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"Love your neighbor" does not extend to "normalize your neighbor's erotic proclivities at the cost of broader society" or "you must erase the distinction between things."
Christians have traditionally believed that marriage is permanent bond between a man and woman for the purpose of forming a household and raising children*, where the duties of the man and woman are asymmetrical. For a man to "marry" another man is a contradiction in terms, the same as when your boss tells you, "I want you to think of me as your friend, not your boss." The male-female relationship has elements that are inherently asymmetrical, and inherently different than male-male relationships, and different things deserve different words. Furthermore, the male-female union is a core building block of civilization and therefore deserves special recognition by the state and by the church. It deserves to be considered normative. One of the things that has especially turned me against gay marriage is seeing how so many institutions (eg public schools) no longer feel empowered to teach the male-female marriage as being the default or the normative institution. Legalizing gay marriage was not just "allow different people to do their own thing" it was, "change the basic way every child is taught about the basic institutions and building blocks of life."
Now part of the problem for modern Christians is that many already have given up on the idea of marriage being permanent or that the husband and wife have different roles and obligations. Once those distinctions have been erased, resistance to gay marriage then looks very unprincipled. But for traditional Christians the argument is very straightforward and consistent.
There is furthermore the argument that homoerotic behavior is a vice, a sin. And if we love our neighbor, we want to save them from sin. Sin ultimately makes us less happy. Vices give momentary pleasure but leave us empty and wanting more, no more happier than before. The glutton eats a lot of junk food, but ultimately that makes the glutton less happy. If society does things to make the glutton less likely to engage in gluttony (eg, banning advertising of junk food) or I do something to make my loved one not engage in gluttony (eg not keeping junk food in the house) then I am doing good for them. If I teach them "fat acceptance" I am actually harming them.
Now I am straight and speak from personal experience about whether for a person who experiences same-sex attraction forgoing homoerotic activities makes that person more happy. I do think though, that forgoing sexual promiscuity and other sexual vices that a straight person has tempted by has made me more happy. So I can see how that argument is plausible. Given the very high rates of promiscuity and sexual experimentation reported among gay populations, seems like gay sex is leaving something empty, like eating a cookie or potato chip, not like eating a steak.
* But what about old/infertile couples? First, never say never. Second, such couples are still modeling the relationship form.
Awesome, thanks! Some things you said that I'd like to explore further:
So, you believe that normalizing non-hetero relationships is a detriment to society? How do you reconcile that with non-hetero people who are in happy, healthy relationships?
I understand what you mean. I try to keep my private life separate from my work life, too. Although, I have a second job at the church I attend, and my pastor is of course, my boss, but he's also my friend. I play in a DnD campaign with a bunch of other church friends, and he's the DM. Would your suggestion to me be that I break the friendship off because he's technically also my boss?
It certainly has been that way throughout the course of history. However, along with that, we've historically treated women separately from men and for along time, women had fewer rights than men. We have also marginalized people of different races, religions, and sexual orientations. Sexuality aside, we've also oriented our social policies to strongly benefit married people over single people. All of this has been "normal" for thousands of years. How does this fit into your definition of loving your neighbor? Also, would you agree that what is "normative", even within the context of Christianity, is fluid and varies over time?
I agree, there's an argument to be made. But that's just it -- an argument, a position, an opinion, a perspective. You believe non-hetero relationships are sinful, I do not. We both think our own opinions are the truth. There are many people who agree with either of us, and there are those who are not religious that pay no mind to the doctrine of sin. What does sin matter to them? Should we force our views onto them, or lovingly allow them to make their own informed choice on what works best, even if we don't agree?
Do you think that a majority of non-hetero people are more sexually promiscuous than hetero people? I identify as asexual, so maybe I don't have the best perspective on this, either.
There are many good things that are happy and beneficial that do not deserve special recognition by the church or the state. There are many vices that should be discouraged by the church and state, even though some people will practice said vice and seem to be happy in practicing it.
It's not a perfect analogy, I was just making a point about language. The "boss" relationship is inherently different than the "friend" relationship, different relationships deserve different words. It's not a perfect analogy because one can be a boss and a friend, maybe I'll think of a better analogy.
Christianity (until recent progressive Christianity) has always recognized the basic human reality that men and women are different, have different strengths and weaknesses, are complementary, and therefore have different spheres of responsibility, different rights and duties. It's hard to remember this now that as Americans we are so long removed from existential war, but the state is primary an agent of violent force, that is the state is an organization of men who use violence to protect their land and women from other organized violent men, and as such of course governance rights of the state are going to be of men. "Loving your neighbor" is an entirely different question than whether person should have say, "a vote", (ie decision-making power over the apparatus of violence).
Everyone believes in sin, secular people just have different words for it. A vice or a personal sin, is something that feels good but is ultimately bad for the person doing it, you don't need religion to understand the concept, it's just without religion you have to reinvent and throw out all the work done on helping people effectively deal with vices.
But specifically you asked how a "Christian" who loves their neighbor could not want to support their neighbor in X. Well if the Christian loves their neighbor, and their religion teaches X is a sin, that means that X is ultimately bad for that person, therefore if they actually loved their neighbor they would want to discourage their neighbor from doing X.
Apples, oranges, cheese and carburetors. These are entirely unlike phenomena and must be analyzed separately
I think that gay men are, yes. I'd recommend reading "And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts. Lesbian women are different phenomenon.
Eggs are expensive, sperm is cheap. Women are the gatekeepers of sex, while men are the gatekeepers of commitment. So, naturally, gay men have tons of commitment-free sex, while lesbian women move-in with each other at the drop of a hat and promptly suffer from lesbian bed death. Hence the following joke:
Gay men are ridiculously promiscuous and have a culture based largely around casual sex. Patient zero for the AIDS epidemic, Gaetan Dugas, famously had over 2,500 sexual partners. Gay "marriage" looks like two gays cruising together for pickups, as wingmen (what Dan Savage calls "monogamish"), rather than anything a straight couple would recognize as a marriage.
Think about how much sex the average man would have if every woman he met was as eager to fuck as he was; that's what it's like to be a gay man. It's disgusting.
I mean, that just tells me the problem is men, not homosexuality.
Men are fine; their level of horniness is correct for dealing with female passivity and resistance. Problems arise when men redirect their reproductive impulses from their natural complement towards a union that can never bear fruit.
Women who do the same are not much better; moving-in together with a near-stranger, suffering from a dead bedroom because neither can take the sexual initiative, truly staggering levels of domestic violence, and doing it all over again immediately after a breakup because women are serially monogamous... lesbian dysfunction is different from gay dysfunction, because women are different from men, but it is still a dysfunction.
The only way to avoid dysfunction is to fulfill our proper telos by seeking partners of the opposite sex, as Gnon intended.
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I agree with this. The apostle Paul even said, "not everything is beneficial." Though, I suspect that you believe that non-hetero relationships fall into the "vice" category.
That's fair.
I would put it more generally, that everyone believes that there are things we do that hurt others or hurt others and/or the larger society. How is a healthy non-hetero relationship something that fits that definition?
I find it interesting you use the bolded word to describe those things, because truthfully, they are concepts that humankind has made up to describe things. Paul famously said, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." It would appear to me that the walls we use to divide each other are are not needed in God's Kingdom. Jesus even said that of marriage -- "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven." (Matthew 22:30)
To put it bluntly, the problem is not a loving (caritas) relationship between two men or two women, which is all fine and good, the problem is using each other as mutual masturbation aids or sticking dicks up each others poopy holes. I would suggest that doing so is like eating that potato chip or masturbating to porn. It feels good in the moment, but ultimately leaves you empty and just wanting more stimulation/titillation while building a habit of mind that ultimately makes a person unsatisfied and less happy than they would be if the relationship was affectionate but not erotic.
I mean, I don't like any of those things because I'm asexual, but even if I wasn't, I wouldn't take such a hard-line stance against such things. I don't understand the fixation that conservative Christians have with sex acts that aren't PIV. I just don't get it. If you don't like them, don't partake in them, but don't try and make someone else's life miserable just because you ascribe to those beliefs.
What's you understanding of the role of the homosexual community (and also the hard drug community, similar arguments applied) in the emergence and spread of the AIDS pandemic? Wikipedia lists 42 million dead, among them something like half of the pre-AIDS male homosexuals in America.
Very little, to be honest.
Mm.
Suppose we have the following two statements:
"There's nothing wrong with these acts or the communities that celebrate engaging in them."
"These communities were ground-zero for a plague that has to date killed an amount of people roughly equivalent to a world war, and the acts they engaged in and their celebration of those acts resulted in a highly disproportionate amount of what we know term super-spreading, particularly in the early stages of that pandemic."
Are these statements compatible?
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American culture and institutions are actively promoting experimental sex acts though -- from the books in schools to pride parades every June to media on TV to the State Department flying flags at embassies worldwide that have colors to represent erotic tendencies. It's not the Christians are not the only party who are obsessed. Christians think these things are bad, and thus, to the extent that we have common culture (public schools, parades, mass media) that sends messaging about sex acts, it would rather that message discourage non-martial non-PIV rather than encourage it.
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Is Paul saying there is no male or female on Earth right now as we go about our daily business of living and build institutions to govern our current Earthly society? Is he saying we are not to make distinctions between males and females, not to make different sets of duties and rules for males and females? This is very obviously not the case, because Paul himself does that all the time. What Paul is saying is that men and women, Jew and Greek, have equal ability to hear the word of God, be baptized, receive the Eucharist, and enter the kingdom of God. The Christian message and the Christian sacraments are not just for one nation, or one sex, or just for an aristocrats or priestly caste.
This is really, really obvious from reading the context around your quote and from reading Paul. Have you actually read Paul fully yourself, have you actually engaged with traditional Christian teaching on these topics previously, or are you just repeating talking points you have acquired second-hand?
I understand. Perhaps my argument there wasn't well-founded.
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I won’t comment on the rest of your post, but the answer to this seems to be unequivocally yes. Gay men have been (by hetero standards) ridiculously sexually promiscuous for pretty much the entire time anyone has been collecting statistics on it. This is true even for married gay men; the Dan Savage “monogamish” approach appears to be very common for gay male marriages. Lesbians, I’m not as sure.
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