Core Issues

This post by Chris Bodenner at Daily Dish is instructive, but not for the reasons Bodenner discusses.

Along those lines, the chart's creator, ReligiousTolerance.org, opted for the label "homosexual orientation" over "gay sex," while it referred to "teen sex" and "premarital sex" elsewhere. So it appears their methodology took into account the Catholic parsing of desire and behavior. I personally think such parsing is bullshit (e.g. how exactly is "deliberately engaging in fantasies" an action?). But in the mind of a strict Catholic, a homosexually-oriented person who's never engaged in gay sex is still neutral to sin.

The Church has the same position on masturbation that it does on homosexual behavior: "The Catechism calls masturbation 'an intrinsically and gravely disordered action' (CCC 2352)."

Bodenner is quoting from Catholic.com, and this I found revealing:

[W]e must reject sin, including homosexual behavior—that is, acts intended to arouse or stimulate a sexual response regarding a person of the same sex. The Catholic Church teaches that such acts are always violations of divine and natural law.

Now, divine law is an iffy sort of thing -- there seem to be as many "divine laws" as there are divinities, and anyone who has studied religion in any depth, particularly those faiths outside one's own, knows this. Even more ludicrous is the Church's repeated insistence on "natural law," a construct that is wholly theological and not only has nothing to do with nature, but flies in the face of observed fact. (I mean, come on -- monkeys masturbate, probably for the same reasons people do: they're horny and bored. So what's "intrinsically disordered" about it?)

I am put in mind of nothing more than a dictum that I ran across in my reading at one point, about the role of religion as a political instrument for maintaining those in power in their comfortable positions, which was expressed very succinctly by the author (and regrettably, due to the erosion of my bear trap-like memory by the inevitable advance of years, I don't remember who it was or where I ran across this gem): Control sex and you control the people. The Christian churches, thanks to the pernicious influence of St. Paul, have made controlling sex -- for everyone else, at least -- one of their primary purposes for the past 2,000 years. (Remember, by all reports, Paul didn't like sex -- unless it came with a rich widow.)

Rather than fostering any true understanding on the part of their followers into the moral ramifications of sexuality, the churches have opted for fear -- the first resort of those who have no substance to advance, as we can well see from the condition of our own political discourse. And, I might point out, it is the Roman Catholic Church in particular that has proven itself incapable of understanding morality in any real sense, particularly when a legitimately moral stance might erode its power.

There are those who will claim that by attacking their churches, I am attacking their religion. Nothing could be further from the truth: being a believer myself, and one whose religion recognizes that there are many ways that lead to the one Truth, I'm not prepared to condemn religious belief out of hand. Churches, however, are another story: no matter what their claims, they are purely man-made institutions (and for the overwhelming majority of such institutions, that is the literal truth), and their doctrines are no better than any other manifestation of human thought, and worse than many. We'd best keep in mind that they are flawed, imperfect as we are imperfect, and should be understood in the context of their times and their political aims, because they are as much political as anything else.

So, take Catholic doctrine on homosexual behavior for what it's worth: it is, after all, a human creation, based on nothing so much as a stray Bible verse, which may or may not have been interpreted correctly, used as a gloss to dress up the Church's overriding definition of humanity, which as far as I've been able to figure out, equates fairly closely with the term "breeding stock."

(Afterthought: Regarding "natural law," it strikes me that this is a deeply flawed doctrine developed from unfounded assumptions based on an imperfect understanding of nature and its workings -- or it might be more accurate to say "a complete disregard of nature and its workings." Remember that Nature fell from grace with humanity, but Nature, I'm told, is not redeemable, Teilhard de Chardin notwithstanding. Think about that for awhile.)