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.
