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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
October 5, 2003
Our gay future
This week for a change of pace I'm going to write about homosexual "marriage". My attentive reader will notice that I have written hardly a word about this before. I have only written about things happening AROUND this subject. Let us now turn our attention to the subject itself. And the first thing we see upon looking into it is this mysterious phenomenon of homosexuality. The word can mean at least two things. It can refer to a sexual attraction to members of the same sex or it may mean acting on that impulse. The distinction is crucial at least in the received Christian view. For one is not a sin and the other is. Having sexual desires of any kind cannot possibly be sinful -- when it is something that happens to us no matter how caused. It is only when a person begins to act upon the impulse -- by for instance indulging fantasy -- that he buys into the sin in his own right. And we are fantastical creatures we humans; we are always capable of more than we assume. It is important to make that clear in further distinguishing sin from sinner. For what I'm saying here is that the distinction runs deep as the free human will runs deep into nature. We are not irresponsible for our acts simply because we suffer bad impulses. And I have no right to judge the homosexual as I have no ability to understand him from inside. His problem is with Christ not me. My problem is with Christ not him. Yet ideas have consequences; and acts also have consequences. Behind the notion that homosexuality is sin is not only Christian doctrine nor also the doctrines of the other "great religions". Behind it is the wealth of accumulated and applied human experience growing through the centuries. The Jews set themselves against the homosexuality that was endemic in the ancient world around them; the pagan Romans set themselves against the homosexual customs of the Greeks. In doing so they were raising the standards of their societies; and not incidentally raising the status of their women. Bear with me: this is important. No social order will long endure that is founded on lies about the human condition. And one of the large truths of that condition -- written not only in the Creator's announcement to the ancient Hebrews that he "made them male and female" but to be found in our experience of the creation itself is the incompleteness of man as man and woman as woman. For as Jews and pagan Romans alike learned or realized more deeply than before the sexes are necessary to each other. There is a man's way and a woman's way of being in the world and we need each other to be fully human. The society of men alone or of women alone easily degenerates into savagery. Our (traditional) institution of marriage has a long history which may be considered as a reflection of God's will or as an adaptation to nature. Same result either way. The norm which emerged and was confirmed through success emerged through many ages. That norm was one man and one woman vowing loyalty to each other through thick and thin in love and in obedience till death. It is not only the secure ground in which to raise children it is even for the childless the secure guarantee of a responsible social order. For a man and a woman are by nature conceived to be a check and balance upon each other stronger together than they can be apart. This point has to be driven home. Notwithstanding the nonsense that feminism has taught and the corresponding masculinist incitements and reactions the difference between a man and woman is vastly more significant than the visible differences between their reproductive organs. There may be hard cases to make bad law but the reality both broad and deep is two parts of one human nature. We no longer have a Christian society yet we could still wish to be if possible fully human. We tolerate far more deviation from our social norms than our ancestors did; or than their ancestors did in every other human culture. We allow people to resist the mould. But when we shatter the mould itself we play with dissolution of everything that makes us fully human. In recognizing "homosexual marriage" and celebrating it as equal to the "traditional" kind we go decisively beyond toleration to encouragement. We are wantonly creating a new social order in which men and women increasingly become detached from each other and from their mutual obligations. We are as those who have thought wisely about such things must know creating a society in which there will be far more homosexuals than there are today and all the unanticipated consequences of that will emerge in succession over time. This is not a possibility but an inevitability. For the truth which we ignore or pretend to ignore is that human beings do not become homosexual any more "naturally" (in the organic sense) than they become heterosexuals. They grow within societies within families within norms. The long-established heterosexual norm took a long time to be established. Once again we must look back to the pre-Christian and non-Hebrew ancient world or look outside the West today or into prison wards to find social orders in which male homosexuality is "normal" in which it becomes the alternative bond of society. In all such societies the position of women is radically different than in our own; in all of them women are reduced to chattels -- and kept if you will as breeding machines. We make the grave mistake of assuming only one or two per cent of a society is "naturally homosexual". That may well be a minimum for a society in which homosexuality is discouraged as was the case in our own. The historical evidence makes it clear that this isn't the case where homosexual relations of one kind or another are actually encouraged. The future to which we are now striving will obviously be extremely bad news for women -- whether or not they grasp it yet. In some ways it may be exhilarating for men; but finally the progressive loss of our ability to look a woman in the eye will diminish us men too. For we also will become less human. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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