Jesus Christ's message of equality and love has been comtaminated by the institutions of patriarchy, male privilege, and the repression of the feminine. The time has come for the Church to cleanse itself and throw off these aberrations. Gay spiritual groups, I believe, are leading the way for the whole Church to bring about this trasformation.
The primary example of this liberation can be found in gay marriage. The traditional paradigm for heterosexual marriage in Western civilzation has been the patriarchal model. This model had two essential elements. The first element was the belief in male superiority and female inferiority. Under this model one bought a wife and she became the property of her husband.
Over a century ago Hegel made the point that whereever inequality existed between married partners, the fullnes of human love can not exist. In fact marriage was considered a legal contract but not a sacrament for the first 13 centuries of Christian civilization. In line with today's development of women's liberation, most women see themselves as the equal of males and refuse to play the role of submission and obedience. Any effort on the part of the male to impose this role leads to anger. And anger is the best anti- aphrodesiac going.
Marriage based on the patriarchal model is in serious trouble. Over half of all marriages end in divorce and that number is growing.. Providentially, God's spirit has given us a new model for human marriage, the model contained in gay marriage . In gay marriage both parties see themselves as equal, no superior and no inferior. The fullness of human love can only exist in partners who see themselves as equal. So gay marriage opens up the possibility of a happier and more fulfilling human love and one closer to the biblical ideal.
But there is a second and, potentially, more serious defect in the patriarchal model of marriage. Every human psyche has both masculine and feminine attributes. Both parties following the patriarchal model must accept only those aspects of their psyche that accord with their gender identity. Males, for example, should only accept the masculine dimension of their psyche amd suppress the feminine, which they then must project out onto their female partner. Women, in turn, must suppress everything masculine in their psyche and project out the masculine on their husband.
Many psychically healthier women today, who are more in touch with both their masculine and feminine dimension, and see themselves as whole persons, increasingly are unwilling to play the role of being mediators of the feminine emotional, spiritual and compassionate needs of men. They want a man who is a total human person in himself! They are demanding, and rightly so, that we men get in touch with our feminine dimension.
Many men, in turn, are coming into touch with both the masculine and feminine dimensions of themselves and refusing to play the role of being the mediator of the masculine needs of women for assertiveness and autonomy. It is this shift in consciousness that has caused the enormous amount of breakdown and divorce when heterosexuals try, with the Church's encouragment. to follow the traditional patterns of male dominence and female submission and refuse to recognize the equality of the sexes.
Both genders are being called on to develop the fullness of their own humanity, so that they can approach each other as complete, independent persons and not remain essentially dependent on the other gender for their completion. Once again gay marriage models a relationship based on both partners being totally in touch with both the masculine and feminine dimensions of their psyche and being able to call on both roles. The result is a more human and fulfilling love relationship between the partners.
Human sexual love is always a love between two unique human persons. Animal love is based on gender. The bull does not care which cow he mounts. But human love is directed towards the uniqueness of the person. I love this unique women or man and no other will do. Catholic teaching equates human sex with animal sex, basing it on gender difference and not on the uniqueness of the human person. Gay marriage then, rather than being a threat to the family, opend up a new paradigm for a fuller, more human and fulfilling love between the partners.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You talk about Jesus, the church, and marriage without providing a single reference to the Bible. In fact, most of this blog entry is antithetical to Biblical doctrine.
ReplyDeleteYou rely on popular trends found in history, society, ethology, psychotherapy, and Catholicism to support your thesis, which would be fine if you did not try to make it a theological argument. The Catholic Church is not the authority of Christian doctrine. The Bible is.
Below is a short dissent of your opinion, using some pertinent verses from the Bible:
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 provides: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”
Not only does the Bible refer to homosexuality here, but also to fornicators, which refers to those who have sex outside of marriage.
God created marriage as between a man and a woman, as affirmed by Jesus himself in Matthew. 19:4-6:
"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
So sex between two people of the same sex cannot be within marriage.
Therefore, by definition, homosexual sex is always outside of marriage. Surely God would not forbid only heterosexual people from having sex outside of marriage. See also 1 Timothy 1:10.
Further, Leviticus 18:22 forbids men from laying with each other: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”
Romans 24-27 says: “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”
There is no way to get around the fact that verse 27 talking about men who were lusting after each other. The previous verse is talking about women lusting after each other “in the same way.” Both verses deal with the unnatural element of such.
Even assuming that this verse is saying that non-procreative heterosexual sex was forbidden, then how can homosexual sex be allowed? It’s absurd that the former would be forbidden but not the latter.