Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

California Catholic Daily had an article yesterday explaining what the San Francisco-based “Gay-Straight Alliance Network” is up to in their latest attempt to promote “marriage” for those who suffer from same sex attraction disorder and number of related affective pathologies. For the upcoming “Freedom to Marry Week” they want clubs in high schools and middle schools to go all out to promote this “fundamental human right — the right to marry those whom we love.”

In order to promote it they are suggesting decorating classrooms and hallways, holding mock weddings complete with wedding receptions with cake and toasts to the “freedom to marry.” One venue aimed at children as young as 14 years old is offering free drag shows and workshops on “safe sex” and “how to do drag.”

Of course, this is the long term strategy. One can see that these activists are hoping to influence enough young minds to become, if not activists themselves, at least favorable to their agenda. The strategy is an appeal to love, human rights, and equality. This seems quite difficult to argue against for many who do not have a solid moral grounding and/or insight into what this lifestyle really entails.

The real difficulty with arguing against this “rights language” is that society has come to distort the meaning of sexuality and marriage so badly that in its present deficient state, there seems little grounds for demonstrating the disordered nature of same sex attraction. This began when we swallowed the error that contraceptive sex within marriage is legitimate. In doing so we separated the inseparable aspects of the marital act–the procreative and the unitive. These two meanings form an inseparable unity just as the body and soul comprise two aspects of one unified human nature. In fact, there is a direct correlation between the marital act and this hylomorphic structure of the human person.

One can see that the procreative aspect of sexual intercourse, the primary end in the biological domain, corresponds to the material/bodily aspect of the human person. Likewise, the unitive aspect of marital intercourse, which weds two souls together, corresponds to the formal/soul aspect of the human person. Just as when one separates soul from body the person dies, when one attempts to separate the unitive from the procreative in marital intercourse, one destroys the marital act. It becomes, what we must admit is the ultimate end of artificial contraception any way, simply an act of hedonism in which pleasure–a fruit of the marital act–becomes the purpose of the act. Making this pleasurable secondary effect an end/purpose results in libidinism. In his work, Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla shows that this libidinism necessarily results in the use (read exploitation) of each person by the other. This is the case even when both consent.

Once we destroyed the meaning of the marital act and treated in such a way that it is now clearly viewed primarily in terms of pleasure, we lost the ability to claim that the act must be reserved to marriage. Thirty years ago living with someone of the opposite sex prior to marriage was still a no no, for the most part, culturally. Today, the average person is often authentically surprised when they hear it suggested that there is actually something morally wrong with premarital intercourse or cohabitation. I see it every year with students and with RCIA.

Now since the marital act has been torn from its unified meaning as procreative and unitive in our culture, it now is free to be redefined however we choose. Add to this the fact that the no fault divorce debacle has led to the annihilation of the meaning of marriage itself, as a life long commitment of two people to one another and to their children. I would argue that the close correlation of the wide availability and “effective” artificial contraception beginning in the 1960s and the radical increase in the divorce rate and the free fall of the nuclear family all represent causally connected phenomena. Because of this destruction of the meaning of marriage and the marital act, some, of course, are choosing to make the case that anyone you can have sex with, you should be able to marry. Now is the opportune time as too many of us have lost the sense of nature and what is natural. All is now all open to redefinition based upon our whims…even the whims of disorder. At least in the sexual sphere, Nietzsche’s nihilistic, deconstructionist dream in his Gay Science is now upon us.

It is not the case that there is a large interest in marriage among those who suffer from these disorders. Rather, what we see in this movement is the manifestation of a phenomenon common to many who find themselves in a perpetual state of moral disorder. These suffering souls need continual reaffirmation that what they are doing is “really ok.” Any sense that there exists anyone, any place who would warn that they are not ok cannot be tolerated. All messages that something is not right with them must be removed.

This is what underlies the movement for “equality” in marriage. SSAD sufferers need continually reaffirmation from all quarters that same sex attraction is not a disorder. They need to hear from everyone that they are normal. This much can be seen from the totalitarian methods taken by many of those suffering from these disorders when they have the power, against anyone who would utter a word suggesting that there might be something wrong with SSAD. And this need for repeated reaffirmation will continue to be the case even when they do not hear anyone telling them they are not.

It is the fault of our society–read those of us in it– that we have promoted the conditions in which the arguments for “equality in marriage” are now compelling to so many. In truth, these disordered efforts to finally destroy the meaning of marriage are not the first volleys in the battle against marriage. Rather, they represent the final assault in a war whose first shot was heard in 1930 in the U.K. when the Anglican bishops meeting in Lambeth agreed that it was permissible to allow artificial contraception in marriage in some restricted cases. That was the initial crack in the windshield; today the windshield is nearing total structural failure.  Don’t be surprised if in the near future, your children or grandchildren will be taking as one of their required courses, How to do Drag…