3 Homosexual Myths and How to Respond to Them

All too often Catholics will be called upon to defend the Church’s stance on homosexuality. Here’s a short primer.

The Old Testament is Old for a Reason

Many homosexual activists have argued that because many Old Testament moral laws have been cast aside, such as the injunction against eating pork, circumcising male babies or keeping heads perpetually covered, it’s not impossible to then dismiss the injunction against homosexuality.

This interpretation is based on a flawed understanding of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Though it’s true that Christians are no longer require to follow the Old Testament’s ceremonial obligations, we are still commanded to keep its moral requirements. God’s moral law is binding at all times and in all places and in all religious traditions.

But even if we were to admit that the Old Testament and everything in it no longer applied to Christians, homosexual activists would have to admit that St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans specifically admonishes homosexual behavior. In fact, Paul attributes some homosexual desires to a refusal to acknowledge, respect and worship God:

Because they do this, God has given them over to shameful passions. Even the women pervert the natural use of their sex by unnatural acts. In the same way the men give up natural sexual relations with women and burn with passion for each other. Men do shameful things with each other and as a result they bring upon themselves the punishment they deserve for their wrongdoing. (Romans 1:26-28)

Paul repeats himself in his Letter to the Corinthians warning readers that homosexual behavior is one of the sins that will deprive the individual of heaven:

Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God’s Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves—none of these will possess God’s Kingdom. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

St. Paul further promotes heterosexuality as the only sexual option for Christians:

But because there is so much immorality, every man should have his own wife and every woman should have her own husband. (1 Corinthians 7:2)

The only other option he gives people is celibacy:

Actually, I would prefer that all of you were as I am; but each one has a special gift from God, one person this gift, another one that gift. Now, to the unmarried and to the widows I say that it would be better for you to continue to live alone as I do. (1 Corinthians 7:7-8)

 

“Times Have Changed”

To insist that times have changed is a useless argument. Basically, the argument follows this structure: “I want to do X, therefore I should be allowed to and because I want to do X, X is therefore good and morally acceptable and I want to do X.” The desire to do something is irrelevant in determining its morality. The verses that follow the above passage specifically prohibits gossip and several other sins:

They are filled with all kinds of wickedness, evil, greed and vice; they are full of jealousy, murder, fighting, deceit and malice. They gossip and speak evil of one another; they are hateful to God, insolent, proud and boastful; they think of more ways to do evil; they disobey their parents; they have no conscience; they do not keep their promises and they show no kindness or pity for others. They know that God’s law says that people who live in this way deserve death. Yet, not only do they continue to do these very things, but they even approve of others who do them. (Romans 1:29-32)

Should we also allow people to disregard the above scriptural passage also? Even if someone really wanted to gossip? What if someone argued that they had the inalienable civil right to gossip as self-expression? What about if gossips had developed a voting bloc? What if anti-hate crime legislation protected gossips? Should we change thousands of years of tradition in order that some people might not be upset? That would be silly. The same holds true about homosexuality.

 

Natural Law

People have a natural, built-in, intuitive understanding of ethics. The Golden Rule, for example is an excellent example as it appears, at least in the negativistic sense, in all cultures and religions. Thus, humanity has an ethical intuition that some behaviors are right and some are wrong because they are unnatural. We naturally understand that the natural sex partner of a human is another human and not an animal. We have the same intuitive understanding that incest and necrophilia are also morally wrong,

The same logic applies to homosexual acts. The natural sex partner for a man is a woman. This is not merely a religious prescription. Consider the evolution of sex or of any of the anatomical parts required to accomplish it. Can anyone say that the purpose of sex, from an evolutionary perspective, was for anything other than perpetuation of the species? After all, an evolutionarily successful organism is one that can pass on its genes to succeeding generations. If such is the case, individual organisms that do not produce offspring are doomed to extinction.

This is not to suggest that homosexual behavior is not also found in nature, for it most certainly is inevitably a matter of social dominance rather than “romantic intent.” And, even if biologists were to find examples of “romance” between animals of the same species and the same gender, that union would have to be necessarily infertile and thus not accomplishing its natural ends (i.e., passing on its genes to succeeding generations). In other words, homosexual sex in nature is neither a reproductive strategy nor a successful evolutionary mechanism. Thus, homosexuality is wrong because it’s unnatural. It is as wrong as is to lie (which is also unnatural because the natural end of language is to convey truth). No one asks a question with the expectation of hearing a lie as a response.