I have often been puzzled by the notion held by
the religious right wing that homosexual sex is evil. I understand that somewhere in the bible it
says homosexuality is a sin, but the bible also says that if a bride is not a virgin
then she is to be taken to the village square and stoned to death by the men of
the village (a pretty Freudian punishment isn’t it?). Even though they still seem to do that in
some Islamist countries, no one in the religious right in the West is pushing
to stone non-virgin brides, so why are they so dedicated to punishing
homosexuality?
I think underneath it are old Puritanical
sensibilities about sex that sees "dirty" sex as so
abominable. Why the Puritans, and Islamists for that matter, think that
sex in inherently sinful except in the context of making babies is an
underlying question.
I think it has to do with the conflating
willpower and virtue, and seeing sex outside of the purpose of procreation as a
weak giving in to pleasure, i.e. the Sins of the Flesh, as sinful and against
God's purpose for sex, and demonstrating a lack of virtuous willpower. I
think the underlying belief and attitude in Puritanism and Islmamism is that
sex is for procreation, not for pleasure, and that seeking sex for pleasure is
the devil's road to debauchery and erosion of the holy masculine virtue of
willpower.
I think that the masculine virtue of willpower
is a wonderful virtue. But it’s not the
only virtue.
In the Catholic Church, it was considered (back
many decades ago when I was still a Catholic) that birth control using the
virtuous masculine energy of willpower was good. It was called the Rhythm method. Only have sex with your wife when she was
less likely to be fertile. Didn’t work
too well. But to use another wonderful
gift from God, intelligence, to develop contraception and abortion as a means
of controlling a woman’s reproductive life was considered a sin. Why is willpower more virtuous than
intelligence? I don’t think it is.
And, of course, I believe there is a wonderful
positive time to use willpower to avoid sex and that is not to commit
adultery. Cheating on a spouse is just a
dumb thing to do. It erodes the love in
the marriage. It’s not that exercising
willpower is in itself such a virtuous act, although it counts, but the
consequences of cheating harms your own marriage and the marriage of the
partner. Its consequences are
destructive. I think that is the reason
it is one of the Ten Commandments, it’s dumb and harmful, not that it’s a
virtuous exercise of willpower.
I think God’s purposes for sex are pretty easy
to understand. They are the functions of
sex. I think sex is for reproduction,
for love, and for pleasure. All of these
are part of nature and thus part of God’s intentions. Or so it seems to me.
So, to me, homosexual sex is perfectly in
keeping with God’s intentions. It is a
means of pleasure and of love. Just like
hetrosexual sex. The fact that it doesn’t
lead to procreation is incidental.
I am very glad to see our country move more in
the direction of dropping its shunning of homosexual men and women. More to go, and more to come, I am sure.
