Homosexuality

Definition and Distinctions

• Homosexuality is a type of sexual orientation characterized by sexual desire or romantic love exclusively or almost exclusively for people who are identified as being of the same sex. Homosexuality is different from:

• Transsexualism (also called transgender) is a core gender identity problem. It is basically an attempt to deny and reverse biologic sex by maintaining sexual identity with the opposite gender. Transsexuals do not alternate between gender roles. Instead they assume a fixed set of attitudes, feelings, fantasies, and choices consonant with those of the opposite sex, all of which clearly date back to early psychosexual development.

For example, in early childhood male transsexuals behave, talk, and fantasize as if they were girls. They do not grow out of feminine patterns, and they do not have any interests in their own sexual organs as evidences of their maleness or as organs for erotic behavior. The desire for sex change starts early and may culminate in assumption of a feminine lifestyle, hormonal treatment, and sue of surgical procedures, including castration and construction of a vagina.

On the other hand, female transsexuals are those who are assigned female sex and gender in childhood, generally on the basis of their external anatomy, but who take up a masculine lifestyle and undergo “sex change” by surgical and pharmaceutical means.

The terms generally used to refer to persons with transsexualism are transsexual persons or transgendered persons.

• Transvestism, in the primary sense of the term is the wearing of clothes and the enactment of a role of the opposite sex for the purpose of sexual excitation. At times it is a fetishistic cross-dressing and as such can be part of foreplay in heterosexual men who in all other aspects behave in a masculine way. Transvestism in transsexualism and homosexuality is not done to cause sexual excitement but is a manifestation of the gender identity issue.

Type of Homosexual Behavior

It is important to distinguish homosexuality from homosexual behavior. The latter is a wider category that the former.

Five main types of homosexual behavior:

1. Homosexual behavior associated with the transient homosexual attraction frequent in preadolescence and adolescence.

2. Homosexual behavior of the substitutive type often found in prisons, ships and military camps in which heterosexual partners, though the preferred sexual outlet, are not available.

3. Homosexual behavior as the expression of sexual curiosity and of desire for diverse sexual experiences, but in which the preferred sexual outlet is the opposite sex.

4. Homosexual behavior as part of the chaotic psyche characterizing disorganized schizophrenia.

5. Homosexual behavior stemming from a homosexual orientation. It is this type that is propeily called homosexuality.

Kinds of Homosexuality Homosexuality may be male or female

• It may be latent or expressed in overt behavior.

• If overt, it may be open or furtive. Open homosexuality is exemplified by apparently well-adjusted individuals whose lifestyle revolve around “gay” activities of friends. Furtive homosexuality is seen in those individuals whose life style is predominantly “straight” --that is, giving an impression of heterosexual orientation--but who engage in clandestine homosexual activity.

• Homosexuality may either take the form of bisexuality or of obligatory homosexuality. Bisexuality refers to sexual preferences and activity that are either equally heterosexual or homoseälöiãf predominantly homosexual but more than incidentally heterosexual. refers to sexual preference and activity that are either predominantly homosexual and only incidentally heterosexual, or are exclusively homosexual. There is the so called “2po!al honioç. liLy” in which the sexual preference and activity are either predominantly heterosexual and only incidentally (or more than incidentally) homosexual. “optional homosexuality” is often not considered to fall under the category of homosexuality because the preferred sexual actii1feisexui.

• Homosexuality may or may not be associated with anxiety disorders (neuroses). When there is such an association, the neuroses generally intensify any tendency toward overt manifestation of homosexuality.

• It is important to distinguish between male homosexuality and effeminacy, as well as female homosexuality and mannishness. There are men with effeminate mannerisms who are exclusively or predominanti heterosexual, just as there arñi ith-m line physique and manners who are omosexuals. Similarly, there are women who have somewhat mannish ways who are heterosexual, and there are women with very feminine looks and mannerisms who are homosexual. The majority of homosexuals have no outer physical characteristics or mannerisms that identify their sexual preference.

Homosexuality should not be identified with sexual deviations such as pedophilia or pederasty (use of a child of either sex to achieve arousal or gratification), or with such antisocial activities as prostitution. Only a small minority of homosexuals engage in such practices. Moreover, heterosexuals also engage in such practices.

Terminology

• On must be careflul in the use of terms in referring to homosexuals. Do not interchange the terms homosexual, transgendered or transvestite.

• Homosexual person/s is a more correct term in public discourse when talking about persons with a homosexual orientation. To use the term “homosexual” as a noun can imply a reduction of the person to his or her sexual orientation and disregarding other essential aspects of the person.

• Do not use street slang or pejorative terms when referring to homosexual persons. In Filipino, it is better to use the term “taong homosekswal” rather than “bakia” particularly in the context of counseling, confession, or academic discussion.

· Sociological aspects

• Homosexuality is probably more common than most people think. Statistics vary as to the prevalence of homosexuality. Estimates vary from 5% of the total population to as high as 20% in males and 10- 20% in females.

· The higher prevalence of homosexuality is not evident because of the most homosexuals conceal their sexual preferences and activity. This concealment is due to the negative reactions that homosexuality elicits from society in general as well as in the family and among friends and acquaintances. They are labeled as immoral, sinners, mentally ill, pedophiles, or abnormal people. People generally make fun of them and even persons who as supposed to be more pastorally sensitive tend to laugh at jokes at the expense of homosexuals because of fear of being suspected of homosexuality themselves if they react negatively to the jokes.

· In recent times, because of advances in psychology, there has been greater understanding of the types of homosexual behavior and their distinct psychodynamics and moral implications. There are organizations and associations for homosexuals have proliferated, providing a sense of community, advocating the protection of the basic human rights of homosexuals, and countering discriminatory attitudes and practices. However, some hostility against homosexuals still persists in most societies.

Causes of Homosexuality

• Science and psychology have not established a single cause of homosexuality. Most likely homosexuality is caused by a complex set of factors.

• Thus the cause of homosexuality is probably a highly complex combination of various factors, some genetic and some environmental, that make it easier for people to develop a homosexual orientation.

• Though there may be genetic factors that increase the likelihood of one becoming a homosexual person, these genetic factors alone do not produce homosexuality. There must also be environmental factors for homosexuality to develop. There may be some people with a genetic likelihood of developing a “predisposition” toward homosexuality, but it requires the addition of environmental factors to actually develop a homosexual orientation.

Psychological status of homosexuality

• Homosexuality should not be considered as a disease, but at the same time it should not be considered a mere variant of normal sexuality.

• On one hand psychiatrists do not consider homosexuality by itself a disease or a symptom of a disease. Therefore homosexuality by itself should not be referred to in terms of “perversion,”“deviation,” or “inversion.”

• On the other hand, it is probably not acceptable to consider homosexuality as a mere variant of sexuality, as if there are two normal variants, homosexuality and heterosexuality.

• In so far as a particular homosexual person suffers from neuroses or immature psychosexual development that leads to dysfunctional sexual attitudes and activities (hatred for men/women, promiscuity, compulsive behavior, etc.), these psychological conditions should be addressed by professionals in order to facilitate the person’s integration and balance.

Medical and Psychological Treatment of Homosexuality

• There are some schools of thought that view homosexuality as a condition that demands medical and/or psychological treatment.

• There has been only occasional success in reversing homosexuality; usually results are poor in the case of obligatory homosexuals whose sexual outlets are exclusively homosexual.

• Treatment however is helpful for the neuroses and psychological disorders that could accompany homosexuality, to the point that the overt, socially dysfunctional expression of homosexuality can be better controlled, and the homosexuality, from being overt, can become latent.

• In any case, no person should be coerced to go against one’s conscience to undergo medical or psychological treatment of homosexuality.

• ‘ A more important and urgent need is the prevention of the dysfunctional expressions of sexuality, both heterosexual and homosexual. This includes wholesome sex education for children in the home, good modeling of sexual attitudes and behavior by parents, discouragement of sexual orientation. The contemporary question of homosexual acts between consenting obligatory homosexually oriented adults in loving relationships was neither the question nor the context addressed ion the scriptural passages mentioned in the current discussions about the morality of homosexual behavior.

· These scriptural passages have contributed to and reinforced attitudes toward homosexual persons and actions.

• Use of Scripture by the magisterium in its teaching on homosexuality

o The official teaching of the Church on homosexuality accepts the negative ethical judgment which Sacred Scripture makes on homosexuality. Moreover it reinforces the negative ethical judgment by the way it interprets certain Scripture passages.

o It critically accepts the “sexual” interpretation of the story of Sodom (Gen 19:1-1 1). It could very well be the wickedness of the sin of was not in sexual terms but was in terms of the violation of the value of hospitality by the molestation of guests. Hospitality was held in high esteem in the cultural context of the author of the Sodom story.

o The official teaching of the Church also interprets Old Testament references to homosexuality in relation to pagan cults (Deut 23:18-19 and others) in terms of sexual morality, although the main object of moral reprobation was probably not so much homosexuality as idolatry.

o In interpreting Scripture on homosexuality, the official teaching is not sufficiently accurate, since it does not distinguish literary context (ritual: Lev 18:22; 10:13; Stoic moral catalogues:

1 Cor 6:9-10, 1 Tim 1:9-10; argumentative exemplification: Rom 1:26-27)

Official Teaching of the Church on Homosexuality

The official teaching of the Church considers homosexual activity as morally wrong. There are two main recent pronouncements of the magisterium on homosexuality.

Persona Humana: Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics (CDF: Dec. 29,1975)

At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.

A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.

In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.

In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God4181 This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.

Commentary on the Declaration:

Homosexuals are portrayed here as victims of one kind of misfortune or another—they suffer from the effects of a false education, improper sexual development, bad example, or a pathological constitution. In some cases their condition is temporary and may be cured, while in others no cure can be expected. To say the least, the CDF analysis is unfortunate and questionable in that it clearly regards people who are homosexually oriented as having some kind of disease or disorder. (In Pursuit of Love, Genovesi, 256)

The CDF presents homosexuality as something analogous to a disease like diabetes or alcoholism. The diabetic or alcoholic is not considered sinful because of the condition, but is called upon to live a healthy life (e.g., watch diet, or no alcohol consumption). Similarly, homosexuality is not considered sinful as an orientation but the homosexual is called upon to live a lifestyle that avoids the genital expression of homosexuality. Homosexual activity is considered immoral.

Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (CDF:

October 1, 1986)

Homosexual Orientation

• In the discussion which followed the publication of the Declaration, however, an overly benign interpretation was given to the homosexual condition itself, some going so far as to call it neutral, or even good. Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not. (No. 3)

• “Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living.” (No. 7)

• “It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church’s pastors wherever it occurs... [and] the intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law” (No. 10).

• “What is essential is that the fundamental liberty that characterizes the human person and gives him dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well” (No. 11).

• “The characteristic concerns and good will exhibited by many clergy and religious in their pastoral care for homosexual persons is admirable and, we hope, will not diminish” (No. 13).

• “A homosexual person, as every human being, deeply needs to be nourished at many different levels simultaneously.... 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.... Today the church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when [it] 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” (No. 16).

Homosexual activity

It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behaviour therefore acts immorally. To choose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator’s sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent. As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one’s own fWfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit

but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood. (No. 7)

• What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties

they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross. . . Just as the Cross was central to the expression of God’s redemptive love for us in Jesus, so the conformity of the self-denial of homosexual men and women with the sacrifice of the Lord will constitute for them a source of self-giving which will save them from a way of life which constantly threatens to destroy them.

Commentary on Letter to Bishops

On one hand, the Letter presents homosexual orientation in a kinder light than the Declaration. However, some critics have pointed out that it is a distortion of reality to describe a person’s sexual orientation solely or mainly as an inclination toward, or desire for, genital activity. Sexual orientation is not primarily a tendency or attraction to acts but to persons. It is not helpful for the Church to refer to an inclination as “disordered” simply because it involves a tendency toward an action that is considered immoral. One can therefore make the same conclusion that the heterosexual orientation is also disordered because it draws the heterosexual to commit acts considered by the Church as immoral such as masturbation, pre-marital sex, marital contraceptive intercourse. It is neither pastorally helpful nor necessary to use the term “disordered” to describe homosexual orientation in order to support the Church’s teaching about the moral unacceptability of homosexual activity. (McCormick, in The Pursuit of Love, Genovesi 257-258)

Summary of the Church’s teaching on Homosexuality (CCC 2357-2359)

Z Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

Overall theological evaluation of the official teaching of the Church

• The ambiguities, lack of nuancing and arguable lack of theological finesse in the official teaching of the Church on homosexuality stem in part probably from too narrow an idea of sexuality, derived from Augustinian and Thomist sources.

• These sources from a less developed understanding of sexuality than is available to us at present. These sources bore the burden of Hellenic dualism, Neoplatonist suspicion of pleasure, biologist

natural law morality, and a prescientific and prepsychological understanding of sexuality, which was heavily androcentric and antiferninist and which saw sexual activity from a procreativist reductionist

viewpoint.

• It is clear therefore that the task of catholic Christian ethicians is to help nuance, refine, and update our ethical reflections and judgments on homosexuality.

Updated Ethical Viewpoint Regarding Homosexuality

1. We have to adopt an attitude of provisionality in our premises and solutions regarding the question of homosexuality, because the anthropological data regarding this question, and the interpretation of this data, are not definite. (e.g., the causes of homosexuality)

2. Those homosexuals who can be totally or partially cured of their psychosexual problems that lead to dysfunctional expressions of sexuality are morally obligated to seek adequate treatment.

3. We are obliged to strive for the liberation of homosexuality and homosexuals from the misunderstandings, prejudices and discrimination against them prevalent in society.

4. Any ethical evaluation of homosexuality has to take into account the significance of sexuality as a whole. Thus it cannot avoid such questions as openness to procreation, unity of life, relationship to matrimony, or acceptability as an extra institutional human project.

5. In order to make a Christian ethical judgment regarding homosexuality, one must neither ignore the data of Sacred Scripture and of tradition, nor read these uncritically. The acceptable approach to these

data is to understand them as reference points which give an added dimension to the anthropological and, autonomously ethical data, without distorting the latter.

6. It is helpful to emphasize the distinction between and the relation between homosexuality and homophilia. Homosexuality refers to the situation of those human beings whose sexual attraction is

predominantly or exclusively oriented towards individuals of the opposite sex. Some of these individuals express this attraction in homosexual behavior and activity. Other, having this orientation toward individuals of their own sex, do not engage in homogenital behavior or homogenital activity, and reject exclusiveness, possessiveness, and expressions ofjealousy. The condition of the latter is

homophilia.

7. The moral management of the situation of concrete human beings seeks to attain a humanizing a situation as possible. For example, in the case of a person who is obligatory and irreversibly

homosexual, this humanizing concern cannot demand a choice for change to heterosexual activity (something impossible in almost all if not all cases). This humanizing concern may have to be patient with the inability of such homosexually oriented persons to immediately attain abstinence, though such abstinence is objectively highly desirable. Should this not be possible, Christian sexual ethics should be creative enough to propose channels of personal growth to a human being who finds himself or herself sexually oriented. In this connection, it is safe to say that a stable, faithful homosexual relationship may have elements of humanization, and is therefore ethically preferable to promiscuous, irresponsible homosexual activity, which has nothing practically humanizing about it.

8. One of the characteristics of healthy human sexuality is its capacity to live without the exercise of its genital aspects. This is achieved by a great many people, both homosexual and heterosexual. Such a nongenital assumption of sexuality is aided by means of sublimation.

9. A homosexual inclination is no barrier to sanctity, and in a sense the demands of Christian chastity are not any harder for homosexual persons than for heterosexual ones, though one has to admit that heterosexual persons could get married and can release sexual tension genitally, whereas homosexual persons are enjoined to be sexually continent during their whole lifetime.

Pastoral observations (Genovesi, 308)

Pastors and counselors must be aware of and inform others of the following points regarding homosexuality:

• Pastors and confessors are advised to avoid both harshness and permissiveness when counseling sexually active homosexuals.

• Homosexually oriented individuals who have been engaged in an active sex life should be encouraged to deepen their spiritual life.

• Although homosexual activity is considered objectively immoral, a distinction must be made, in terms of gravity, between irresponsible, promiscuous and destructive homosexual activity and homosexual activity within the context of a permanent and exclusive relationship between two homosexuals who find it impossible to live solitary lives of sexual abstinence.

• Approach according to magisterium: Homosexuals in a loving relationship that are striving for permanency must aim at, and struggle for, the elimination of all genital behavior from their lives. At the same time the Church acknowledges that homosexual couples will probably not be able to achieve this goal immediately but only gradually.

• It would not be wise to advise homosexuals to marry (the opposite sex)