I’ve been asking one, fairly simple question, and you keep coming back with bromides.

You’ve pointed to no concrete harms that come from lesbian sex. You’ve offered no rebuttal to the idea that lesbian practice is any more unnatural than the things a man might practice with his wife.

For gay sex, you point to numbers that apply in general to the harms of anal sex but don’t weigh specific risks—that is, what exactly are the odds of men suffering trauma and what is the range of seriousness of any trauma?

Since lesbians suffer no concrete harms, would you then say that “all” they suffer is spiritual division? If so, then lesbianism must belong to a category of sin that includes things like idolatry and failing to keep the Sabbath.

Arguments about how homosexual parents “do violence to their children” are fanciful, don’t answer my question, and betray ignorance of how successfully many homosexual Christian couples have raised their children.

Perhaps it’s time to consider whether you’ve really been listening to the Holy Spirit.

You asked:

“What exactly is wrong with homosexuality?”

In response to which I provided reading material that makes the case that it is unnatural and that homosexual acts have negative consequences for homosexuals. I have also pointed out that the consistent teaching of Christianity, that consistency being the promised work of the Holy Spirit in the Church (the teaching you call “ancient prejudice” where you disagree with it), is that homosexuality is unnatural and that homosexual acts are sinful. If one flippantly dismisses such an essential teaching regarding human nature itself it is obvious one does not believe that Christ kept His promise that the Holy Spirit would be with the Church forever and guide its teaching. If you don’t believe Christ keeps His promises, you don’t really believe in Him.

You also asked, “whether homosexuality is a sin that has concrete harms like adultery or one that has ‘only’ spiritual harms like idolatry.”

In this this question you concede that homosexuality (I assume you mean homosexual sex because homosexuality and heterosexuality are not in themselves sinful) is a sin and has negative consequences and want an explanation of just what kind of harm is done.

You also concede that more than two thirds of gay men have an increased risk of disease:

“On physical health, Diggs correctly describes the physical trauma of anal sex and the increased risk of disease. … He does not mention the NIH study finding that nearly a third of gay men don’t have anal sex.”

I pointed you to a document that mentions the “concrete harm” homosexual unions do to children raised in such an environment, which further answers your second question. You may call that “changing the subject” instead of responding to the points made in the document if you like.

I had hoped for an increased understanding of your position on the matter but it sounds like you are declaring “victory.” If that is the case (which is certainly not obvious ;o) it is a Pyrrhic victory only, and in reality a tragic loss for you and those who think like you.

Don’t rush it. If you can’t show that homosexuality is wrong, then there’s no point in arguing about homosexual marriage. So-called orthodox Christianity has staked a lot on its defense of ancient prejudices against homosexuals, and yet you can’t come up with a good answer for a simple question. I read Diggs as you asked, gave an honest assessment, pointing out where I think his argument is strong and where it is weak, and you change the subject. Maybe you’ve lost the fight against homosexuality for a reason.

Your response to Diggs was predictable but fascinating nonetheless. I am curious to know what you think of the following excerpts from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons. Maybe I will be surprised by what you think but I suspect that I won’t be.

As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case. …

The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.

If you take the time to read the entire document, which can be found here:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html

you will find that it explains very clearly the reasons for Catholic opposition to same-sex marriage.

Thanks

Diggs is looking at homosexual sex in the aggregate. He’s not looking specifically at how homosexual Christians live. Diggs identifies five areas of risk: promiscuity, physical health, mental health, life span, and monogamy. Homosexual Christians who follow traditional teachings on monogamy don’t have to worry about two of these risks, namely, promiscuity and monogamy. Diggs identifies promiscuity as the culprit behind the shortened life span, so that is off the list, too. What remains are mental health and physical health.

On mental health, the Dutch study Diggs cites is asking the relevant questions, but it remains only one study. It also flies in the face of what I’ve seen. The gay Christians in our congregation don’t seem more depressed than anyone else in our congregation.

On physical health, Diggs correctly describes the physical trauma of anal sex and the increased risk of disease. While he provides numbers for the increased risk of disease, the diseases he discusses result from promiscuity, not from anal sex. He provides no numbers concerning how many men suffer from physical trauma or how bad or dangerous that physical trauma is. He does not mention the NIH study finding that nearly a third of gay men don’t have anal sex.

And of course, when Diggs discusses the physical health effects on lesbians, he has nothing. The harms all stem from promiscuity, not homosexuality.

To the question of whether homosexuality has any concrete harm, Diggs only provides this answer: Homosexuality leaves men with some unspecified risk of trauma if they practice anal sex. One single study suggests that homosexual sex leaves people depressed, but the study states that it’s not clear whether homosexuality causes depression or vice versa.

From Diggs, I conclude that lesbianism has no concrete harms and that gay men need to be careful about anal sex, avoiding it altogether or practicing it sparingly and carefully. There is no reason to disapprove of homosexuality based on concrete harms alone.

“Can you answer the direct question I have asked, namely, is homosexuality a sin that has concrete harms like adultery, or is it one that has “only” spiritual harms like idolatry?”

Take a look at this:

The Health Risks of Gay Sex
John R. Diggs, Jr., M.D.
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0075.html

“I think we can assume spiritual harm from the fact God calls it a sin: that’s a given.”

This is a good general rule, though I think Jesus taught us to look very closely at what is called a sin and what is not, and we see the early Church doing just that in the Council of Jerusalem, for example.

“I also think that societies that embraced it tend to start skewing the straight side of it as well.”

I’m not interested in what societies do as much as I am in what Christian communities do. Much of the debate about homosexuality has pointed to social and public policy rather than looking at where Christian communities have succeeded or failed.

Now that the sexual revolution is long past and many can see the destruction left in its wake, the young are ready to embrace different models of life, and the Christian model is the only one that is truly and fully satisfying.

I also think that societies that embraced it tend to start skewing the straight side of it as well. I’m an anime and manga fan, and we both see things called Yuri and Yaoi-f/f and m/m comics designed for straight consumption. It’s lampooned humorously here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgaAzSFOvGE (should be sfw) but the acceptance of homosexuality can also spill into heterosexual relations between themselves.

It’s going to be interesting to see how a subculture of a generation of women that would rather see Harry Potter marrying Draco Malfoy than Hermione deals with men in general.

“If you believe that life can mean nothing more than feeding your own individual appetites – and that the individual pursuit of appetite-pleasure is the highest (maybe only) good – then sure, this is logical”

You began your response with a quote from me, but I don’t see how you’re actually responding to what I’m saying. I think I’ve been quite clear that what you call “the individual pursuit of appetite-pleasure is the highest (maybe only) good” is mistaken about the purpose of human life. Perhaps you can clarify what you were trying to say.

—

Harry,

Can you answer the direct question I have asked, namely, is homosexuality a sin that has concrete harms like adultery, or is it one that has “only” spiritual harms like idolatry?

My point was that procreation is an aspect of human sexuality that you didn’t mention because homosexual relations are sterile. The heterosexual relations of the infertile and aged are natural. Homosexual relations are always infertile and unnatural.

As for the immorality of homosexual relations, even though such relations are objectively wrong, one’s culpability would be based on one’s freedom in the matter, one’s understanding of morality and the extent to which one failed to live according that understanding.

Christians who have a grip on the morality that has been preserved in the Church by the Holy Spirit for twenty centuries and are free to live according to that morality would be culpable to a significant extent.