Comments for Stemming the Gay Marriage Tide at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 26 out of 20 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Mon, 20 May 2013 02:01:00 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12553 Dear Louise, Thank you, Louise. No, I did not know that. It certainly explains a lot, though, doesn't it. :) My husband has probably already guessed. Female warrior . . . .hmmnnn. M-L - Maggie Louise Sat, 21 Jul 2012 04:19:10 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12551 Perhaps, just perhaps, this is an opportunity to make a sharper distinction within society between the sacramental nature of marriage and the civil (contract) nature of marriage. If not within the broader society, certainly it can provide clarity within the Church. Civil marriage has increasingly become a non-binding legal contract that has more to do with what is legally required when the marriage fails rather than any kind of contract related to preservation of the marriage. Perhaps this controversy will lead to a new primacy in the importance of the sacrament of marriage and civil marriage will be seen for what it has become, a non-binding "contract" that can be broken by either party, for any reason, at any time. What is happening now is the further degradation of the institution of civil marriage and it's status within society. - TomD Sat, 21 Jul 2012 03:30:14 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12549 Harold, thank you for stepping out on this issue which is so important to the future of civilization. I’ve often reflected that it matters little whether or not there is a genetic predisposition to same sex attraction, say through a personality type the formation of which may be a combination of nature and nurture. Anyone who would base their life merely on their feelings is not basing it on a very firm foundation. We all have inclinations that are not consistent with our human nature, i.e. we all have temptations to sin in various ways. Are we as a society really willing to say that the only way to judge the rightness of a person’s particular behavior is because they feel an attraction to engage in it? If so, we have reached the end of law and we will soon see how we like chaos. Sometimes I wonder if we are suffering from a new form of Gnosticism & Manicheaism in that there is simply little consideration given to the importance of the body. JPII was farseeing in this way. I think I am a little of Gian’s perspective re point #3. While I think contraception deforms the marriage act, I don’t think it totally obliterates it, as nature sometimes finds a way. Also, according to the literature at least, what is happening in some forms in a certain percentage of cases is not contraceptive but abortifative. So the marriage act is preserved but the unborn child is killed. I would agree with the “grace” point; it certainly makes less grace available to the world to have so many married couples sinning in this way. But from a political perspective, I don’t think it is a barrier to opposition to redefining marriage. People instinctively see that marriage is a fundamental pillar of society and are not willing to fool with it. (Maggie Louise, you do know that our shared name means “female warrior”? We are twins in more than name…I totally agree about the lexicon we need to employ) - Louise Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:18:29 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12542 Dr. Kainz, I find your logic unassailable, but my expereince tells me that it will fall on deaf ears when presented to a Catholic of a contraceptive mind-set. When I was a young man I knew a hihgly educated Catholic who spoke with equal scorn of both Church's teaching on contraception and on homosexuality, imagining that the latter had freely chosen their siituation, even though I told him of men I knew who wanted nothing more than to live normal lives. At that time I broke off a relationship with a Catholic woman because she was deteremind to never have children and when I told her that no priest could marry us if he knew that she said she would just lie. The same elderly chap said I some kind of cad for not wanting to marry a woman under false pretenses. Bad catechesis all around! - Thomas C. Coleman, Jr. Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:58:03 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12539 @Gian: My point is that ethically both acts are nonprocreative and it would be inconsistent of heterosexual contraceptors to castigate a slightly different form of nonprocreative sex. - Howard Kainz Fri, 20 Jul 2012 06:26:27 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12528 Howard Kainz, Non-procreative coitus is physically and socially a different act than homosex. Then how is it ethical and consistent that both of them be regarded equally? - Gian Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:49:42 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12527 Michael Paterson-Seymour, The concept of filation is now rendered problematic owing to widespread use and acceptance the artificial techniques. - Gian Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:46:45 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12526 Just an anecdote illustrative of the extend that even some priests will go in front of a congregation to rationalize thier support for evil. I heard a reitiring Naval chaplalin, on the occasion of his last Mass on active duty, claim the the Council of Jeruselm released Christians from Hebrew dietary laws and "laws regaring sexual purity." I cannot believe that any priest who just accdently misconstrue the injunction to (varous translation) avoid unlawful marriage or avoid unchastity to mean what he claimed. I also know parents who have foudn consolation ina priest's advice to accept their son or saugher's so-called preference since the Church no longer holds to the old superstitions. Many Catholics sincerely think that God is perfectly okay with anything anything that doesn't pollute the environment or promote white or heterosexual privilege. This is the Winter of our Diabolical Disorientation! - Thomas C. Colmean, Jr. Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:46:16 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12525 Dan, indistinguishable? you must be joking, arghhh. - Achilles Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:07:30 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12524 The root cause of the pervasive acceptance of homosexuality and so called "gay marriage" is No. 3, contraception (and the ideologies that endorse or tolerate contraception). Heterosexual sex with contraception is, in principle, indistinguishable from homosexual sex acts. - Dan Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:55:04 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12521 If in fact marriage is a sacrament then it needs to be explained why non-catholic marriage is not fornication. Or why there is a Christian sacrament that is regularly participated in by unbelievers. As for "contract", that word implies a commercial agreement and marriage, while it has commercial aspects and may be enacted primarily for such reasons, is simply not the same thing. Furthermore when done for political instead of commercial reasons, it would properly be referred to as a "treaty" not a contract. In other words rethink your wording. - jason taylor Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:02:49 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12520 I looked up van den Aardweg's statement on the web. His opinion is apparently based on a single phone call with Spitzer nearly 10 years ago. There is nothing more than this opinion (and yours) to suggest that lingering emotional turmoil interacted with his age and current physical condition to produce the apology. I contrast that with Dr. Spitzer's actual letter, which strikes me as rational and straightforward, and has no hint of bein written under duress. I don't endorse his position, but I pay him the respect of taking it at face value. Implying causality when none exists undermines the credibility of your argument. - DS Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:51:23 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12518 I just remembered that this site is The CATHOLIC Thing so I went to para. 2357 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It states..."Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered'".... "Under no circumstances can they be approved." I would assume that would slam the lid on "marriage", n'est-ce pas? - Manfred Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:05:14 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12515 @DS: Gerard van den Aardweg, a Dutch psychologist who has also worked extensively on homosexuality, said that Spitzer’s apology was issued under duress. “He had nearly broken down emotionally after terrible personal attacks from militant gays and their supporters,” he said. “There was an outpouring of hatred.” According to Van den Aardweg, the journal which originally published Spitzer’s work on reparative therapy, Archives of Sexual Behavior, has not withdrawn the work, because the study was scientifically sound. “His retraction does not change his results and his results are the only thing that counts." - Howard Kainz Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:05:07 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12514 Mack Hall It speaks volumes about the sexual practices of the Ancient world that an Egyptian Jew of the 2nd century BC should write The Jews "are mindful of holy wedlock, and they do not engage in impious intercourse with male children, as do Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Romans, specious Greece and many nations of others, Persians and Galatians and all Asia.” Bear in mind, too, that the sages in the Talmud forbid a Jew to sell boy slaves or sheep to gentiles! - Michael Paterson-Seymour Thu, 19 Jul 2012 08:52:20 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12512 Even in the, oh, giddiest of ancient pagan states homosexual activity appears -- emphasize appears; I barely graduated from high school and am no authority -- to have been tolerated as, at best, a wink-wink / nudge-nudge thing, and not sanctioned by the state or by the state religion. Indeed, despite many very real errors, successful ancient states defended and protected marriage and the family as the foundation of society. - Mack Hall Thu, 19 Jul 2012 07:20:23 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12510 5) Homosexual couples are "solving" the poverty problem in India by contracting surrogate pregnancies. There will soon be a sizeable test-tube voting bloc. Hopefully we can do better than the protagonist of "Brave New World" in witnessing to the truth. (For those who cite the "ick" factor, remember BNW managed to cast the heteros as the grotesques). - Sue Thu, 19 Jul 2012 07:12:29 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12509 Regarding the polls that say most Catholic couples use artificial contraception, I think that we in the Church, including the lay faithful, need to engage in a mobilization to really teach the Theology of the Body to the Catholic populace of the country. I may be naive, but having studied the TOB myself, and seen its beauty, I believe that we can change the behavior of a great many people. Of course there are some who won't care, but it could be a life changer for those who will listen, if only someone would tell them the truth. I firmly believe that the TOB leads directly to God's ultimate gift of sending us Jesus through the incarnation, and that our sexuality is God's way of writing his invitation to love Him directly into our bodies. - Athanasius Thu, 19 Jul 2012 07:11:45 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12506 " So perhaps we've been co-opted into the semantics as well when we really ought to be calling homosexual "sex" something else. " I have held my finger in the dike for a good long time now by suggesting that we not concede the field by accepting the language and terms of the debate. As Frank said, we have been co-opted by using the language of the homosexual agenda. Being a language person, I often fear that, very soon, words will have no meaning at all and we will all end up saying "whatever" or, as some of you may remember, "gross". If homosexual so-called sex is a sin, in what possible way can it be said to be "gay"? So, time and again (ad nauseum you are probably saying), I stuck my finger in the dike and said, "Please, call it by its name." To use an adjective that is so glaringly opposed to reality is nothing but a lie. (Remember that word?) So totally have we been co-opted that, when I was making this argument with a young woman probably in her late 30s or early 40s, she had no idea that the word "gay" had any other meaning than "homosexual". We've lost. Would anyone like to join me at the dike? Since another Louise has joined our company, I will give myself a new name. ("the earlier Louise" is a mouthful.) So I'll be Maggie Louise from now on. - Maggie Louise Thu, 19 Jul 2012 05:25:00 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/stemming-the-gay-marriage-tide.html#comment-12505 I think that point 3 is a crucial one in terms of Catholics' being willing to stand up against gay marriage, as for many of them, sexual activity need not always be simultaneously unitive and ordered toward procreation. - John Anderson Thu, 19 Jul 2012 05:09:00 +0100