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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: New York the 6th state to extend marriage to same-sex couples
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
Sorry, TubaMirum - you've lost me. How does it imply anything of the sort?
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
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TubaMirum
Shipmate
# 8282
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Sorry, TubaMirum - you've lost me. How does it imply anything of the sort?
Hmmm. You yourself just said this:
quote:
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.
I'm not clear why you are "lost" about this. What does "chastity" in marriage mean to you, if not - as in the second definition I gave above - "moderation in sexual matters"? i.e., "the same call for any married person." How, exactly, are these "married persons" actually living out their "call to chastity"? What does this actually mean, when speaking about marriage?
And why do you think it wouldn't apply to gay people in the same way?
Posts: 4719 | From: Right Coast USA | Registered: Aug 2004
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
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.
No. It doesn't. Because marriage is defined by the Church as an instutution between men and women and always has been (just as it was and is for Jews and Muslims and any other number of religions and socities).
Married people exercise chastity by treating one another, others and themselves in accordance with what the Church teaches: they may not engage in any act which is wrong in itself, such as abuse, exploitation, triolism, public indecency, etc. But since homosexual genital acts are in themselves wrong according to the Church, homosexual unions cannot be chaste if they involve them. Therefore, although the marriage of persons with same-sex attraction to people of the opposite sex is not in itself ruled out, it is ruled out between two people of the same sex.
I'm sure none of this comes a surprise to you, and I don't expect you to accept it - but it is the clear teaching of the Catholic Church and always has been.
[ 03. July 2011, 18:40: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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TubaMirum
Shipmate
# 8282
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Married people exercise chastity by treating one another, others and themselves in accordance with what the Church teaches: they may not engage in any act which is wrong in itself, such as abuse, exploitation, triolism, public indecency, etc. But since homosexual genital acts are in themselves wrong according to the Church, homosexual unions cannot be chaste if they involve them. Therefore, although the marriage of persons with same-sex attraction to people of the opposite sex is not in itself ruled out, it is ruled out between two people of the same sex.
I'm sure none of this comes a surprise to you, and I don't expect you to accept it - but it is the clear teaching of the Catholic Church and always has been.
"Triolism"! That's a new one on me; never heard the term before today.
The section in the current catechism on homosexuality was written in the 1980s, as a reaction (no doubt) to the gay rights movement. There doesn't seem to be anything in the Baltimore Catechism (which I think was the one previous to the current one).
So I wonder how much thought has actually gone into this, in fact? It sounds from what's in the current catechism as if it's a doctrine in search of an excuse for itself.
James Alison writes that the Church's teaching is fatally flawed in another way:
quote:
Please notice that there are two logical barriers which the ecclesiastical argument cannot jump without falsifying it’s own doctrine. The first is this: The Church cannot say “Well, being that way is normal, something neutral or positive, the Church respects it and welcomes it. The Church only prohibits the acts which flow from it”. This position would lack logic in postulating intrinsically evil acts which flow from a neutral or positive being. And this would go against the principle of Catholic morals which states that acts flow from being – agere sequitur esse. The second barrier is this: the Church cannot say of the homosexual inclination that it is a desire which is in itself intrinsically evil, since to say this would be to fall into the heresy of claiming that there is some part of being human which is essentially depraved – that is, which cannot be transformed, only covered over.
Faced with these two barriers, ecclesiastical logic did a backward double-flip worthy of an Olympic gymnast so as to arrive at the following formulation: “The homosexual inclination, though not itself a sin, constitutes a tendency towards behaviour that is intrinsically evil, and must therefore be considered objectively disordered.” With this phrase, the Vatican Congregations sought to maintain the absolute prohibition of the acts without describing the desire as intrinsically evil. Nevertheless the price of this definition is very high. It obliges its defenders to insist that the homosexual inclination, independently of any acts flowing from it, is something objectively disordered. And the kind of objectivity they have in mind is deduced not from what can be known through experience, but is an a priori which depends on the Church’s teaching concerning marriage. That is to say, the a priori of the intrinsic heterosexuality of all human beings. In other words, from the presupposition of the intrinsic heterosexuality of all human beings, it is deduced that the person whose inclination is towards those of the same sex is a defective heterosexual.
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This then is the conflict: for the prohibition of the acts to correspond to the true being of the person, the inclination has to be characterised as something objectively disordered. However, since the inclination doesn’t alter, unlike desires which are recognisably vicious, the gay or lesbian person would have a desire which is, in fact, intrinsically evil, an element of radical depravity in their desire. And we would have stepped outside Catholic anthropology. Or, on the other hand, the same-sex inclination is simply something that is, in which case grace will bring it to a flourishing starting from where it is, and with this we would have to work out which acts are appropriate or not, according to the circumstances, and we will have stepped outside the absolute prohibition passed on to us by tradition.
In other words: it doesn't really matter how long the prohibition has been in place, if the actual attempt to deal with the topic creates a fatal contradiction in the Church's own teaching! (This, I'd say in fact, is a clear indication that the teaching is wrong.)
Posts: 4719 | From: Right Coast USA | Registered: Aug 2004
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
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.
Excuse me, but there IS a fundamental psychological and emotional obstacle - and it's one that the church RECOGNISES. We are NOT ATTRACTED TO THE OPPOSITE SEX!
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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.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
Actually, I'd hate to miselad you: it's "troilism", and it's my example, not the Church's. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
As to James Alison's argument, it's a bit all over the place. In his evident need to make it look as if the Church just hasn't thought her doctrine through properly, he overloooks something massively important himself.
Because of the fall, many of our desires are disordered - some only when out of control or proportion but directed towards soemthing neutral or good (like, say, unrestrained gluttony or lust), others intrinsically because of what it is directed towards (like same-sex attraction). But in neither case is the desire itself - whether intrinsically disordered or merely out of control - morally culpable (unless deliberately indulged in or acted upon). A desire certainly can be intrinsically disordered without any blame attaching to the person with that desire.
In other words, there is no contradiction here at all.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
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.
Excuse me, but there IS a fundamental psychological and emotional obstacle - and it's one that the church RECOGNISES. We are NOT ATTRACTED TO THE OPPOSITE SEX!
You and TubaMirum will have to fight that one out between yourselves, then. If it's not an obstacle to formimg a proper intention to marry as the Church understands it and is not an absolute obstacle to consummating the marriage, then it's an open question as far as I'm concerned. All I know if that I couldn't marry a guy if the requirements were the same.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Because of the fall, many of our desires are disordered - some only when out of control or proportion but directed towards soemthing neutral or good (like, say, unrestrained gluttony or lust), others intrinsically because of what it is directed towards (like same-sex attraction).
Which brings me back to Sodom and Gommorrah. I have this version of the story in my mind where God says "Oh RIGHT, you wanted to rape a WOMAN! Sorry, terrible misunderstanding. Won't destroy you then. Carry on!"
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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.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
All I know is that I couldn't marry a guy if the requirements were the same.
Exactly. Which makes it utterly ridiculous to tell a gay man "Good News! You're allowed to marry a woman!"
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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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TubaMirum
Shipmate
# 8282
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Actually, I'd hate to miselad you: it's "troilism", and it's my example, not the Church's.
As to James Alison's argument, it's a bit all over the place. In his evident need to make it look as if the Church just hasn't thought her doctrine through properly, he overloooks something massively important himself.
Because of the fall, many of our desires are disordered - some only when out of control or proportion but directed towards soemthing neutral or good (like, say, unrestrained gluttony or lust), others intrinsically because of what it is directed towards (like same-sex attraction). But in neither case is the desire itself - whether intrinsically disordered or merely out of control - morally culpable (unless deliberately indulged in or acted upon). A desire certainly can be intrinsically disordered without any blame attaching to the person with that desire.
In other words, there is no contradiction here at all.
I think you probably should read the whole article; the ellipses did leave out some important stuff - but it was too long to quote....
Posts: 4719 | From: Right Coast USA | Registered: Aug 2004
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TubaMirum
Shipmate
# 8282
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
All I know is that I couldn't marry a guy if the requirements were the same.
Exactly. Which makes it utterly ridiculous to tell a gay man "Good News! You're allowed to marry a woman!"
Well, to be fair, he was responding to me; I'd asked why gay people were forbidden intimacy at all, simply because we were same-sex oriented. This doesn't make sense to me; one would think that this was going way too far, especially since (as Chesterbelloc describes it) the RCC teaches that reproduction is as centrally important as it is.
I'd wondered why gay people should be singled out for enforced lifelong celibacy - forbidden to have physical relationships of any type - merely because we were same-sex oriented. It just seems bizarre, that's all; we have, at the outset, to realize that we are attracted to our own gender. Then, if we admit this (if only to ourselves) we are suddenly cast as complete untouchables - and we must from that moment forgo any sort of intimate relationship, even if we'd be willing to settle and marry somebody of the opposite sex.
All because of the peculiar argument that "Homosexual persons are called to chastity." Yes, even if we were willing to marry heterosexually and make a real go of it. Don't you find that strange?
[ 04. July 2011, 00:30: Message edited by: TubaMirum ]
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TubaMirum
Shipmate
# 8282
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Actually, I'd hate to miselad you: it's "troilism", and it's my example, not the Church's.
(And may I just add: what will these wild and crazy heterosexuals come up with next!? )
Posts: 4719 | From: Right Coast USA | Registered: Aug 2004
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John Holding
Coffee and Cognac
# 158
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Posted
For centuries gay men have married women and engendered children with the full approval of the church. Sometimes the church didn't know, but very often it did. The homosexual behaviour of James VI and I didn't stop the church marrying him. And the flamingly gay Duke of Orleans (Louis XIV's uncle? cousin?) had no problem getting the church to marry him at least once, if not twice.
Because, of course, men didn't have gay sex (that would have been a sin, and when the church says something's a sin, nobody does it) in the first place, they didn't have to be warned not to keep on with it after marriage. So, by and large, they did.
Basically, neither the church nor certain sections in society, cared what a man did apart from his wife so long as he had children to keep property in the family and didn't parade a male lover the way both the church and those sections of society fully accepted and approved of parading his mistress. Of course, neither the church nor (very broadly) those sections of society valued women (as a class, not specific women) except as mothers of sons to inherit.
There are well known examples of gay men who married women and had children and continued patronising male brothels in London and frequenting Hyde Park after dark well into the 20th century -- a peer, one of Edward VII's close friends and administrators, had to resign because of being found with a guardee in the Park one night. As late as the 1930s, a certain bishop in the CofE was so notorious that Lambeth reputedly warned curates asked to visit his palace -- and he was married and had children. Everybody knew in all these cases, and no one cared.
John
Posts: 5929 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
Everybody knew in all these cases, and no one cared.
And yet they also knew about Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, and they did care. Is it because Wilde and Turing weren't nobility?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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TubaMirum
Shipmate
# 8282
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
Everybody knew in all these cases, and no one cared.
And yet they also knew about Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, and they did care. Is it because Wilde and Turing weren't nobility?
Perhaps the difference is in the "married" part? Alan Turing was openly gay, and not playing any sort of game about it. As long as you do obeisance to the will of the majority, you can often skirt by; it's when you break society's rules and forgo the pretense that you get into trouble.
I don't know about Wilde, though....
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
Everybody knew in all these cases, and no one cared.
And yet they also knew about Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, and they did care. Is it because Wilde and Turing weren't nobility?
Perhaps the difference is in the "married" part? Alan Turing was openly gay, and not playing any sort of game about it. As long as you do obeisance to the will of the majority, you can often skirt by; it's when you break society's rules and forgo the pretense that you get into trouble.
I don't know about Wilde, though....
In regards to Oscar Wilde, wasn't it the case that ONE guy, Lord Alfred's father, really cared, and decided to humiliate Wilde publically by sending a mock bouquet to one of his performances? Followed by Wilde ignoring all the legal advice he was given, and launching a libel suit against Queensberry? Which led to information coming up at trial about his sexual activities, and then subsequent criminal charges from that?
Not at all defending the prosecution of Wilde, or the laws he was charged under. Just that, from my recollection, it was a fairly unique set of circumstances that led to Wilde's being charged criminally. And that Wilde himself kind of pushed things along, as a result of his own bad decisions.
Like I say, that's my recollection. Someone else can fill in the blanks, or make any neccessary corrections.
[ 04. July 2011, 20:13: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
So, they don't care except when they do? They don't care how gay you are until you admit it publicly? I'm not following the logic.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So, they don't care except when they do? They don't care how gay you are until you admit it publicly? I'm not following the logic.
I wasn't really trying to argue anything one way or the other about how the Victorians treated homosexuality. I was just filling in the blanks about Wilde, since Tuba said that s/he didn't know the details of the case.
My guess would be that the Victorians basically treated sexual "deviance" the way we treat, say, cocaine use. Everyone knows that there are high-ranking government officials and corporate CEOs snorting cocaine as we speak, but for the most part people are happy to look the other way, and confine prosecution to the the few luckless losers who are indiscrete enough to get caught.
And yes, I think that Victorian's hypocrisy about sex and our own hypocrisy about drugs are equally disgusting.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Mousthief: quote:
So, they don't care except when they do? They don't care how gay you are until you admit it publicly? I'm not following the logic.
Did I miss something? Who said social rules had to be logical?
The point (for the Victorians, and many people today who would just prefer to sweep gays back under the carpet and pretend they don't exist) was that whatever you might get up to in private, in public you behaved as a Normal Person so that other people knew how to relate to you. The fact that some of them also knew what you got up to in private was irrelevant.
Yes, I think it's ridiculous too. But that was the way people behaved at the time.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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TubaMirum
Shipmate
# 8282
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So, they don't care except when they do? They don't care how gay you are until you admit it publicly? I'm not following the logic.
Well, to be honest, I'm not sold on what John Holding has said above, anyway. I'd certainly like some sort of evidence that it's true - because I doubt it very much, myself, unless he's talking strictly about the very wealthy or powerful. Still, I'd sure like some links or something to read about this.
I was just offering a possibility. It is true, though, that the church will forgive people who "succomb to the vice" of homosexuality - as long as they admit it's a vice. What it really doesn't like is open and unashamed homosexuality, though; that's the whole issue at present, in fact, at least for a large part of the church. This is why gay people get kicked out of certain churches; it's OK to be seen to be "fighting the inclination" - but if you don't accept that it needs to be fought against, you're simply not acceptable.
Posts: 4719 | From: Right Coast USA | Registered: Aug 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Mousthief: quote:
So, they don't care except when they do? They don't care how gay you are until you admit it publicly? I'm not following the logic.
Did I miss something? Who said social rules had to be logical?
I think you misunderstand me. I wasn't talking about social rules when I said I don't understand. I was asking about what people were saying were the social rules in the UK. It was a, "do i have it straight, what you're saying?" (no pun intended of course.) Social rules are often illogical and inconsistent. But it is also true that I often misunderstand what people are saying.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
for the most part people are happy to look the other way, and confine prosecution to the the few luckless losers who are indiscrete enough to get caught.
And yes, I think that Victorian's hypocrisy about sex and our own hypocrisy about drugs are equally disgusting.
Not just Victorian. 15-20 years ago Terry Teachout ranted about the nascent phenomenon of gay people coming out and predicted that it would lead to a mighty backlash. Gays do nicely without it, he explained, because people are willing to look the other way when their own values are not challenged or threatened. Then he launched into a sort of paean for this kind of hypocrisy-- overlooking certain behavior in others despite disapproval-- which is distinct from doing something oneself while making a great production of condemning it.
I must agree that some kinds of hypocrisy are so much more benevolent than others as to deserve a different word for them. But, in the first place, Teachout was painting far too rosy a picture of the status quo he was defending. What would a music-drama critic moving in the rarefied academic, artistic, and literary circles of Manhattan know about the atmosphere of a schoolyard or a realtor's office in small-town flyover country? What he defended as was described by Kurt Dussander in The Apt Pupil: "To have someone in your control. To have them know that they are alive only because you have not decided to the contrary." Dussander had become well acquainted with that intoxicating power as the superintendent of a Nazi death camp. What Teachout advocated may be a milder form of it, and superficially more wholesome, but it's essentially the same game. Is it a free country that requires certain people to live under such a sword of Damocles?
In the second place, one is happy to observe that his predicted backlash has not come to pass. Quite the contrary: and that in the face of the AIDS epidemic. Perhaps it vindicates the old saying: the truth will out.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
Speaking of New York and same-sex marriage:
quote:
The gay car dealer who opened his home to Rudy Giuliani in 2001 during his humiliating divorce battle says the former mayor offered to preside at his wedding if same-sex marriage were ever legalized -- but is now ducking his calls to make good on the offer.
"I asked if he would marry us," recalled Howard Koeppel, the unlikely provider of an emergency Midtown crash pad to Giuliani for six months when his marriage to Donna Hanover was crumbling and Gracie Mansion was a war zone.
"He said, 'Howard, I don't ever do anything that's not legal. If it becomes legal in New York, you'll be one of the first ones I would marry.'"
Ten years later, Koeppel is distressed that his former house guest hasn't returned the many calls he began making before the legislation was passed last week.
"It seems like a lot of people he was close to become persona non grata," Koeppel observed.
Koeppel has been with his partner, Mark Hsiao, since 1991.
The only explanations I can think of are that Giuliani is a total tool or that he's delusional enough the think that this would be the act which makes Republicans reject him at the polls. These two explanations are, obviously, not mutually exclusive.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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iGeek
Number of the Feast
# 777
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Posted
One thread to celebrate a bit 'o progress for Teh Gayz' and the usual suspects come out and piss in the cheerios.
You guys are *such* an advertisement for "Good News".
Not.
Posts: 2150 | From: West End, Gulfopolis | Registered: Aug 2002
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John Holding
Coffee and Cognac
# 158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
Everybody knew in all these cases, and no one cared.
And yet they also knew about Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, and they did care. Is it because Wilde and Turing weren't nobility?
Possibly. Nobility, or at least upper and upper middle class. Or cathedral clergy. Or Oxbridge colleges. Or senior civil servants. Or...
And I am talking about things certainly pre-WWI. Middle-class morality did view both adultery and gay sex as wrong at the time I'm thinking of, and the upsurge of that particular moral perspective after the war changed a great deal. I'd guess the change started as part of the change that brought about the Liberal government in 1905, and the process lasted for at least a couple of decades, though I suspect that in the uppermost classes it never was the universal view.
One could adduce the late Queen Mother's reputed easy tolerance for gay men in her service and that of the crown as an example of late Victorian aristocratic morality in practice. How this would have been affected by her (reputed) very catholic religious views, I don't know.
Wilde is a special case, since it seems clear he could have avoided prosecution if he had used a modicum of common sense.
John
Posts: 5929 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: May 2001
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John Holding
Coffee and Cognac
# 158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TubaMirum:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
Everybody knew in all these cases, and no one cared.
And yet they also knew about Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, and they did care. Is it because Wilde and Turing weren't nobility?
Perhaps the difference is in the "married" part? Alan Turing was openly gay, and not playing any sort of game about it. As long as you do obeisance to the will of the majority, you can often skirt by; it's when you break society's rules and forgo the pretense that you get into trouble.
I don't know about Wilde, though....
I suspect that's a large part of it. Wilde was married with children, though so I think in his case it was more what Stetson describes.
John
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