Last week, I said I couldn’t say for certain when I first became involved in a homosexual relationship.
BY Melinda Selmys
February 11-17, 2007 Issue |
Posted 2/6/07 at 9:00 AM
Last week, I said I couldn’t say for certain when I first
became involved in a homosexual relationship. I said I always perceived my
relationships with men as a power struggle — and that with another woman I
could always easily perceive myself as more in control.
This obviously is not reflective of the entire lesbian
community — relationships between two emotionally distant, hyper-independent
psychological cowards wouldn’t work, both because they would never form in the
first place, and because they would ultimately lead to power struggles that
would eliminate their appeal.
Even within a homosexual
relationship there has to be some sort of complementarity — and so it is
necessary that there be a number of different psychological conditions that
produce same-sex attractions.
What is most important, though, is
that we realize that the reasons underlying homosexual behavior are genuine
emotional and psychological needs or fears.
People who experience these desires
are people whose sexuality, and possibly the ability to identify with their own
gender, has been wounded in some way.
It is, therefore, not enough to
convince them that homosexual activity is wrong. There are plenty of people practicing
homosexuality who believe in the immorality of their actions, but feel unable
to stop because they don’t know of any other way to fulfill their fundamental,
underlying needs.
Many have gone through years of
guilt and shame before finally deciding that any God who demands such an
impossible sacrifice is cruel, and any church that rejects their sexual actions
is unjust. It is important, therefore, to seek to bring the healing power of
God into their lives so that, rather than simply telling them to live chastely,
we give them the emotional and psychological means by which to do so.
This work requires a one-on-one
approach — it cannot be done through the mass media — and it cannot be achieved
from the pulpit. Most people who have had any success in ministering to persons
with same-sex attractions agree that you can’t get anywhere unless you first
form a personal relationship.
This is one of the reasons why fear,
hatred or disgust directed towards those who are attracted to their own sex is
so crippling when it is found within the Christian community. It repels those
who have embraced the “gay” lifestyle, and alienates those who are struggling
to remain faithful in spite of their same-sex attractions.
When Christians use degrading
language or demonstrate uncharitable attitudes, it interferes with our ability
to reach out to souls who are suffering with these temptations. Yet this is the
most important work — not the work of safeguarding the legal definition of
family or of changing public opinion on the matter of homosexuality (although
these are obviously also important battles), but the work of saving individual
souls who are afflicted with homosexual tendencies.
We must be clear on this: Persons
with same-sex attractions, even the most strident, anti-Catholic, shamelessly
sexualized demonstrators, are not the enemy. They are our own people, who have
fallen into enemy hands, and it is our responsibility as Christians to do
anything necessary to win them back.
Keeping this in mind, there are a
couple of practical points that should be kept in mind by anyone attempting to
evangelize persons with same-sex attractions.
First, while it is important to be
conscious of the psychological problems that may underlie a homosexual
orientation, it is equally important not to openly psychoanalyze. People hate
being told that their feelings and attitudes are the result of an Oedipus
complex, even if it happens to be true. If it becomes appropriate to help them
realize, at some point in a long-term relationship, that their feelings stem
from a lack of comfort with identifying with their own gender, that’s fine, but
you have to make sure that this conclusion is something that they are coming to
realize themselves, not merely something that you are trying to tell them as a
supposed expert.
Secondly, it is usually not a good
idea to go into a deep discussion of the moral theology of sex unless they
absolutely insist on doing so. Of course, you must never give the impression
that you approve of what they are doing, but it is usually sufficient to say
that, yes, as a Catholic, you support the Church’s teachings on homosexuality
and believe that homosexual behaviors are morally wrong — but that those
teachings don’t in any way interfere with your personal feelings of love or affection
for them as a person.
One of the people who was most
instrumental in my conversion to Catholicism took precisely this approach. I
always knew that he didn’t approve of my sexual choices, but it was never one
of the central concerns of our relationship. For the most part, it was
something that didn’t even come up.
Once you’ve established a
relationship, it is tremendously important that you seek to undermine their
identification of self with sexual preference.
This can be difficult, because our
sexuality does form an important and integral part of our personality, and
since those who experience same-sex attractions usually suffer from a wounded
sense of sexual identity, it is easy to see why they would think that their
“sexual orientation” was tied to something more profound and fundamental than
the mere sex act itself.
Thus, if you tell someone suffering
from same-sex attractions that their sexuality is objectively disordered and
their behaviors are immoral, but that you love them in spite of their
sexuality, they are going to call you a hypocrite. This sentiment is baffling
to many Catholics because we tend to see same-sex attractions primarily in
terms of homosexual intercourse. We need to bear in mind that many people in
the homosexual community feel that they have only ever really been personally
accepted by that community — not just because the outside world condemns
homosexuality, but because some significant part of the outside world failed to
accept their personality even before they had any sort of homosexual feelings.
As a result of this, their genuine
personality traits — aspects of themselves that actually are part of the way
God made them — are psychologically bound up with their homosexuality. The
things that made society (or Daddy or whoever) reject them are a part of their
“gayness,” and to reject their homosexuality is, in their eyes, to reject all
of those aspects of their personality, as well.
What is necessary, therefore, is to
show them that someone can love them, and love all of the things that they
erroneously associate with homosexuality, without actually loving their sin.
Only when this becomes a practical reality, rather than a theoretical tagline,
will they actually believe that it is possible, and understand that they have an
identity and a personality with which their sexual desires are not integrally
connected.
Since we can’t bring people who
identify themselves as “gay” into the Church simply by demonstrating that their
actions are contrary to natural law, we need to use another approach.
The
one that is most appropriate is, in fact, surprisingly simple: Make the faith
appealing. Show them a God who is patient, merciful and loving, a God who
brings healing to a world broken by sin. Talk to them about your faith, your
experience of God’s healing power and of his forgiveness. Show them that God
will meet, perfectly, all of the psychological needs that they have been trying
to fulfill through homosexuality.
When
I finally decided to join the Church, and to abandon my homosexual lifestyle,
it was not because I had been rationally persuaded that homosexual acts were
unnatural, it was because I had developed a relationship with God, and he asked
it of me.
At
the time I didn’t even remotely understand the logic behind his request, but he
had died for me on the cross, so he had the right to ask that I give up
something as relatively minor as my sexuality for his sake. Before I believed
this, there was no amount of logic in the world that could have persuaded me
that what I was doing was wrong. Once I believed it, it didn’t matter if all
the logic in the world was against me, because my God had asked it.
Although,
as I said, it is usually not a good idea to bring up homosexuality, it is
fairly important to understand the Church’s teachings. There is likely to come
a point where the person you are evangelizing will want to know why this Church
and this God that are suddenly starting to be appealing insist that
homosexuality is sinful.
When
this point comes, you are going to need to be able to explain Catholic doctrine
clearly, rationally and with the greatest possible compassion. How? We’ll save
that for next week.
Melinda Selmys writes
from Etibicoke, Ontario.
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