Thus contraception is disordered, sex outside marriage is disordered, masturbation is disordered, using pornography is disordered, divorce is disordered.
And this is not easy teaching either: if one's husband or wife leaves one, one is not free to shack up with someone else. Even if one's spouse 'marries' someone else. That's what we mean when we say 'for better or for worse... till death us do part.' If one is scared of conceiving, one may not contracept, for this denies both the true gift of self and the purpose of God. And so on...
So if I'm homophobic for my views on homosexual behaviour, what does all that make me? Hetero-phobic? Promisco-phobic?
The positive side of all that is that we are all made for chastity: and therein find out something of the meaning of love - including that it is always sacrificial.
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3 comments:
I think you're quite right. In particular, anyone who follows Catholic teaching on homosexuality but not on contraception is a hypocrite.
The other things you mention - pornography, promiscuity, masturbation - apply, as you say, to everyone, so cannot by themselves indicate a phobia to a particular sexual orientation: I assume you're merely being flippant.
Indeed - flippancy is one of my habitual failings. I wish it were the worst...
Possibly flippant, but you make an important point. Although the list you mention does apply to everyone, so does the Church's teaching on homosexuality. Ah, you say, but not everyone is tempted to sin through homosexual activity. True, but that also applies to the other sins on the list. Some people, men particularly, have an addiction to pornography. Not everyone does. Ditto marital infidelity. The problem with the "homophobia" thing is that a particular group has decided that it is uniquely discriminated against (it isn't) by Church teaching, society, their employer, etc. and then tries to shut down debate in case it's proved that they're not as badly off as they'd have us believe, and the cultural and legal privileges they have acquired on the back of their "victimhood" are challenged. It's this politicisation of particular sins that most of us find difficult to take. By contrast with the hard-nosed gay rights lobbyist, the Church's teaching is loving and merciful.
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