A friend asked a group of people if they thought he were gay by choice or by birth. Everyone in the group, being sympathetic to his struggle, told him he has born that way and to be proud. For me the source of his same sex attraction does not matter. His real choice is in how he responds to it. Having same sex attraction is not a sin. Acting on it is. Having a strong desire for something does not justify embracing the desire and it does not matter if you were born with the desire or if it developed from an experience.
There is a perceived notion by some that the Catholic Church hates people with same sex attraction. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Because every human is fallen every human has been given a cross they have to bear in this life. The Church does not hate someone just because of the cross they have been given to bear. In fact the Church is more like Simon the Cyrene, the man who helped Jesus carry his cross to Calvary. The Church is made up of sinners, each with their own crosses. The Church loves sinners and stands ready to help every sinner bear their cross in this life. There is no cross the Church is not ready to help a sinner carry. One needs only to ask.
The root of the problem with same sex attraction is when one uses their desires as justification to engage in sexual activity. God created sex to be part of a fruitful marriage. Its first purpose is procreative. Pro-creative = For-creation= to bring about new life. The second purpose of sex is to strengthen the bond between husband and wife. The family is the foundation of all society. Family is the rock that human interaction is built upon. Destroy the family and you destroy society.
Sex was never intended to be about personal pleasure. The road to heaven is selflessness – giving to another. The road to hell is selfishness – taking for one’s self. When sex is done for selfish pleasure it leads towards hell. It does not glorify God or honor his design and intent.
Any sex done outside of the bonds of one man, one woman marriage is therefore sinful. It does not matter if it is between people of the same sex, unmarried people of the opposite sex, those cohabitating, or even masturbation. Even sex between married couples that intentionally ends in a way that is not open to life is sinful.
I have a theory that the forbidden fruit mentioned in the first book of the bible was actually sex. Adam and Eve were naked and innocent and did not know each other. The devil tempted Eve into having sex with him and she in turn then had sex with Adam. Their eyes were opened and they were ashamed. The union with the devil could have possibly conceived Cain and this is how evil entered into human nature. Adam’s greatest sin was in not protecting his wife in the garden. This is just something to ponder.
Sex is serious stuff simply because sex is holy. It is through the act of sex that man was given something the angels weren’t. God shared with man the ability to create life. The devil cannot create life, he can only corrupt it. That is something he has been doing since Adam and Eve were placed in the garden. The devil has convinced man that sex is for personal gratification. He has gotten us to sacrifice our children to him. He has gotten us to believe that contraception is a good thing. Contra-ception = against conception = to stop life. Contraception has led to sterile, fruitless marriages. It has weakened the bonds of marriage to the point that many no longer find a reason to be married. People now come together for what they can get for the self and not what they can give to the other. Once they stop getting it is time to move on. This in turn has destroyed the family. Once the foundation of a house has been destroyed the house falls. Society is in a death spiral. Most of the civilized world is below replacement rate – the rate of birth needed to just break even in the population. There are places in Europe where entire towns have closed simply because there is no one left to maintain them.
Through all of this the devil is laughing.
Death came into this world through selfishness in a garden.
Life was restored to the world through a garden by a celibate man born of a virgin woman.
Sex is holy and should only be used as it was designed.
Be a blessing to everyone you meet and allow them to be a blessing to you.
Very well written! Thanks for sharing this. It's a message much needed in our fallen world.