that I cannot give him, I cannot because maybe they are things that I do not understand or just because he also needs affection of others.
In recent times I have the impression that he wants to be close to me, that he cares what I say and what I think and especially that he cares to show me that he loves me but avoiding deluding me. But how can I, Project, to think that maybe we go back together, because it probably will happen, or at least somehow will happen, but how do I then think that he might even have another guy? I’m not saying he could not love me, because I do not think this will happen, but how could I accept not to be everything for him anyway? This thing upsets me. Project, and if, after accepting such a thing, I were worse? And if maybe I’m the one who deceives him because I’m not able to comply with his rules and then I expect it to be business as usual? I think I can find another guy, but it is not what I want.
When I tried to approach other guys I expected from them his reactions, his answers, and instead I found myself in front of quite different things, things from which I was barely involved, in practice I was not involved at all because I thought those guys were not like him. When he’s around I feel his presence very strong and it is not a matter of sex, even arguing with him is another thing. He never tells me I’m right when he thinks that I’m wrong and discussing with him it’s a true discussion, both of us at the same level. After all he has not kept pace but loved me anyway and I have no doubt, but he loved me in his own way. I do not know if we would be back together, it’s probably something else that does not involve the classical concept of couple.
Project, do you understand in what kind of problems I’m involved? It is a situation that previously I would never have accepted for any reason, I would have rejected on principle, but I do not want to be without that guy, certainly the situation in these terms will make me live in anxiety, and I think that the sense of uncertainty will be unavoidable in the future. You really think that it’s possible to find stability this way? That I can be happy even so?
If you want you can publish this e-mail.
__________
Editor replies:
Given that for me there may be different types of relationship between two people – it’s enough to clarify, from the beginning, towards which kind of relationship one is oriented and even its possible evolution - if both the partners agree on a classical couple relationship, however, there cannot be perpetually third parties (other guys): I think it is natural (indeed human) that guys tend, in the long run, to orient a relationship, whatever it could be, towards a classical couple relationship, because it is able to give more stability and emotional reward for the emotional investment that basically it is done in every relationship worthy of the name. In short, I don’t think that "seeing oneself in the prospect of couple life" is only the product of a millennial process of inculturation, but I think it is a natural (and legitimate) expectation when you "invest" so much emotionally on a person.
Alyosha replies:
"sometimes we expect people to adapt to our models, but people, not models, are the absolute value" I take note of this statement and I will recycle it at the next opportunity! The speech made by Project seems to me to be very meaningful and in fact, many couple problems derive from considering models as an absolute value. If I can be sincere, overall, with respect to the first discussion, when Sad was still furious, I had the impression that his external attitude was more of "blackmail" than objective, of the series "if you don’t change I leave you", but that the intention was not at all to leave him, but to let him make a decision, to let him make change his attitude.
The fact that the other kept his positions, led to a downward compromise. If after some time Sad assumes that the other has not yet a guy, probably the problem is not having another guy, but living one’s own life without feeling conditioned or suffocated by the presence of the other, especially if the other has a conditioning attitude, that is tends to pour his expectations on the other, expecting the other to adapt. I see in the 28-year-old an attitude of the "all or nothing" series. Either the two guys form a really tight couple or the 23-year-old goes away with another, as if loosening his grip on him the 23 year old must necessarily run away, when it is clear that he didn't go away even when the relationship seemed finished. As I see it, you should not get used to the idea that he is with another guy, on the contrary you should get used to the idea that loosening the grip on him nothing would really happen, maybe he can just relax and you could avoid the ride in the roller coaster.
Watchermat replies:
"He tells me he needs freedom, to try and make his life". When I hear such speeches, I struggle to hold back my anger. It is true that to hug too tightly around one's own partner is likely to suffocate him but it is equally true that it can be the partner who feels suffocated a little too easily.
Now I'm no longer talking about Sad’s case, but more generally. I'll explain. A person may come to think that by continuing a romantic relationship with someone it is not possible to evolve with one's own life, individually. And so? Does this mean that you cannot have a partner and live a life even as a single person? I don’t think so. The explication lies in "what makes me feel suffocated?". My personal experience has led me to meet many people who are objectively frustrated by being single but at the same time are unable to change a bit of their life, all in the name of their freedom as singles. The simple understanding that the thing is becoming more intimate (and this can also mean that the attendance has gone beyond the 3 meetings) triggers the feeling that their freedom and individuality are in danger. Hence an intolerance and a discomfort that leads to the termination of the relationship (every time) in the space of more or less time (from weeks to months). I wonder if sometimes even the simple idea of a relationship is not enough to put someone in confusion even without the actual suffocating behavior of the partner. The blessed "middle ways" exist, and it is possible to find a balance of spaces, proximities and distances, within the couple life. When there is the possibility of being an individual within a couple it means that things are going well, that the couple is fine. Reaching such a balance requires exposing oneself and getting to know each other more deeply. If, knowing each other more deeply, one understands that it is not possible to continue the relationship one has the sacrosanct right / duty to tell it his partner. But it is not something that concerns the risk of losing one's personal freedom. What do you think?
Blackout replies:
Fine answers by Project, which above all allow us to evaluate a situation outside of our experience. I state that I don’t have the least experience of relationship, so at most I can express my opinion, from the outside. I grew up, I too, with the idea that relationship meant to be two, no more, and the couple was the only concept admitted. But when I started thinking by myself, I realized that this idea doesn’t belong to me, or rather I don’t have to necessarily think that this is the only way to have a relationship, because the situations that can occur will always have peculiar characteristics and I’m not here to give you examples, you can understand it better than me.
Watcher speaks of "a sense of suffocation" especially for singles. And I understand it well because when you are single you build your good habits and the relationship that could possibly occur, selfishly considered, seems to remove rather than add something. And it is perhaps true (often I think it is) that the only idea that that initial feeling can become something, often makes people run away. Well, for me those people are numb sentimentally, I don’t know how to explain it but I think they have developed an inability to certain types of relationships and tend only to close themselves in a safe and muffled world that is that of the single. Time and patience to understand how to build a relationship have been lost. This is just an opinion, as I said, I don’t know anything about relationships.
Totoro replies:
Having always been a guy who "runs away", I’m better inclined to share the positions of the one who has distanced his partner rather than of the one who has written this mail, I would be much more inclined to support his reasons than the moral blackmail and reasoning of the guy of twenty-eight, or so I imagine. I confirm that not always when one goes away he does so because he no longer feels affection for the person he leaves. In the past I happened to be with people who expected from me (note the "expected") that I leaned on them from the emotional point of view. Given that even this simple attitude is something suffocating for me who was accustomed to lick my wounds alone and find it rewarding, the moral blackmail "if you don’t lean on me it means that you don’t love me or that you don’t need me anyway"
had only the effect of bringing me to seriously turn off any kind of affection. Because often, if not always, people tend to think about things starting from their own way of thinking, that is reasoning this way: "for me it is so, so it must be so absolutely for everybody". Frankly I don’t know if they are wrong or not, if the root of my taking distance was that I then identified or if the past things have led me to my conclusions but ultimately I never really wanted a relationship. Even less I can say if others are frustrated by not having a relationship but at the same time are too used to being alone to embark on such a thing, certainly situations are very different and complicated. And it is not even said that when a guy says he wants to live his life he intends to "try to have relationships with others", maybe he can only mean that he needs to be independent and to learn to rely only on his own strength.
Whoknows answers:
Watchermat, I fully agree with you! I really cannot stand those types of relationships in which jealousy takes over and everyone's freedom is greatly limited, but I don’t think I could tolerate the open couple ... but I should try, before judging. In this email, however, one thing is not clear: the guy in question loves him, but doesn’t want the couple. And the sex in their relationship what role does it occupy? In fact, if it doesn’t occupy any role, it can simply mean that this guy loves him as a friend, but that he is not attracted to him. Or he can also be attracted to him, but maybe he realizes that on some aspects their point of view is too far away to allow the creation of a lasting relationship (for example, maybe due to life projects, like one wants to go to foreign and the other not, or one wants to live as a gay out of the closet and the other doesn’t want renounce privacy). In reality, we know the story from a single perspective and it is not even clear what kind of relationship exists between the two guys.
Barbara answers:
The difficult thing about living as a couple or having an affective relationship is precisely the search for this balance that Totoro describes. In a close relationship the need to mediate is continuous and takes place at all levels. To mediate means to come to meet and find a point of agreement. Often it is not a real middle ground, in the sense that maybe one of them adapts much more than the other. Each of us is more or less inclined by character to make his own needs prevail or to let his partner prevail. Many balances also remain unbalanced for a long time, until maybe they explode. It seems to me that in that mail it is also this. One of them was satisfied with how things were going and the other was not. Only that maybe they didn’t want or couldn’t face reality. The other guy had sent messages that perhaps should have been taken into consideration. Maybe nothing would have changed because their needs were too far away and maybe they could have found a solution before closing their relationship. In any case it is very true what Totoro says, that relationships with others and above all conflicts also force us to question ourselves. They lead us to ask ourselves if we expected too much from the other or if our request was legitimate and was therefore the other at fault in not accepting it. I think relationships help us get out of ourselves and grow, however things go. For example, those that have gone wrong can teach us to check in time if there are the minimum conditions to find a compromise. If I’m a person who needs to have his own spaces and not feel invaded by the other, it is very difficult for me for example to hold a relationship with someone who continually needs confirmations. One will feel the air missing and the other will feel abandoned. Sometimes we stay together even when it would be wise to separate and sometimes we prefer to truncate everything even before we have seriously tried to recover the situation. This is also a good dilemma to be dissolved.
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| POPE RATZINGER AND HOMOSEXUALITY |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 07:12 PM - Forum: Gays and religion
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The February 11, 2013, when I heard on the radio of the waiver to the papacy by Pope Benedict XVI, I thought to write an article about it, but I prefer to refrain from making judgments of any kind. I attach below two documents signed by Cardinal Ratzinger on the topic of homosexuality:
1) LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE PASTORAL CARE OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS – October 1, 1986
2) CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITIONTO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS – June 3, 2003
___________
CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
ON THE PASTORAL CARE OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS
1. The issue of homosexuality and the moral evaluation of homosexual acts have increasingly become a matter of public debate, even in Catholic circles. Since this debate often advances arguments and makes assertions inconsistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church, it is quite rightly a cause for concern to all engaged in the pastoral ministry, and this Congregation has judged it to be of sufficiently grave and widespread importance to address to the Bishops of the Catholic Church this Letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.
2. Naturally, an exhaustive treatment of this complex issue cannot be attempted here, but we will focus our reflection within the distinctive context of the Catholic moral perspective. It is a perspective which finds support in the more secure findings of the natural sciences, which have their own legitimate and proper methodology and field of inquiry.
However, the Catholic moral viewpoint is founded on human reason illumined by faith and is consciously motivated by the desire to do the will of God our Father. The Church is thus in a position to learn from scientific discovery but also to transcend the horizons of science and to be confident that her more global vision does greater justice to the rich reality of the human person in his spiritual and physical dimensions, created by God and heir, by grace, to eternal life.
It is within this context, then, that it can be clearly seen that the phenomenon of homosexuality, complex as it is, and with its many consequences for society and ecclesial life, is a proper focus for the Church’s pastoral care. It thus requires of her ministers attentive study, active concern and honest, theologically well-balanced counsel.
3. Explicit treatment of the problem was given in this Congregation’s “Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics” of December 29, 1975. That document stressed the duty of trying to understand the homosexual condition and noted that culpability for homosexual acts should only be judged with prudence. At the same time the Congregation took note of the distinction commonly drawn between the homosexual condition or tendency and individual homosexual actions. These were described as deprived of their essential and indispensable finality, as being “intrinsically disordered”, and able in no case to be approved of (cf. n. 8, 4).
In the discussion which followed the publication of the Declaration, however, an overly benign interpretation was given to the homosexual condition itself, some going so far as to call it neutral, or even good. Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.
Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not.
4. An essential dimension of authentic pastoral care is the identification of causes of confusion regarding the Church’s teaching. One is a new exegesis of Sacred Scripture which claims variously that Scripture has nothing to say on the subject of homosexuality, or that it somehow tacitly approves of it, or that all of its moral injunctions are so culture-bound that they are no longer applicable to contemporary life. These views are gravely erroneous and call for particular attention here.
5. It is quite true that the Biblical literature owes to the different epochs in which it was written a good deal of its varied patterns of thought and expression (Dei Verbum 12). The Church today addresses the Gospel to a world which differs in many ways from ancient days. But the world in which the New Testament was written was already quite diverse from the situation in which the Sacred Scriptures of the Hebrew People had been written or compiled, for example.
What should be noticed is that, in the presence of such remarkable diversity, there is nevertheless a clear consistency within the Scriptures themselves on the moral issue of homosexual behaviour. The Church’s doctrine regarding this issue is thus based, not on isolated phrases for facile theological argument, but on the solid foundation of a constant Biblical testimony. The community of faith today, in unbroken continuity with the Jewish and Christian communities within which the ancient Scriptures were written, continues to be nourished by those same Scriptures and by the Spirit of Truth whose Word they are. It is likewise essential to recognize that the Scriptures are not properly understood when they are interpreted in a way which contradicts the Church’s living Tradition. To be correct, the interpretation of Scripture must be in substantial accord with that Tradition.
The Vatican Council II in Dei Verbum 10, put it this way: “It is clear, therefore, that in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls”. In that spirit we wish to outline briefly the Biblical teaching here.
6. Providing a basic plan for understanding this entire discussion of homosexuality is the theology of creation we find in Genesis. God, in his infinite wisdom and love, brings into existence all of reality as a reflection of his goodness. He fashions mankind, male and female, in his own image and likeness. Human beings, therefore, are nothing less than the work of God himself; and in the complementarity of the sexes, they are called to reflect the inner unity of the Creator. They do this in a striking way in their cooperation with him in the transmission of life by a mutual donation of the self to the other.
In Genesis 3, we find that this truth about persons being an image of God has been obscured by original sin. There inevitably follows a loss of awareness of the covenantal character of the union these persons had with God and with each other. The human body retains its “spousal significance” but this is now clouded by sin. Thus, in Genesis 19:1-11, the deterioration due to sin continues in the story of the men of Sodom. There can be no doubt of the moral judgement made there against homosexual relations. In Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, in the course of describing the conditions necessary for belonging to the Chosen People, the author excludes from the People of God those who behave in a homosexual fashion.
Against the background of this exposition of theocratic law, an eschatological perspective is developed by St. Paul when, in I Cor 6:9, he proposes the same doctrine and lists those who behave in a homosexual fashion among those who shall not enter the Kingdom of God.
In Romans 1:18-32, still building on the moral traditions of his forebears, but in the new context of the confrontation between Christianity and the pagan society of his day, Paul uses homosexual behaviour as an example of the blindness which has overcome humankind. Instead of the original harmony between Creator and creatures, the acute distortion of idolatry has led to all kinds of moral excess. Paul is at a loss to find a clearer example of this disharmony than homosexual relations. Finally, 1 Tim. 1, in full continuity with the Biblical position, singles out those who spread wrong doctrine and in v. 10 explicitly names as sinners those who engage in homosexual acts.
7. The Church, obedient to the Lord who founded her and gave to her the sacramental life, celebrates the divine plan of the loving and live-giving union of men and women in the sacrament of marriage. It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behaviour therefore acts immorally.
To chose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator’s sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent.
As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one’s own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood.
8. Thus, the Church’s teaching today is in organic continuity with the Scriptural perspective and with her own constant Tradition. Though today’s world is in many ways quite new, the Christian community senses the profound and lasting bonds which join us to those generations who have gone before us, “marked with the sign of faith”.
Nevertheless, increasing numbers of people today, even within the Church, are bringing enormous pressure to bear on the Church to accept the homosexual condition as though it were not disordered and to condone homosexual activity. Those within the Church who argue in this fashion often have close ties with those with similar views outside it. These latter groups are guided by a vision opposed to the truth about the human person, which is fully disclosed in the mystery of Christ. They reflect, even if not entirely consciously, a materialistic ideology which denies the transcendent nature of the human person as well as the supernatural vocation of every individual.
The Church’s ministers must ensure that homosexual persons in their care will not be misled by this point of view, so profoundly opposed to the teaching of the Church. But the risk is great and there are many who seek to create confusion regarding the Church’s position, and then to use that confusion to their own advantage.
9. The movement within the Church, which takes the form of pressure groups of various names and sizes, attempts to give the impression that it represents all homosexual persons who are Catholics. As a matter of fact, its membership is by and large restricted to those who either ignore the teaching of the Church or seek somehow to undermine it. It brings together under the aegis of Catholicism homosexual persons who have no intention of abandoning their homosexual behaviour. One tactic used is to protest that any and all criticism of or reservations about homosexual people, their activity and lifestyle, are simply diverse forms of unjust discrimination.
There is an effort in some countries to manipulate the Church by gaining the often well-intentioned support of her pastors with a view to changing civil-statutes and laws. This is done in order to conform to these pressure groups’ concept that homosexuality is at least a completely harmless, if not an entirely good, thing. Even when the practice of homosexuality may seriously threaten the lives and well-being of a large number of people, its advocates remain undeterred and refuse to consider the magnitude of the risks involved.
The Church can never be so callous. It is true that her clear position cannot be revised by pressure from civil legislation or the trend of the moment. But she is really concerned about the many who are not represented by the pro-homosexual movement and about those who may have been tempted to believe its deceitful propaganda. She is also aware that the view that homosexual activity is equivalent to, or as acceptable as, the sexual expression of conjugal love has a direct impact on society’s understanding of the nature and rights of the family and puts them in jeopardy.
10. It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.
But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
11. It has been argued that the homosexual orientation in certain cases is not the result of deliberate choice; and so the homosexual person would then have no choice but to behave in a homosexual fashion. Lacking freedom, such a person, even if engaged in homosexual activity, would not be culpable.
Here, the Church’s wise moral tradition is necessary since it warns against generalizations in judging individual cases. In fact, circumstances may exist, or may have existed in the past, which would reduce or remove the culpability of the individual in a given instance; or other circumstances may increase it. What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God’s liberating grace.
12. What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian’s suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ.
It is, in effect, none other than the teaching of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians when he says that the Spirit produces in the lives of the faithful “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control” (5:22) and further (v. 24), “You cannot belong to Christ unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires.”
It is easily misunderstood, however, if it is merely seen as a pointless effort at self-denial. The Cross is a denial of self, but in service to the will of God himself who makes life come from death and empowers those who trust in him to practise virtue in place of vice.
To celebrate the Paschal Mystery, it is necessary to let that Mystery become imprinted in the fabric of daily life. To refuse to sacrifice one’s own will in obedience to the will of the Lord is effectively to prevent salvation. Just as the Cross was central to the expression of God’s redemptive love for us in Jesus, so the conformity of the self-denial of homosexual men and women with the sacrifice of the Lord will constitute for them a source of self-giving which will save them from a way of life which constantly threatens to destroy them.
Christians who are homosexual are called, as all of us are, to a chaste life. As they dedicate their lives to understanding the nature of God’s personal call to them, they will be able to celebrate the Sacrament of Penance more faithfully and receive the Lord’s grace so freely offered there in order to convert their lives more fully to his Way.
13. We recognize, of course, that in great measure the clear and successful communication of the Church’s teaching to all the faithful, and to society at large, depends on the correct instruction and fidelity of her pastoral ministers. The Bishops have the particularly grave responsibility to see to it that their assistants in the ministry, above all the priests, are rightly informed and personally disposed to bring the teaching of the Church in its integrity to everyone.
The characteristic concern and good will exhibited by many clergy and religious in their pastoral care for homosexual persons is admirable, and, we hope, will not diminish. Such devoted ministers should have the confidence that they are faithfully following the will of the Lord by encouraging the homosexual person to lead a chaste life and by affirming that person’s God-given dignity and worth.
14. With this in mind, this Congregation wishes to ask the Bishops to be especially cautious of any programmes which may seek to pressure the Church to change her teaching, even while claiming not to do so. A careful examination of their public statements and the activities they promote reveals a studied ambiguity by which they attempt to mislead the pastors and the faithful. For example, they may present the teaching of the Magisterium, but only as if it were an optional source for the formation of one’s conscience. Its specific authority is not recognized. Some of these groups will use the word “Catholic” to describe either the organization or its intended members, yet they do not defend and promote the teaching of the Magisterium; indeed, they even openly attack it. While their members may claim a desire to conform their lives to the teaching of Jesus, in fact they abandon the teaching of his Church. This contradictory action should not have the support of the Bishops in any way.
15. We encourage the Bishops, then, to provide pastoral care in full accord with the teaching of the Church for homosexual persons of their dioceses. No authentic pastoral programme will include organizations in which homosexual persons associate with each other without clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral. A truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin.
We would heartily encourage programmes where these dangers are avoided. But we wish to make it clear that departure from the Church’s teaching, or silence about it, in an effort to provide pastoral care is neither caring nor pastoral. Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral. The neglect of the Church’s position prevents homosexual men and women from receiving the care they need and deserve.
An authentic pastoral programme will assist homosexual persons at all levels of the spiritual life: through the sacraments, and in particular through the frequent and sincere use of the sacrament of Reconciliation, through prayer, witness, counsel and individual care. In such a way, the entire Christian community can come to recognize its own call to assist its brothers and sisters, without deluding them or isolating them.
16. From this multi-faceted approach there are numerous advantages to be gained, not the least of which is the realization that a homosexual person, as every human being, deeply needs to be nourished at many different levels simultaneously.
The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation. Every one living on the face of the earth has personal problems and difficulties, but challenges to growth, strengths, talents and gifts as well. Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a “heterosexual” or a “homosexual” and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.
17. In bringing this entire matter to the Bishops’ attention, this Congregation wishes to support their efforts to assure that the teaching of the Lord and his Church on this important question be communicated fully to all the faithful.
In light of the points made above, they should decide for their own dioceses the extent to which an intervention on their part is indicated. In addition, should they consider it helpful, further coordinated action at the level of their National Bishops’ Conference may be envisioned.
In a particular way, we would ask the Bishops to support, with the means at their disposal, the development of appropriate forms of pastoral care for homosexual persons. These would include the assistance of the psychological, sociological and medical sciences, in full accord with the teaching of the Church.
They are encouraged to call on the assistance of all Catholic theologians who, by teaching what the Church teaches, and by deepening their reflections on the true meaning of human sexuality and Christian marriage with the virtues it engenders, will make an important contribution in this particular area of pastoral care.
The Bishops are asked to exercise special care in the selection of pastoral ministers so that by their own high degree of spiritual and personal maturity and by their fidelity to the Magisterium, they may be of real service to homosexual persons, promoting their health and well-being in the fullest sense. Such ministers will reject theological opinions which dissent from the teaching of the Church and which, therefore, cannot be used as guidelines for pastoral care.
We encourage the Bishops to promote appropriate catechetical programmes based on the truth about human sexuality in its relationship to the family as taught by the Church. Such programmes should provide a good context within which to deal with the question of homosexuality.
This catechesis would also assist those families of homosexual persons to deal with this problem which affects them so deeply.
All support should be withdrawn from any organizations which seek to undermine the teaching of the Church, which are ambiguous about it, or which neglect it entirely. Such support, or even the semblance of such support, can be gravely misinterpreted. Special attention should be given to the practice of scheduling religious services and to the use of Church buildings by these groups, including the facilities of Catholic schools and colleges. To some, such permission to use Church property may seem only just and charitable; but in reality it is contradictory to the purpose for which these institutions were founded, it is misleading and often scandalous.
In assessing proposed legislation, the Bishops should keep as their uppermost concern the responsibility to defend and promote family life.
18. The Lord Jesus promised, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” (Jn. 8:32). Scripture bids us speak the truth in love (cf. Eph. 4:15). The God who is at once truth and love calls the Church to minister to every man, woman and child with the pastoral solicitude of our compassionate Lord. It is in this spirit that we have addressed this Letter to the Bishops of the Church, with the hope that it will be of some help as they care for those whose suffering can only be intensified by error and lightened by truth.
(During an audience granted to the undersigned Prefect, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, approved this Letter, adopted in an ordinary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and ordered it to be published.)
Given at Rome, 1 October 1986.
JOSEPH CARDINAL RATZINGER
Prefect
ALBERTO BOVONE
Titular Archbishop of Caesarea in Numidia
Secretary
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CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITIONTO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS
INTRODUCTION
1. In recent years, various questions relating to homosexuality have been addressed with some frequency by Pope John Paul II and by the relevant Dicasteries of the Holy See.(1) Homosexuality is a troubling moral and social phenomenon, even in those countries where it does not present significant legal issues. It gives rise to greater concern in those countries that have granted or intend to grant – legal recognition to homosexual unions, which may include the possibility of adopting children. The present Considerations do not contain new doctrinal elements; they seek rather to reiterate the essential points on this question and provide arguments drawn from reason which could be used by Bishops in preparing more specific interventions, appropriate to the different situations throughout the world, aimed at protecting and promoting the dignity of marriage, the foundation of the family, and the stability of society, of which this institution is a constitutive element. The present Considerations are also intended to give direction to Catholic politicians by indicating the approaches to proposed legislation in this area which would be consistent with Christian conscience.(2) Since this question relates to the natural moral law, the arguments that follow are addressed not only to those who believe in Christ, but to all persons committed to promoting and defending the common good of society.
I. THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE AND ITS INALIENABLE CHARACTERISTICS
2. The Church’s teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose.(3) No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.
3. The natural truth about marriage was confirmed by the Revelation contained in the biblical accounts of creation, an expression also of the original human wisdom, in which the voice of nature itself is heard. There are three fundamental elements of the Creator’s plan for marriage, as narrated in the Book of Genesis.
In the first place, man, the image of God, was created “male and female” (Gen 1:27). Men and women are equal as persons and complementary as male and female. Sexuality is something that pertains to the physical-biological realm and has also been raised to a new level – the personal level – where nature and spirit are united.
Marriage is instituted by the Creator as a form of life in which a communion of persons is realized involving the use of the sexual faculty. “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).
Third, God has willed to give the union of man and woman a special participation in his work of creation. Thus, he blessed the man and the woman with the words “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). Therefore, in the Creator’s plan, sexual complementarity and fruitfulness belong to the very nature of marriage.
Furthermore, the marital union of man and woman has been elevated by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament. The Church teaches that Christian marriage is an efficacious sign of the covenant between Christ and the Church (cf. Eph 5:32). This Christian meaning of marriage, far from diminishing the profoundly human value of the marital union between man and woman, confirms and strengthens it (cf. Mt 19:3-12; Mk 10:6-9).
4. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved”.(4)
Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts “as a serious depravity… (cf. Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10). This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”.(5) This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries(6) and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition.
Nonetheless, according to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided”.(7) They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity.(8) The homosexual inclination is however “objectively disordered”(9) and homosexual practices are “sins gravely contrary to chastity”.(10)
II. POSITIONS ON THE PROBLEM OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
5. Faced with the fact of homosexual unions, civil authorities adopt different positions. At times they simply tolerate the phenomenon; at other times they advocate legal recognition of such unions, under the pretext of avoiding, with regard to certain rights, discrimination against persons who live with someone of the same sex. In other cases, they favour giving homosexual unions legal equivalence to marriage properly so-called, along with the legal possibility of adopting children.
Where the government’s policy is de facto tolerance and there is no explicit legal recognition of homosexual unions, it is necessary to distinguish carefully the various aspects of the problem. Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons. Therefore, discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.
In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.
III. ARGUMENTS FROM REASON AGAINST LEGAL RECOGNITION OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
6. To understand why it is necessary to oppose legal recognition of homosexual unions, ethical considerations of different orders need to be taken into consideration.
From the order of right reason
The scope of the civil law is certainly more limited than that of the moral law,(11) but civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its binding force on conscience.(12) Every humanly-created law is legitimate insofar as it is consistent with the natural moral law, recognized by right reason, and insofar as it respects the inalienable rights of every person.(13) Laws in favour of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason because they confer legal guarantees, analogous to those granted to marriage, to unions between persons of the same sex. Given the values at stake in this question, the State could not grant legal standing to such unions without failing in its duty to promote and defend marriage as an institution essential to the common good.
It might be asked how a law can be contrary to the common good if it does not impose any particular kind of behaviour, but simply gives legal recognition to a de facto reality which does not seem to cause injustice to anyone. In this area, one needs first to reflect on the difference between homosexual behaviour as a private phenomenon and the same behaviour as a relationship in society, foreseen and approved by the law, to the point where it becomes one of the institutions in the legal structure. This second phenomenon is not only more serious, but also assumes a more wide-reaching and profound influence, and would result in changes to the entire organization of society, contrary to the common good. Civil laws are structuring principles of man’s life in society, for good or for ill. They “play a very important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behaviour”.(14) Lifestyles and the underlying presuppositions these express not only externally shape the life of society, but also tend to modify the younger generation’s perception and evaluation of forms of behaviour. Legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.
From the biological and anthropological order
7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involv- ing a grave lack of respect for human dignity,(15) does nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.
From the social order
8. Society owes its continued survival to the family, founded on marriage. The inevitable consequence of legal recognition of homosexual unions would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in its legal status, an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to heterosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children. If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good. By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties.
The principles of respect and non-discrimination cannot be invoked to support legal recognition of homosexual unions. Differentiating between persons or refusing social recognition or benefits is unacceptable only when it is contrary to justice.(16) The denial of the social and legal status of marriage to forms of cohabitation that are not and cannot be marital is not opposed to justice; on the contrary, justice requires it.
Nor can the principle of the proper autonomy of the individual be reasonably invoked. It is one thing to maintain that individual citizens may freely engage in those activities that interest them and that this falls within the common civil right to freedom; it is something quite different to hold that activities which do not represent a significant or positive contribution to the development of the human person in society can receive specific and categorical legal recognition by the State. Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase.
From the legal order
9. Because married couples ensure the succession of generations and are therefore eminently within the public interest, civil law grants them institutional recognition. Homosexual unions, on the other hand, do not need specific attention from the legal standpoint since they do not exercise this function for the common good.
Nor is the argument valid according to which legal recognition of homosexual unions is necessary to avoid situations in which cohabiting homosexual persons, simply because they live together, might be deprived of real recognition of their rights as persons and citizens. In reality, they can always make use of the provisions of law – like all citizens from the standpoint of their private autonomy – to protect their rights in matters of common interest. It would be gravely unjust to sacrifice the common good and just laws on the family in order to protect personal goods that can and must be guaranteed in ways that do not harm the body of society.(17)
IV. POSITIONS OF CATHOLIC POLITICIANS WITH REGARD TO LEGISLATION IN FAVOUR OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
10. If it is true that all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians. Faced with legislative proposals in favour of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are to take account of the following ethical indications.
When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.
When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is already in force, the Catholic politician must oppose it in the ways that are possible for him and make his opposition known; it is his duty to witness to the truth. If it is not possible to repeal such a law completely, the Catholic politician, recalling the indications contained in the Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, “could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality”, on condition that his “absolute personal opposition” to such laws was clear and well known and that the danger of scandal was avoided.(18) This does not mean that a more restrictive law in this area could be considered just or even acceptable; rather, it is a question of the legitimate and dutiful attempt to obtain at least the partial repeal of an unjust law when its total abrogation is not possible at the moment.
CONCLUSION
11. The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.
The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, in the Audience of March 28, 2003, approved the present Considerations, adopted in the Ordinary Session of this Congregation, and ordered their publication.
Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 3, 2003, Memorial of Saint Charles Lwanga and his Companions, Martyrs.
Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect
Angelo Amato, S.D.B.
Titular Archbishop of Sila
Secretary
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NOTES
(1) Cf. John Paul II, Angelus Messages of February 20, 1994, and of June 19, 1994; Address to the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Council for the Family (March 24, 1999); Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 2357-2359, 2396; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Persona humana (December 29, 1975), 8; Letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons (October 1, 1986); Some considerations concerning the response to legislative proposals on the non-discrimination of homosexual persons (July 24, 1992); Pontifical Council for the Family, Letter to the Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe on the resolution of the European Parliament regarding homosexual couples (March 25, 1994); Family, marriage and “de facto” unions (July 26, 2000), 23.
(2) Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the participation of Catholics in political life (November 24, 2002), 4.
(3) Cf. Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, 48.
(4) Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2357.
(5) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Persona humana (December 29, 1975), 8.
(6) Cf., for example, St. Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians, V, 3; St. Justin Martyr, First Apology, 27, 1-4; Athenagoras, Supplication for the Christians, 34.
(7) Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2358; cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons (October 1, 1986), 10.
(8) Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2359; cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons (October 1, 1986), 12.
(9) Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2358.
(10) Ibid., No. 2396.
(11) Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae (March 25, 1995), 71.
(12) Cf. ibid., 72.
(13) Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 95, a. 2.
(14) John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae (March 25, 1995), 90.
(15) Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum vitae (February 22, 1987), II. A. 1-3.
(16) Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 63, a.1, c.
(17) It should not be forgotten that there is always “a danger that legislation which would make homosexuality a basis for entitlements could actually encourage a person with a homosexual orientation to declare his homosexuality or even to seek a partner in order to exploit the provisions of the law” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Some considerations concerning the response to legislative proposals on the non-discrimination of homosexual persons [July 24, 1992], 14).
(18) John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae (March 25, 1995), 73.
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| GAYS AND SEXUALITY EDUCATION |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 07:07 PM - Forum: Gay orientation
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In recent days I have had the opportunity to carefully examine a very interesting document of the Regional Office for Europe of the World Health Organization (Federal Centre for Health Education), entitled STANDARDS FOR SEXUALITY EDUCATION IN EUROPE.
The document was published in 2010 and, after presenting an overview of sex education in Europe, defines the standards that should be followed for sexuality education as they went through the maturing of sex education activities already in operation in Europe and throughout the scientific contributions of the many disciplines involved.
Reading this document has led me to reflect on the enormous need for sexuality education and the response of public institutions, essentially nothing, at least in Italy. Sexuality education is effectively delegated to the peer group, religious institutions, and even now on a large scale, to pornography.
A serious sexuality education, built on the basis of information coming from specialists in various disciplines, independent from religious teachings and respecting sexual rights of people is one of the pillars for the improvement not only in the situation of homosexuals but for the increase in personal and collective well-being of all. I emphasize that sexuality education should be compulsory and independent from religious teachings, in the sense that parents should not be allowed for any reason to ask for exemption of children from participation in educational activities, because this would be a violation of the rights of children in the name of parents’ convictions.
Many young guys, gay guys and not only ,have got to experience the absolute lack of preparation of teachers in imparting a serious sex education and even the presence of prejudices and discriminatory attitudes. Contents of sexuality education are often conveyed through other disciplines on the basis of personal feelings of teachers and with no scientific basis, many have found that religion classes often result in areas of indirect sexuality education. A serious sexuality education could have a strong social impact, not only in reducing sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and teenage bullying, but in improving the sexual and emotional relatedness of people in enabling them to make their own choices on the basis of objective scientific information, promoting an attitude of serenity toward sexual pleasure, to increase self-esteem and sense of responsibility. The fact that sexuality becomes, for groups of teenagers and sometimes also adults, an object of ridicule and jokes is a sign of immaturity in dealing with these issues.
The document to which I have referred, precisely because it is open to all, prepares a draft of a general nature.
This post is a concrete proposal. I invite you to read the document and report your past and present need for sex education. You can add a comment to this post or send a mail to [email protected]
In particular, I invite you to report on:
1) the sexuality education you received and from what sources.
2) the sexuality education ay school.
3) what did you miss most in terms of sexual education.
Of course you can write what you think better even beyond these indications. I will try to summarize what gradually emerges from the discussion to define guidelines for sexuality education useful to non-heterosexual and to avoid discrimination.
The intention is to define standards for sexuality education related to non-straight people.
As a first contribution, I reproduce below the cap. 2 of the mentioned document, from which I extract three definitions that can be the basis for the next job.
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2. SEXUALITY. SEXUAL HEALTH AND SEXUALITY EDUCATION – DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS
The concepts of sex, sexuality, sexual health and rights, and directly related concepts are to some extent interpreted differently in different countries or cultures. If translated into other languages, they may again be understood differently. Some clarification of the way these concepts are used here is therefore needed.
In January 2002, the World Health Organization convened a technical consultation meeting as part of a more comprehensive initiative, which aimed at defining some of those concepts, because there were no internationally agreed definitions. This resulted in working definitions of the concepts of sex, sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights.
Although these definitions have not yet become official WHO definitions, they are available at the WHO website, and they are increasingly being used. In this document, they are likewise used as working definitions.
“Sex” refers to biological characteristics that define humans generally as female or male, although in ordinary language the word is often interpreted as referring to sexual activity.
“Sexuality” – as a broad concept, “sexuality” is defined in accordance with the WHO working definitions as follows:
“Human sexuality is a natural part of human development through every phase of life and includes physical, psychological and social components […]”.
A more comprehensive definition suggested by WHO reads as follows.
“Sexuality is a central aspect of being human throughout life and encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction. Sexuality is experienced and expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviours, practices, roles and relationships. While sexuality can include all of these dimensions, not all of them are always experienced or expressed. Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political, ethical, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors.”
For a number of reasons, this definition is very useful. It stresses that sexuality is central to being human; it is not limited to certain age groups; it is closely related to gender; it includes various sexual orientations, and it is much wider than reproduction. It also makes clear that “sexuality” encompasses more than just behavioural elements and that it may vary strongly, depending on a wide variety of influences. The definition indirectly indicates that sexuality education should also be interpreted as covering a much wider and much more diverse area than “education on sexual behaviour”, for which it is unfortunately sometimes mistaken.
“Sexual health” was initially defined by WHO in a 1972 technical meeting, and reads as follows:
“Sexual health is the integration of the somatic, emotional, intellectual and social aspects of sexual being in ways that are positively enriching and that enhance personality, communication and love”.
Although this definition is rather outdated, it is still often used.
During the WHO technical consultation in 2002, a new draft definition of sexual health was agreed upon. This new 2002 draft definition reads:
“Sexual health is a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity. Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected and fulfilled.”
This draft definition emphasizes not only the need for a positive approach, the essential aspect of pleasure, and the notion that sexual health encompasses not just physical, but also emotional, mental and social aspects. It also alerts the user to potentially negative elements, and for the first time it mentions the existence of “sexual rights” – two issues which were almost absent in the 1972 definition. Also, those potentially negative elements are not focused upon as is often the case in HIV and AIDS literature on the subject. In short, it is a balanced definition.
Sexual health is one of five core aspects of the WHO global Reproductive health strategy approved by the World Health Assembly in 2004. It should be stressed that WHO has, since the early 1950s, defined and approached “health” in a very broad and positive manner, referring to it as a “human potential” and not merely the absence of disease, and including not only physical, but also emotional, mental, social and other aspects. For these latter reasons, it is felt that the WHO definitions are acceptable and useful starting points for discussing sexuality education. Thus in this document the term “sexual health” is used, but this includes the meaning and notion of ”sexual well-being”. Sexual health is not only influenced by personal factors, but also by social and cultural ones.
Sexual rights – embracing especially the right to information and education. As mentioned before, the 2002 WHO meeting also came up with a draft definition of sexual rights, which reads as follows.
“Sexual rights embrace human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus statements. They include the right of all persons, free of coercion, discrimination and violence, to:
the highest attainable standard of sexual health, including access to sexual and reproductive health care services;
seek, receive and impart information related to sexuality;
sexuality education;
respect for bodily integrity;
choose their partner;
decide to be sexually active or not;
consensual sexual relations;
consensual marriage;
decide whether or not, and when, to have children; and
pursue a satisfying, safe and pleasurable sexual life.
The responsible exercise of human rights requires that all persons respect the rights of others.”
Although this is only a draft definition, it is used as a starting point in this document, because it is felt that the elements included here have a broad support base throughout Europe. Furthermore, it is important to note that in this definition the right to information and education is explicitly included.
A note of caution is needed here, however. Clearly, some of the rights mentioned have been conceived with adult persons as the point of reference. This means that not all of those rights are automatically applicable to children and adolescents. For example, it is clear that issues like consensual marriage or right to decide on childbearing do not yet apply to children or young adolescents.
The right of the child to information has also been acknowledged by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was conceived in 1989 and has since been ratified by the vast majority of States. It clearly states the right to freedom of expression and the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds (Article 13); Article 19 refers to States’ obligation to provide children with educational measures to protect them, inter alia, from sexual abuse.
__________
In summary, we can adopt the following definitions that conform to the recommendations of the World Health Organization:
DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS
“Sex” refers to biological characteristics that define humans generally as female or male, although in ordinary language the word is often interpreted as referring to sexual activity.
“Human sexuality is a natural part of human development through every phase of life and includes physical, psychological and social components […]”.
“Sexuality is a central aspect of being human throughout life and encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction. Sexuality is experienced and expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviours, practices, roles and relationships. While sexuality can include all of these dimensions, not all of them are always experienced or expressed. Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political, ethical, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors.”
“Sexual health is the integration of the somatic, emotional, intellectual and social aspects of sexual being in ways that are positively enriching and that enhance personality, communication and love”.
“Sexual health is a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity. Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected and fulfilled.”
“Sexual rights embrace human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus statements. They include the right of all persons, free of coercion, discrimination and violence, to:
the highest attainable standard of sexual health, including access to sexual and reproductive health care services;
seek, receive and impart information related to sexuality;
sexuality education;
respect for bodily integrity;
choose their partner;
decide to be sexually active or not;
consensual sexual relations;
consensual marriage;
decide whether or not, and when, to have children; and
pursue a satisfying, safe and pleasurable sexual life.
The responsible exercise of human rights requires that all persons respect the rights of others.”
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| PRINCIPLES OF (GAY) SECULAR SEXUAL MORALITY |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 06:59 PM - Forum: Gays and secularity
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I chose to give this post the title “principles of (gay) secular sexual morality” putting the word gay in brackets because, although to form my opinion on the subject I have referred to my environment, that is gay people, the result of my reflection is independent of sexual orientation.
The reflections are very general, I start by acknowledging a discomfort and therefore a conflict and tend to resolve it with a proposal.
Discomfort, as such, and in this case the moral distress identified as guilt, it is believed originated from an conflict inside the conscience between what you should be and what you are. According to the most common schematization, the transgression of a moral precept leads to guilt, but it is actually difficult to define both what you should be and what you are.
The real action can be more or less free, but also the moral norm with which the concrete action is compared often derives from more or less forced internalization of external regulatory assumptions on which very often it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to have any rational control. If the concepts of good and evil are defined for passive assimilation of external codes the meter itself of moral judgment falters.
In front of the definition of the criteria of moral there are two substantially different attitudes, dogmatic one for which the distinction between moral and immoral is objective and morality looks like a system formal and legalistic, and the other that focuses on the size of individual freedom and of the subjective judgment. The first trend “teaches moral norms”, the second “opens the door to the individual conscience” and of course, at least within broad areas, to the subjectivity of conscience. The moral of individual freedom is not the moral of individualism, selfishness, etc.. etc.., but the moral of the individual pursuit of the good. In this individual research, indeed, the fundamental principle is the realization of the good of the other, an altruistic principle.
Beyond the individual rules of behavior, which are left to individual freedom, what is altruistic has to be considered moral and what is egoistic has to be considered immoral. It is clear that certainly continue to exist behaviors that should be considered “objectively” immoral and must be attentively prevented and are those who are in the criminal law that punishes acts objectively detrimental to the others rights.
While the champions of the objectivity of the moral norm spread a teaching of well defined moral principles, that despite the stated objectivity are strongly characterized historically and culturally (there is no objective morality shared by all), the champions of moral freedom of individual tend to spread a pedagogy of freedom that merely indicates the pourpose (altruism) and leaves to the individual conscience the search for ways to realize it.
In a prescriptive morality, beyond the predictable statements that try to bring up the opposite, it makes no sense to distinguish between the one who commits an error and the error itself because what matters from the moral point of view is not the person but what that person does, the individual conscience is really considered a poor thing, on the contrary in a morality of freedom, except in cases of major criminal behavior, moral judgment is subjective and internal to conscience, I mean that evaluating the good and the bad outside the conscience of the individual completely loses meaning.
The society in which we live is the result of centuries of moral precepts and for this reason the prescriptive moral is generally perceived as the only possible moral. The transmission of value systems and moral codes thus tends to perpetuate the prescriptive moral from one generation to another creating the illusion that that moral is absolute and eternal.
When the moral code absorbed from the outside is not properly fitting to the life of the individual, a conflict raises up, this conflict could be resolved adjusting the individual behavior on internalized moral norm but since this method tends to reduce the freedom of the individual, it is better to look for a different way and weaken the moral norm, its interpretation becomes flexible, and this way creates less discomfort, but in reality flexible interpretations leave survive the whole edifice of formal moral, which is the very reason for the discomfort, because the norm is imposed by forcing freedom of individual morality. In essence, the need for moral freedom almost always returns to the surface (when it has been suppressed not too violently) and internalized normative codes, without being challenged, are actually removed or weakened.
I wonder if no longer it makes sense to respect the individual moral freedom from the beginning. Doesn’t it make more sense to educate people about freedom of choice? There are some countries in which the pedagogy of freedom has existed for many years and not only did not facilitate the abuse but educated to a sense of responsibility
Let’s try to bring the theoretical discourse in practice.
A guy growing up realizes that he is gay, if he has been educated according to a prescriptive moral, he can perhaps feel in trouble, in conflict with the family, the religion and the society, and can also live very deep hardship. If he doesn’t end up giving up entirely to himself, sooner or later the individual freedom will emerge, will eventually the norm too much rigid will weaken, the guy will follow in appearance the standard behaviour in front of the family, the religious community and other public places, but sooner or later, that guy will find ways to get back his freedom.
On the contrary If that guy had been educated from the beginning to the moral freedom there would be nothing with which to come into conflict and he would wonder how to live responsibly his homosexuality, that guy must be aware of some objective limits that cannot be eliminated and that while leaving freedom on how to implement the welfare of others, however, requires not to damage them in any way. In this case the first moral duty is the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. It is clear that the first postulate of morality is “objectively do not harm others.”
How may that guy trying to do right, realize what is the good of the other? The answer is quite simple, he has to try to see situations from the point of view of the other, it is certainly not easy to try to evaluate the effect of our actions as they appear in the eyes of the other. Good and evil are not measured on the intentions of the agent but from the point of view of the persons to whom actions are addressed. In this sense, no behavior in the context of moral freedom is good or bad in itself because the assessment can be given only by to those who act trying to understand the effects of what they do (principle of responsibility).
Let’s go to a concrete example: sex yes or no? The answer is obtained immediately starting from the point of view of the other. No sex if sexual contact is not wanted by the other, or if it may cause him, later, remorse or situations of discomfort; sex, yes, if your personal desire meets the one of the other in a free and spontaneous. And if things are not very clear? Here, too, the answer is simple, the solutions to the questions must be seek in two, the other is not only the recipient of our assessments, but chooses with us and sharing doubts and uncertainties helps prevent misjudgements. On the other hand among people accustomed to moral freedom, the judgment about a man depends on his honesty, on his lack of ulterior motives, on the consistency of the manner of his speaking with his way of being and on his willingness to get involved on equal terms with other persons.
From this discussion we arrive at a necessary conclusion: the basis of sexuality education and, I might add, of all forms of education should be the education for freedom. Our freedom and that of others form the foundation of morality and our happiness and that of others constitute its purpose.
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| GAYS FROM PREJUDICE TO HUMAN RIGHTS |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 06:56 PM - Forum: Gays and religion
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In June 2012, a Polish priest Dariusz Oko, a professor at the Pontifical University of John Paul II Krakow, published on the Polish magazine, Frond, and soon on the German theological journal Theologisches an article entitled: “With the Pope against homo-heresy” where he claimed that homosexuality within the Church gave birth to a mafia that generates a real homo-heresy.
In September 2012, Msgr. Tony Anatrella, consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for Health, has published (in Italian by Edizioni San Paolo), his latest book, “The theory of gender and the origin of homosexuality”. Recently has been released the book “Homosexuality and the Church’s Magisterium” (Sugarco Editions, 2013), with a foreword by Msgr. Anatrella.
I tried to go a bit deeper. According to Msgr. Anatrella, the UN, the European Union and the World Health Organization are slaves to the gay lobbies and only the Catholic Church can save us from the hidden power of these lobbies, Anatrella adds “You have to read the Bible and then Saint Paul who describes the dire consequences of a society that promotes homosexuality”.
I wonder, just because I’m gay and I live in the midst of gay people, what does Msgr. Anatrella know about homosexuality if, to understand what it is, he prefers to go to St. Paul. I also wonder why the Catholic “lobby” tries to substantiate its thesis by paradoxical statements, repudiated by all the major international scientific circles.
On the other hand, on 24 July 1992 the document “Some considerations concerning the response to legislative proposals on non-discrimination of homosexual persons” states that ” Including “homosexual orientation” among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights… This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homo- sexuality which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality.”
Another important document “Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons”, 3 June 2003, states that:” Where the government’s policy is de facto tolerance and there is no explicit legal recognition of homosexual unions … discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil. In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.”
It is well known the speech of the Archbishop Tommasi at the General Debate of the United Nations human rights area in March 2011 (here you can read the speech in English http://cittademocratica.blogspot.it/2011/04/il-vaticano-e-lomofobia.html) which argues that there would be no need for an explicit assertion of a right to homosexuality because sexual orientation, according to the letter of the Vienna Convention, seems to be defined in terms of thought and not of behavior. The sphere of freedom of thought is already protected and therefore there would be no need to reaffirm specific gay rights, but Tommasi adds that homosexual behavior should instead be governed by the law because the law already deals with some behavior such as pedophilia. This reasoning is the very negation of the logic of human rights and insinuates intolerable combinations between homosexuality and pedophilia.
Ecclesiastical interventions aimed at devaluing the major international organizations, replicate in various ways, from the dramatic to the most subtle, the idea that there should not be any international recognition of gay rights. But against such positions comes clearly the United Nations Secretary-General:
“To those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, let me say: You are not alone. Your struggle for an end to violence and discrimination is a shared struggle. Any attack on you is an attack on the universal values the United Nations and I have sworn to defend and uphold. Today, I stand with you and I call upon all countries and people to stand with you, too” Ban Ki-moon, March 2012.
In March 2012 The United Nations has issued a key document for the rights of homosexuals, entitled “BORN FREE AND EQUAL – Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in International Human Rights Law”
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/BornFreeAndEqualLowRes.pdf
The document is a hymn to freedom. Following are the five points that the UN identifies as targets of government action in the field of LGBT human rights.
1. Protect people from homophobic and transphobic violence. Include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected characteristics in hate crime laws. Establish effective systems to record and report hate-motivated acts of violence. Ensure effective investigation and prosecution of perpetrators and redress for victims of such violence. Asylum laws and policies should recognize that persecution on account of one’s sexual orientation or gender identity may be a valid basis for an asylum claim.
2. Prevent the torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of LGBT persons in detention by prohibiting and punishing such acts and ensuring that victims are provided with redress. Investigate all acts of mistreatment by State agents and bring those responsible to justice. Provide appropriate training to law enforcement officers and ensure effective monitoring of places of detention.
3. Repeal laws criminalizing homosexuality, including all laws that prohibit private sexual conduct between consenting adults of the same sex. Ensure that individuals are not arrested or detained on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and are not subjected to baseless and degrading physical examinations intended to determine their sexual orientation.
4. Prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Enact comprehensive laws that include sexual orientation and gender identity as prohibited grounds of discrimination. In particular, ensure non-discriminatory access to basic services, including in the context of employment and health care. Provide education and training to prevent discrimination and stigmatization of LGBT and intersex people.
5. Safeguard freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly for LGBT and intersex people. Any limitations on these rights must be compatible with international law and must not be discriminatory. Protect individuals who exercise their rights to freedom of expression, association and freedom of assembly from acts of violence and intimidation by private parties.
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| THE REAL LIFE OF A GAY GUY |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 06:53 PM - Forum: Gay guys
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Hello Project,
about a month ago, while surfing the internet, I found gay project which surprised me because it is something unique. At first I was impressed by the simplicity of the sites and by the absence of erotic advertising, then I started reading and I was amazed by the fact that I was reading a lot of things very similar to those that have happened to me and this, for me , was very important. That’s why I decided to write overcoming so many doubts and resistances. My life does not have anything very important, I’m an engineering student, I come from a normal family after all. My father and my mother more or less get along, my sister got married last year and no longer lives with me. My parents do not know anything about me, and I’ll absolutely avoid to tell them how things really are because for them I think it would just be a trauma, I do not think they would be able to understand, they are good parents, not too invasive, according to the their way of seeing, nor too selfish to care only about their own business. I will not speak with them in order to avoid them to stress uselessly, the idea that children should adapt to be the image and likeness of their parents is too deeply impressed in their own head. I cannot say whether or not they are believers, and to what extent, they go to church on Sunday and I’m going with them as if it were a natural thing because they expect it, my mother goes to confession every so often and receives communion, daddy never, but at least they have the common sense not to put pressure on me about such things. Luckily for me I’m still young and they think that I should hurry to graduate and so the fact that I do not have a girlfriend takes second place, because it would be a distraction from the fundamental purpose. My father and my mother have attitudes toward gay people that make me very angry but I have to tolerate discomfort for a quiet life: they know nothing about such things but they believe they know and understand everything, they are sympathetic to gay people just as priests are, they are inclined to forgive the vice for the weakness of the flesh because “also gays are people” (what a great concession!) but they would never admit that two guys can love each other because “it’s so nice to follow nature” and “between two men or between two women love does not make sense.” I let them talk because they need to be convinced that they are right. By saying so I mean that practically the relationship with my parents doesn’t exist at all but they don’t even realize it, for them it’s much more important to be right. Breaking away from the mentality of my parents and beginning to think with my head it was not so easy. At age 18 I went to confession for the last time, I told the priest that I was gay and I was in love with a guy, the priest didn’t even conceive the idea that it could be a true and deep feeling, and started to repeat certain things that offended me deeply, and I thought that what he said was patently false and immoral so much that I got up and I went away. I do not accept the idea that a feeling that I consider the most important thing in my life can be outraged by those who don’t even understand what they say and think they are speaking in the name of God. I have not had second thoughts, sometimes in church, I hear homilies that I cannot stand absolutely but I act as if I was just thinking of something else, exams, university, etc.. In high school I still had many doubts, not doubts about what I was, but doubts about how I had to behave. I remember a specific fact, the penultimate year of high school the Italian teacher assigned us as a task to compose a short essay on violence. I thought of speaking about violence against women, racism and the usual things and also about homophobia, but then gave up the idea completely, when the teacher gave us back our works classified in the commenting on one of them said to a student: “You have considered many aspects of the problem: religious intolerance, violence in stadiums, homophobia, violence against women …”, at the word homophobia I felt myself freeze and the eyes of all the guys have focused on the student with whom the teacher was talking and there have been mischievous smiles. That guy is definitely not gay but the word homophobia caused a particular reaction among my classmates, for them it is only an allusion to homosexuality, something more or less ridiculous that they only know from jokes and has been interpreted just as a joke. Obviously I had been right not to talk about homophobia. I don’t think that my classmates were homophobic, for them the problem did not even exist, for them gays were a kind of tribe on the edge of reality, for them a gay guy had to have many characteristics that are recognizable, they didn’t even realize that someone could be hurt by the fact that they were laughing at the word homophobia, in the end they were not homophobic, they were just superficial (stupid) and had no need to understand, because it was something that they weren’t absolutely interest in. Instinctively I have always kept away from groups, from too close friendships and from the gossip and this helped me to finish my high school, maintaining the my reputation of fake straight. In high school I supposed that one of my classmate was gay, but my assumptions were totally wrong. In college I found myself immersed in a completely different world. I had gone to the classical high school, with a strong majority of women (more than 2/3 of my classmates were girls), in the Faculty of Engineering there was instead a strong male predominance, and in particular in my courses. For a gay guy who came from the experience of classical high school, being in an engineering classroom was just like being a child entering the pastry: a huge temptation, an environment that created a community almost entirely male. Some guys were very handsome. If ever I had some little doubt about the fact of being gay this doubt vanished soon after I begun to attend engineering classes We went to classes together at the canteen together, to the study rooms in the library together, we spent together intervals between classes, and inevitably there we would agree to spend free time together as well. I should add that the environment was not gossipy and the guys were not talking only about tits and asses, on the contrary, when it occurred, rather rarely, some speech that touched even homosexuality there weren’t giggles, jokes and things like that but serious talk very far from the stereotypes, nevertheless, despite the high number of guys who attended the faculty there was not even one openly gay, a sign that those who were there did not trust to come out of the closet, exactly what I did. After the first few days began to form stable study groups. The basic element of aggregation was the level of knowledge and skills of individuals. Those that were obviously ahead of the others tended to congregate together and so the selection was made, so to speak, on academic merit. After a few days, and after the results of the first tests of profit, the number of students has decreased quite dramatically, in practice about 40% changed their courses of study and two groups were formed, one of the geniuses always in the front pew during lessons, always with maximum scores, but we are talking about a dozen boys in all, highly motivated but in practice these were young people who lived exclusively for the study, and a second group, let’s say mid-level, with more or less twenty students, and then the group of those who took it for granted that they would not have finished their studies without losing at least one year. I was at the boundary between the first and the second group, I was coming from the secondary school of classical address and at the beginning it was very hard for me but then I went ahead well. Prior to joining the faculty I thought it would have been so much easier, then I realized that to stay afloat at a good level I had to struggle a lot. Those in the first group did not send a shot wide, sometimes I tried to enter their group but I didn’t held the pace and, objectively, they were at levels far more advanced than mine. There was another thing, those guys lived for the study, admitted that they had a girl, they probably saw her for up to an hour on a Sunday afternoon and, because I felt like the a child entering the pastry, I did not want to end up like them, I don’t say that I wanted to make a feast of sweets, but at least I wanted to taste one. In practice I was there certainly to study, but certainly not just for that. I decided that I would be among those to intermediate level, because with them the afternoons were not exclusively to study, there was even talking. I have read on the forum something about gay radar, well, in fact, when one is, or better when a gay guy is in an environment like that one where I was, the first thing is to go by eye, that is, look for the guys who are more attractive, but if this were the only guideline it would be easy to miss the target. And there began, about four or five guys, the exhausting game: is he gay or not? And since the first purpose was just studying and no one used to speak about different things, it was extremely difficult to give an answer about the gayness of my colleagues. At this point there has been an unexpected phenomenon. A guy who didn’t belong to the group of geniuses nor to that of handsome guys and not even to that of supposedly gay guys asks me for my notebook of class notes. I would not have given my block of notes to anyone for all the gold in the world because my notebook was my lifeline and I used to handle it with maniacal care, but that guy was asking for my notebook, I show it to him, then he asks me if he can photocopy it and I say yes, he smiles at me and says something complimentary, more or less that I would get them back the next day. At that time I thought I was wrong to give him my notebook, but I was also happy because it was the first real opportunity to hook a guy, I started to wonder how it would have been if that guy had been gay, but he was not one of the handsome guys, yes, he had a beautiful smile, but it was all there, I just lent my notebook to a guy who had a beautiful smile! Project, now you might think that that guy is now my boyfriend, but no, because he gave me an appointment for the next day to give me back my notes and then showed up accompanied by his girlfriend! I was like an idiot, my brain had begun to go on his own, but fortunately the situation became evident almost immediately. Project, in essence, the child entering the pastry, with his mouth watering has been left empty-handed! According to statistics of gay project among my colleagues there should be at least five or six gays, one is me, then let’s say four or five but they are well hidden, I wonder if they too are like children in the pastry or already have decided to devote themselves exclusively to the study. I would not exclude that some of those geniuses who know everything, then underneath are gays terribly frustrated. Then the second year came, we are further decreased in number and hierarchies based on the results of the examinations are now well established, I stay in the second group, I go forward, but I’m not the new Einstein and frankly I don’t even want to be. My dream is to live a love story, I do not know if I would be able, however, it is certain that I’d try. Until now it has not happened. Project, that’s all, it’s trivial, I know, no overwhelming loves, neither depressing disappointments, so many dreams just too big and a lot of very small achievements. Post this e-mail if you want. I think I’ll send you another e-mail tonight with three or four things that I did not understand very well. You are a great, you did a monstrous job that is really useful!
Gay Hunter (but in a good way!)
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| GAY MARRIAGE: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REPUBLIC |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 06:49 PM - Forum: Gays and religion
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This post is aimed at comparing two different opinions about homosexual marriage, the first one emerging from an inter-religious conversation between Jorge Mario Bergoglio then-archbishop of Buenos Aires (now pope Francis), and rabbi Skorka, and also from an interview with Monsignor Juan Vicente Còrdoba, secretary of the Columbian episcopal conference, and the other coming from the legislative solutions definitively adopted, on April 23, 2013, by the French National Assembly.
The comments in square brackets used inside quotations are by the author of this post.
Bergoglio and Homosexuality
In 2010 a book by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, titled “Sobre el cielo y la tierra” was published by Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires.
This book is a compilation of the conversations between the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis and Abraham Skorka, rabbi and rector of the Latin-American Rabbinic Seminary in Buenos Aires. The inter-religious conversations are about different topics, such as God, fundamentalism, atheists, death, holocaust, homosexuality and capitalism and took place alternatively in the bishop seat and in the Jewish community Benei Tivka.
In the sixteenth chapter, “Sobre el cielo y la tierra” deals with “marriage between people of the same sex”. So rabbi Skorka opens the conversation: “In my opinion, same-sex marriage has been considered in a very partial manner, compared to the depth that the topic deserves. Cohabiting same-sex couples are matter of fact and are entitled to legal solutions to problems such as pensions, inheritance etc.. (which may be part of a new juridical figure), but equating homosexual couples to heterosexual ones is something totally different. It’s not just a belief question, but we must be aware that this problem concerns one of the most delicate elements our culture is based on.”
Bergoglio replies: “Religion, being at the service of the people, in entitled to express its opinion. And if somebody asks me for advice, I have the right to give it to him. Sometimes the religious minister calls attention to certain points of the private or public life because he is the mentor of the faithful.” Up to this point we can find the usual reaffirmation of the duties and obviously also of the consequential rights that religions are entitled to claim, nevertheless Bergoglio introduces a new element pointing out what “is not for religious minister, as he doesn’t have the right to interfere with anybody’s private life, and that’s for sure. If, during the Creation, God faced the risk of making us free, who am I to interfere? We condemn the redundancy of spiritual influence, which occurs when a minister imposes the guideline, the behaviour to follow, depriving people of freedom”. These statements, however, are not intended for possible approval of choices different from those suggested (not imposed) by the church because Bergoglio is quick to point out that “God let us free even to commit a sin. Talking clearly about values, limits, commandments is something absolutely necessary, of course, but spiritual or pastoral interference is not allowed”.
Skorka reminds that in Judaism there are some currents in which prescriptive approaches prevail, but he underlines that in Jewish Law there’s no place for homosexuality, and he adds: “On the other hand, I respect any individual who maintains a reserved and intimate approach to the theme”, then he refers to the Argentinian law of 2010 about civil marriage between same-sex people and access to adoptions by same-sex couples; he reminds the worth that scientists like Freud or Lévi-Strauss attribute to the prohibition of incestuous relationships and to sexual ethic, and he admits to be worried about the consequences for society that laws like that approved in Argentina in 2010 can produce.
Bergoglio considers the Argentinian law approved in 2010 as an “anthropological regression”, since it weakens “an institution millennia old, created in accordance with nature and anthropology”; this way the rejection of homosexual unions considered as equivalent to marriage loses the quality of religious precept, in the name of which church is not allowed to deprive anybody of his freedom, and assumes the meaning of safeguard of the natural law in opposition to anything unnatural, and also of safeguard of a principle of anthropology, which affirms that heterosexuality is an intrinsic characteristic of the man as such.
Bergoglio then states something apparently open-minded: “Fifty years ago, co-living before marriage was not as common as nowadays. It was something degrading. Then things changed. Today, co-living before marriage, although it’s not right from a religious point of view, does not have any more the extremely negative social weight it had fifty years ago. It’s a sociological fact that clearly is not comparable to the completeness and greatness of marriage, an institution millennia old that has to be defended. […] We too consider very important what you have just highlighted, that is the base of the Natural Law mentioned by the Bible: the union between a man and a woman”. Shorly, Bergoglio underlines that Bible recognizes the “real” Nature Law, which is identified, in sexual matter, as heterosexuality.
Bergoglio continues: “homosexuality has always existed. The island of Lesbos, for example, was well known for having homosexual women. But it had never happened in history that somebody tried to give it the same status as marriage. It was tolerated or not tolerated, it was appreciated or not appreciated, but never considered equal.” Bergoglio doesn’t even conceive that homosexuality can be considered equated with heterosexuality, because he said it doesn’t embody the Natural Law (strange concept of nature!).
Bergoglio continues with a statement: “We know that during some epochal evolutions the phenomenon of homosexuality sensibly increased”. Actually, in those periods of changing the repressive power of some institutions like Catholic Church weakened, that’s why homosexuality became more visible.
Bergoglio adds: “But in our age, it is the first time we face the problem of assimilating it to marriage, and I consider this as a bad value and an anthropological regression”.
Immediately after, Bergoglio presents the most convincing argument, according to him,: “A private union doesn’t hurt anybody nor the society. Instead, if this union is considered under the category of marriage and the right of adoption is allowed, there is the risk of damaging children. Each individual needs a male father and a female mother who help him shaping his own identity”. The idea of homo-parenthood as something dangerous is taken for granted, though many serious studies about the issue have demonstrated that those are only prejudices.
Bergoglio adds: “I insist: our opinion on marriage of same-sex people does not have a religious basis but anthropological”, and for this reason the limitation of the sphere of the individual freedom would be justified as well as the non-equalization of homosexuals with heterosexuals.
Bergoglio reminds that, for the first time after 18 years of being bishop, he had to draw the attention of a public officer when the major of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, refused to appeal against a first grade judgement that had authorized a homosexual marriage. But Bergoglio points out, twice, that he never talked about homosexuals or used derogatory terms against homosexuals and remarks that he confined himself to the legal issue.
Skorka then widens the subject on the natural law and he reminds that “in the discussion before the approval of the law, somebody invoked the “natural law” thanks to which Nature has in itself the rule leading the human behaviour. So, God himself infused this rule in the Creation. Now, a homosexual may rightly object it was God or Nature that made him that way. On the other hand, somebody declared that love between homosexual people has a multiple nature, because female love and male love co-exist together, although this does not implies a suitable condition to create a family”. These last statements of the rabbi, related to a generic “somebody”, are in fact quite curious.
Skorka introduces the question of the parental figures in the educative field and Bergoglio answers that “generally, people say that it would be better for a kid to be grown by a same-sex couple rather than living in an orphanage or in an institute for minors. Of course, neither of these situations is optimal”.
Bergoglio searches for a different solution which could allow to avoid adoption by same-sex couples. He states that “the problem is that the State does not do what it should, […] We have to consider the situations od children who live in public structures or institutes where everything is done but recover those children. NGOs, the different religious confessions or other kinds of organisations should take care of those minors”, but Bergoglio concludes: “a mistake from the State’s side [the excess of bureaucracy and corruption] does not justify another mistake by the same State [the legitimation of adoptions for same-sex couples]”. In this sense, if regulations and procedures for the adoptions were speeded up and bureaucratic rules “whose actual application encourages corruption” were eliminated, there would be no justification for adoptions by same-sex couples.
Skorka goes on quoting Bible and Maimonides, looking for images that compare the relationship between God and men to the matrimonial relationship between a man and a woman, then he concludes: “A homosexual person loves somebody he knows, a fellow. It is easy for a man to know another man, on the contrary it is much more difficult to know a woman, because he needs to decode her. A man perfectly knows what another man feels, and a woman perfectly knows what happens in the body and in the mind of another woman. Discovering the other sex, instead, is a true challenge”.
Bergoglio ends up this way: “Usually, in the homily for a marriage I tell the groom he must make her more woman, and I tell the bride she must make him more man”.
Monsignor Juan Vicente Còrdoba and the adoptions by homosexual people
The secretary of the [Columbian] Episcopal Conference, Juan Vicente Còrdoba, a professional psychologist, questioned the adoption of two little brothers authorized by the Columbian Institute for Family Wellness (ICBF) to an American homosexual man. It’s the case of the journalist Chandler Burr, who has taken back with him the two brothers after a long dispute, consequent to the fact that the adoption had been suspended when his sexual orientation was known.
What do you think about this case?
“I don’t want to judge that man or the ICBF, and I imagine there was a good intention behind. But what kind of investigation was carried out on the personality of the future dad? You have to be sure the adopters are a couple, a man and a woman, or a single man or a single woman with a stable psychology, if you want to entrust a child to somebody”.
Is homosexuality a psychological problem?
“It is not an illness, but a gender identity disease, about the identification of the gender. This is what universal psychiatry says”. [Homosexuality objectively has nothing to do with diseases or with gender identity problems, as World Health Organization confirmed many times.]
What do you know about Chandler Burr?
“I don’t know him and I’m not accusing him of anything, but one thing is clear: he has a homosexual tendency and a ten-year old boy and a thirteen-year old boy will be entrusted to him, among them there is a father-son relationship, they entrust him two boys of an age in which they can be attractive for him and so they can be a temptation”.
Do the children risk something?
“One says: why not giving him two girls? Why right two boys to a homosexual man? He wouldn’t feel any attraction towards two girls, if heterosexual fathers abuse of their daughters and even of their sons, then there’s more to worry about a homosexual man. It would have been better to give the children a father and a mother”.
So a homosexual man can’t house an orphan?
“He can, but he has to be a person with an internalized ability of controlling his tendency, his drives, his passions. It’s very hard not to fall in temptation if somebody has diabetes and he lives in a candy shop”.
What is you proposal?
“I believe that things have been made in a hurry, but it is possible to invert the trial as there was a fundamental fact nobody knew. Thus, revising the trial and bringing it back to a previous phase is something absolutely necessary. It will be very difficult for this man to be impartial and give a pure and transparent affection. Colombia cannot supply its citizens to another country like if they were just goods”.
The Prosecutor’s office investigates Chandler Burr’s couple life. The control authority expressed a negative opinion on Burr’s case, “especially about the psychological valuation test, according to which there are some evident inconsistencies about the existence of relationships with same-sex people”.
The control authority confirmed its request to ICBF for obtaining the revision of the adoption requests by mono-parental families or singles and announced that the case will be followed and this proceeding of adoption will be contested.
The choices of the French Republic
On March 24, 2013, Gay Project published an article: GAY MARRIAGE IN FRANCE AND STATE SECULARITY
The French law has finally closed the phase of the double track: marriage only for heterosexuals and other forms of cohabitation also for homosexuals. Without giving any “definition of marriage” was adopted simply a new text of art. 143 of the Civil Code which now reads:
“Art 143 – Marriage is contracted by two persons of different or of the same sex.”
All contrary provisions must therefore be considered amended accordingly. So the secular France has honoured the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.
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| UNDERSTANDING TO BE GAY |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-03-2017, 06:44 PM - Forum: Understand to be gay
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Gay Project has published in Italian a “Manual of homosexuality”: http://gayproject.altervista.org/manuale_di_omosessualita.pdf, that is a guide to know and understand the real problems of gay guys. I present here the first chapter transalated into English, in the coming weeks I will publish the next chapters.
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CHAPTER 1 – UNDERSTANDING TO BE GAY
Let’s start with a concrete example.
A boy 12 year old (seventh grade) experiences for the first time the spontaneous swelling up of his penis (erection) while he is in the locker room along with his mates and while concentrating his attention on one of them who is undressing. The experience is pleasant, the guy comes home, sits back to think about his mate, goes quickly erect, the feeling is newly nice, the guy starts a long manipulation of his penis (masturbation) at the end of which he feels a strong contraction of the testes (orgasm) that makes a white substance (semen) squirts up from his penis (ejaculation), immediately after the guy experiences a strong feeling of relaxation, as if all the tension caused by sexual arousal had been discharged (post-orgasmic phase). Throughout all this procedure, the imagination is concentrated on the image of the mate undressing in the locker room (masturbatory fantasy).
Let us now analyze this example. It is the discovery of masturbation, that is the first real sexual experience. In this experience, there are two different components linked together, the physical one (erection, masturbation, orgasm, ejaculation, post-orgasmic phase) and the imaginative one (masturbatory fantasy).
It is usual to call masturbation also the whole physical-imaginative process we have just described. During masturbation the guy brings to mind the images that had caused the erection spontaneously, because focusing on those images (masturbatory fantasies) he can easily get an erection (sexual arousal through masturbation fantasies) and the erection is more vigorous and all the process of masturbation is strongly addictive. If the masturbatory fantasies of a guy are directed towards other guys we use to say that masturbation is gay oriented, if masturbatory fantasies are directed towards girls we use to say that masturbation is hetero oriented. When the masturbatory fantasies are really spontaneous, they represent the fundamental indicator of sexual orientation: a guy who masturbates in an exclusive and consistent way with gay fantasies is to be considered a gay guy.
Now we go further with exemplification.
The same guy that we talked about before, listening to his mates about masturbation becomes aware that they experience something similar to his own experience in the physical aspect but different with regard to the masturbatory fantasies, and realizes that his mates, during masturbation, don’t focus attention on other guys but on girls. Back home, the guy tries to masturbate focusing on a girl, that is, using the same masturbatory fantasies used by his mates, but those fantasies do not produce results and are on the contrary experienced as something alien and not really exciting. The guy then comes back to masturbation fantasies focused on his mates and the physical response is rapid and convincing.
Let’s analyze the example.
This is the first perception, by a gay guy, of the fact that his sexuality is not similar to that of other guys. The thing in itself would not cause any problem, but the guy, speaking with his mates, becomes aware, with a growing awareness, that his sexuality is considered by his mates as an object of ridicule and as something quite offensive to joke about and begins to connect to his sexual orientation words like gay, fag, queer, fagot and so on, that people use as an insult. This way the guy perceives for the first time the discomfort of being gay, which is not caused by the fact of having a sexuality different from that of the other guys but by the contempt shown by other guys.
But let us proceed with the examples.
The guy that we talked about in the previous examples starts to feel the presence of the guy who is the object of his masturbatory fantasies as something very pleasant, he is happy while being beside that guy, talks to him for as long as possible, appreciates his voice, his physical presence and smile and tends to create a relationship with him. At first that relationship seems to have the typical characteristics of friendship but really differs from friendship because that guy is also the subject of masturbatory fantasies.
All the process described above represents a typical gay love affair, in which there are two components: one affective, which consists in creating a relationship of proximity and affection with the other guy, and the other strictly sexual, which consists in being sexually involved by the other guy assuming him as object of masturbatory fantasies.
For the other guys, who leave similar experiences, but oriented towards girls, the natural outcome of being in love is the declaration of love to the girl they love, that statement is usually taken by the girls like something however flattering. The gay guy understands on the contrary that, for him, declaring his love for another guy carries the risk of being identified as gay and thus being branded with offensive epithets by his mates and also by the guy he is in love with. In essence, the gay guy realizes that he’s a gay guy in a group of guys who have a different sexual orientation and concludes instinctively, that not to be labeled as gay by his mates, he has to pretend to be straight.
So far we have presented a very simple model of getting aware of being gay applied to a 12 year old gay. In reality, this scheme can be complicated by many disruptive factors. Let us therefore examine the most important factors that interfere with the awareness of homosexuality. Consider an example.
A guy 11/12 year old is involved in sexual games with a girl slightly older than him, his first erections are not really spontaneous but are induced by the interplay of sexual manipulation by the girl, which is especially rewarding because allows the preadolescent to perceive himself like a man. The guy will repeat on his own the handling of the penis and will arrive at the discovery of masturbation and, at least apparently, his masturbatory fantasies will be oriented toward girls, but in this case during the masturbation the spontaneous sexuality cannot emerge just because the first erections are not spontaneous but are induced by a girl through explicit sexual advances (the manipulation of the penis or the intimate caresses). The sexual imprinting , that is the first real sexual or para-sexual experience, in this case, has been experienced by the guy “in a straight atmosphere” due to external elements (the girl) and thus was not the result of the sexual spontaneity of the guy, but nevertheless such sexual experiences are not superficial. The hetero imprinting can induce quite easily masturbation fantasies related to the imprinting, i.e. hetero fantasies, rather than to spontaneous sexuality. Following an hetero imprinting, even a guy who, if he could spontaneously develop his own sexuality, would manifest a gay sexuality, can present a straight masturbation for years. Gay guys sooner or later come certainly out of the constraints that derive from the hetero imprinting because in the long time spontaneous sexuality comes always afloat.
Much more complicated and problematic is the situation of guys who have been subjected to violence or sexual abuse. I would simply point out that sexual abuse can leave on anyone who has suffered it very heavy consequences, particularly if it was committed with physical or psychological violence or by a close family member.
Let us consider now much more common disturbing elements that can interfere with the process of getting aware of being gay. We start here with an example.
An 8 year old guy is part of a larger group of friends and hears them speak with great interest about pornography on the Internet. For him, 8 years old, genital sexuality is still something to come, but he is induced by what he heard to go and see what it is. In this way, the guy discovers pornography, which means, in the vast majority of cases, heterosexual pornography, before having sexual maturity to understand the real meaning of sexuality. In this way, the guy gets a form of pre-orientation toward sexuality almost always towards heterosexuality, which tends to stabilize the guy because using pornography he feels integrated with the group of older guys. Over the years the tendency to imitate the sexuality of the older guys leads that guy to the discovery of masturbation that takes place in a straight atmosphere and therefore manifests a heterosexual orientation. This not spontaneous hetero orientation, precisely induced by the described mechanism, just because it is not spontaneous, may not coincide with the deep sexual orientation and therefore, also in this case a young guy with an exclusive hetero masturbation may be, with the passing of time, having to deal with the subsequent emergence of a spontaneous gay sexuality.
We come now to another important point, namely the education that a guy receives about sexuality, and as usual we consider a concrete case.
A guy has been accustomed from childhood to attend Catholic circles, typically the parish. In that environment he feels comfortable, the family has confidence in the priests and is happy that the child attends that environment because even the parents grew up in that environment and feel it as safe and suitable for the growth of the child. Gradually, from childhood on, that guy has assimilated the values typical of a Catholic environment that are related to the idea of family (father, mother and children), seen as the center of the life of an individual. This model does not create any problem to the guy before his first contact with sex life and indeed is regarded as quite natural because, before discovering sexuality, a guy identifies himself only in the role of child and not in a possible role of father. But there are also other things to take in account, a guy, before discovering sexuality considers as natural the idea that sexuality, which he still does not know concretely, is aimed exclusively to the procreation and that any other use of sexuality is wrong. When the guy discovers masturbation and the horizon of real sexuality, he is brought automatically to suppress the new feelings and to feel guilty about the fact of not being able to do without what he believes to be absolutely to avoid. Up to this point the conditioning of sexuality operated by the religion is practically the same for both gay and straight guys, but for gay guys there are also other problems. In religious circles in general people tend to take for granted that all the guys are heterosexual and the existence of homosexuality is considered as a manifestation of disease and sin. The priests who care for older kids only talk about relationships between guys and girls and these behaviors lead gay guys to stay as far as possible away from homosexuality, considered like a very serious sin but avoidable. Let us pause to reflect on the situation we have just described.
The Catholic Church considers heterosexuality as the only natural form of sexuality and considers homosexuality as a pathological tendency, something against nature, which must be repressed. The Church considers a grave sin every homosexual act, that is, all forms of sexuality shared with someone of the same sex and also considers masturbation a grave sin. The World Health Organization has recognized for several decades homosexuality as a “normal ” (i.e. non-pathological) variant of the human sexuality and homosexuals has been recognized in many states the right to join together to form a family, a family formed by same-sex partners, in some states, it is also granted to homosexual couples the right to adopt children exactly as it is granted to heterosexual couples. The same World Health Organization has explicitly acknowledged the value of masturbation not only as a fundamental element for the formation of sexuality in adolescence but as a positive element that produces pleasure, accompanies the entire sexual life of an individual and also involves married man and women, who clearly have also a sexual life as a couple. The World Health Organization has included education to masturbation as part of sex therapy aimed at the well-being of the person as an individual and as part of a couple.
The teachings of the Catholic Church in matters related to sexuality and especially homosexuality and masturbation, are not only not universally shared but are completely incompatible with what the scientific community says about the same subjects.
Sexuality education in accordance with the dictates of the Catholic Church or other religious groups with similar attitudes, promotes feelings of guilt and leads to the repression of sexuality and especially homosexuality, which is seen only in the dimension of sin and not as a natural and spontaneous behavior.
What are the consequences of all this for a homosexual guy? The guy tries to force himself toward heterosexuality and considers homosexuality as a vice to be eradicated, seeks to create a relationship with a girl that can reassure him by giving him the illusion that his homosexuality will disappear if he will be able to resist temptation particularly avoiding masturbation, so in fact the feeling towards a girl will grow “pure” that is not tainted by sex. In repressing masturbation, which would inevitably be gay oriented, and in building a relationship with a girl chastely, that is, without any trace of sexuality, the guy sees a merit, a victory over himself and the sign that his “heterosexuality” is true love and not vice because it is not contaminated by masturbation. In fact the apparent “pure” falling in love with a girl is not really falling in love because is missing entirely any sexual involvement. That apparent falling in love allows the guy to pretend to be straight, relegating homosexuality to the rank of marginal vice that will pass easily, over the years, when he will go to the wedding. It is in essence a problem of removal of homosexuality that is denied and minimized. In some cases, starting with these concepts, when the first attempts to couple sexuality with a girl are successful, the guy can get easily even at the wedding.
The expression “sexual imprinting”, in the strict sense, is used to denote the first sexual or para-sexual experience (nudity, physical contact) that induces, through sexual arousal, the initial orientation of masturbation towards guys or girls. It is quite common to speak of sexual imprinting also about the discovery of pornography and even about the educational pressures. While the discovery of pornography, particularly if very early, can effectively determine the initial orientation of masturbation, and therefore can constitute a real sexual imprinting, the educational pressures act mainly through deterrence. In general, the removal of homosexuality as a result of education does not lead a gay guy to hetero masturbation but to abstinence from masturbation, in this case we can speak of sexual imprinting only in very general terms.
Here it should be clarified that as a guy who lives a straight imprinting can masturbate, for a period of time at least, with heterosexual fantasies, even if he is not straight, so a gay guy, in situations of particular emotional involvement, can have a sexual intercourse with a woman. It should be borne in mind that the true sexual orientation is the “spontaneous” sexual orientation of a person, therefore a guy is gay if, without any conditioning, his sexuality is focused on guys, and similarly a guy is straight if, without any conditioning, his sexuality is focused on girls, but that does not mean that a gay guy, that is a guy who, without any conditioning, focuses his sexuality on guys , cannot, under specific conditions, i.e. with strong constraints, respond to heterosexual stimulation. Similarly, a straight guy, who is spontaneously led to a hetero sexuality, in some particular situations, may also respond to homosexual stimulation. It is precisely for this reason that, in the presence of strong environmental constraints, when the orientation of masturbation does not coincide with that of couple sexuality, the true sexual orientation is what emerges from masturbation because during masturbation the weight of the constraints is enormously less and there is no expectation to satisfy on the part of the partner. The fantasies that accompany masturbation are, for these very reasons, the fundamental index of sexual orientation.
It should be noted that, given that 92% of the population is composed of heterosexuals, environmental pressures that push toward heterosexuality are very strong, while those that push towards homosexuality are virtually nil. That’s why there are many gays who have problems, even for long periods, about their being gay, while it is very rare to find a straight guy who has problems about is being hetero.
About 30% of the guys who end up recognizing themselves exclusively gay have had before periods in which they considered themselves to be heterosexuals and some of them, and not a few, also had sex with a girl and also with more than just one. Those guys are not heterosexuals who have become homosexuals but they are homosexuals who have been induced to pretend to be heterosexuals by environmental pressures or by an education for nothing respectful of sexual spontaneity and typically have lived long and troubled periods of uncertainty about their sexual orientation. It is significant that most of these guys, even when they have a girlfriend and have sex with girls, continues to practice masturbation with gay fantasies.
Let us now deal with elements that can appear but are not indicators of sexual orientation. Let’s consider an example.
A 11 year old guy goes for swimming and compares his penis with that of his peers. In this case it is true that there is an interest in the penis of other guys but it should be clear that for the guy this is only an element of comparison for assessing his own sexual maturation in relation to that of other guys, the same is true when considering physical development, height or strength in relation to the similar characteristics of other guys. All this has nothing to do with homosexuality.
Let’s move on to another situation which is incorrectly related to sexual orientation or gender identity, that is the feeling of being a man or woman. A child about 5 or 6 year old sometimes puts on mum’s shoes, plays with dolls with girls and not at soldiers with his male mates, is at ease with the girls better than with his male mates, does not like to play football and so on.
Such situations are not indicators of sexual orientation or gender identity (feeling of being male or female) but can sometimes express forms of discomfort to integrate into the peer group, often caused by a very rigid education or simply by shyness. Adults should avoid to negatively emphasize these behaviors with attitudes amazed or worried that can really cause insecurities that are likely to remain unexpressed and unresolved.
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