My Evolving Views on Homosexuality

Quote: FrGamble

How can something I know to be right feel so wrong!

Why don't you completely abandon any attempt to analyze it as a religious issue and simply look at first scientifically and second, as a social issue.

Many organisms have a variety of ways to regulate sex based upon available resources. Alligator eggs develop according to temperature which is related to the presence of water. Male embryos receive a testosterone bath and females sharing the womb obviously react to it also. Infections, trauma, drugs can influence sexual preference. Even among lions homosexuality is used politically.

There are a host of social issues such as sale of poor children as laborers, conscription of children as coal miners as war clouds darkened the UK, abortions which alter the poverty rolls and crime statisitics irrespective of religious babblings. So one can have a negative emotional response to abortion but approve of its existence because of the economic results just as one can oppose child slave labor but appreciate the lowering of public financial costs.

Only after you have reached conclusions based on Science and Sociology should you tackle the issue you are having with the babbling of ancient zealots and priests.

I think the only way a person in this day and age could not have an evolving understanding of these issues would be to live under a rock. It is the age of the bursted open closet!

As for me, I understand a lot better the entanglement of the identity issues with the sexual preference issues. Back in the day, we straights just lumped it all together, and if nothing else, the modern activists have made it clear that it's not so simple.

As for gay marriage, I have decided that it's not so much marriage they need, but it's clear gay divorce is definitely needed. It's just that I now have personal knowledge of people buying houses and other financial joint ventures in gay relationships [plus unmarried straights too] that break up. When it does, one person or the other really gets run over in a way that would not happen if they had married. I do think that too little thought is given to the legal protections of marriage when discussing these things. It is always there in the background of a marriage, including those that are strong, this knowledge that the law is protecting the interests of both partners.

I notice that those who defend traditional marriage often proclaim that marriage is an arrangement for the generation and protection of children. But I can tell you for sure, and for parents with daughters there is no doubt, that it also is an arrangement for the protection of women! I guess you can make a case for "men too", but for the most part it's women and this is rightly so. Perhaps someone can tell me why traditional marriage defenders never mention this?

Quote: Fleastiff

So one can have a negative emotional response to abortion but approve of its existence because of the economic results just as one can oppose child slave labor but appreciate the lowering of public financial costs.

Only after you have reached conclusions based on Science and Sociology should you tackle the issue you are having with the babbling of ancient zealots and priests.

You made it very clear in one horrible and frightening sentence why morality is never looked at only based on science or economic means. The moral question is one that takes into consideration science and sociology but rises above it using our reason and our conscience. I don't care is child slave labor of one child magically made everything in the world free it would still be wrong and horrifying. You should take a lesson from the babbling ancients who understood the role of morality much better than our modern world and yourself.

Quote: Dalex64

Marriage was an institution of the state before it was a sacrament of the Catholic Church, around the year 1100.

It's a very messy, mixed-up history. Worse, we don't know as much about it as we would like.

If we confine ourselves to the West, we need to look at marriage traditions in Rome, Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Canaan just for starters. unfortunately we know a good deal about what the elites did, and very little about everyone else. This is a major point, as marriage tended to be mostly a political tool for the elites. It was how they gained and/or maintained legitimacy, forged and/or strengthened alliances, gained social status, etc.

Some cultures involved religion and others didn't. Most surprisingly, Egyptian marriages were low-key affairs involving not even a pro-forma ceremony of any kind. Pretty much the woman simply moved to the mans' house and that was that. In Rome there were a ton of legalities and ceremonies involved, including some religion, but it wasn't a religious thing necessarily. Divorce was common, too. In Judea marriage, regardless of purpose, was entirely religious in nature (why Christians think they invented it and it has been 100% religious all along).

All this, however, doesn't matter. History is valuable in understanding how people, society, politics, etc. have evolved over time, how things came to be as they are, etc. But a LED light bulb works and does all it does regardless of whether Edison invented a different light bulb over a century ago.

So it is with marriage. In most of the world, and in the West in particular, marriage is a civil matter between two adults. Few countries at all, and none I'm aware of in the West, requires a religious marriage of any kind. You can be married by a judge if you want to. So it doesn't matter if at some time marriage was 100% a religious thing or not. It's 0% religious now in law.

Quote: FrGamble

So in regards to the Church itself (I just want to make sure my bishop is not on this forum).

I'll pass over the obvious cheap shot here.

Quote:

I am wondering if we could not solemnize homosexual unions in a different ceremony than marriage. For us marriage is strictly linked to procreation and the union of spouses so it would need to be something different.

This is not a bad first step, so long as you admit that's all it is. No doubt you think this is all that's needed, but you've been wrong before. To begin with, if marriage is strictly linked to procreation, what about infertile couples? As far as I know, your church doesn't like even artificial insemination, much less in-vitro methods and surrogate mothers.

My late grandmother in her late 60s married a man in his 70s. There was exactly zero chance of them conceiving "naturally," and more naturally they didn't want to. Would you object to calling such a union marriage? I assume it involved sex on occasion.

Quote:

I probably should have written this as a blog post but I thought there would be some desire to comment from the forum. I know that this means nothing to some members (I'm looking at you Nareed)

It means something. Just not as much you seem to think it does. You seem to be inextricably married to a "separate" interpretation of rights, and to old, outdated ideas of sexuality. But at least you're not, quite, uncritically obeying old dogmas.

Quote: FrGamble

You made it very clear in one horrible and frightening sentence why morality is never looked at only based on science or economic means.

You missed my point completely.

I never said anything about ONLY looking at science or economics. I emphasized the Science and Economics merely being FIRST evaluations because of their precision and relevance. The Catholic (and some other) churches used Child Labor or acted as Slave Traders frequently in many countries and on a massive scale. I'm sure the Priests and Bishops felt it was a moral necessity or perhaps even a moral good.

Quote:

You should take a lesson from the babbling ancients who understood the role of morality much better than our modern world and yourself.

Oh no. I take Reason and Enlightenment and Precision and Knowledge over the babbling of the ancients or the babbling of L. Ron Hubbard who is perhaps the social and intellectual equivalent of the ancients. We sing songs about John Brown's body, but clearly he was a madman. Its quite possible that the ancient scribblers were the madmen of their day just as much as John Brown was a rabid arsenal-raiding madman.

Quote: Fleastiff

The Catholic (and some other) churches used Child Labor or acted as Slave Traders frequently in many countries and on a massive scale.

The Vatican never opposed child labor
until the 1890's. Even then the pope
said it was OK for kids 7-8 years old
to work, but not younger than that.
The Church didn't come out totally
against it until it became an industry
standard in the world. Their god likes
little kids working, apparently. Once
again, it's just greedy men at the helm,
no god in sight.

The Swiss just gave 20,000 Euros to the elderly survivors of "RentKids" a government run program that seized kids from divorced parents, single parents, feeble minded parents, etc. and rented them out as child laborers to farmers/factory owners who usually worked them as slaves and generally sexually abused them. Many such siezures were initiated by church officials who learned of unwed mothers or divorced parents. Even if officialy a governement run secular program it surely had religious overtones to it.

And yes, it was purely financial, not at all religious or moral.

Quote: Fleastiff

You missed my point completely.

I never said anything about ONLY looking at science or economics. I emphasized the Science and Economics merely being FIRST evaluations because of their precision and relevance. The Catholic (and some other) churches used Child Labor or acted as Slave Traders frequently in many countries and on a massive scale. I'm sure the Priests and Bishops felt it was a moral necessity or perhaps even a moral good.

And you missed my point completely as well. Science and economics are not to be used as evaluations of if something is moral at all. They are only tools and facts that go into the bigger discussion of the morality of the act. They are precise and give relevant facts but that is all they do. Again I don't care if science or economics can point out that torturing this one child will lead to free stuff for everyone, it will not be a moral act. I also don't care what some priest or bishop or the whole world at that time thought was a moral good. I only care what Jesus Christ clearly pointed out so many hundreds of years ago that the littlest ones are the greatest in the kingdom and if anyone harms one little one such as this it would be better for a millstone to be tied around his neck and thrown into the sea.

Quote:

Oh no. I take Reason and Enlightenment and Precision and Knowledge over the babbling of the ancients or the babbling of L. Ron Hubbard who is perhaps the social and intellectual equivalent of the ancients. We sing songs about John Brown's body, but clearly he was a madman. Its quite possible that the ancient scribblers were the madmen of their day just as much as John Brown was a rabid arsenal-raiding madman.

This is idiotic. I wish Plato and Aristotle were here to slap you.

Putting aside arguments for and against your proposal, the mere fact that you have come to the conclusions that you have, and then made such a proposal, is extraordinary.

Good luck getting anyone in the church to listen, but that's another story.