I'm trying to post more, bear with me. I'm aware it's not going.. you know, all that well.
With the steam that advocates of same-sex marriage have been picking up recently in the public eye, I figured I should comment on it a bit. I've actually written and rewritten this post a few times, mostly focusing on why same-sex marriage isn't really a thing (the idea being that I am no more "against" homosexual marriage as I am "against" square circles), but to be honest, that's been done to death and, although it's a purely secular, sociological argument, the fact that this is a religious blog will discredit my motives in many people's minds.
So forget
that noise.
Instead I'm going to address the issue from a slightly different point of view. Namely, why I hate the idea of identifying (or being identified by) people by sexual orientation. What I mean here is identifying yourselves or others through labels such as homosexual, heterosexual, bi, omni, whatever. By pushing these
attributes through everything else and placing them at the forefront, you reduce the
person they describe to the point of them effectively losing their humanity.
Anyways, the idea of someone being "attracted to men" or "attracted to women" is such a generalization to begin with. I dunno about you, but I'm attracted to individual women,
not women as a whole. To their personalities, and looks, and style, and idiosyncrasies, and all the other millions of things that factor into a person being a
person, and not an object that exists primarily for my own satisfaction. Are they all accessible? No, and rightfully so, but when you reduce yourself to a label that puts sex at the forefront, you cannot help but start viewing others through that lens of "how can this person fit in with the fact that I am a homosexual".
People like labels, there is something comforting about having a place for everything and having everything in its place. And that's fine for, oh I dunno, office supplies, but people don't work that way. The first and most important doctrine of the Church in regards to people is the idea of intrinsic human dignity. To put it simply, it means that every single human being to ever exist has a built-in worth that comes directly from the fact that they are created, sustained, and in the image of the creator God of the Universe. This worth cannot be taken away for any reason. But in modern society, people tend to hinge more and more of their worth on the things they do, the places they live, the people they know, the stuff they own. They begin to identify themselves by those things, and suddenly they are no longer people but simple walking lists of
stuff.
This is an exhausting way to live, and unsurprisingly there has been a push-back on this in recent years as people try to shed those chains by turning to some form of spirituality or another (to varying degrees of success). But while people question the practicality of labeling themselves by their deeds and stuff, the fallacy of identifying ourselves by our sexuality goes strong and, infact, has become somewhat of a cultural taboo to even begin to question. But it's the most damaging of the reductionist labels because it tells us that, ultimately, we are slaves to our desires, that everything we do and identify with must be viewed through the framework of our sexuality and, to put it bluntly, what we want to rub our genitals against.
Guys,
you are NOT your
genitals.
An excellent quote:
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.
Read the entire pastoral letter
here.
I'm going to follow up on this post soon with a discussion about how, while we are
not our genitals, we most certainly
are our bodies.
