Justifications for same-sex marriage, from the most liberal to the most Christian proponents, often appeal to happiness: that marriage is required to be happy and to live a good human life. This idea made its way into the rationale of Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that made same-sex marriage legal in the United States. With same-sex marriage now a reality, as Catholics who dissent, we need to be clear that opposition is not based on any hatred or wanting to bar anyone from happiness.
It would be helpful then to go through the strongest case, and one from a Christian perspective, that argues for life-long partnerships as necessary for happiness. In a 2001 article in the Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, “Alasdair MacIntyre as Help for Rethinking Catholic Natural Law Estimates of Same-Sex Life Partnerships,” William McDonough argued just that: that narrative ethics, which refers to the homosexual person’s experience of goodness, can justify same-sex life partnerships because of the emotional benefits of shared life. He invokes Alasdair MacIntyre’s treatment of natural law and love in order to provide a framework for this. The idea is that marriage as a “blending” of two lives does immense emotional good for the human person, and that because sexuality is tied into that, it should open to everyone, even two men or two women.
I think the essay fails however in that he attributes too much of Catholic thinking to Stoicism and undervalues the non-sexual friendships that are completely open to the persons dealing with same-sex attraction. In short, marriage is not a prerequisite for happiness. This is something an entire branch of celibate and committed Catholics attest to, in a sometimes criticized position Austin Ruse dubbed The New Homophiles, a position I will return to later.
At the outset of the article, McDonough claims that there is a “wall” in Catholic ethics between natural law rationale and the narrative experience of persons with same-sex attraction trying to seek their good in their own lives. Natural law is the application of what is good for humans. The Catechism says:
“The ‘divine and natural’ law shows man the way to follow so as to practice the good and attain his end….It hinges upon the desire for God and submission to him, who is the source and judge of all that is good, as well as upon the sense that the other is one’s equal….This law is called ‘natural,’ not in reference to the nature of irrational beings, but because reason which decrees it properly belongs to human nature:”
In short, natural law means seeking to act in accord with human nature, what is good for humans, to attain human flourishing. In the Catholic tradition, the desire for God is preeminent among requirements for man’s flourishing. The guidelines provided by human nature are grounded in man’s concrete being, both his bodily (i.e. biological) and spiritual dimensions. The Catechism states that “The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body” (365). This means that our bodily actions express our spirit and so they matter a great deal.
In Catholic philosophy, natural law has often been conceived of as a series of precepts applied to varied cases. McDonough rightly points this out. He argues, however, that the precepts regarding same-sex attraction, i.e. that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” (CCC 2357), are simply not resonant with the homosexual person’s experience of seeking the good for their own lives, which is what he means by narrative ethics. He cites self-identified Gay Catholic, Andrew Sullivan who says that natural law ethics for gay people are an “unethic” because it treats gay people as below the subject of ethics. Sullivan explains that he came to reject natural law not because it was intellectually unsound, but because, in his own life experiences “they seemed so destructive of human love and self-realization” (193). Ultimately, McDonough argues, since natural law means to seek the end of human flourishing, it must somehow become concordant with the experience of living persons (193, 194). Here, he is completely right. There ought not to be a wall between natural law, which aims at seeking goodness in human life and a person’s experience of seeking that goodness. Persons experiencing same-sex attractions are persons just like the rest of us, and the Church claims to care for us all and to offer to all humans salvation and proscriptions for a happy, moral life. It is, therefore, vitally important that we get the conversation right about same-sex relationships and not seek to dismiss the question.
However, though narrative experience and natural law precepts ought to agree as both seek the good, both Catholic tradition and McDonough’s argument acknowledge that man’s sinfulness obscures our perceptions of the good and therefore of the natural law. This is why revelation and Church herself as needed as guides.
Despite his acknowledgement of the reality of sin, McDonough argues that the Church’s approach to same-sex relationships is too discordant from these persons’ lives to be acceptable and that it isolates them from their own experience of goodness. He claims that the Catechism’s recommendation that such persons grow toward “Christian perfection” through “disinterested friendship” is “incoherent” because it rests on a wrongful understanding of Stoic friendship. Instead he wants to “recognize the sanctity of life partnerships of homosexual persons” and their contribution towards human flourishing (194). To answer this, we need to explain philosophical dimensions but also be sincere in taking the experience of all human persons seriously to be clear that no hatred or unjust discrimination is ever acceptable.
McDonough, like others who make the case for gay marriage, thinks that the type of love expressed in marriage can be engaged in by two people of the same sex. He says that MacIntyre’s description of love from his work Dependent Rational Animals, which McDonough notes takes into account both man’s sociological and biological identities, offers a framework which should include same-sex life partnerships so that they can experience goodness and happiness. He quotes MacIntyre in saying that one of the central defining features of human moral actions is our dependent quality, “initial directedness to certain goods…having been cared for, we care for others” (196) and that “A good human being is one who has learned to give and receive a love that is detached in the sense of unconditional.” Drawing on these principles articulated by Alasdair MacIntyre, McDonough says this should lead us to “recognize the sanctity of same sex life partnerships” (197).
The quotations McDonough cites from MacIntyre, however, are in reference to agape (self-giving) love in general and not specifically to marriage. I doubt anyone would argue that gay persons cannot engage in self-giving love. McDonough’s argument ignores the fact that all persons of all states in life are called to live well, showing agape love. It is certainly not limited to married people, so there is no logical link to demand marriage as the only proper home of agape. Close personal and even general friendships with all mankind can express self-giving love. This is why the Catechism recommends chaste friendship to persons who experience same-sex attraction.
McDonough believes that this type of friendship is based on a Stoic understanding of relationships that rejects human desires. He finds the Stoic friendship a type of “blandly generalized” benevolence that is ultimately empty because it lacks that dependent quality of engaging with actual human beings in a reciprocal relationship. “What the Stoic achieves is not a friendship that has calmed self-seeking by on-going and shared life. If Stoic friendship is ‘disinterested,’ it has become so by considering all human relationships indifferent” (200). He believes this to be inhuman and ineffective for persons with same-sex attraction.
He may be right about Stoic friendship, but the Catechism does not mention “stoicism” nor “indifference,” and McDonough presents no further evidence that Catholicism teaches such indifference for homosexual persons. In contrast, I find it far more likely that the friendship referenced in the catechism is that precisely detached, therefore unconditional, love that MacIntyre describes. Such a friendship could forego sexual expression despite its the strength of desire precisely because it is not self-seeking and because it realizes that such sex is not a gift at all and achieves no natural end. This is the view that many self-titled gay Catholics have taken up, the call to radical friendship.
Further, a life partner is no guarantee of happiness, as McDonough presents the matter. No human being, not even a spouse, can fulfill all the needs of the human heart, and when we look to spouses for that much support, we err. We hurt ourselves and our spouses. Only by looking to God for fulfillment can we actually grow closer together. This second way, of looking to God, is completely available to homosexual persons, as it is to all persons. And it is a path equally open to those in married or celibate vocations. In short, looking to God for fulfillment is Christian life, and it is open to all.
We can best explain Catholic teachings by recalling that happiness is not limited to marriage, nor is it taught that marriage is better than celibacy or virginity. In fact, the opposite is true. The Christian is called to seek God, and celibacy is actually an aid in this.
Part II will explore McDonough’s arguments from a sexual perspective and concludes that taking reality, as in biological, bodily acts, seriously necessitates that sexuality find right expression in the marital act between one man and one woman. It will also address the idea of the New Homophiles and argue that we can value their experience and insight without proclaiming a “gay exceptionalism.”
Stephanie Pacheco is a freelance writer and convert from Northern Virginia. She earned a M.A. in Theological Studies, summa cum laude, from Christendom College and holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia in Religious Studies with a minor in Government and Political Theory. Her work has been featured in America Magazine, Crisis Magazine, Soul Gardening Journal and syndicated by EWTN and Zenit. She blogs about making sense of the Catholic Faith in modern life at theoress.wordpress.com and lives with her husband and two young children.
