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More Weaknesses in Natural Law (Sex and Catholics 4)

October 20, 2017 Terence Leave a comment

Natural Law: Part 4

More Holes and Weaknesses in Natural Law and the future for sexual love
Part 1 dealt with the Natural Law.

Part 2 considered the male and female perspectives of Natural Law and the Church’s teachings on sexual morality, and recent learning from experts in evolution.

Part 3 considered examples of the world’s expertise in science and learning relating to the Church’s sexual morality teaching and assessed the Church’s teaching in the light of these critiques, and its response.

Now in this final section, Part 4, we consider more expert criticism of the use of Natural Law and Church’s sexual morality teachings about homosexuality. We critically assess what is called “New Natural Law” and its treatment of homosexuality. We conclude by examining Thomas Aquinas’s Homosexual Deception, and how this reinforced the Catholic Church’s treatment of homosexuality as a grave sin. The Church now needs to reassess whether it is transmitting the Truth about sexually expressing love in human relationships.

Natural Law and Homosexuality

Natural Law and Homosexuality are discussed in Stanford University’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy and this finds significant holes in the Catholic Church’s defence of its current Natural Law teaching. It’s clear that when Natural Law can’t defend the Church’s teaching it falls back on what it claims ‘God says’ to rescue the argument. We hear from some fresh contemporary experts, ones we did not meet in part 3. ¹

Sterile marriages and homosexual relationships

The Church makes procreation the ‘natural fulfillment’ of marriage, but this denigrates sterile marriages where one or both partners is infertile, and also devalues vaginal sex within marriage after a woman’s menopause. Yet vaginal sex within sterile and post-menopausal marriages is not morally wrong and the Church agrees these marriages are perfectly valid and acceptable. Why, people reasonably ask, is homosexual sex in the same context wrong (in a long-term committed relationship, such as a civil partnership, or lesbian or gay marriage)? ²

The Natural Law response to any suggestion that sex within lesbian and gay marriages and civil partnerships should be allowed, is to defend the Church’s teaching by saying that while vaginal intercourse within a sterile marriage is potentially procreative (considered in itself), sex within same-sex relationships is never potentially procreative. ³

But is this biological distinction also morally relevant and persuasive, and in the way that Natural Law theorists assume?

Is this relevant and persuasive?

The Vatican and other orthodox Christians have no alternative left but to resort to tradition and interpretations of scripture to try to support natural law; they must respond that it’s because ‘God said so’ and only (even if just theoretically) procreative vaginal sex within a heterosexual marriage is ‘natural’ and ‘ordained’ by God.

Saying sex can only ever be within a heterosexual marriage because ‘God said so’, is not a Natural Law argument, it’s just based on interpretation of scripture. If you are secular, or don’t accept those scripture interpretations, that’s unpersuasive.

The Natural Law defence is particularly flimsy, because this says that the only permissible sex Natural Law ever permits is vaginal sex; but the key procreative part is irrelevant for infertile or post-menopausal couples. Asserting Natural Law to restrict sex to vaginal only appears really weak; this is more a matter of Church tradition, based on Aquinas’s reasoning.

If you insist it is from Natural Law, that requires a simplistic and particularly restrictive doctrinaire view of Natural Law that has been adopted by the Church and rigidly adhered to.

When the couple are infertile or post-menopausal, the Church attempts to include the theoretical procreativity as well, but that is an appeal for a miracle. [This happened only once in the New Testament. Barren and elderly Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah, nonetheless had a miraculous son, John the Baptist. Zechariah was visited and informed of this by an angel (Luke 1, 6-7, 13-15)]. The Church doesn’t teach post-menopausal women or infertile couples to expect a miracle of procreation, as a justification for having vaginal sex.

The Church refuses to allow assisting fertility with things like IVF. Natural Law is behind that.

Loving unions and secular Natural Law
Secular Natural Law theorists, when they consider infertility or post-menopausal marriages, waver and oscillate. On the one hand, they want to defend an ideal of marriage as a loving union wherein two persons are committed to their mutual flourishing, and where sex is a unitive complement to that ideal. Yet that opens the possibility of permissible gay sex, or of heterosexual oral or anal sex, all of which they want to oppose.

Reductive fallback on procreation
So secular Natural Law theorists then must defend a version of human sexuality which seems crudely reductive, emphasizing procreation to the point where literally a male orgasm anywhere except in the vagina of one’s loving spouse is impermissible, like orthodox Catholic teaching. Then, when accused of being reductive, they move back to the broader ideal of marriage.

Secular liberal ideas in modern natural law
So secular Natural Law theorists have now made significant concessions to mainstream liberal thought. In contrast to medieval times, most contemporary secular Natural Law theorists argue for little or no governmental intervention in sexual activity, and do not believe the state should attempt to prevent all moral wrongdoing.

Secular justification of discrimination and lesbian and gay exclusion
Some secular Natural Law theorists still argue against homosexuality, and some even argue there should not even be any anti-discrimination legal protection for gays and lesbians in areas like employment and housing; the most extreme have even served as expert witnesses in court cases and produced expert opinions for the courts in cases disputing the legal rights and protections of lesbians and gay men.

Natural Law Homophobic Tweet from a Coffee Shop

Where does this aversion to homosexuality come from, especially where this is also used to justify unequal treatment and discrimination? If the person is secular, then they can’t call on religion or its traditions for an explanation. Their gay aversion can only be based on a very simplistic heterosexual vaginal penetration view of sex, as proposed by Aquinas; anything else would allow heterosexual oral / anal sex and that makes excluding lesbians and gay men illogical. The only other possible explanation for such a restrictive conception of acceptable sex is secular homophobic prejudice. In the 21st century, for secularists to argue Natural Law only permits vaginal heterosexual sex is simplistic, anachronistic, and medieval, in the face of scientific studies of nature showing the biological abundance of diverse sexual behaviour patterns and the blurring of gender roles.

Catholic teaching forbids unjust discrimination
The Catholic Church certainly opposes ‘unjust’ discrimination against homosexuals, and states clearly that a homosexual orientation is never a justification for this.

ooops! Do what the Church says not as I do, please people

The Stanford Encyclopedia says some secular Natural Law theorists, like the Catholic Church, argue against allowing gay and lesbian marriage equality, and it cites Gerard V Bradley [4] and Robert P George [5]. However it is clear neither of them are secularists arguing a secularist view; both are Catholic authors arguing a Catholic case.

Gerard V Bradley is a Catholic working at the Notre Dame Law School and contributed his essay to the Catholic Social Science Review. Robert P George wrote his essay “‘Same-Sex Marriage’ and ‘Moral Neutrality’”, using Catholic Natural Law and religious arguments. There is a detailed critique and summary of his essay here. There is nothing new here: both use arguments we have heard before in the Pastoral letter from the London Archbishops opposing lesbian and gay marriage, but these pieces are written for an academic audience.

The “New Natural Law” and homosexuality
Stephen J Pope has written an ethical analysis and critique of the Magisterium’s arguments against same sex marriage, which appeared in Theological Studies 65 (2004). [7]
This lengthy extract below is very helpful in critically understanding current Catholic Natural Law in relation to homosexuality:

Natural Law, Homosexuality and Roman Catholicism book

“The central concern of the natural moral law in relation to the state’s civil law is, of course, justice and related notions of human rights, fairness, equity, and the common good. The state does in fact “legislate morality” in some sense, but, as St. Thomas Aquinas held, the civil law cannot and should not enforce the entire natural moral law. [8]
The Magisterium does not advocate the civil law should make illegal all “homosexual activity”. The Magisterium restricts itself to preaching this activity is wrong, both inside and outside the Church.

New Natural Law
There are a variety of ways of interpreting natural law within Catholic theology, but the “new natural law” theory presents the most visible school of Catholic ethics engaged in the public debate over same-sex marriage.

The “new natural law theory” works from a key premise:

“In voluntary acting for human goods and avoiding what is opposed to them, one ought to choose and will those and only those possibilities whose willing is compatible with integral human fulfillment.” [9]

Individuals may never legitimately attack a “basic good,” including the “marital good.” [10] According to “new natural lawyers” Gerard Bradley and Robert George,

“Marriage, considered not as a mere legal convention, but, rather as a two-in-one-flesh communion of persons that is consummated and actualized by sexual acts of the reproductive type, is an intrinsic (or, in our parlance, ‘basic’) human good; as such, marriage provides a non-instrumental reason for spouses, whether or not they are capable of conceiving children in their acts of genital union, to perform such acts.” [11]

“Homosexual acts” are thus not ethically permitted because they are incapable of attaining this “one flesh unity”; in fact, “homosexual acts” merely create the “appearance” of true sexual intimacy.” [12]

The “new natural lawyers” in effect maintain that the “good of union” cannot be pursued unless the couple is also “open to procreation.” [Contraception is unacceptable].

The “new natural lawyers” recognize that the law should neither simply legislate the entirety of the moral law, nor outlaw all sexual acts such as contraception or fornication that violate the “marital good.” The purpose of civil law is to secure the conditions that “favor, facilitate and foster the realization by each individual of his or her personal development.” [13]

New Natural Law: The State should do what it can to discourage gay life: Finnis

Finnis argues that the state has a “compelling interest in denying that homosexual conduct—a ‘gay lifestyle’—is a valid, humanly acceptable choice and form of life,” and that it ought to do “what it properly can . . . to discourage such conduct.” [14] Since the government is a teacher and the law has a pedagogical function, neither government nor law can remain “morally neutral” with regard to social institutions as important as marriage and the family.

Thus in some settings a government could be perfectly justified in imposing legal restrictions on “the advertising and marketing of homosexual services, the maintenance of places of resort for homosexual activity, or the promotion of homosexualist ‘lifestyles’ via public education and public media of communication,” [15] and so forth.

Objections to “New Natural Law”

The “new natural law” theory is vulnerable to two objections. First, it fails to build a logical case for its claim that accepting the ethical legitimacy of any and all “homosexual acts” necessarily implies that one regards sexual activity as nothing more than the pursuit of individual self-gratification. [16]

Its sweeping ethical condemnation of all intentionally non-procreative sex is excessively monolithic and undifferentiated.

As legal scholar Stephen Macedo points out, it is

“strikingly simplistic and implausible to portray the essential nature of every form of non-procreative sexuality as no better than the least valuable form.” [17]

The same habit of gross over-generalization is exhibited in its claims about gay people. It is a reductionistic exaggeration to epitomize the behavior of every gay person as driven by a “promiscuous, liberationist ‘gay lifestyle,’ which rejects all sexual restraints and value judgments.” [18] If this were universally the case, there would in fact be few gay activists lobbying for same-sex marriage. Gay people are more diverse, and in morally relevant ways, than is recognized by the “new natural law theory.”

Second, the “new natural law” argument does not take into account the concrete experience of gay people. Here it replicates the Magisterium’s oversight. It attempts to justify its position on the basis of a deductive argument and abstract philosophical analysis, but it cannot avoid making claims of a predictive nature about the real world, how people will act in it, and the probable consequences of their actions on their communities. This empirical dimension is especially important when considering moral arguments against same-sex marriage.”

You Can’t Predict or Generalise about Lesbians and Gay Men: Britons of Distinction: Alan Turing, Gay Hero

Continuing evolution of attitudes and moral responses
We are still going through a period and process where attitudes and thinking about lesbian and gay marriage and behaviour are evolving and developing, in both secular and Christian moral philosophy. Both are heatedly debated in the USA, far more so than in the UK.

The significantly shifting public attitudes to lesbian and gay marriage illustrate sharply this ideological flux and the tension between liberal and conservative orthodox opinions. The tide has turned and is running generally, in most of the developed and nominally Christian world, in support of lesbian and gay rights and acceptance.

Thomas Aquinas’s deliberate deceptions about Sodomy [19]
As the conclusion to this series, it’s time to look into Thomas Aquinas’s homosexual deception, and how this reinforced the treatment of homosexual behaviour by the Church as a serious sin. This was referred to in the first post on Natural Law, when I described St Thomas Aquinas as a naughty deceptive moral theologian, because he buried and distorted some key passages in Aristotle to suit the Church’s historic hostility.

The background is that the Church has fairly consistently taught that some kind of sexual behaviour, which the Church now says are homosexual acts, was a serious sin (‘homosexual’ was a word only invented in the late 19th century); this is based on Romans 1: 26–27. St Paul’s words are taken together with passages in Leviticus which are understood to be also about homosexual acts.

But Leviticus was actually condemning other things. One was breaking a major Jewish and middle eastern social taboo by being inhospitable to your visitors and guests (Lot and his wife did this). Reform Jews see in another of Leviticus’s warnings: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination”, a warning against temple prostitution, of Jews adopting the idolatrous fertility cults and practices of their Canaanite neighbours.

St Paul had been a strict Jew who actively persecuted the early Christians, converted but remained an authoritarian character. What he was actually condemning (in Romans 1 26) was the sexual abuse of male power and privilege: sexual acts by a more powerful, higher status male, imposing sex on a younger, lower status male. Among Greeks this was typically a youth who lived with an older man as a pupil and apprentice, learning to be a good adult male citizen. Among Romans, Paul was condemning higher status males imposing themselves sexually on their male slaves.

We only hear his condemnation about sex with other males. Sex with a woman would be the sins of adultery and fornication (sex outside marriage) which were bad, but not publicly shameful in Paul’s eyes.

St. Paul also instructed women to always cover their heads in Church, but the Catholic Church chooses to ignore that and now keeps quiet about it.

There was no such thing as ‘homosexuality’ or ‘homosexuals’, as we understand these in the Greek or Roman world at the time. Despite the claims usually made, and the wording of the translations commonly quoted, what St Paul was really condemning was male power abuse, through the sexual use of vulnerable males.

There was no culture of male couples preferring sex with each other, to sex with a woman; refraining from marriage to have a male partner was alien. So in religious and secular writing from this time and later, the references are always to acts, never to a “sexual orientation”, nor to “homosexuals”, which are modern concepts.

Both Roman and Greek pagan society vehemently derided and stigmatized behaviours such as male effeminacy, any adult Roman male citizen being penetrated by another citizen, or by anyone of a lesser status, particularly by a slave. The early Church inherited these pagan hostile attitudes and these linked into Judaic prohibitions in Leviticus. So early writings by Church fathers describe same-sex acts as sinful, and St Chrysostom in the 4th century described same sex acts as worse than murder. This condemnation of same sex behaviour continued in later centuries.

Saints Sergius and Bacchus

However, the historian John Boswell disagreed strongly with this account, and referred to the same-sex Church ceremony of adelphopoiesis, which united two people of the same sex as “spiritual sisters/brothers”, and Boswell argued this gave Church blessings to romantic and sexual unions. Others point out that the ceremony’s words say that it was not a carnal union, and that the union was a ceremony creating “blood-brothers”, and that is what the pictures of Saints Sergius and Bacchus together are depicting. However Saints Sergius and Bacchus were both referred to as erastai in ancient Greek manuscripts, the same word used to describe lovers. We won’t ever really know for sure because it was so long ago and we can’t know what happened in or out of bed.

Boswell, in his essay The Church and the Homosexual, attributes Christianity’s denunciations of “homosexuality” to a supposedly rising intolerance in Europe throughout the 12th century, but the historian R W Southern disagrees: “the only relevant generalization which emerges from the penitential codes down to the eleventh century is that sodomy was treated on about the same level as copulation with animals.”

St Thomas has his say on homosexual acts [6]

It was shortly after this, in the middle of the 13th Century, that Thomas Aquinas produces his work where he distorted Aristotle, to support the Church’s condemnation of same sex acts.

Thomas Aquinas is responsible for the ‘sodomy delusion’. In a crucial passage of his major work Summa Theologiae (III, q. 31, 7) he falsified the material which he borrowed from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (VII v 34, 1148b).

In this, Aristotle had explicitly stated that sexual attraction to males (venereorum masculis) could be motivated either by nature (natura) or from habit (ex consuetudine).

In his commentary on this Latin translation of Aristotle, Aquinas dutifully reported Aristotle saying that acting on an attraction to the same gender could be ‘natural’: “from the nature of the physical constitution which [certain people] have received from the beginning” (ex natura corporalis complexionis quam acceperunt a principio).

But when he came to write his theological masterwork, the Summa Theologiae, he suppressed the fact that acting on one’s homosexual nature can be ‘natural’, and instead bluntly asserted that what is contrary to human nature (id quod est contra naturam hominis) may “become connatural to a particular human being” (fiat huic homini connaturale).

“Connatural” here does not mean “inborn” but applies to feelings that have fused with your personality, to be “second nature”. So Thomas is saying ‘unnatural homosexual behaviour’ can become ‘second nature’, which is not what Aristotle had said at all. So Aquinas fiddled his sources to fit the Church’s rules, to reinforce the Church’s teaching about same sex sin. He was writing a major theology book for the Church. If you did this at university now, you’d risk being failed for serious misrepresentation of your sources and academic deceit.

Later he manages another fiddle by adding something Aristotle never said, that “such corruption can be…for psychological causes” (quae corruptio potest esse…ex parte animae). Aquinas claims this involves “intercourse with animals or males” (in coitu bestiarum aut masculorum), which neatly fits the Church’s sin agenda by deliberately paraphrasing the Christian notion of sodomia (which then included both bestiality and any same sex behaviour).

Homosexuality as a theological problem
So Aquinas strongly reinforced homosexuality as problem for Christian theologians, who have, ever since, kept up the tradition that erotic attraction to one’s own sex is a choice that becomes second nature and therefore must be condemned as deliberate, unnatural, abnormal and pathological.

Aquinas gave the condemnation of same sex acts a proper scholastic context, making it a standard in moral theology and the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church, and this helped legitimise homophobic criminal laws and social discrimination for the last 750 years.

His authority appears unchallengeable, because the Council of Trent in the 16th century declared him a ‘Doctor of the Church’. The Church will want to avoid admitting a major Saint and Doctor of the Church made any error in writing about natural same sex attraction, a foundation stone of Catholic moral theology.

His theological conclusions help explain why the Church is reluctant now to reassess its teaching, when modern evidence and thinking calls for a serious review. Aquinas codified a teaching and reinforced a Tradition that was built on mistranslations and misinterpretations of Scripture, the pagan patriarchal roots of same-sex revulsion and exclusion, and the Church now chooses to disregard the wealth of scientific understanding about the flexibility and diversity in gender and sexual behaviour found throughout the natural world and different human cultures, and the changed world situation since 2000 years ago. The Church is discomforted because all this doesn’t fit the doctrinaire and simplistic construction which is the Catholic Natural Law for sexual behaviour.

Rather than recognise the weight of evidence calling for a thorough reassessment of whether the Church is actually transmitting God’s Truth and the message of Jesus in Gospels about sexually expressing human love, the Church is still sheltering within its comfort zone of old certainties. The Second Vatican Council made clear this is not good enough. The Church has found new understandings of the Truth before, including about slavery and usury. The Truth about the sexual expression of love between people is its latest challenge.

Further Reading and References
¹ Pickett, Brent, “Homosexuality”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), and Homosexuality and Natural Law

² Macedo, Stephen, 1995, “Homosexuality and the Conservative Mind” Georgetown Law Journal 84: 261-300.

³ George, Robert P., 1999, In Defense of Natural Law. New York: Oxford University Press

[4] Bradley, Gerard V., 2001, “The End of Marriage” in Marriage and the Common Good. Ed. by Kenneth D. Whitehead. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press.

[5] George, Robert P., 2001, “‘Same-Sex Marriage’ and ‘Moral Neutrality’” in Marriage and the Common Good. Ed. by Kenneth D. Whitehead. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press.

[6] http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Aquinas.pdf

[7] Pope, Stephen J., 2004, The Magisterium’s arguments against same sex marriage: an ethical analysis and critique, Theological Studies, 65

[8] Aquinas, Thomas Summa theologiae 1–2, q. 96, a. 2, ad 3.

[9] Finnis, “Law, Morality, and ‘Sexual Orientation,”’ 1075, n.63.

[10] See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 2: Living a Christian Life(Quincy, Ill: Franciscan, 1993) 651; and John Finnis, “Law, Morality, and ‘Sexual Orientation,”’ Notre Dame Law Review 69 (1994) 1049.

[11] Gerard V. Bradley and Robert P. George, “Marriage and the Liberal Imagination,”Georgetown Law Journal 84 (1995) 301–20, at 301–2.

[12] Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus 2.653. Finnis argues that sexual intimacy between two members of the same sex can by their very nature accomplish no more than what is expressed in casual sex, sex contracted with a prostitute, or solitary masturbation. (See Finnis, “Law, Morality, and ‘Sexual Orientation,”’ 1049, 1067.) Some critics of course object strenuously to this description of gay and lesbian sexual activity, but this debate need not be entered here. See Paul J. Weithman, “Natural Law, Morality, and Sexual Complementarity,” in David M. Estlund and Martha C. Nussbaum, ed., Sex, Preference, and Family: Essays on Law and Nature (New York: Oxford University, 1997) especially 239–41.

[13] John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980) 147.

[14] Finnis, “Law, Morality, and ‘Sexual Orientation,”’ 1070, emphasis in original text. See also Robert P. George, “’Same-Sex Marriage’ and ‘Moral Neutrality,”’ in Christopher Wolfe, ed., Homosexuality and American Public Life (Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 1999) 141–53.

[15] Finnis, as [14]

[16] Weithman, “Natural Law, Morality, and Sexual Complementarity” 242–43.

[17] Stephen Macedo, “Homosexuality and the Conservative Mind,” Georgetown Law Journal 84 (December 1995) 261–300, at 282; emphasis in the original text.

[18] Stephen Macedo, as [17]

[19] http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Aquinas.pdf

Chris Morley’s complete series on natural law

Natural Law, Pure Reason and Vatican Jargon. (queeringthechurch.com)
Sex and Catholics 2: Gender perspectives and Evolution (queeringthechurch.com)
Sex and Catholics: the problems in Natural Law (queeringthechurch.com)
Sex and Catholics 3: Vatican II and Modern Specialists (queeringthechurch.com)
“Against Nature?”: Exclusive HETEROsexuality, and HomoPHOBIA.(queeringthechurch.com)

Sexuality and gender

Can One Be Both Gay and Christian / Catholic?

March 7, 2016 Terence Leave a comment

Gay Times notes that

Christmas. It’s the time of love, good will and John Lewis adverts. But lest we forget, for millions of Christians, it’s also the birthday of Jesus Christ.

Which segues us quite nicely into lifting the lid off of one of the biggest debates in modern times. Can you be gay and live within the teachings and values of Christianity?

Framing this a debate, they have published the responses of Rev Jeremy Pemberton, an openly gay, married Anglican priest, and of Matthew Parris, gay columnist, former MP, and self-proclaimed committed atheist.

Unfortunately, both these good men have it right in part – and completely miss the point Of course you can be both gay and Christian – as countless numbers of openly gay and lesbian Christians demonstrate. And of course, if one does believe in God, it’s more important to pay attention to what God wants of me, than to what I want of God.

What neither of these have pointed out, is that for one who is naturally gay – that is precisely what God wants. On the one hand, ideas of radical inclusion, justice and equality are at the core of the Christian gospels. So too, are ideas of honesty and personal integrity. The Catholic Church formal teaching accepts, for instance, that a same-sex orientation is entirey natural, and discourages attempts to change it. The Catholic Catechism also states clearly, that each of us should “accept” our sexual identity, and integrate it into our personality. Hence, if our natural orientation is towards the same sex, if we are in fact gay or lesbian, even the Catholic Church teaches that we should accept this – and furthermore, that others should, too. Catholics are officially told to treat gay and lesbian people with “respect, sensitivity, and compassion”, and should avoid any malice in speech or in words, or any form of unjust discrimination.

That is not of course, the end of it. The Church also teaches that while to BE gay is OK, to act on this in sexual expression is not – thereby contravening its own insistence on non-discrimination and the rest. It raises the alternative question, not “can one be gay and Christian”, but “can one be gay and celibate?”, Clearly, within the framework of Catholicisma and other mainstream Christian denominations, once can certainly be gay – as long as one refrains from sexual activity. I suspect that Matthew Parris (and many others) who believe that one cannot be both gay and Christian, really meant that one who is sexually abstinent, cannot be considered truly “gay”.

I’m not goning to go into that question, how do we define “gay”. Instead, I will pursue the much more controversial topic, can one be Christian, gay and also sexually active? I have no doubt at all that the answer is absolutely, yes.

There is nothing in either the Christian or Jewish scriptures that says anything at all against “homosexuality”, not even a single word – for the simple reason that neither the word nor the concept existed in Biblical times. At best, there are no more than half a dozen isolated verses which, taken out of context, appear to oppose sexual acts between men. Closer inspection shows that even these few texts may have been badly mistranslated, misinterpreted or incorrectly applied, and have no relevance at all to loving, committed sexual relationships.

Furthermore, although it is certainly true that formal Catholic teaching today, and that of most other denominations, is that any sexual acts between men are inherently sinful, this was not always so, and is probably the result of what Pope Benedict once described as the “distorted tradition” in Christian history, against which we must be always on our guard. It is more likely that the original proscription was not against relationships based on equality between the partners, but against exploitative sexual acts, in which a powerful man took advantage of his superior position to assuage his lusts on his social inferiors.

Finally and above all, even if we accept the dubious proposition that Church opposition to same-sex relationships may be justified by scripture and tradition, we must always bear in mind that the sexual rules are only one small part of Catholic teaching – and in the hierarchy of “levels” of Church teaching, occupy the bottom rung, which does not require assent. Catholic teaching has always insisted on the primacy of conscience, and accepts that a Catholic may in good conscience, simply disagree with the teaching on sexual rules, and ignore it. Other denominations demonstrate this respect for conscience even more explicitly, in the increasing acceptance of openly gay or lesbian, partnered pastors, bishops and moderators.

Parris is absolutely right in saying that Christians should be asking what does God want of us? It is in fact a commonplace in Christian theology, that what God wants of us, is precisely what is best for us. For gay and lesbian Christians, that must include accepting our sexual identity, exercising it responsibly, and living lives of integrity and honesty.

The really important question for Christians, gay or otherwise and for gay people, Christian or otherwise, is not can one have a sexual life with integrity – but what does that mean? Does responsible sexual ethics require that we restrict sexual activity to expression within loving and committed, mutually faithful monogamous partnerships? Is there a place for sex during courtship, before making a permanet commitment, or for simple recreational sex? If so, how do we guard against harmless but regular recreational sex crossing over to irresponsible sexual addiction?

These are the really important questions that should be occupying us – not the simplistic non-question of “can one be gay and Christian?”

History, Queer Saints and Martyrs

Uganda Martyrs: Charles Lwangwa and companions

June 3, 2014 Terence 5 Comments

For queer Christians, the phrase “Ugandan Martyrs” carries a tragic double meaning. In Catholic hagiography, it refers to the execution / martyrdom in 1886 of a band of young men, pages in the Royal court of the Bugandan King Mwanga II, who had converted to Christianity and thereafter resisted his sexual advances. June 6th, is the anniversary of their joint beatification by Pope Benedict XV in 1920. Their feast day, known as the Feast of Charles Lwanga and companions, is celebrated annually on June 3rd.

Uganda_Martyrs

From a modern LGBT point of view, there is a quite different significance, almost it’s polar opposite. This perspective recalls that in the cultural context of the time, King Mwanga’s expectation of sexual service from his pages did not make him a perverted monster, as seen by the missionaries. Before the arrival of European colonials, different forms of homosexual practice and non-conformist gender expression were commonplace across Africa. Seen in this light, the execution of the pages was a legal penalty for resisting customary law – and the introduction by foreign missionaries of what has since become deeply entrenched cultural homophobia.

In recent years, the flames of homophobia have been further fanned by missionaries, this time especially by American evangelicals, who have promoted draconian legislation to criminalize homosexuality, carrying harsh penalties for those convicted of transgressions. Along with the legal penalties, the popular mood in Uganda has become so hostile, that life for ordinary gay and lesbian people in the country has become exceedingly difficult. Even to be suspected of being gay, frequently frequently leads not only to simple social ostracism, but also to outright exclusion from homes and families, to discrimination in employment and social services, to police harassment, to violence, and even to murder, such as that of David Kato. For many LGBT people, the only viable response is to leave the country entirely as refugees seeking asylum abroad.

So, the double meaning of the phrase “Ugandan Martyrs”: from the traditional Catholic perspective, the martyrs are those who were executed in 1886 for sticking by their Christian faith, in the face of Royal commands to renounce it. For modern gays and lesbians, the words refer to all those who are persecuted or even murdered, often in the name of the Christian religion, for their sexuality.

For a more extended analysis and reflection on the martyrs, and what this commemoration means for queer people of faith, see Kittredge Cherry at Jesus in Love Blog, who introduced her post on the feast day, by observing (accurately) that

Tough questions about homosexuality, religion and LGBT rights are raised by the Uganda Martyrs whose feast day is today (June 3).

Recommended Books:

Epprecht, Marc: Sexuality and Social Justice in Africa: Rethinking Homophobia and Forging Resistance (African Arguments)
Yemisi Ilesanmi: Freedom To Love For ALL: Homosexuality is not Un-African
Roscoe, Will: Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities

Uganda Martyrs raise questions on homosexuality, religion and LGBT rights (jesusinlove.blogspot.com)
David Kato: Ugandan LGBT rights activist (jesusinlove.blogspot.com)

History, Queer Saints and Martyrs

Rev. Phebe Ann Coffin Hannaford, Pioneering “Lesbian” Minister

June 2, 2014 Terence Leave a comment

b. May 6, 1829
d. June 2, 1921

Gay and lesbian clergy have been around for a long time – right from the start of ordained ministry (barring some quibbles over terminology: the words “gay” and “lesbian” do not apply directly to the earliest years). Even in modern times, there are numerous reports of openly gay or lesbian clergy going back a lot further than I had recognised. Among many who are described as the “first” in one or other specific field, the earliest clear example I have come across (so far) is Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford, who was raised a Quaker,where she was accustomed to full participation by women, was briefly a Baptist, and finally ordained in the Universalist church in 1968, claiming to have been the first woman of any denomination ordained in New England. She was also plainly and openly “lesbian”, many years before the term or concept was widely recognized.

Phebe Ann Coffin was born into a Quaker family in Siasconset, on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, the only child of the merchant and shipowner George W. Coffin and his wife Phebe Ann (Barnard) Coffin. Both were Quakers and direct descendants of the island’s first white settlers, Tristram Coffin and Peter Folger.

Phebe lived amidst women who bore the responsibilities of daily life as the whaling men were at sea. These two influences made Phebe an extraordinarily independent woman. She was educated in public and private schools on the island, tutored in mathematics and Latin and her talents were encouraged at home. She was a formidable scholar and active reformer: she wrote the first biography of Lincoln to be published after his death, and was active in both the abolitionist and women’s movements.

She spoke openly of her desire to be a Quaker preacher. She took the pledge at the early age of 8 and at age 18 was chaplain and treasurer of the Daughters of Temperance and Deputy Grand Worthy Chief Templar in the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts.

She taught school on Cape Cod and in Nantucket until her marriage in 1849 to Dr. Joseph H. Hanaford, a homeopathic physician and school teacher. She joined her husband’s Baptist church. Their son, Howard, was born in 1841 and their daughter, Florence, in 1854.

Living in Beverly during the Civil War, her commitment as an abolitionist led her to relinquish her Quaker pacifism. As her marriage was failing she supported and educated her children with her writing. Her contact with Universalist women opened up a world of activism for the rights of women. In 1868 she was ordained a minister in the Universalist church. From 1874, she was pastor to a congregation in New Jersey, but after her initial three year term, controversy arose over her reappointment which she did not get.

The controversy was nominally over her involvement in the “women’s issue” (ie, the suffragette movement), but in reality it was her relationship with coworker Ellen Miles, which had begun in 1870. Newspaper clippings preserved in Hanaford’s scrapbook reported that the disgruntlement among congregation members was, in fact, over Hanaford’s liaison with Miles, whom the papers called the ‘minister’s wife.’ Hanaford, it seems, was not simply asked to cease her women’s rights activities, but more specifically, to ‘dismiss’ Miss Miles… their letters testify to a deep and abiding affection. The two remained life-long companions, separated after forty-four years together only by Miles’s death in 1914.

After her failure to be reappointed in New Jersey, she attempted to set up a new congregation of her own. However, when her dissident New Jersey congregation applied for formal recognition and was rejected by the General Universalist Convention in 1878, Hanaford had no settled pulpit, and for years she conducted lecturing and preaching tours across New England and the Middle Atlantic and Western states. Deprived of formal ministry, she created a successful independent ministry of her own – ultimately achieving high honour in the early twentieth century , when she was asked to officiate at the at the funeral services for two leading women’s rights activists of the nineteenth century: the feminist philosopher Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the woman-suffrage organizer Susan B. Anthony. The two friends, who had shared a life of labor, died within four years of each other, and Hanaford had known them both well.

After Ellen’s death Phebe lived with her granddaughter in Basom, New York where she was isolated from the activities she enjoyed. Both her children predeceased her. She voted in the New York election but not in the federal election of 1920. The family moved to Rochester, New York where she died alone in her bedroom. She was buried in an unmarked grave in Orleans, New York next to her daughter Florence Hanaford Warner.

There is a great deal in the story of this remarkable woman for us to reflect on and learn from. The story of her extraordinary achievement as a woman in defying and transcending gender boundaries as an impressive scholar and pioneer female ordained minister is remarkable in itself. Thereafter, after commencing a new life committed to a woman, she was confronted by a demand from her congregation to give up her partner and conform, or to face the loss of her ministry. Courageously, she chose commitment and truth over expedience, and paid the price. She persevered independently for decades, forging an independent ministry where she was unable to work within the formal structures – and ultimately achieved honour and recognition for it.

Rev Hanaford deserves to be better remembered and celebrated.Source:A Paper Trail: Piecing Together the Life of Phebe Hanaford

Church history, Queer Saints and Martyrs

SS Benedicta, (6 May) and Galla (5 October), Roman nuns – and lovers?

May 6, 2014 Terence Leave a comment

One of the curiosities of the Catholic tradition of honouring our saints and martyrs, is how hagiography seamlessly combines historical biography, myth with collective amnesia. The stories of Saints Patrick and Brigid of Ireland, for instance, are replete with well-known legends that have absolutely no verifiable foundation in historical fact, and the delightful story of St Wilgefortis (aka Uncumber), the crucified bearded woman, turns out to have a much more plausible basis in reality. For many other saints, the distortions of hagiography are not just the accretions that are added by popular imagination, but the important details that are so often omitted in the transmission down the ages. St Paulinus, for instance, is widely honoured for his missionary work and for the impressive quality of his Latin devotional poetry. The standard Catholic sources on the saints, however, discreetly omit any reference to his other poetic legacy – equally fine homoerotic verse addressed to his boyfriend, Ausonius.

The story of Saints Galla and Benedicta of Rome may be another example of this selective memory.

Neither of these is particularly well-known, and Benedicta is even less-so than Galla, but I start with her. There are references to her scattered across the internet, but they all seem to come down to a few lines similar to these, from Catholic Online:

Mystic and nun. Benedicta lived in a convent founded by St. Galla in Rome. Pope St. Gregory the Great states that St. Peter appeared in a vision to warn her of her approaching death.

This seems innocuous enough, until it is set against the parallel warning of imminent death that St Gregory also gave to the better known St Galla.

From a large selection of on-line sources, Wikipedia sums up the key uncontested points of her story, those widely reported elsewhere:

Galla was the daughter of Roman patrician Symmachus the Younger, who was appointed consul in 485. Galla was also the sister-in-law of Boethius. Her father, Symmachus the Younger, was condemned to death, unjustly, by Theodoric in 525. Galla was then married but was soon widowed, just over a year after marriage. It was believed that she grew a beard, to avoid further offers of marriage. Being wealthy, she decided to retreat to theVatican Hill, and found a hospital and a convent, near St. Peter’s Basilica. Galla is reputed to have once healed a deaf and mute girl, by blessing some water, and giving it to the girl to drink. Galla remained there for the rest of her life, tending to the sick and poor, before dying in 550, of breast cancer.

Notice, please, that little sentence tucked away in the middle, and its cautious qualifier: “it was believed that she grew a beard, to avoid further offers of marriage.” This strategy of a holy woman, to grow a beard to avoid marriage, is precisely that adopted by Wilgefortis. Her legend appears to have a much more mundane explanation. I have no knowledge of any firm evidence to either corroborate, or to contradict, Galla’s legendary beard. What interests me is the rest of Galla’s story, and its treatment in hagiography.

An article at Catholic Culture is a good example. It seizes on the beard, and uses it as a moral fable, encouraging us to “dare to be different”. Catholic Culture, however, claims that the beard story was only a threat, and the beard never did grow.

A story about St. Galla of Rome, illustrating the importance to not follow the crowd, but to be oneself. Legend says that St. Galla, after becoming a widow, grew a beard to avoid any offers of remarriage.

Not only girls who want to be nuns, but girls who just want to be good have to ignore a marvelous lot of nonsense from those who “follow the pack.” Life will pass you by, they say, and you won’t have any fun if you don’t do as we do! About as fast as St. Galla grew her beard, it will!

So, then dare to be different – the cause of following holiness. But there’s one little detail also included in the same article, which they do not comment on – a detail that has been omitted from all the other accounts I have seen about Galla. These all tell how, as reported by St Gregory, St Peter appeared to Galla in her final illness to predict the date of her imminent death. The other reports omit the crucial detail that the deaths of Galla and Benedicta were directly linked – at Galla’s express request to Peter:

One night she saw St. Peter standing before her between two candlesticks and she asked him if her sins were forgiven her. St. Peter nodded and said, “Come, follow me.” But Galla asked if her dear friend Benedicta might come too. Yes, she might, said St. Peter, after thirty days — and that is precisely what happened. St. Galla and another holy woman departed this life for heaven three days later, and Benedicta thirty days after them.

As Censor Librorum at Nihil Obstat noted in her reflection on Galla last December, a woman who first grows or threatens to grow a beard to avoid marriage, and then implores Saint Peter to allow her female beloved to accompany her into heaven, is not displaying a conventional heterosexual orientation.

I have no hesitation in hesitation in adding Saints Galla and Benedicta to my collection of queer saints and lovers.

Marriage / family, News

Gay Marriage – UGANDA!

December 22, 2013 Terence 2 Comments

Let us never forget, that in Catholic (and other) theology, it is not the priest or minister that administers the sacrament of matrimony, but the two spouses, who administer it to each other, in the sight of God and the community. It is also not the state that makes a marriage, but the mutual commitment of the spouses: all that the state does, is recognize and register the marriage. Informal, unregistered marriages are common in many parts of Africa,

This lesbian wedding in Uganda is thus as valid as any other unregistered marriage – even if it will garner direct opposition and possible prosecution from the law, instead of the approval it deserves.

Lesbian wedding held in Uganda day after anti-gay bill passed

Kenyan activist reports a lesbian wedding the day after Ugandan parliament passes bill threatening life imprisonment for gay people

22 DECEMBER 2013 | BY ANNA LEACH

A brave lesbian couple in Uganda has held a wedding a day after parliament passed a bill that threatens gay people with life in prison if caught expressing their sexuality.

Kenya gay rights activist Denis Nzioka tweeted a photograph of a celebrant and two women in wedding garb and said that Ugandan activist Kasha Jacqueline had attended the marriage. ‘This is what I call guts,’ he said.

via Lesbian wedding held in Uganda day after anti-gay bill passed | Gay Star News.

African LGBT activists praise, mourn Nelson Mandela (76crimes.com)
Living in Fear: Gay and Persecuted in Uganda (creativetimereports.org)
Uganda: LGBT activists bravely stage pride parade in Kampala (sendson04.wordpress.com)
Dispute over LGBTI clinics in Uganda (76crimes.com)
Statement from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: Uganda’s New Draconian Anti-LGBT Legislation (dailyqueernews.wordpress.com)

00 Uncategorized

Vida Dutton Scudder, American Lesbian Saint for Our Times

December 15, 2012 Terence 2 Comments

Vida Dutton Scudder is a rare example of a modern lesbian who is a recognized Christian saint (recognized by the US Episcopal Church, not the Roman Catholics). Her work and message are particularly relevant to the twentieth century, as we grapple with an economic crisis triggered in effect by corporate and consumer greed.

Born in 1861, over a long life Scudder was an educator, writer, and welfare activist in the social gospel movement. Much of her thinking has particular relevance to us today, as we grapple with a financial and economic crisis precipitated in effect by a corporate and consumer culture marked by unrestrained greed. Throughout her life Scudder’s primary relationships and support network were women. From 1919 until her death, Scudder was in a relationship with Florence Converse, with whom she lived.

After earning a BA degree from Smith College in 1894, in 1895 she became one of the first two American women admitted to graduate study at Oxford university. After returning to Boston, Scudder Continue reading Vida Dutton Scudder, American Lesbian Saint for Our Times →

Uncategorized

November 10: Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin, Pioneer Lesbian Activists

November 9, 2012 Terence Leave a comment

Del Martin

b. May 5, 1921

d. August 27, 2008

Phyllis Lyon

b. November 10, 1924

“Two extraordinary people … that have spent the greater part of a half century … fighting for their right to live the way so many of us, frankly, take for granted.“

– San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon founded the first lesbian organization in the United States and have fought for more than 50 years for the rights of lesbians and gays. On June 16, 2008, Martin and Lyon became the first gay couple to be legally married in California.

Martin and Lyon both earned degrees in journalism. While working as journalists in Seattle, the two became romantically involved. The couple relocated to San Francisco and moved in together on Valentine’s Day 1953.

In 1955, finding it hard to develop a social network in San Francisco, Martin, Lyon and a small group of women founded the first lesbian organization, called the Daughters of Bilitis. The name was inspired by Pierre Louys’s “Songs of Bilitis,” a collection of poems celebrating lesbian sexuality.

Though it was intended to be a secret society, Martin and Lyon wanted to make the Daughters of Bilitis more visible. The group began publishing a monthly magazine, called The Ladder, which was the first-ever lesbian publication. As editors of the magazine, they capitalized the word “lesbian” every time it appeared.

In 1964, while fighting to change California sex laws criminalizing homosexuals, the couple joined religious and gay community leaders to form the Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH). This organization was at the forefront of the movement to gain religious support on gay rights issues. Both women served on the founding CRH board of directors.

In 2004, when gay marriage was offered in San Francisco, Martin and Lyon were the first to wed. A California appellate court ruling subsequently invalidated their marriage. Then in May 2008, a California Supreme Court decision provided same-sex couples the right to marry. On June 16, 2008, they were the first same-sex couple married in California. The wedding was officiated by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Martin and Lyon have published two books together, “Lesbian/Woman” (1972) and “Lesbian Love and Liberation” (1973). On their 50th anniversary, the documentary “No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon” premiered. In 2005, the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association inducted Martin and Lyon into the LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame for their pioneering work on The Ladder. In 2007, they received the 2007 Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Pioneer Award.

Bibliography

“Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon.” (The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Religious Archives Network).

Kornblum, Janet. “Gay Activists Blaze Trail for half century.” USA Today. March 4, 2004

“Lesbian Pioneers Wed at San Franciso City Hall.” CNN. June 17, 2008

Streitmatter, Rodger. “Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin.” National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association: LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame. June 5, 2008

Articles

Gordon, Rachel. “Lesbian Pioneer Activists See Wish Fulfilled.” San Francisco Chronicle. June 16, 2008

Marshall, Carolyn. “Dozens of Gay Couples Marry in San Francisco Ceremonies.” The New York Times. February 13, 2004

McKinley, Jesse. “Same-Sex Marriages Begin in California.” The New York Times. June 17, 2008

Books

Lesbian/Woman (1972)

Lesbian love and liberation (The Yes book of sex) (1973)
Battered Wives (1976)

Other Resources

No Secrets Anymore: The Times of Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon (2003)

Groundspark: Igniting Change Through Film. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons’s Wedding Video

Bible, New Testament, Uncategorized

You Say They’re Homosexuals? Jesus Says, “So What? That Doesn’t Matter. You Come, Follow Me.”

October 20, 2012 Terence Leave a comment

I received an email which voiced numerous objections to the idea that Jesus accepted some sexually active gays and lesbians, which I document from Luke 17. I replied to him, “You’ve covered far too much ground to answer in one email. Let me answer one point from your first paragraph.” He had written

But I’ve seen posts from you that say that Jesus “taught” on gay and lesbians. And that from Luke 17:34-35, that God “accepts” gays and lesbians. But that is NOT what Jesus said. All Jesus said was “there are two men in a bed… two women grinding” (if you are correct). Jesus didn’t “teach” ANYTHING in these verses. Jesus didn’t say whether it was wrong or right.

True. Jesus didn’t say whether it was wrong or right. What he said was that it didn’t matter, that it was irrelevant.

You left something out. In verses 34 and 35 we read, “one shall be taken, and the other left.” One member of each pair is acceptable to God, and one is not. Based on the testimony of Luke 17, then at least some sexually active gays and lesbians are acceptable to God, and delivered from judgment. (I’ve had some literalists ask me if I believe that 50 percent of gays and lesbians are going to heaven, which is quite silly.)

I tell you, in that night,
there shall be two men in one bed;
the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.
Two women shall be grinding together;
the one shall be taken, and the other left.

(Luke 17:34-35, KJV)

It is the separation of the righteous and the unrighteous that is the key point of my thesis. The fact that some sexually active gays and lesbians are acceptable to God is the point I am making.

The point of this passage is that homosexuality and homosexual activity are not factors in a person’s acceptability to God. God does not take sexual orientation into account. Jesus ignores it.

-read more at « Bible-Thumping Liberal.

(emphasis added)

The Gospels’ Queer Values (queersaints.wordpress.com)
Ron Goetz: Straight Ally in Faith, “Bible – Thumping Liberal” (queeringthechurch.com)

Church history, Theology

Sex and Catholics: the Problems in Natural Law (1)

April 2, 2012 Terence 4 Comments

(Guest post by Christopher Morley)

Something called ‘Natural Law’ sets the ground rules for all Catholic teachings about sex. Natural Law means the only Catholic approved sex is vaginal intercourse that can lead to procreation, and only when it is between a married woman and man couple. Any other sex at all is prohibited as ‘unnatural’ and the Church usually says it is a mortal sin. Many people search their informed conscience and disagree with both teachings and sinfulness. The common use of ‘artificial’ contraception within most Catholic marriages in the developed world is just one example of this.

Ancient origins of Natural Law

The Natural Law rules about sex for Catholics are truly ancient: mostly they come from St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), and he got a lot of his ideas from ancient Greeks like Plato and Aristotle, around 1,500 years earlier, a few hundred years BC. Interesting fact: ancient Greek texts had just come to Christian Europe’s attention because they were rescued from oblivion by Islamic scholars.

Aquinas and his homosexual deception

Another little known fact – Aquinas cheated and bent what Aristotle said about innate, natural homosexual behaviour, to help justify his and the Church’s condemnation of all homosexual behaviour. Aquinas, instead of talking of innate behaviour, said homosexual behaviour was something people acquired which then becomes ‘second nature’ to them – in other words Aquinas made it something people choose, instead of being born with. A choice is deliberate, so his twisting of Aristotle’s facts and reasoning helped the Church to call homosexual behaviour a deliberate sin, and Aquinas made it the particularly grave sin of ‘unnatural vice’. We’ll examine exactly how Aquinas performed this deception trick in Part Four of this series of posts on Natural Law.

Challenges to Natural Law: cracks in the dam

It is no surprise that something so ancient and so strict about how humans may sexually express our love is being seriously challenged in the 21st century. The Natural Law dam that is Catholic sex teaching is showing some serious cracks. Because Catholic Natural Law bans any lesbian and gay sexual expression, lesbians and gay men in particular have been asking tough questions about how sound the Church’s teaching really is. Many of us are not convinced at all by the Church’s wobbly defence of its Natural Law basis. Heterosexual women and men too have disputed the contraception ban especially, since the 1960s. Altogether there’s very many frustrated and unhappy Catholics who are urging a major sexual morality rethink, including expert Catholic moral theologians and ethicists. Outside the Church, even secular natural law theorists are struggling to hold the creaking Natural Law sexual morality edifice in one piece. It’s past its sell-by date.

Natural Law explored and tested : Part One of Four

This is the first of four posts, and the series will investigate the strange and unfamiliar world of Catholic Natural Law. We’ll find out why its rules about sex are so strict. We’ll reveal its male viewpoint and discover that significant things about women’s bodies, needs and ideas are simply ignored by the Church. All kinds of experts and thinkers have been turning inside out the Catholic teachings on sex and Natural Law, and very few are convinced by what they find. Catholic teaching on sex and relationships is a mess and a lot of senior people now realise this. Changing the Church’s sexual teaching is inevitable, but won’t come easily or quickly. But there are signs that change is on its way.

Catholic moral theologians’ ideas explored

This ‘Natural law’ and sex series ties in with posts from Terence about Catholic moral theologians discussing lesbian and gay sexuality. We’ve heard about the ideas of:

Dr James B Nickoloff, is an openly gay Catholic theologian who tells it straight. It’s not lesbians and gay men who are ‘intrinsically disordered’ but Catholic sexual teaching on lesbian and gay relationships. He tells us his idea of what the path ahead looks like for lesbians and gay men in the Church.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson tells us the teaching for heterosexuals must change before it can change for lesbian and gay people. He wants the Church to shift the sexual rules from an obsession with sex acts, to focusing on the people, relationships and doing no harm.

James Alison is a priest and theologian who is openly gay and keen to help the Church get out of its rut of inexcusably blaming lesbians and gay men.

There are also heterosexual Catholic ethicists writing on similar themes: Todd Salzmann and Michael Lawler, who wrote ‘The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology’, and
Sister Margaret Farley, author of ‘Just Love: a Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics’, among other moral ethicists.

‘Disordered’, wrong teachings, in need of significant review

Each of these experts in their own way have criticised the Church’s teaching on sexual morality as ‘disordered’, wrong, and badly in need of thorough updating and review, for everyone, heterosexuals and lesbians and gay men.

Aquinas: ‘Doctor of the Church’

The Natural Law and theological influence of St Thomas Aquinas, who is a ‘Doctor of the Church’, gives his ancient work particular authority in the Church canon and tradition. His contribution and the high esteem in which he is held by the Church is a major reason why it is especially slow and reluctant to review and change traditional teaching and interpretations of scripture on sexual morals. You have to be pretty brave to say St Thomas got things wrong, when he has a title of distinction for getting theology right. But that’s what more and more experts, and lay people, are doing.

Every time the Pope or Bishops talk about lesbian and gay sexuality and gay marriage as ‘unnatural’ or ‘intrinsically disordered’ in Pastoral letters, Vatican documents and the Catechism, that’s a reference to Natural Law. Why is most contraception called ‘artificial’ contraception by the Church (no doctors use that phrase)? That’s because using contraception is ‘unnatural’ according to the Church, it’s against Natural Law, because it blocks natural procreation.

Natural Law

Natural law is deductive, based on the idea that everything in the world has its own natural purpose, and that we can work out the purpose of things through observing, reasoning and deducing things, like a detective. Thomas for example says, about the sex that is permissible:

Wherefore it is no sin if one, by the dictate of reason, makes use of certain things in a fitting manner and order for the end to which they are adapted, provided this end be something truly good.

Natural law deduces that fulfilling the proper natural purpose of our human design is the only ‘good’ use of our human faculties, and any misuse, contrary to their natural purpose, will be against natural law. Noses are for breathing and smelling things like roses, not for snorting cocaine.

So our moral rules are derived from the nature of the world and the nature of human beings. Since humans are by nature rational beings, we should behave in ways that conform to our sensible, rational nature. Thus, Aquinas and the Church derive natural law and moral rules from the inherent nature of human beings.

Homosexuality in nature

However defenders of orthodox interpretations of Natural Law insist that it does not mean everything “as found in nature”. So the same sex behaviour that is widely seen in all kinds of creatures in the natural world is not proof that this is natural for some humans too. Some even contend that ‘homosexuality in animals is a myth’, such as the conservative Dr Antonio Pardo, a Spanish professor of Bioethics. He argues that there is no such thing as homosexual behaviour in nature, and while some animal behaviours just look homosexual, these can all be explained by dominance and the strong sexual urge. Few bioethicists who’ve studied the phenomenon share his opinion.

His contention that all animal same sex behaviour is explained by dominance and the sex urge, simply disregards the breadth and depth of the available zoological evidence and the diversity of reasons why different creatures engage in a huge variety of non-procreative sexual behaviours, and why same sex animal couples raise young. Only some of the animal diversity of sexual exuberance can be characterised as homosexual, and ‘dominance’ is clearly not the real explanation. See this detailed, illustrated discussion, by Terence last week.

Another favourite dismissive argument is that (to use human behaviour labels) incest, cannibalism and rape are also found among animals, and those are immoral for humans and so too must be all homosexual behaviour. That’s a weak argument because it ignores the reality of the very specific all-encompassing Catholic prohibition on all sex, including among heterosexuals, which is not strictly marital vaginal penetration open to procreation. However we know very many human societies, including historial and current Christian societies, have or had no such taboos on other heterosexual behaviours, and some human societies find no problem in homosexual expression. Most people can see a clear category difference between causing harm to others (rape, cannibalism), and taking irrational risks of genetic abnormalities appearing in the longer term (incest), and the mutual loving of chosen life partners (homosexuality).

Arguing humans can only enjoy a one dish sexual menu (marital vaginal penetration for procreation only) because that is all that can be justified from the evidence of nature and ‘right reason’ is just bizarre. Different human societies in different places and times have their individual sexual moral codes of behaviour, all much more varied. These are all part of natural human social diversity. Attempting to exclude homosexual expression as uniquely transgressive for all humans makes no logical sense. Even Aristotle did not exclude homosexual expression as unnatural in law.

This bar on homosexual expression and all heterosexual sexual activity that is not marital vaginal penetration for procreation, is all the creation of Aquinas and his successors, using reasoning that is directed to a series of ends found by reference to pre-existing misinterpretations of Old and New Testament scripture and of Church tradition.

The evidence was selected, sometimes twisted from Aristotle’s original, and Thomas’s reasoning happened to suit particular and preferred Catholic conclusions.

English translations of Thomas’s writings on sex

First in these translations of Aquinas is what he has to say on ‘unnatural vice‘; this is much broader than simply lesbian and gay sexual expression, and includes heterosexual sex that is “not observing the natural manner of copulation, either as to undue means, or as to other monstrous and bestial manners of copulation,” and masturbation and bestiality. These are all grave sins in Aquinas’s mind. Few people these days can accept that masturbation is in the gravest category of sins. If that’s OK, what does that mean for the rest on Aquinas’s grave list?

The key passage dealing with lesbian and gay sex, masturbation, bestiality and unnatural heterosexual sex is this:

As stated above (A6,9) wherever there occurs a special kind of deformity whereby the venereal act is rendered unbecoming, there is a determinate species of lust. This may occur in two ways: First, through being contrary to right reason, and this is common to all lustful vices; secondly, because, in addition, it is contrary to the natural order of the venereal act as becoming to the human race: and this is called “the unnatural vice.” This may happen in several ways. First, by procuring pollution, without any copulation, for the sake of venereal pleasure: this pertains to the sin of “uncleanness” which some call “effeminacy.”[=masturbation] Secondly, by copulation with a thing of undue species, and this is called “bestiality.” Thirdly, by copulation with an undue sex, male with male, or female with female, as the Apostle states (Rm. 1:27): and this is called the “vice of sodomy.” Fourthly, by not observing the natural manner of copulation, either as to undue means, or as to other monstrous and bestial manners of copulation. [=non-procreative heterosexual sex acts]

The second is about sex in general, including fornication, incest, adultery, rape etc.

The key passage about permissible heterosexual sex is here:

I answer that: A sin, in human acts, is that which is against the order of reason. Now the order of reason consists in its ordering everything to its end in a fitting manner. Wherefore it is no sin if one, by the dictate of reason, makes use of certain things in a fitting manner and order for the end to which they are adapted, provided this end be something truly good. Now just as the preservation of the bodily nature of one individual is a true good, so, too, is the preservation of the nature of the human species a very great good. And just as the use of food is directed to the preservation of life in the individual, so is the use of venereal acts directed to the preservation of the whole human race. Hence Augustine says (De Bono Conjug. xvi): “What food is to a man’s well being, such is sexual intercourse to the welfare of the whole human race.” Wherefore just as the use of food can be without sin, if it be taken in due manner and order, as required for the welfare of the body, so also the use of venereal acts can be without sin, provided they be performed in due manner and order, in keeping with the end of human procreation. [= vaginal penetration open to fertilisation]

Ancient Greek misreadings of nature

Scholars like James Boswell and other academics clearly trace Aquinas’s ideas back to Aristotle’s own misreadings of the sexual behaviour of animals. Other scholars point to Aquinas’s misrepresentation of Aristotle’s findings on human homosexual expression.

Ignorance of evolution and the female perspective

The ancient Greek roots of Natural Law and Aquinas’s contributions in the 13th century mean none of them knew anything about the processes of evolution which influence sexual behaviour throughout nature, and they also all saw things solely from a male perspective. We’ll come back to their ignorance of evolution and the male-only perspective later, because these are the origin of some big cracks in the natural law moral dam.

Aquinas, Creation and God

While Aristotle didn’t believe in any creation by a god (he believed the world had always existed) and simply used reasoning from observation of nature and form to deduce everything’s purpose, Aquinas believed in God’s creation. For Thomas the creator God was involved in designing the natural purpose of all things and the Bible helped him decide that natural purpose. So Catholic Natural Law is an odd mixture of nature’s supposed purposes, with the addition of Bible and God, whenever Aquinas needed to import these to buttress a version of Natural Law to suit him and the Church.

Body Parts decide the natural law of human sexuality

In considering human sexuality, the starting point is the purpose of various body parts. The purpose of eyes is to see, and you can deduce this from close examination of their parts and connections to the brain. The purpose of lungs is to breathe air and so oxygenate the blood and then expel waste carbon dioxide.

In this natural purpose design view, the penis has a dual purpose, excretion and procreation. In procreation it is designed to penetrate the vagina and deposit semen, in order to fertilise a woman’s egg.

Any other usage of the lungs than to breathe would be unnatural and irrational, and therefore morally wrong, as this is not part of God’s creation design for the lungs. Using the lungs to sniff glue to get high, or to smoke, or depriving the lungs of fresh air for the risky thrill of asphixiation, are neither natural nor rational, not part of their design purpose.

By the same token, using the penis purely for pleasure as in masturbation, or for penetration of other orifices, as in oral or anal sex is, in the Church’s strict conception of the natural purpose of things, neither natural nor rational. The Church teaches that natural and rational sexual faculty use is strictly intended by God only for procreation. Church teaching that limits sex to procreative vaginal sex within a married couple is tradition and scripture-based, with a Natural Law cloak of simplistic use of interlocking body parts. It wilfully ignores widespread natural human and animal sexual behaviours that are clearly not for procreation. It ignores Aristotle’s uncritical words about the sexual activities of innately homosexual men.

God and the Bible imported into natural law

Although it is called natural law, because God was the creator / designer of everything, Aquinas and the Church often import God and the Bible into nature to buttress their natural sexual morality conclusions, to justify excluding some uses of our sexual faculties which they designate as ‘unnatural’. It would be more honest for the Church to say unprocreative non-marital uses are un-Godly or un-Biblical, rather than un-Natural, against ‘natural law’. The fusion and confusion of natural and doctrinal, makes challenging the Church’s version of ‘natural law’ frustrating.

St Thomas Aquinas was in at least one key instance a naughty deceptive moral theologian, because he buried and distorted some key passages in Aristotle to suit the Church and his own anti-gay hostility, in order to render homosexual activity ‘unnatural’.

Slippery as eels

The deliberate blurring of the boundaries between what humans can reason solely from nature, and God’s presumed intentions for his human creation, makes the Church’s so-called ‘natural law’ limits on sexual behaviour problematic. God and interpretations of the Bible are imported to justify some behavioural rules that can’t be inferred by reason alone from observing nature and through pure reasoning to decide what would be ‘right conduct’. But the Church nonetheless calls this fusion ‘natural law’.

The Church does not use or recognise a 21st century scientific understanding of the natural world and evolution, but sticks with a Bible-infused 13th century conception of nature. This makes a rational discussion of sexual morality with the Church a problem, because ‘nature’ keeps shapeshifting between a quasi-scientific natural world view, and a theological, bible-based conception of the world of nature. In the middle of a piece of nature-based natural law, suddenly the Bible or God are produced out of a hat. The Aquinas model of natural law with added Bible and God means the Church sets the rules and so tries to win every argument, because whenever it is losing on nature grounds, it calls on its traditional interpretation of the bible and theology to rescue it.

What’s next in Part Two?
Next time, we will consider how the Church’s sexual teachings are distorted because they only look through male eyes.

We will carefully consider male and female sexual body parts which Aquinas and the Church ignore, and contemplate Natural Law through women’s eyes, for a really fresh perspective. It’s very satisfying seeing things differently.

More about Aquinas and Natural Law ethics

Natural Law and Homosexuality in the Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Farley, Margaret. “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” Continuum, 2006

Natural Law Part 2: Gender perspectives and evolution
Natural Law, Pure Reason and Vatican Jargon. (queeringthechurch.com)
Robinson 1: Hetero/Homo, Catholic Sexual Teaching Stands (Or Falls) Together(queeringthechurch.com)
“Against Nature?”: Exclusive HETEROsexuality, and HomoPHOBIA.(queeringthechurch.com)
Valuable Discussions of Christian Sexual Ethics: Geoffrey Robinson and Jeffrey John (bilgrimage.blogspot.com)
Thomas Aquinas, part 6: natural law | Tina Beattie (guardian.co.uk)
Bishop Robinson: Sexual Acts, or Relationships? (queeringthechurch.com)

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