Is Every Sperm Sacred?

From Summa Bergania

Theological and Philosophical Perspectives on Sexual Ethics

by David Bergan - May 16, 2002 (revised November 5, 2005)

With the possible exception of hardened criminals and crazy people, everybody has a line that separates acceptable sexual experiences from the unacceptable. If you go low enough on the scale, eventually everyone will give an emotional response similar to "That's wrong!" "They're sick!" or at least, "Icky!" But this line seems to vary from person to person. I have met people who can discuss intercourse with farm animals in graphic detail without a hint of red in their face, while I also know of many husbands and wives who seem so embarrassed by their nightly activities, that they refuse to talk about it even with each other. The gut response whenever someone encounters a sexual practice on the other side of her line is to declare that practice unnatural. But often these declarations are neither well thought-out nor objective. One person’s 'icky' is the next person's fantasy. Since the sexual impulse is so strong, and sexual perversions so numerous, for social order and decency it is necessary to establish common objective standards. But since the sexual impulse is so strong, and sexual perversions so numerous, it is impossible to set such standards without incurring violent criticism from all people who do not define natural and unnatural sexual practices in the same way that you do.

The Bible also imposes arbitrary restrictions on sexual morality. It makes its own line regarding natural and unnatural sexual practices. And while many people are content with simply knowing which practices are forbidden by Scripture and which are not, I cannot look at the list without asking, "Why does the Bible say these particular things are unnatural? What’s the common thread that weaves through these rules?" Catholic theology does the same thing, and as a result it formed its own definition of what is natural. And it is because of their definition that they declare some sexual practices wrong (such as using contraceptives) when there is no clear Scriptural support for that prohibition. Therefore, the mark of this paper is to investigate different interpretations of what is natural and unnatural for sexual intercourse and look for the one that best fits the proscriptions of the Bible.

Contents

The Bible

Many Christians, especially Protestants, use the Bible as their moral compass. While there is not a clear philosophical definition of what makes certain sexual practices natural and others unnatural, there is a nearly exhaustive list of examples of acceptable and unacceptable sex. But first, what do we do with Leviticus 15? Lev. 15 not only lists all forms of sex as making people 'unclean,' but it also includes nocturnal emissions for males and natural menstruation for females. And it does not stop there. The chapter continues to explain that the male’s saddle is unclean, his clothes are unclean, and his bed. All of it needs to be washed, although none of it is considered pure again until after sundown. Women have it worse, since it takes them seven days to become pure after menstruation, and anything they touch becomes just as unclean.

I think we have to assume that the impurity/uncleanliness discussed in this chapter is not the same as forbidden sexual practices. When Leviticus goes on to talk about sexual perversions, it condemns them as abominations. Therefore, in my list I am going to include the laws from chapter 18, and ignore those in 15.

Here are the Bible’s commandments on sex:


In all of these instances, only two reasons are given to abide by these rules. Either they are arbitrarily labeled abominations, or other Biblical verses ground their prohibition. Most fall in the first category, while 1 Corinthians 6 bases its explanation against fornication on the principle in Genesis that in sex “the two become one flesh.” Also in Matthew 5, Jesus refers to the Old Testament laws against adultery when He goes a step further to say that to even lust after a married woman is adultery in the heart. Never is an explanation given for what is natural or unnatural. The sexual practices are just divided into these categories without the criteria for division being clearly defined. Therefore, we have no way of placing the questionable practices into one category or the other unless we infer a criterion from the other separations.

Inferring the Biblical criteria—Attempt #1: Augustine

Saint Augustine wrote that the only meaningful purpose of sex is procreation. The pleasure one receives in the process is a manifestation of pride which leads us away from God. Therefore, the conscious emission of any semen must be intended only for a producing a child. And even if that is your primary intention, you must still try to restrain from any pleasure in the process.

Lust not only takes possession of the whole body and outward members, but also makes itself felt within, and moves the whole man with a passion in which mental emotion is mingled with bodily appetite, so that the pleasure which results is the greatest of all bodily pleasures. So possessing indeed is this pleasure, that at the moment of time in which it is consummated, all mental activity is suspended. What friend of wisdom and holy joys, who, being married, but knowing, as the apostle says, "how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the disease of desire, as the Gentiles who know not God," would not prefer, if this were possible, to beget children without this lust, so that in this function of begetting offspring the members created for this purpose should not be stimulated by the heat of lust, but should be actuated by his volition, in the same way as his other members serve him for their respective ends? But even those who delight in this pleasure are not moved to it at their own will, whether they confine themselves to lawful or transgress to unlawful pleasures; but sometimes this lust importunes them in spite of themselves, and sometimes fails them when they desire to feel it, so that though lust rages in the mind, it stirs not in the body. Thus, strangely enough, this emotion not only fails to obey the legitimate desire to beget offspring, but also refuses to serve lascivious lust; and though it often opposes its whole combined energy to the soul that resists it, sometimes also it is divided against itself, and while it moves the soul, leaves the body unmoved.[1]

The pleasure is dirty and distracts our minds from wisdom. As evidence for this position, he appeals to the observation that even lawfully married couples having lawful marital relations would be ashamed if a friend intruded on their sex. And the more virtuous the people are, the more ashamed they would be. Laws do not have to be written that forbid having sex in public because people are by nature so afraid of being caught in the act, that the fear of the government is not even needed.

Augustine’s theology on sex rises mostly out of the book of Genesis. He analyzes the Fall of Man being the result of Man’s desire to seek pleasure (and understanding) apart from God. In the Hebrew, the desire that Eve has for the forbidden fruit has an undercurrent of lust.[2] Since imbibing in the fruit has strong symbolism with sex, Augustine takes that to mean that any such pleasure contributes to separation from God. If Augustine were around today, he might be ranting that all married people should abstain from sex completely and have children only through in vitro fertilization.

Saint Augustine does have an appeal, but mostly to saints and angels. His own life might even serve as an argument against his theology. He was thirty-two when he converted to Christianity and “no longer desired a wife.”[3] After years of confessed fornication and living with a mistress, his lust may have been satiated. And even then, he goes on in Book X to tell of his struggles with pleasures of the flesh after his conversion—finally concluding that any power we have over them is nothing less than God’s grace.

For our purposes, Augustine discusses natural and unnatural in Heavenly terms. We are part angel, and though the angel is imprisoned in a body, it has mastery over it. The pleasure of sex is a rebellion against this angel. A rebellion so strong, that our soul is engulfed by the pleasure. The motions of our body which are usually directed by reason are instead directed by the pleasure. If pressed, I imagine Augustine would define natural in terms of the soul having total control over the body. The excellence or virtue of man is for the soul to grow and the body to shrink.

This position can be criticized in two ways. First, if the body and its desires are empty, then why is there any pleasure at all? God created us out of mud to have a different kind of existence that what the angels have. Augustine talks about the body as if it is our own personal prison when it is not clear that its pleasure was intended to separate us from God in any way. Rather than lust being the defining sin of separation, I would explain it as pride. When lust oversteps its bounds, such as it does if a man lusts after a woman who is married to someone else, then it is an issue of pride. Pride that says, “I deserve to know this woman, in spite of the fact she is united with someone else.” Lust for one’s own wife or husband could be appropriate. Bodily pleasures may be an intrinsic part of human nature. Even our Lord wasn’t an ascetic. Jesus admits that He Himself was “eating and drinking” and was criticized as being “a glutton and a drunkard.”[4]

This leads to my second criticism, that Augustine’s reasoning may suffer from what I call the ‘vegetarian fallacy.’ As far as I know, there is not any well-developed philosophical belief behind vegetarianism. However, the stories I hear from those kinds of people is that the first month of abstaining from meat is the hardest, and then it gets progressively easier in subsequent months. Let’s say that we have two friends, one who has been a veggie for a couple years, and one that has just started last week. The apprentice vegetarian is likely to confide her longings for meat with her friend, who will almost surely reply with some hoo-ha about ‘sticking to your principles’ or how ‘the road gets easier the longer you travel.’ And I will admit that giving up meat-eating is probably a tough thing to do. But, just because it is tough to do, does not mean that it is right. Vegetarianism seems to be a morally neutral practice. It may be tough to do, but that does not mean that there is some moral end. In the means of abstaining, it takes some temperance and fortitude, but those are not virtues specific to vegetarianism. In this same way, Augustine could have built his theology around a phantom moral principle. But since it took dedication to abstain from his philandering, he assumed that there was a moral end.

Furthermore, Augustine’s position does not line up with all of the Bible’s sayings on sex. It is in stark contradiction with Proverbs, Song of Solomon and Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians, which uphold the idea of sex for happiness and intimacy so long as it is between lawfully married people.

Inferring the Biblical criteria—Attempt #2: Aquinas

Aquinas addressed the topic of sexual law in the Summa Contra Gentiles with the following quote:

The emission of semen ought to be so ordered that it will result in both the production of the proper offspring and in the upbringing of this offspring.
It is evident from this that every emission of semen, in such a way that generation cannot follow, is contrary to the good for man. And if this be done deliberately, it must be a sin. Now, I am speaking of a way from which, in itself, generation could not result; such would be any emission of semen apart from the natural union of male and female. For which reason, sins of this type are called contrary to nature....
Likewise, it must also be contrary to the good for man if the semen be emitted under conditions such that generation could result but the proper upbringing would be prevented....
Now, it is abundantly evident that the female in the human species is not at all able to take care of the upbringing of offspring by herself, since the needs of human life demand many things which cannot be provided by one person alone. Therefore, it is appropriate to human nature that a man remain together with a woman after the generative act, and not to leave her immediately to have such relations with another woman, as is the practice with fornicators....
Now we call this society matrimony. Therefore, matrimony is natural for man, and promiscuous performance of the sexual act, outside matrimony, is contrary to man’s good. For this reason, it must be a sin.[5]

The quote seems pretty Augustinian in flavor. However, in the first line he says, "The emission of semen ought to be so ordered [to produce and rear a child]." The phrase 'so ordered' leaves it ambiguous as to whether Aquinas thinks that the only legitimate intention for sex is procreation (within marriage), or whether he accepts all sex within marriage as acceptable so long as it merely leaves open the possibility for having and rearing a child.

Regardless of what he intended to mean, the Catholic Church has come to interpret it in the latter sense. They recognize that sex has three effects (pleasure, intimacy, and procreation), and license any marital activity so long it is caters to all three. The primary intention of the couple does not have to be procreation. It is acceptable for a bride and groom to enjoy the part of their honeymoon where they share a bed and not necessarily be preoccupied with trying to produce fruit from their loins.

Therefore, natural sex in this sense, means any sex that joins all three effects. To deny any one of them is unnatural. This interpretation lines up perfectly with the Biblical account, except that it forces all of the practices in the questionable/mute list to the forbidden list. The most startling of these crossovers is probably in vitro fertilization. Usually, the temptation for Catholics who follow their position is that they would want to have sex for pleasure without the possible consequence of conceiving a child. However, in the same way that contraceptives and non-reproducing sexual activities exclude the procreation aspect of having sex, in vitro fertilization excludes the intimacy and pleasure aspects. A man may have his barren wife as many times as he would like for mutual pleasure and intimacy, because they are not intending to prohibit childbirth... they are leaving all three aspects open. To use a contraceptive means to intentionally limit the part of procreation. The intention makes it wrong. Similarly, the intention of a couple using in vitro fertilization is only procreation. The process is not intended for (and usually does not directly result in) sexual pleasure or intimacy; it is therefore harmful for the child to be conceived in this unnatural fertilization.[6] Many loving and financially stable couples would be denied the privilege of having their own children if we adopted this reasoning universally.

Furthermore, the stance against masturbation that this position requires is not accepted among even conservative Christians. Of these people, I would rank Dr. James Dobson at Focus on the Family as one of the most conservative Christian psychologists of our time. In an article from his book, Complete Marriage and Family Home Resource Guide, he explains how teenagers perceiving masturbation as a sin are vulnerable to psychological trouble.

Boys and girls who labor under divine condemnation can gradually become convinced that even God couldn't love them. They promise a thousand times with great sincerity never again to commit this despicable act. Then a week or two passes, or perhaps several months. Eventually, the hormonal pressure accumulates until nearly every waking moment reverberates with sexual desire. Finally, in a moment (and I do mean a moment) of weakness, it happens again.[7]

Neither the critique from in vitro fertilization, nor the critique from masturbation philosophically shatter today’s Catholic position. But if you share these doubts, then we need to keep searching. Is there a philosophical perspective that places some or all of questionable/mute practices in the acceptable column rather than the forbidden one?

Who cares about the Bible? I just want to have fun.

Forsaking both Christian scripture and tradition, many Americans consider it acceptable to fulfill only one of the three functions of sex... usually pleasure. The consequence of this belief is that all consensual sexual activities are permissible. Moreover, they feel it is legitimate to intentionally exclude one of the functions even after coitus. It is possible by forward-thinking folks to reduce the likelihood of childbirth with the birth-control pill, but many 'unlucky'[8] and irresponsible people think that because the child was conceived without intending it, they then have a right to destroy it.

Not quite as troubling, but in the same vein, there are many men[9] who roam the bars to find pleasure in a one night stand. The sex may or may not give them what they desire, but since the nature of sex includes the possibility of intimacy along with pleasure, the woman can become emotionally attached to the scumbag. Then the next time they meet, when he gives her the cold shoulder, she is devastated. The effect of intimacy, like conception, extends past the deed itself, and if the consequence was unintended by one of the parties, he assumes that he is not responsible for it. The unintended child can be aborted. The unintended emotional attachment can be blown off. Yet, it is strange to me that our culture seems to consider the second worse than the first. The plot of countless television dramas reinforces the moral that it is wrong to ‘cheat’ on your lover... that is to make light of the intimate connection. But very few plots make the point that it is unacceptable to take lightly one’s responsibility to his or her future child.

Theologically, this position is way off our mark. Philosophically, we can only say that those cases where one or both people want to shirk responsibility for the unintended effects are flawed. It is somewhat analogous to a man that shoots a gun at a fly on a person’s head, intending only to kill the fly. He might be honest when he says that he only wanted to kill the fly, but the fact that he did something which had a nature that included the effect of killing the person, leaves him guilty. In other words, if somebody is having sex but does not intend to have an intimate relation, they are violating the nature of sex. The intimacy (or the child) are effects of sex and anyone engaging in sex is responsible for them even if they do not intend them.

We can say this much against the position now, but at the end of the paper we will see a stronger critique that addresses both the intended and unintended effects of promiscuity.

Reinterpreting the Biblical Criteria.

The above view is the most popular one in secular America, but some homosexuals are not comfortable with it because it puts aside the religion that they find comfort in. Andrew Sullivan argues for dramatic revisions of natural law theory in a book titled Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality.[10] His argument is mostly autobiographical which explains how in his pre-teen years he had a yearning for intimacy, which grew into a desire to unite with the same sex. This deep-most desire was either planted in him by nature or by God, and he sees the fulfillment of this yearning for intimacy the thing "which would most give him meaning." He is not advocating the typical promiscuous lifestyle where you find most homosexuals, but instead a responsible homosexual lifestyle identical in all ways but one to the Christian marriage. In that setting, homosexuals would be free to establish the intimacy they desire without the dangers of the promiscuous culture they have now.

The crux of Sullivan’s argument lies in the claim that homosexuals are that way because of either God or nature. Being born homosexual, they argue, is the same as being born black, Jewish, or red-headed.

But in what sense is that the same? Every sexual act, from holding hands to collapsing the bed, is a choice. No part of a person’s DNA forces them to kiss another person—same sex or not.

Scientists have examined everything from the size of certain parts of the brain, to the number of loops on fingerprints to determine a biological correlation for sexual orientation. To date, they all turn up lacking. The Journal of Homosexuality, a peer reviewed and respected medical journal, did the most extensive review of homosexual literature in its 460+ page review for Volume 28, 1995. In it, it independently engaged and dismissed all of the claims for a biological link.

But not only did it respond to all of its current issues, it also provided a challenge of its own. Homosexuals make up somewhere between 2% and 10% of the population. If homosexuality is biological, then it must be affiliated with a gene. However, since it is the nature of a homosexual not to have any children, the gene falls out of the gene pool. Therefore, homosexuality as a trait must exist as a mutation of a gene. But, "such a high frequency of an allele (alternate form of a gene) cannot be maintained by mutation alone for any significant period of time, as no known mutation rates are this high."[11]

My suspicion is that homosexuality is the result of environmental influences rather than biological ones. Tracing the root of the desire could lead to such a subtle event in a person’s life; then it would be easy for someone to jump to the conclusion that it was there from the womb. And literature is such that descriptive words for this kind of an effect can easily be misconstrued for a biological process. In the first Romantic autobiography ever written, Jean-Jacques Rousseau sinks deep into the memories of his childhood, to a time where the head mistress of his boarding school used to spank him as punishment for misbehaving. Although he was too young to know sexual pleasure, he enjoyed the punishments and often acted disruptively to deserve (or, in his mind, earn) another round.

Who could have supposed that this childish punishment, received at the age of eight at the hands of a woman of thirty, would determine my tastes and desires, my passions, my very self for the rest of my life, and in a sense diametrically opposed to the one in which they should normally have developed. At the moment when my senses were aroused my desires took a false turn and, confining themselves to this early experience, never set about seeking a different one.[12]

Candidly admitting the source of his, self-proclaimed, strange tastes, he goes on with such poetry that makes it easy to mistake a cultivated taste for a natural one.

With sensuality burning in my blood almost from birth, I kept myself pure and unsullied up to an age when even the coldest and most backward natures have developed...
Imagining no pleasure other than those I had known, I could not, for all the restless tinglings in my veins, direct my desires towards any other form of gratification.[13]

At the dawn of Romanticism, Rousseau is mixing biological language like ‘tinglings in my veins’ with his non-biological desire. This seems to be the problem with Sullivan’s position that nature can be defined by our deep-down desires. Science tells us that there is nothing inherently natural about them, but the emotions are too strong to think otherwise. Sullivan wants another man just as Rousseau wanted a spanking mistress. But Rousseau at least had the reflection to recognize that this desire came from specific episodes in his life and not his genes. And as of right now, the objective reports of both biology and psychology agree with him.

Natural Sex Vs. Sex with Objects

A couple of interesting authors I read discussed two other, different, aspects of sex, but had their fingers pointed in the same direction. The first, Vincent Punzo, wrote about the importance of intimacy in sex. Addressing the people who have promiscuous sex only for mutual pleasure, he argues that this leads to ‘depersonalization’ because it separates the two parts of human nature, body and mind. He says that there is a huge difference in the questions, “Will you play tennis with me?” and “Will you have sex with me?” Logically and grammatically, the syntax is the same, but the activities are fundamentally different. Sex is the act of uniting two people as much as they possibly can, both physically and psychologically. Treating it as mere pleasure is morally deficient because it lacks ‘existential integrity.’ The two people are making a total merging of their bodies while consciously resisting the union of any other dimension of themselves. The cost of doing this is significant.

In so far as premarital sexual unions separate the intimate and total physical union that is sexual intercourse from any commitment to the self in his historicity, human sexuality, and consequently the human body, have been fashioned into external things or objects to be handed over totally to someone else, whenever one feels that he can get possession of another’s body, which he can use for his own purposes.[14]

He continues with this reasoning toward an interesting turnover of the perceptions of the chaste and the unchaste.

The chaste person has often been described as one intent on denying his sexuality. The value of chastity as conceived in this section is in direct opposition to this description. It is the unchaste person who is separating himself from his sexuality, who is willing to exchange human bodies as one would exchange money for tickets to a baseball game.[15]

For Punzo, sex is a total human commitment. The intimacy and pleasure aspects are so integrally intertwined that to separate them causes damage to yourself and your perception of sex. He does not make any Scriptural references, but his writing rings a lot like Saint Paul’s in the aforementioned 1 Corinthians.

The other author, Thomas Nagel, published a novel essay looking at sex from the idea of sexual perversions. His first step is to establish that these unnatural perversions exist, and he does this by examining what a perversion of another appetite would be like. Perversions of eating are rare, and as a psychologist, he has never had a patient with such a condition. But it is not too hard to imagine what a gastronomical perversion might be like, and he gives some examples: 1) insisting on being fed through a funnel, 2) obsession with cutting out and eating pictures of food from a cookbook, 3) only eating meat while it is alive, or 4) collecting and fondling napkins and ashtrays from a favorite restaurant. Number 4 translates most easily into a sexual perversion, fetishism. What the gastronomical perversions have in common is that they all deal with particular qualities of the eating process, but they all raise that lone quality to the point where it dominates their appetite.

Something similar can be said about sexual perversions. One quality of the activity is raised above the activity itself. In fetishism, the obstacle is obvious. The shoe or pantyhose become the object of the appetite. But to understand how other activities like pedophilia and sadomasochism are perversions, he illustrates the following scenario.

Suppose a man and a woman, whom we may call Romeo and Juliet, are at opposite ends of a cocktail lounge, with many mirrors on the wall which permit unobserved observation, and even mutual unobserved observation. Each of them is sipping a martini and studying other people in the mirrors. At some point Romeo notices Juliet. He is moved, somehow, by the softness of her hair and the diffidence with which she sips her martini, and this arouses him sexually. Let us say that X senses Y whenever X regards Y with sexual desire. (Y need not be a person, and X’s apprehension of Y can be visual, tactile, olfactory, etc., or purely imaginary; in the present example we shall concentrate on vision.) So Romeo senses Juliet, rather than merely noticing her. At this stage he is aroused by an unaroused object, so he is more in the sexual grip of his body than she of hers.
Let us suppose, however, that Juliet now senses Romeo in another mirror on the opposite wall, though neither of the them yet knows that he is seen by the other (the mirror angles provide three-quarter views). Romeo then begins to notice in Juliet the subtle signs of sexual arousal: heavy-lidded stare, dilating pupils, faint flush, et cetera. This of course renders her much more bodily, and he not only notices, but senses this as well. His arousal is nevertheless still solitary. But now, cleverly calculating the line of her stare without actually looking her in the eyes, he realizes that it is directed at him through the mirror on the opposite wall. That is, he notices, and moreover senses, Juliet sensing him. This is definitely a new development, for it gives him a sense of embodiment not only through his own reactions but through the eyes and reactions of another. Moreover, it is separable from the initial sensing of Juliet; for sexual arousal might begin with a person’s sensing that he is sensed and being assailed by the perception of the other person’s desire rather than merely by the perception of the person.
But there is a further step. Let us suppose that Juliet, who is a little slower than Romeo, now senses that he senses her. This puts Romeo in a position to notice, and be aroused by, her arousal at being sensed by him. He senses that she senses that he senses her. This is still another level of arousal, for he becomes conscious of his sexuality through his awareness of its effect on her and of her awareness that this effect is due to him. Once she takes the same step and senses that he senses her sensing him, it becomes difficult to state, let alone imagine, further iterations, though they may be logically distinct. If both are alone, they will presumably turn to look at each other directly, and the proceedings will continue on another plane. Physical contact and intercourse are perfectly natural extensions of this complicated visual exchange, and mutual touch can involve all the complexities of awareness present in the visual case, but with a far greater range of subtlety and acuteness.
Ordinarily, of course, things happen in a less orderly fashion—sometimes in a great rush—but I believe that some version of this overlapping system of distinct sexual perceptions and interactions is the basic framework of any full-fledged sexual relation and that relations involving only part of the complex are significantly incomplete.[16]

This recursive process defines natural sex for Nagel. When something interferes with the cycle of arousal, he considers it a sexual perversion. Fetishism and sexual obsessions with plants and non-living objects never get off the ground, because they cannot reciprocate emotion. Bestiality and sex with infants are only one level from the ground, because they show only the most basic emotion, awareness.

Sadomasochism and other similar practices take the focus off the arousal cycle and put it instead on the inflicting or suffering of pain—the other person is not treated as being self-aware and mutual reciprocation is not intended. Unlike eating an omelet, the pleasure and desire in sex is two-sided. Not only do you desire to eat the omelet, the omelet desires to be eaten. Sadomasochism is like two people sitting down to eat breakfast... they only care about their own appetites, and the cycle is never engaged.

Nagel stops at this point, mentioning that it is difficult to continue reasoning in this way about homosexuality, sex with multiple people, and embellishments of the sexual process. If they are perversions, it is because of some other reason.

However, I would like to pick up where he left off, using Nagel’s and Punzo’s analyses to develop something that fits the Biblical list. These authors handle the cases of fornication, adultery, prostitution, bestiality, rape, incest (insofar as it is usually non-consensual), and maybe even cross-dressing (a form of fetishism?). All that’s left, then, is monogamous homosexuality and lust/mental adultery. I will let Jesus’s words speak for themselves on the latter, and use the rest of the paper to examine the former.

The focus of Punzo’s article is clearly the intimacy of sex. Sex is a total human investment in another person—body and mind. Nagel also puts his attention on intimacy, but he looks at it as a method of respecting and helping each other to a higher level of pleasure. The question is whether the same goals can be fulfilled in a homosexual relationship. Remember that Andrew Sullivan expressed his orientation in terms of wanting to find an intimate relationship, first, which then turned into a desire for a homosexual relationship. Is this possible?

Nagel says that a proponent of homosexuality in the 1960s, Norman Mailer, wrote about the vaguely sadistic pleasure in homosexuality, making allusions to rape.[17] The connection does not seem too outlandish. First, one man is bending over to expose himself to the other person, while not seeing his penetrator in return—the epitome of a dominance/submission stance. And second, the process is painful because the organs do not fit, which causes much blood and screaming.

Both of these facts lead me to believe that the cycle of recursive arousal is not likely. The men treat each other, at minimum, like sadomasochism partners—but it’s not unlikely that they could be in rapist/rape victim roles. Assuming that our ideal married homosexual couple acts only like the first, that is still a barrier to intimacy. And when the lack of intimacy can be shown, all of the other facts/statistics we know about homosexuality fall into place:

  • We know that the homosexual community is highly promiscuous; a survey indicated that homosexual males have as many as 100 partners in their life.
→Failure to reach intimate relations encourages promiscuity.
  • We know that AIDS first and most quickly spread through the homosexual community.
→Promiscuity and anal sex[18] explain AIDS.
  • We know that homosexuals, as a group, have a suicide rate of about three times that of the rest of society (and this higher rates remains the same even in countries like the Netherlands where homosexuality is embraced as much as possible by its government, culture, and society).
→The failure of intimacy (where it is clearly longed for) plus promiscuity leads to a higher rate of suicide.
  • We know that homosexuals, as a group, have a life expectancy of nearly 20 years less than the general population.
→Suicide, STDs, and living an unfulfilled life marital life all contribute to a lower life expectancy. (Single heterosexual people also have a lower life expectancy than married people... but only by a couple years, not 20.)

But since we established earlier that homosexuality is a choice, we have to wonder in light of these pretty well-known facts about the homosexual culture, why would someone choose it? That question can only be answered on an individual level. Each person probably has their personal reason or their Rousseau-like experience. Psychological studies establish a pretty definite correlation between lack of parental attentiveness (especially on the father’s part) and homosexuality. Or it might simply be like a lazy out-of-shape person who knows that life would be more healthy and enjoyable if he were fit, but does not have the ambition to change. Whatever the cause, there is clear evidence that homosexuality is not biological, and many testimonies of people happily converting to a heterosexual lifestyle. That being the case, it seems that homosexuality is an issue rather of the soul than the body.

Conclusion

At this point, I have satisfied myself in finding a philosophical explanation that closely lines up with the Biblical stance, without casting the questionable issues from our list into the forbidden pile as the Catholic position does. By putting forth intimacy as the only necessary, primary, intention of a sexual act, we can allow for contraceptives and in vitro fertilization, and understand that the Biblical list prohibits the perversions that it does specifically because they are (in one form or another) violations of intimacy. God seems to have first intended sex as a sacred, private, bond for one man and one woman. Destroying that bond in any of the multitudinous ways is wrong, as is creating other similar bonds to people whom you have not committed your life and soul to.

Child-bearing and pleasure are secondary issues, after this eternal intimate bond is covenanted first. And perhaps we could even reduce child-bearing and pleasure into sub-categories of intimacy. It would be strange to find someone with a sincere desire to want to bear the child of a stranger. And there may not be any human pleasure greater than that of two life-long committed people communing with their bodies and souls.

Notes

  1. ^  Saint Augustine, City of God, Book XIV, Chapter 16 [19]
  2. ^  Snake... lust... fruit... wisdom of the world... opening of the eyes... covering their nakedness afterwards...
  3. ^  Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book VIII, Chapter 12
  4. ^  Matthew 11:19
  5. ^  Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III, Chapter 2
  6. ^  Although in my opinion it would be close enough if the couple would give the eggs and sperms to the doctor, then 'fake' the pleasure and intimacy in nearby bedroom while the clinic does their thing.
  7. ^  http://www.family.org/docstudy/solid/a0014922.html italics in original
  8. ^  I have to put unlucky in quotes, since it is tough to say in any objective sense that the gift of life, which many hold sacred, could be anything but a blessing.
  9. ^  And women, too. I do not want my examples of despicable behavior to reflect any gender bias.
  10. ^  My information about this book comes from Robert P. George’s article "Nature, Morality, and Homosexuality." (rest of cite below)
  11. ^  Journal of Homosexuality, Volume 28, 1995 p. 155
  12. ^  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, Book I, section 1719-1723 (sections are based on years)
  13. ^  ibid.
  14. ^  Printed in Social Ethics, p. 160
  15. ^  ibid.
  16. ^  'Sexual Perversion' reprinted in Moral Problems, p. 76-77
  17. ^  ibid. p. 80
  18. ^  AIDS is transmitted more easily with the blood involved.

Bibliography

Aquinas, Thomas. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith. Material used from: Social Ethics, 5th ed. Ed. Thomas A. Mappes and Jane S. Zembaty New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.

Augustine. City of God. Online. Internet. May 15, 2002. Available: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1201.htm

Augustine. Confessions. Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin. London: Penguin, 1961.

Dobson, James. Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference Guide, 2000. Online. Internet. May 15, 2002. Available: http://www.family.org/docstudy/solid/a0014922.html

George, Robert P. "Nature, Morality, and Homosexuality." Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy Ed. Forte, David F. Washington: Georgetown, 1998. 29-40

Nagel, Thomas. "Sexual Perversion." The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 66, 1969. Reprinted in Moral Problems. Ed. James Rachels. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. 69-83

Punzo, Vincent C. "Morality and Human Sexuality." Social Ethics, 5th ed. Ed. Thomas A. Mappes and Jane S. Zembaty New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997. 157-162

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Confessions. Trans. J. M. Cohen. London: Penguin, 1953 (1781 – first publication).

Contrasting Views

  • G. E. M. Anscombe has a 1977 essay written along similar lines... which defends the Catholic view against contraception.
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