Sex Moral And Immoral. And Why Religion Has An Obligation To Address It Realistically

People are gaping in wonder at the recent statements out of the Vatican about welcoming sexually active gay folk into the Catholic church, even as the rules still deem even faithful, loving relationships among gay folk sinful.  Included in the welcoming attitude are groups such as those who married after an unannulled marriage, a group which no less a figure than Jesus noted were committing adultery, he was silent on same-sex sex so far as we know.  

That it is those groups whose unapproved activity is consensual sex between adults were selected for such unwelcoming treatment in the past is a bit of a scandal, in itself.

Considering the other statements of Jesus, love each other, love others as you love yourself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you and consider the activities that have been commonly accepted by the hierarchy which are obviously and inevitably disobedient of those statements.  I'm not only talking about the obvious ones, war, enslavement, discrimination but such things as capitalism, ecnonomic exploitation..... right down to the football teams at Notre Dame "killing" their opponents on the field or the hockey team at Boston College being exhorted by the faithful to do the same.  At the same time bishops and priests were banning politicians from speaking on campus because they supported the right of women to choose legal abortion, something else which Jesus never spoke to and, if I'm not mistaken, is not banned anywhere in the bible, the same bishops, priests, etc. were glorying in the violent sports teams in their Catholic colleges and universities.

Either you really believe what Jesus said is true and you take it more seriously than social convention, or you don't.  And if you don't, also according to his words, you are not one of his followers.  You have to take the ban on doing harm to others more seriously than you do the conventional permission to do ritualized violence, to practice discrimination, unillegalized theft and routine negligence of the poor that is generally accepted in human societies.

It is far easier to come up with sayings of Jesus and the apostles which would make playing violent sports impossible, were they followed, than it is to come up with a reason that a Catholic married to someone who has been divorced should not receive communion and the sacraments.  Jesus shared the first Eucharist with Peter who was about to deny him, the rest of the apostles who would, likewise abandon him and, very possibly, Judas who he knew had betrayed him.   If Jesus had no problem sharing the first Eucharist with them who has the authority to ban anyone who sincerely asks for it?

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There are people who were shocked that a gay man who supports full marriage equality could talk about sex the way I do, especially straight folk.  Sex is one of the most problematic and troublesome parts of human life, open to all kinds of temptations because it, as a means of escaping the wrappings of ego,  is also one of the greatest fulfillment and pleasures of life. Sex is an activity that is fraught with both the ability to be a selfless and so sacred act but it has enormous potential to be the occasion of great evil.  Not all sex is good, much of it is sheer evil.  

The most obvious problem is in pregnancy when a child is not wanted or rejected or if a pregnancy is dangerous for the mother or if the parents cannot provide for a child and have no reliable person to provide for a child.  Bringing a child into the world under those conditions is morally problematic in the extreme.   That the Vatican has, up till now, not understood that since people are going to have sex that it is morally responsible to regulate conception is hard proof that there is something very wrong with the traditional view of sexual morality.

And even when conception is prevented, sex is open to being one of the most dangerous of human activities.  The real danger of contracting and passing on sexually transmitted diseases is a very serious moral issue, it always has been.  The horrific death that comes with syphilis and other diseases, the debilitation of those diseases, the terrible potential of passing them on to children born to those with the diseases makes that another venue for sex to be immoral.  And, I will remind people, even with treatment of one STD becomes available, new strains of old ones that resist treatment and entirely new diseases come up.  It is one of the most appalling things about popular culture today,  how that hard lesson, learned through many scores of thousands of deaths and millions of those whose infection blights their lives, is breezily brushed aside in a pursuit of cool, transgressive sexiness and a desire by hack magazine writers to write something that will get buzz and clicks.

Then there is the promotion of sex as a venue of the assertion of power and dominance by a stronger, more manipulative, less morally restrained person, almost always a man, over those who are weaker or who can be made weaker by drugs or physical restraints or economic pressure.  Not to mention through the infliction of violence.  As I will never stop pointing out, you can find that all over the internet, in the case of gay porn, it is the largest expression of hatred of gay men to be found anywhere, entirely secular, championed by the free speech industry and considered to be hotly kewl by even many heterosexuals.  And what you say about men in porn, you can say about women, children and animals.

I will say again that the internalized hatred in gay men is an especially pernicious thing, the most effective means by which the hatred of gay men is perpetuated among ourselves, making us do far worse to ourselves through our agency than straight gay haters do and all in the name of sexual arousal.  Anyone who looks at the language of gay porn, the images of it, the messages of domination and use, abuse, enslavement, objectification and destruction will see exactly what I mean.  In the face of that the alleged purification of "consent" is hardly an adequate means of addressing it.  I could add the sexist imaging and stereotyping, seen by many as an extravagant flower of gay pride but which makes me cringe at the annual "gay pride" parades which make me ashamed to be associated with them, in any way.

It used to be the correct thing to say that rape was not a sexual act but a violent act, which ignores the absolute fact that it is both at once. Rape is another venue for sex to be immoral, it is about sex as it is also about violence, hatred and domination, about the use of a person like an object, the disregard of their rights and dignity on the basis of unequal power, and, in many cases, the permanent damage, disabling and murder of the person who is raped.

I could go on and on as to how human beings use one of the strongest and most pleasurable acts of human experience to do evil but I think the case is clear.

Religion has no choice but to address the evil that is done through sex but it will be prevented from doing that if it mistakes the good that sex can be.  It has been one of the sins of religious authorities that they both condemn the good that sex can be while turning a blind eye to the evil that it can be put to.  That is the substance of the Catholic hierarchies handling of the rape and molestation of children by clergy by the last two popes.  It would seem that Francis has a real opportunity to change that, first and foremost, by acknowledging there is a real difference in different sexual activities and that some are good and some are evil. Discerning that difference makes all the difference.  Now, if only the secular left would do the same.