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Source: (consider it) Thread: New York the 6th state to extend marriage to same-sex couples
Anglican_Brat
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Some Christians have a strange persecution complex. While no doubt there are some conservative Jews and Muslims who are opposed to same-sex marriage, I have yet to read of any prominent leader of those communities complain that the state will make them perform gay marriages.

There could be fear involved. Some people are stuck in a dog-eat-dog world point of view. As in, the expansion of rights for some means the limitation of other people's rights. But this has never been the case. To support civil rights for gays and lesbians does not mean that one does not support religious freedom.

Women's rights have been recognized for some time now, though a lot still has to be done in terms of pay equity, violence against women, etc. Yet the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church has never been threatened with legal sanction for continuing to forbid ordination of female clergy. Yes, the cultural shift of women's rights had made more people support women clergy, both in these traditional denominations and outside, and I expect that more and more people will demand inclusion and justice of gays and lesbians within these churches. But the State itself is not involved in that conversation.

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Matt Black

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quote:
Originally posted by Louise:
quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
The Oh-So-Holy-Orthodox™ on Facebook are in apoplexy. My other "liberal" Orthodox friends seem to think I'm the only one who can hold the barricades. Guys, just clicking "like" on my posts isn't enough! I need some support!

As I'm not friends with the Bishop (and not sure I wish to be!), it's a bit difficult to post a comment.
hosting

Can I remind people not to import matters from other boards/websites onto these boards? I didn't post previously because Mousethief remembered and corrected himself. But just in case anyone is in doubt about official policy, please don't import arguments from your facebooktwitblogwhatever here! [Big Grin]

cheers,
Louise
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hosting off

Sorry! Won't happen again.

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mousethief

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A personal response to the call to sign the Manhattan Declaration by an Orthodox priest.

Excerpt:

Do we practice what we preach? Why should anyone pay attention to us at all until we do? If there is a persecution of Christianity in this country it may well come not because of our fidelity to the truth, but due to our arrogance and hypocrisy.

...

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TubaMirum
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
A personal response to the call to sign the Manhattan Declaration by an Orthodox priest.

Excerpt:

Do we practice what we preach? Why should anyone pay attention to us at all until we do? If there is a persecution of Christianity in this country it may well come not because of our fidelity to the truth, but due to our arrogance and hypocrisy.

...

Well, that is somewhat heartening.

(Of course, I had to look up the facts about the "Manhattan Declaration." Apparently it hadn't made any particular impression on me previously....

[Biased] )

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orfeo

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I hadn't heard of the Manhattan Declaration either. So I had a read. THIS paragraph fascinated me:

quote:
We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being—the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual— on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.
What an extraordinarily elaborate way of saying 'we don't think your genitals fit together properly'.

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Kelly Alves

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quote:
Originally quoted by mousethief:

Do we practice what we preach? Why should anyone pay attention to us at all until we do? If there is a persecution of Christianity in this country it may well come not because of our fidelity to the truth, but due to our arrogance and hypocrisy.

...

Heh. I remember saying something along these lines to my mom when I was about 15- 16. I asked her if there was any verses in the Revelation indicating that we were asking for it. (This was during some of the uglier moments in Christianity's Response to the AIDS Crisis.)

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Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
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TubaMirum
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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
What an extraordinarily elaborate way of saying 'we don't think your genitals fit together properly'.

And isn't the phrase "fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation" just about the most romantic thing you've ever heard?

[Razz]

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orfeo

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Quite.

I'm almost tempted to draft a 20-line response that basically boils down to "okay then, explain the prostate gland".

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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.

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MSHB
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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Quite.

I'm almost tempted to draft a 20-line response that basically boils down to "okay then, explain the prostate gland".

Created to provide employment for urologists?

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Matt Black

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Doesn't it also produce the necessary ingredients to sustain the sperm in their Great Journey?

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orfeo

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Fine, fine. The 25-line version will be more explicit. It will say 'explain the LOCATION of the prostate gland, and why it's known as the male G-spot'.

Sheesh. Next you'll be asking for diagrams.

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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.

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Matt Black

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To make taking a shit a leisure activity for blokes [Big Grin]

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Soror Magna
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quote:
That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.
I'm happy to be corrected, but really? Didn't we have a discussion a while back about whether two people who explicitly didn't want children could have a Catholic marriage? And didn't Henry VIII do just this (although the official excuse was consanguinuity)? OliviaG

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Chesterbelloc

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quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
quote:
That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.
I'm happy to be corrected, but really? Didn't we have a discussion a while back about whether two people who explicitly didn't want children could have a Catholic marriage? And didn't Henry VIII do just this (although the official excuse was consanguinuity)? OliviaG
Yes, that's right, OliviaG. Two people who decided in advance that they would choose not to have children (in circumstances where they supposed such was possible) lack the intention to effect the sacrament of matrimony. But a case in which either or both were infertile and knew this to be the case could still effect the correct intention for martrimony, supposing their infertility was involuntary.

The reason Henry VIII needed the fig-leaf of consanguinity was precisely because the Church would not declare the marriage null merely on the grounds of Catherine's inability to produce a live male heir.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Yes, that's right, OliviaG. Two people who decided in advance that they would choose not to have children (in circumstances where they supposed such was possible) lack the intention to effect the sacrament of matrimony. But a case in which either or both were infertile and knew this to be the case could still effect the correct intention for martrimony, supposing their infertility was involuntary.

Under that logic, wouldn't same-sex marriage be sacramentally okay? After all, a same-sex couple knows in advance that they're infertile, and I can't think of a way to argue that this infertility is voluntary (i.e. the result of a conscious decision and specific actions).

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Humani nil a me alienum puto

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Chesterbelloc

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No, Crœsos. Because being able or not being able to bear children is just one aspect to the Church's teaching on marriage.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No, Crœsos. Because being able or not being able to bear children is just one aspect to the Church's teaching on marriage.

I thought your argument was that being able to bear children wasn't an aspect of the Church's teaching on marriage at all, though it does have a strong opinion about being willing to bear children.

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Humani nil a me alienum puto

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Chesterbelloc

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Um, yes - that's right. What's your point?

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Um, yes - that's right. What's your point?

Simply that such arguments seem to be a non-sequitur in relation to same-sex marriage (the alleged topic of this thread).

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Humani nil a me alienum puto

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Chesterbelloc

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I wasn't actually using it as an argument against gay marriage - I was answering a query of OliviaG's.

Since the Church doesn't forbid marriage to those who cannot conceive a child together, the Church naturally does not premiss its argument against gay marriage on that.

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Stetson
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quote:


Since the Church doesn't forbid marriage to those who cannot conceive a child together, the Church naturally does not premiss its argument against gay marriage on that. [/QB]

Well, the "inherently nonprocreative nature of homosexual unions" was one of two reasons cited by the US Conference Of Catholic Bishops cited for opposing gay marriage. The other being that gay unions don't "express human complementarity".

So, from what I can tell, yes, procreation is a big part of the RCC's argument.

Third paragraph

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Chesterbelloc

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quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Well, the "inherently nonprocreative nature of homosexual unions" was one of two reasons cited by the US Conference Of Catholic Bishops cited for opposing gay marriage. The other being that gay unions don't "express human complementarity".

Ah, but that's rather different. The fact that a man and a woman may be incapable of having a child together is no impediment in itself. In itself, not being able to have children is not a proof that a valid marriage cannot be contracted. Which is why marriages are permitted to sterile couples and why the accidental impossibility of children is does not in itself nix homosexual marriages.

But a relationship that is so ordered that procreation is, by the fundamental identity of the persons themselves, precluded - not by accident but by the very sorts of persons (two males or two females) attempting to contract the marriage - cannot, the Church argues, be solemnised in matrimony.

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Well, the "inherently nonprocreative nature of homosexual unions" was one of two reasons cited by the US Conference Of Catholic Bishops cited for opposing gay marriage. The other being that gay unions don't "express human complementarity".

Ah, but that's rather different. The fact that a man and a woman may be incapable of having a child together is no impediment in itself.
Then why bring it up?

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Chesterbelloc

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I didn't - OliviaG did. Do keep up.

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I didn't - OliviaG did. Do keep up.

Didn't say you did; sorry if it seemed that way.

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Josephine

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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
But a relationship that is so ordered that procreation is, by the fundamental identity of the persons themselves, precluded - not by accident but by the very sorts of persons (two males or two females) attempting to contract the marriage - cannot, the Church argues, be solemnised in matrimony.

Can you explain what things are part of the very sort of person one is, and what things are accidental? I'm trying to make your statement here make sense to me, and I'm having trouble with it.

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Chesterbelloc

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quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
But a relationship that is so ordered that procreation is, by the fundamental identity of the persons themselves, precluded - not by accident but by the very sorts of persons (two males or two females) attempting to contract the marriage - cannot, the Church argues, be solemnised in matrimony.

Can you explain what things are part of the very sort of person one is, and what things are accidental? I'm trying to make your statement here make sense to me, and I'm having trouble with it.
It's back to the complementarity thing. God made people male and female (which is, I would argue, a basic part of each person's identity as a created being) as part of His plan for creation, which includes procreation. Whether one is fertile or not is not a basic part of one's identity as a person - being male or female is.

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TubaMirum
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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
It's back to the complementarity thing. God made people male and female (which is, I would argue, a basic part of each person's identity as a created being) as part of His plan for creation, which includes procreation. Whether one is fertile or not is not a basic part of one's identity as a person - being male or female is.

And yet, the Catholic Church teaches precisely that homosexuals should not procreate - that we are "called to chastity."

So which is it?

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Chesterbelloc

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quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
It's back to the complementarity thing. God made people male and female (which is, I would argue, a basic part of each person's identity as a created being) as part of His plan for creation, which includes procreation. Whether one is fertile or not is not a basic part of one's identity as a person - being male or female is.

And yet, the Catholic Church teaches precisely that homosexuals should not procreate - that we are "called to chastity."
No, rather the Church recognises that homosexuals cannot procreate (at least, in ways which would also be licit for heterosexuals).

[eta: but yes, the Church calls homosexual people to chastity.]

[ 01. July 2011, 21:29: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]

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TubaMirum
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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No, rather the Church recognises that homosexuals cannot procreate (at least, in ways which would also be licit for heterosexuals).

[eta: but yes, the Church calls homosexual people to chastity.]

Of course homosexuals can procreate, and often do.

We're not infertile; we could simply marry heterosexually and have children in the usual way. Why does the church teach what it does? Why doesn't it teach, instead, that we should marry somebody of the opposite sex and have children?

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TubaMirum
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Let me quote back to you again what you wrote above:

quote:
God made people male and female (which is, I would argue, a basic part of each person's identity as a created being) as part of His plan for creation, which includes procreation. Whether one is fertile or not is not a basic part of one's identity as a person - being male or female is.
What you've just said about procreation directly contradicts this; apparently homosexuals are actually NOT "part of His plan for creation" at all. (And BTW, it's rather odd hearing this argument from a member of a Church that has heartily approved of celibate priests since the early middle ages and celibate monastics from the very beginning....)
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Chesterbelloc

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# 3128

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quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No, rather the Church recognises that homosexuals cannot procreate (at least, in ways which would also be licit for heterosexuals).

[eta: but yes, the Church calls homosexual people to chastity.]

Of course homosexuals can procreate, and often do.
Really? With their same-sex partners and in a way that would be licit (in the eyes of the Church) for heterosexuals (i.e., as a result of the marital act and not by in vitro or other such technologies)? Because that was the claim I was making.

quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
We're not infertile; we could simply marry heterosexually and have children in the usual way.

Well, obviously. I fail to see the relevance of that obsrvation to the question in hand, however.
quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
Why does the church teach what it does? Why doesn't it teach, instead, that we should marry somebody of the opposite sex and have children?

Because the Church does not tell anyone they should marry and have children. It especially would not encourage people who were unsuited to a heterosexaul marriage for whatever reason that they should marry. The Church teaches what it does because it thinks it is in possession of the truth.

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Josephine

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# 3899

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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
God made people male and female (which is, I would argue, a basic part of each person's identity as a created being) as part of His plan for creation, which includes procreation. Whether one is fertile or not is not a basic part of one's identity as a person - being male or female is.

I understand the assertions -- male or female is a basic part of your identity, fertility is not. What I don't understand is your reason for the assertions. What makes one thing a basic part of your identity and another thing not a basic part? I know people who consider being Deaf or being autistic a basic part of their identity -- would you agree or not? If you're 6'11" tall, is that a basic part of your identity? Who decides? On what basis?

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Chesterbelloc

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# 3128

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quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
What you've just said about procreation directly contradicts this; apparently homosexuals are actually NOT "part of His plan for creation" at all. (And BTW, it's rather odd hearing this argument from a member of a Church that has heartily approved of celibate priests since the early middle ages and celibate monastics from the very beginning....)

[Roll Eyes] The Church does not think procreation is God's plan for every single individual person - as you've just pointed by metioning calling to celibacy of her priests. But [it is I]part[/I] of the plan for humankind as a whole.

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Chesterbelloc

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quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
What makes one thing a basic part of your identity and another thing not a basic part? I know people who consider being Deaf or being autistic a basic part of their identity -- would you agree or not? If you're 6'11" tall, is that a basic part of your identity? Who decides? On what basis?

Good questions. The Catholic Church's answer is "God": through reason and revelation. This is the way creation is presented to us in the Scriptures, in most of (the rest of) Tradition and as it presents itself to reason. For example, we think it remains true that we will be men and women in eternity, but not deaf or blind or necessarily the same height as we were in life.

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TubaMirum
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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
[Roll Eyes] The Church does not think procreation is God's plan for every single individual person - as you've just pointed by metioning calling to celibacy of her priests. But [it is I]part[/I] of the plan for humankind as a whole.

Oh, stop rolling your eyes; I'm asking perfectly reasonable questions here, given your assertions about human beings made male and female for a particular purpose - i.e., "procreation."

I'm going to ask again: why are homosexuals "unsuitable" for heterosexual marriage? Why are we "called to chastity" instead? What makes us "unsuitable," given our God-given natures as men and women, created for the purpose of procreation? (And why, BTW, are priests "unsuitable" for marriage, while we're at it?)

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
[Roll Eyes] The Church does not think procreation is God's plan for every single individual person - as you've just pointed by metioning calling to celibacy of her priests. But [it is I]part[/I] of the plan for humankind as a whole.

Not sure why that has anything at all to do with marriage equality. God's plan for humankind as a whole involves procreation. Fine. But not all can procreate. So that completely skirts the problem of distinguishing between those who can't procreate in their marriage by means of being fertile, with those who can't procreate in their marriage due to not having complementary plumbing. THAT criterion, at least, is irrelevant to the distinction since it equally covers both.

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TubaMirum
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(What's really interesting, actually, is that it's very, very easy to make the case that the preferred marital status in the New Testament is "none." Paul encourages those who are single to stay single, after all. Jesus flatly states that we can't be his disciples if we don't hate our families and give everything up for him.

It's actually fascinating that none of this ever gets discussed when referring to "Sacred Scripture" on the topic of marriage. We're point to Genesis instead (and of course, never to anything else in the Old Testament, where polygamy was widely and licitly practiced).

I should be the one rolling my eyes. Maybe I will, in fact....

[Roll Eyes] )

[ 01. July 2011, 23:24: Message edited by: TubaMirum ]

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Chesterbelloc

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quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
Oh, stop rolling your eyes; I'm asking perfectly reasonable questions here, given your assertions about human beings made male and female for a particular purpose - i.e., "procreation."

I'll stop rolling my eyes if you stop so badly misrepresenting what I'm saying. I have never said all human beings were created with the express purpose of procreation. That would be ridiculous. In fact, the Church teaches that God made everybody with the supreme purpose of loving him and living with him and all redeemed humnaity for ever - that is the purpose of our creation. That procreation is part of God's plan for humanity (not every single human being) is all I contend.
quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
why are homosexuals "unsuitable" for heterosexual marriage? Why are we "called to chastity" instead? What makes us "unsuitable," given our God-given natures as men and women, created for the purpose of procreation? (And why, BTW, are priests "unsuitable" for marriage, while we're at it?)

In order:

1) I don't categorically state that all homosexual people are necessarily unsuited to (heterosexual) marriage. Perhaps there are some for whom it works very well. But I think there are obvious problems with someone marrying another person with whom there is a baseline sexual incompatibility. Don't you?

2) All people who remain unmarried are called to chastity, because marriage or abstinence from sex altogether are the states of life (that the Church believes) God calls us to.

3) Not all people are called to procreation - see above.

4) Priests are not necessarily unsuited to marriage at all - they merely forego it (in general, in the Latin Church) to answer their call to priesthood.

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Chesterbelloc

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quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
(What's really interesting, actually, is that it's very, very easy to make the case that the preferred marital status in the New Testament is "none." Paul encourages those who are single to stay single, after all.

Agreed. The Catholic Church does and always has taught that the the unmarried state is in a sense a higher state than the married one. But that is not to say that one does wrong by marrying - that can work towards God's purpose too, and without it there would be no new children of the Church (since god has "devolved" that to us). I'm married myself. Not everyone is suited to a life of celibacy, even if that is the "higher" way. Any more that a life of complete holy poverty is for everyone, although in a sense more perfect.

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Louise
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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
It's back to the complementarity thing. God made people male and female (which is, I would argue, a basic part of each person's identity as a created being) as part of His plan for creation, which includes procreation. Whether one is fertile or not is not a basic part of one's identity as a person - being male or female is.

Except 'He' didn't. Human beings have an interesting range of intersex conditions and chromosomal variation. Historically societies have tried hard to force people with such conditions into binary human constructs of either male or female approved sexual roles. Churches, catholic and protestant, have often behaved with extraordinary cruelty in order to do this - hermaphrodites who didn't stick to their Church court assigned sex-roles were often burned. Gay people who refused to be forced into asexual or heterosexual lives were executed.

Human beings are not 'created beings', we evolved and we evolved originally from single cell animals which were asexual. Genesis is not a factual account of our biological origins. Attempts to shoe-horn people into neat tidy categories devised from origin myths may be intellectually satisfying to some, but it's not cisgendered, XX or XY, heterosexual people like you and me who get sacrificed on that Procrustean bed.

I came across a concept a few years ago which I hadn't encountered in the UK - the idea of the invisible knapsack: ways in which we don't realise we are privileged by our race. I would extend this and say that people like you and me are also privileged by belonging by accident of birth, environment and genetics to categories which have been traditionally and historically created by people like us, for people like us, in terms of sex and sexuality.

These categories have been given the stamp of approval by various churches which settled their doctrines before anyone understood much about sexuality, genetics and intersex conditions. Thus we belong to a historically-privileged majority group and thus it's no cost to us to impose those constructs on other people and to wave away the distress and harm those constructs cause by appealing to Churches which made their mind up on them before the issues were even understood.

But when you come down to it, it's privileged people dictating terms to those who don't share their privilege, and the gymnastics entered into to make sure those pesky 'not-like-us' people don't get the same rights would put to shame Constable Savage doing over Mr Winston Kudogo of 55 Mercer Road for "Loitering with intent to use a pedestrian crossing... Walking on the cracks in the pavement,' 'Walking in a loud shirt in a built-up area during the hours of darkness,' 'having an offensive wife.' 'Possession of curly black hair and thick lips."'

"Savage" says the senior officer, "would I be correct in assuming that Mr Kodogo is a coloured gentleman?"
"Well, I can't say I've ever noticed, sir." sez Savage

What the churches have been doing to LGBT and intersex people all these years is just a variant of this 'we set the rules and we manipulate them to make sure they exclude who we want to be excluded'. There's no excuse for it, so please don't try shifting the blame to God. He definitely didn't create people 'male' and 'female'. He didn't create people full stop. He created, if we can say that, asexual unicellular organisms which He (if we use that word) must be inordinately fond of to 'create' so many of them. So let's please stop using 'creation' and 'complementarity' as an excuse to justify excluding LGBT or intersex people from the privileges we take forgranted.

cheers,
Louise

[crossposted with lots of people because I took so long writing]

[ 02. July 2011, 00:01: Message edited by: Louise ]

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Chesterbelloc

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Louise, of course there are people with all sorts of conditions which make them gendered in non-typical ways. But that doesn't, it seems to me, fundamnentally affect the general nature and calling of the vast majority of people. Hard cases make bad law, as it were. Too late to say much more on that.

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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."

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TubaMirum
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# 8282

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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
Oh, stop rolling your eyes; I'm asking perfectly reasonable questions here, given your assertions about human beings made male and female for a particular purpose - i.e., "procreation."

I'll stop rolling my eyes if you stop so badly misrepresenting what I'm saying. I have never said all human beings were created with the express purpose of procreation. That would be ridiculous. In fact, the Church teaches that God made everybody with the supreme purpose of loving him and living with him and all redeemed humnaity for ever - that is the purpose of our creation. That procreation is part of God's plan for humanity (not every single human being) is all I contend.
So, then: what's the problem with homosexual relationships?

quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
why are homosexuals "unsuitable" for heterosexual marriage? Why are we "called to chastity" instead? What makes us "unsuitable," given our God-given natures as men and women, created for the purpose of procreation? (And why, BTW, are priests "unsuitable" for marriage, while we're at it?)

In order:

1) I don't categorically state that all homosexual people are necessarily unsuited to (heterosexual) marriage. Perhaps there are some for whom it works very well. But I think there are obvious problems with someone marrying another person with whom there is a baseline sexual incompatibility. Don't you?

2) All people who remain unmarried are called to chastity, because marriage or abstinence from sex altogether are the states of life (that the Church believes) God calls us to.

3) Not all people are called to procreation - see above.

4) Priests are not necessarily unsuited to marriage at all - they merely forego it (in general, in the Latin Church) to answer their call to priesthood.

1) The Catechism does, categorically. Here it is, #2359: "Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection." Period. End of story. And unless I'm mistaken, Catholics can marry without any sort of consultation with a priest; they can marry somebody of another religion, too, and people can become Catholic after having been married in another tradition. All those kinds of marriages are considered valid. Which means that heterosexuals never have to attest to their sexual attraction to their spouses; why should gay people be denied heterosexual (or any) marriage on that basis?

2) Nobody else is "called to chastity" for life, without the possibility of parole. If others get marriage proposals, their chastity is over; not so for us. For us, the goal is a lifelong "resolute approach to Christian perfection."

3) Fine. But that's not the question. Perhaps there are homosexuals who would make perfectly fine spouses and parents; the question is, why does the church tell us we are "called to chastity," period, full stop, merely on the basis of sexual orientation? Particularly when it teaches, you say, that gender and procreation are so fundamentally important?

4) All right, that's fine. But about half of all candidates wash out, most because of the celibacy requirement. They choose marriage, in other words - but gay people don't get to choose.

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TubaMirum
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(I can't really understand the concept, I should add, of blithely explaining away enforced lifelong celibacy - and at the same time expressing concern over "incompatibility" in a marriage! I'd say you've never really thought very deeply about all this - or had to.

I mean, if gay people are supposed to "approach Christian perfection" by means of our lifelong enforced celibacy - what's so hard about "baseline sexual incompatibility" in a marriage? In many cultures, and for many years, marriages were arranged! Somehow, most of those couples managed to work it out.

Perhaps they did it by working towards "Christian perfection"? Or is that simply too much to ask?

Another case of "one law for me, and another for thee," methinks....)

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Louise
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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Louise, of course there are people with all sorts of conditions which make them gendered in non-typical ways. But that doesn't, it seems to me, fundamnentally affect the general nature and calling of the vast majority of people. Hard cases make bad law, as it were. Too late to say much more on that.

This is exactly the problem - this kind of statement is more or less what it looks like to judge other people from a position of, almost unconscious, privilege. It doesn't look that way for someone on the receiving end of it. Much of Jesus's teaching is about trying to get us to see that other end of the stick and to refrain from hitting people with it.

And this is why I say we can't shrug off the injustice of this kind of position by shifting the blame for the evil consequences onto the Church, God, tradition etc. Churches have been hideously wrong on this before. I could point you to the very records in the archives which show the inhumanity of the way churches have tried to impose their favoured categories on people.

Sometimes it seems to me that the tiny number of verses about marriage in the Gospels, (mostly concerned with the evils of divorcing women in a society where that meant poverty and disgrace), are often blown up out of all proportion to the point where they negate the core teaching about how we are to treat others. An over-rigid theology of marriage has been elaborated from them which actually negates the key teaching of compassion which underlies them.

L.

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orfeo

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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Louise, of course there are people with all sorts of conditions which make them gendered in non-typical ways. But that doesn't, it seems to me, fundamnentally affect the general nature and calling of the vast majority of people. Hard cases make bad law, as it were. Too late to say much more on that.

So why do you lump homosexuals in with 'the general nature and calling of the vast majority of people'? Instead of with the intersex and transgender as non-typical people?

The situation that many churches, including the Catholic Church, seem to have got themselves into is a very peculiar halfway house. They have now got to the point where they are prepared to acknowledge that these differences between people ARE real. The existence of permanent and unchangeable homosexual desires, or of transgender people whose brain and body don't match, is recognised.

But then, people aren't allowed to take action in their lives in accordance with their needs.

The end result is to basically say that either God stuffed up massively, or he's incredibly cruel. You have all these non-standard people walking around who have no choice but to be miserable because they don't fit the standard model, which is the only one allowed.

Frankly, my reaction to some of the claimed rules and purposes is that if God didn't want me to procreate in a happily heterosexual manner, he shouldn't have given me a sex drive. If God wanted a handy pool of excellent aunts and uncles, then asexuality would have done the job far better.

[Edit: And while I was writing my post, Louise was writing an excellent complementary one taking the same ideas from slightly different angles.]

[ 02. July 2011, 00:37: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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TubaMirum
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One interesting thing I just noticed is that in fact "chastity" has two distinct meanings: it can mean either "moderation in sexual matters" or "abstinence from sexual activity."

They don't use the word "celibacy," in fact, which has only the one meaning. (Here's #1579, for instance, on that topic:

quote:
1579 All the ordained ministers of the Latin Church, with the exception of permanent deacons, are normally chosen from among men of faith who live a celibate life and who intend to remain celibate "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to "the affairs of the Lord," they give themselves entirely to God and to men. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church's minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God.
I mean, I would imagine that all Catholics are "called to chastity" in the first sense of the word, no? So perhaps this is actually loophole left for later, when the understanding of homosexuality changes - and therefore the teaching has to change with it?

Film at 11!

(Doubtful, I know, given the current Catholic understanding of sex - arising from its position on birth control. Still, these folks use words carefully....)

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leo
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# 1458

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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
But a relationship that is so ordered that procreation is, by the fundamental identity of the persons themselves, precluded - not by accident but by the very sorts of persons (two males or two females) attempting to contract the marriage - cannot, the Church argues, be solemnised in matrimony.

Can you explain what things are part of the very sort of person one is, and what things are accidental? I'm trying to make your statement here make sense to me, and I'm having trouble with it.
It's back to the complementarity thing. God made people male and female (which is, I would argue, a basic part of each person's identity as a created being) as part of His plan for creation, which includes procreation. Whether one is fertile or not is not a basic part of one's identity as a person - being male or female is.
God also made people who are neither fully male nor female.

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Chesterbelloc

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Falling way behind here and am going to be out all day, but just to pick up on one point that TubaMirum raised.

The Catechism does not say that homosexual people are called to celibacy, as TM later pointed out, but to chastity - which is the same call for any married person.

If there are no fundamental obstacles (psychological, emotional, physiological, situational, etc.) to a person with same-sex attraction forming the relevant intention of matrimony with a person of the opposite sex and to consummating that marriage, I do not see why they may not, ceteris paribus, be married by the Church.

[ 02. July 2011, 10:04: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]

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TubaMirum
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quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
The Catechism does not say that homosexual people are called to celibacy, as TM later pointed out, but to chastity - which is the same call for any married person.

If there are no fundamental obstacles (psychological, emotional, physiological, situational, etc.) to a person with same-sex attraction forming the relevant intention of matrimony with a person of the opposite sex and to consummating that marriage, I do not see why they may not, ceteris paribus, be married by the Church.

Hate to mention it, but this also implies that gay people can in fact marry their same-sex partners.

And since some very large percentage of Catholics (85%-98% are the numbers I've seen, worldwide and in the US respectively) simply ignores the Church's doctrine on birth control, there's no reason whatsoever for gay partners to abstain, either.

See how easy that was?

[ 02. July 2011, 12:38: Message edited by: TubaMirum ]

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