homosexuality

Comments

• Coptic88

  January 2010

  Yeah im pretty sure its not a medical disorder. People are not born as homosexuals nor do they medicaly transform. They choose to be so. Thats what i think.
  
  
• peterfarrington

  January 2010

  Homosexuality is complex.
  
  From a spiritual point of view a person may be tempted to consider other members of their own gender as objects of desire. This is temptation. It does not define us. But like all temptations it can become active in us as sin, and when we delight in it (however much we say that we do not) then like all sins it becomes a habit and will destroy us.
  
  From a psychological point of view a person may develop a disordered manner of thinking. In extreme forms this leads to men and women seeking surgery on their bodies to try and change how they feel about themselves. A man thinks that by changing how his body looks it changes who he is. This is false thinking. In the case of those who consider themselves attracted to those of the same gender such wrong thinking can develop very early. It is often associated with a dominant or absent parent. It can be triggered by early sexual experiences. Humans can very easily indeed become convinced that how they think is normal, and as bad ways of thinking become habitual they become normal for that person.
  
  From a psychological point of view we can see that many people, especially in this internet age, can become addicted to pornography. It is, at its root, a desire for intimacy with another, though of course it is a false and consuming counterfeit. In a similar way, homosexual desires can be found rooted in a desire for intimacy which is manifest in a false manner. A student may have great respect and affection for a teacher, but if this was manifest in a sexualised manner it would be disordered, even if the student was trying to show how much he/she liked the teacher. If a patient expresses his thanks and relief at being healed by a sexualised approach towards his nurse then this is also disordered. If a parishioner has a great love for her priest, or a priest has an affection towards his parishioner, then there is always the temptation that fatherly and filial feelings become disordered into sexualised ones.
  
  These are regular occurrences. It is not to be doubted that a child who longs for an absent father might sometimes develop an attraction to other fatherly figures which can become sexualised and confused. A child sent to a boarding school and lonely might easily come to confuse inappropriate adolescent sexual behaviour with the means of being intimate and close to another. Drunken experiences with a practicing homosexual might well confuse a person and lead them to think that they must also be a homosexual because they participated and found pleasure in the incident. Some other children are even told constantly that their mother wanted a daughter and are encouraged to behave in a feminine way.
  
  Then we must consider that increasingly the media and state is insisting that homosexual practice must be considered normal and even that if young people do not try such activities they will not know if they are not a homosexual. This is most dangerous since we become what we do, and it is entirely possible for a 'normal' person to become habitualised to any sort of depravity if they are exposed to it enough. Many of the worst mass murderers start out in a very small way and become more and more evil in what they do because they become habitualised to it.
  
  If I eat too much I might have committed the sin of gluttony, but I do not become a glutton until I habitualise myself to gluttony. Likewise, a person who has one or two homosexual experiences is not a homosexual, though he/she will be encouraged to think so. A homosexual is someone who habitually practices homosexual practices.
  
  Someone who is tempted in such a way is not a homosexual. Let us imagine the following conversation:
  
  'I am a glutton, Father. Every day I am tempted to eat more than I should'
  
  'And do you fall before this temptation?'
  
  'Oh, no, Father. I give thanks to God and I only eat a small bowl of cereal in the morning etc'
  
  'Then you are not a glutton. You are tempted to fall into this sin but you resist with the grace of God'
  
  The same is true of homosexuality. A person may be grieviously tempted but if they do not fall into sin then they are free from blame. And if they fall once or twice then again that does not make them a homosexual, but a person who has fallen into a sexual sin. It is if they become habitual in such acts, and even rejoice in them, that they become what we might call a homosexual.
  
  Homosexual sin is no worse than many other sins. Heterosexual sin is just as bad. Sexuality may be used in a sinful and damaging way even within a marriage. This is why chastity (which does not mean abstaining from all sexual activity but conducting ourselves in a pure way in all circumstances) is so important for all Christians, and why promiscuity, both homosexual and heterosexual, is so destroying.
  
  I do not believe that people are born as homosexuals, just as I do not believe that people are born gluttons. But I can imagine that some people are less well disposed genetically and psychologically to resist addictive behaviours. I can also imagine (because I know it myself) that our family also influences us greatly as we grow into adults, and we bear the hurts and inner scars of even completely unwitting infuences for a long time. Someone who is constantly told they are stupid will grow up bearing the burden of thinking they are stupid for much of their life and will be constantly trying to impress others - which may manifest itself in inappropriate behavior. Someone who longs for an absent father may well grow up constantly seeking a male figure to be intimate with and may confuse such a desire for imtimacy with sexual behaviour.
  
  Ultimately however, sin is a matter of choice. We choose wrong and this is sin. Homosexual behaviour is a wrong choice. Much heterosexual behaviour is a wrong choice. Just because we come to consider our behaviour normal does not mean that it is. We find normality in the presence of God, not in a life lived with the absence of God. A great many people get completely drunk at the weekend - this is statistically normal - but it is not normal according to the life lived in God. A great many people commit adultery, but we do not yet have a social/political lobby insisting that adultery is entirely normal and should be taught to our children in schools. Many people eat too much, but this does not make it normal human behaviour, just a common sin. Even governments recognise that their are behaviours which are 'normal' but should be restricted - so people are not allowed to smoke in most places in the UK now, even though such behaviour was 'normal' and statistically normal.
  
  There is more that could be said. Homosexual culture is abnormal. Outside the context of a homosexual couple quietly living together there is great promiscuity which causes physical harm to those who participate in it. Homosexual practice is damaging to people. Many homosexuals will have a very great number of partners, illness and physiological harm is common. Those Orthodox I know who have decided to become homosexuals have lost their faith. It is a likely end for any of us who choose to live a life of sin - however much we are convinced that we are living a life of love.
  
  There is nothing wrong, as we might read in the Fathers, of a man living with his disciple, and the two having a great intimacy and love for each other. But if this becomes sexualised then it becomes sin. There would be nothing wrong with two men living together for companionship, but to allow feelings of affection to become a means of sin is to fall away from love and life. In the past many people in the West would join monasteries, which would be a place where an unmarried man or woman might find a community of life. Now that most Western people do not even consider such an option it is not surprising that the temptation to enter into disordered relations with others, seeking community and intimacy, is so much greater.
  
  May the Lord have mercy on us all, as we are not exempt from temptation or sin and though we categorise this sin we do not wish to judge those caught in the trap of Satan's making.
  
  Father Peter