When I was growing up (I’m almost 50 years old now), there were few more hurtful and shameful insults that could be hurled at oneself than “gay” or “homo.” Moreover, the visceral reaction against homosexuality was so strong at the time, the thought that the terms “gay” and “marriage” would be used in the same sentence would have seemed preposterous – even to many people with a same-sex attraction.
Now, I know it’s hard to believe for many young people today that homosexual activity was once looked at with repugnance. They have grown up in a popular culture where homosexuality is largely accepted and even celebrated at times. However cruel the insults may have been for the persons, whether they were homosexual or heterosexual, the culture I grew up in did not view homosexuality favorably.
While emotional repugnance as an argument against homosexual activity worked for many decades, to a certain degree it also inhibited the articulation of a more rational approach to showing why homosexual acts are morally wrong. Subsequently, people did not see the need to explain why same-sex “marriage” is a metaphysical impossibility. There were such arguments available (e.g., truths drawn from the natural moral law), but they were not often relied on, at least not on a popular level, to make the moral case against homosexual sex acts.
The recent shift in public support for same-sex “marriage” has been, in many ways, swift and sweeping – at least among the elites – surprising its opponents and forcing them to articulate old arguments in new language.
Proponents for the redefinition of marriage, with the mainstream media, Hollywood, and various activist groups on their side, have used language that hasn’t so much debated and defeated the arguments against same-sex “marriage.” Instead, the rhetoric has simply appealed to the American peoples’ sense of fairness, justice, and tolerance.
For the most part, the proponents for the redefinition of marriage have not addressed the morality of same-sex “marriage.” Instead, what we get are questions such as: Who can be against “marriage equality”? Isn’t all love “equal”? Shouldn’t we call someone a “bigot” if he or she opposes same-sex “marriage” “rights”?
The advocates of same-sex “marriage” have cleverly used language, often with overtones of the arguments used against racial prejudice by the civil rights movement, to shift the focus from the nature of marriage to equal rights.
Yet, it must be observed, the sexual acts themselves that homosexuals perform and want legitimated have no bearing on the realization of the fundamental human goods traditionally understood to make marriage a public and legal arrangement central to the common good of society: children, chaste fidelity, and sexual complementarity. Hence, same-sex “marriage” is not something society should or can in fact countenance. It can be “marriage” in name only.
What about “gay unions”? From a moral, anthropological, social, and legal perspective, even homosexual civil unions – which some states have – would be extremely problematic.
In 2003, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document which addresses the issue of various kinds of gay unions titled, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Couples.” The Congregation argues:
In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection (no. 5).
The conclusion is equally unambiguous in its moral assessment of homosexual unions/marriage:
The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself (no. 11).
Thus, the Congregation reminds us that we may not approve or support either homosexual unions or homosexual “marriage” (formal cooperation). We must also limit, as far as possible, any kind of assistance to the passing or carrying out of such laws (material cooperation).
Indeed, we have an obligation to oppose these laws, one reason being the duty to uphold the goodness of natural marriage. One can respect persons with same-sex attraction without having to give in to the demands of the gay rights movement.
Let it also be noted that heterosexuals do not think of their personal identity primarily in terms of what they do sexually in the bedroom, but people with a same-sex attraction often do. At least it seems this way to me. Maybe that’s because they have not been able to take their sexuality for granted in the way that heterosexuals have been able to: i.e., homosexual acts have rightly been viewed as taboo, perverted, unnatural, and as a transgression in society and in many religious traditions.
But I have a hunch that even if homosexual “marriage” were fully legitimized in our legal culture, those who consider themselves as gay and lesbian would still identify themselves largely in terms of their same-sex sexual orientation. That’s good neither for them nor for society and their future children who find themselves as members of that society.
True compassion for persons who struggle with same-sex desires helps them to lead chaste lives. Authentic compassion does not acquiesce to the culture’s full-court press for the “normalization” of homosexual activity and same-sex unions.
Mark S. Latkovic, S.T.D. is Professor of Moral Theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary (Detroit, MI), where he has taught for over 22 years. He is the co-editor of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives (The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), author of numerous articles and the forthcoming book, What’s a Person to Do? Everyday Decisions that Matter (Our Sunday Visitor, 2013).
