Understanding Homosexuality from a Spiritual and Moral Perspective

Homosexuality is a controversial issue in our day. Simply defined, it is the situation where an individual prefers to have sexual relations with members of their own sex. Homosexuality applies to male and female, and the acts considered homosexual are not limited to sexual intercourse alone. Homosexuality is controversial in contemporary politics. Specifically, liberal politicians are of the view that homosexuals should be allowed to get married, especially since their homosexuality is a natural condition. Conservatives on the other hand are more inclined to believe that homosexuality is erroneously chosen by the individual and should be discouraged.

Freedom of choice, as defined by moral philosophers, includes both the will and the intellect of the individual and is not brought on by forces external to them. When homosexuality is called a choice, conservatives mean that homosexuals are willful perverts who are free to be heterosexual – which is the conservative norm – but instead proceed to be homosexual. This implies that homosexuals do not embrace self control and are not willing to play by social rules, and so must be sanctioned for their conscious choice. The flip-side view is that homosexuals are born that way, because of genetic proclivities to same-sex physiological characteristics. If they are born so, it means that they do not freely choose their behavior, but find themselves acting in a homosexual manner because they cannot help it. If they indeed cannot help themselves, liberal politicians propose that government help them by using the laws of the land to say it is alright for them to be gay and act on their homosexual desires.

The latter is a deterministic paradigm, as opposed to the former free-will paradigm. Determinism refers to the idea that forces external to the individual’s intellectual and moral will are responsible for the individual’s acting in a certain way. The force in the case of the born-this-way advocates is natural birth. If a person is born homosexual, he or she cannot have chosen to be so. They cannot then be held responsible for being homosexual, and so they do not deserve to be held in opprobrium. The Catholic Church as a moral institution does not encourage homosexuality, and does not permit its ministers to be homosexual. The argument among Catholic philosophers with regard to homosexuality is that the human being has a choice not to act on whatever sexual desires they have, be these desires homosexual or heterosexual. In other words, if the born-this-way argument is that the individual cannot help being homosexual, the Church is saying that the individual can help acting homosexual. There is a difference between feeling like doing something and actually doing the thing.

Moral philosophers talk about the five steps involved in human action, and they are: antecedent emotion, constitutive judgment, desire, deliberation, and consent or choice. Even if homosexuals were born so, whenever they are presented with a situation that calls to question whether or not they will act in a homosexual fashion, they are responsible for deliberating and choosing to or not to act homosexually. They are not held responsible for feeling like acting homosexually or being drawn by the potential of homosexuality, but they may be held responsible for consummating the homosexual act. Heterosexual individuals deal with much the same reality. They are responsible for consummating the sexual act, albeit heterosexual. The concomitants of sexual behavior similarly behoove on heterosexual couples. If they have unprotected sex, they could contract diseases. They could harm their relationships or compromise their understanding of love. In this respect, homosexual and heterosexual couples are similar: both share the physical and psychological consequences of having sexual intercourse.

But what does it mean for one to describe themselves as homosexual? The reality of a complex human sexuality as a whole makes it difficult to ascribe sexual proclivities to certain groups of individuals and proceed to label them that way. The human sexuality is hard to define, and medical doctors and philosophers still grapple with what really constitutes homo- or heterosexuality. The Kinsey Scale for example places individuals in medial positions between absolute heterosexuality and homosexuality, and numerous individuals that identify as gay admit to having had many sexual encounters that were heterosexual. In our day, the gay movement is prevalent because of our increasingly commercial culture. Capitalism has a way of placing a price tag on everything, defining them in terms of utility and materiality. Wealth, productivity, status – these are the defining measures for even otherwise spiritual realities. It used to be that when a person said “I love you” to another person, the one to whom such a statement was made would reciprocate in a non-sexual manner, understanding the speaker to mean friendship or companionship. Today however, saying “I love you” to another person nearly always connotes sex. Indeed, when a person tells another, “Let us just be friends,” it can definitely be interpreted to mean, “I do not want to have sex with you”; in other words, “Let us not be sexually active with each other,” as if "friend" were a polar opposite of "sexual partner," and vice versa. Popular culture is similarly guilty of flashing sexual images over the radio, television, cinematography and other media, particularly the Internet. Pornography is the cheapest it has been in a century, and magazines, newspapers, books and other print communications do not want to be outdone by the electronic media.

In Plato’s Symposium in contrast, thinkers talk about the true meaning of love. They call it many laudatory names. Ultimately, it is Socrates that states that love is a child of Virtue, and Need. Socrates is of the view that love is needy, but also in search of the good. This good is Beauty itself, which is transcendent of material reality. Love is interested in finding what is immortal and lasting. It is not simply sexual intercourse, which is temporal. The Symposium’s account of love is relevant. In the first place, it shows that spiritual love is greater and of a higher quality than carnal love. Socrates states that the gradation of love begins at its lowest level by the love of an individual body. This is what happens in the case of a homosexual person acting on his or her desires and having sexual intercourse. When a person defines love as a physical attraction and is drawn, in the words of the Symposium, to an individual body, such a person can only see love in terms of sex.

Plato sees this situation as inferior. It is earthly and permissive. Preferred to the love of individual bodies is the love of the human soul, the essence rather than the matter of a person. The love of the soul is the better love, and even higher than this is the love of customs and cultures and institutions, and laws, and ultimately the intelligible, which can only be known by the mind that is trained and disciplined by philosophy, and on from there to the concept of the Beautiful itself, which cannot at all be known by the carnal. What I think homosexuals can learn from the Symposium is foremost to redefine love. A person that truly wants to live a life in keeping with the majority of society should define love not as carnal attraction, which is by far the lesser and belongs by right to the appetitive aspect of ourselves, but as the love of souls, and spirits. When a person has started out by defining love as that of the soul and of spirits, the person is able to place a restraint on his or her carnal impulses. Such a person sees love not as a sexual game, but as a serious intellectual activity to be contracted within the framework of society, cognizant of the restraint of chastity.

By saying that higher forms of love are loves of customs and laws and ideals, the Symposium affords a homosexual person this opportunity: to seek from society the way by which he or she may practice love. In my opinion, choosing to act on homosexual desires and excluding oneself from what the majority are doing is preferring lower forms of love to higher forms thereof, based on an inferior definition of love. If higher forms of love prefer customs and laws and ideals, then higher forms of love would not want to fall foul of these customs, laws and ideals, and would look to them to guide the self in how to control and express feelings which appear to be leading one to be sexually involved with members of the same sex. Take Socrates for example. In the Symposium, Alcibiades states that he tried to test Socrates by seducing him behind closed doors, to see if the love Socrates felt for him was carnal, because everyone knew that Socrates loved and admired Alcibiades. Despite the seduction, however, Socrates did not have any carnal intercourse with Alcibiades, and the latter testified in the Symposium to the moral rectitude of Socrates. This rectitude was attributed to Socrates’ trained mind. Being a philosopher, he was able to distinguish between the higher and lesser forms of love, as well as realize that the love of the soul of his friend Alcibiades was far more important than the love of his friend’s male body.

The duality of the reality of body and soul would always call the conscious mind to stop and see whether it were not better to focus on the love of the soul rather than the love of the body. Socrates is of the view in this regard that both the body and the soul are capable of inspiring procreation. The body gives birth to humans, but the soul gives birth to ideas. These ideas live even longer than the individuals which the body gives birth to, and is the stuff of which fame is made. The reality here is that humanity is perpetuated not just by individuals being born to populate the species, but also by the stories of the triumphs of individuals who may or may not have physical children, but whose noble deeds inspire those that hear of them. Socrates was trying to show that, by paying attention to these higher forms of love, individuals would be able to make the world a better place, full of morality and justice, a reality shared in the Republic by Plato. Homosexuals therefore owe it to Society to discover if the feelings they have that seem to pull them to others of the same sex are not simply a call by Destiny for them to focus their creative – by creative here I mean the potential for human work, and not simply the arts, as the Symposium does in fact enjoin us to consider all aspects of human endeavor as creative – efforts on inspiring others and “giving birth in the soul,” rather than in the body.

A counter argument here might be: But why should a select population of individuals be singled out and made to bear the responsibility of not having same sex, but only inspiring others? This is a question difficult to answer, and yet various religions have celibates, and celibacy has always been a human condition. Jesus himself was celibate, and encouraged his followers to be like him, as did St Paul. More so, being single has always been promoted for the purpose of concentrating on delicate artistic activity, as among goldsmiths in West Africa. There are countless other reasons for the value of celibacy. Families and loved ones of those that are homosexual also have a unique responsibility toward them (homosexual relatives). They are not supposed to treat them like pariahs. They are supposed to act as friends and helpers. One of the reasons I think that homosexual people go hay-wire and begin to act out is that the people that ordinarily should have given them a love for culture and souls and intellectual things did not. What would make a person reject society and culture and laws if not that the guardians of these mores refused to be a model example for them? And so they question: If the people that represent society to me are not living up to their charge of being good models of human culture and society, what incentive is there for me to sacrifice my selfish, carnal desires in preference of being a celibate inspirer of the human family? There is not much.

If the mindset of homosexuals changes through the efforts of a transcendent definition of love, a preference for society rather than individual bodies, and a supportive network of friends and family committed to mentoring them in choosing higher forms of love, then the communications that spread in the public place will change, and this will include mass communications: there will be less pornography, less nudity and less obscenity in the electronic and print media of communication. More and more people will begin to see love as a higher ideal that points us all toward laws and customs and not necessarily sex. More and more heterosexual couples will begin to wait until marriage to have children. They will begin to see that we all can choose the way we act even if we cannot always choose the way we feel. They will begin to see a teleological avenue for the expression of love, which is to give birth in the body for heterosexual couples, but to give birth in the soul for homosexual individuals and heterosexual couples. 

They will begin to see love not as a game or a deontological sexual reality, but as a moral, conscious choice made in favor of the preservation of the human species in material as well as intellectual terms, the latter being of greater significance than the former. Ultimately, these attitudes would usher in an altogether more moral society that would be freer and less commercial; a sensible approach to the human condition outweighing and keeping in check the baser, appetitive aspects of the human soul and promoting the higher, more disciplined, and philosophical aspects thereof. Family and friends of homosexual individuals cognizant of this vision should therefore love them and teach them to prefer the higher forms of love to the lower ones. They should teach homosexuals to embrace the human family as united and holistic, separate from animals, mobilized in the cause of growing the human species and preserving it in morality and immortality. This is a charge we all bear, whether called to give birth through love in the body, or in the soul. We all should be able to mentor the homosexual individuals that are seeking for a justification to sacrifice lower forms of love that concern sexual desires for individual bodies, in favor of the higher forms of love that prefer the laws, customs and ideals of the political, social and cultural milieu in which they live.

When the homosexual in question begins to see love in a higher sense and begins to love and prefer souls and spirits, the concept of love is in this way brought to a psychological and spiritual place, and it is from this psycho-spiritual place that the individual can proceed to operate morally. Some of the ways by which the individual can operate in this way include looking for means to advocate for change in society; devoting time to physical activities that are non-sexual, such as sports and recreation, as well as volunteering to any of the many charitable causes around the world. Relatives and friends can also help by always being huge pillars of emotional support and by encouraging platonic friendships for their loved ones, and providing a welcoming climate where these homosexuals can experience loving representatives of the laws and customs they are supposed to love in preference to individual bodies. They can thus strive to provide the psychological and spiritual frameworks that enshrine the higher forms of love in homosexual minds.

So far, I have been speaking from a moral perspective. I have a further argument, from a spiritual one. For those that believe in reincarnation, a person who experiences homosexual tendencies may see their soul as inchoate. Perhaps they were of a different gender in a past life, and did not use their gift of sexuality in the best possible way. Perhaps they were manipulative and narcissistic and exploited others for their own ends, or maybe they were vain or promiscuous and lewd. Perhaps they were heterosexual, but oppressed the minority population of people who defined themselves as homosexual. Their gift of sexuality, having not been used in the way intended for it by God, was taken away and entrusted to another soul in its depreciated state. The new soul would be born in conditions that would force them to learn the spiritual lessons of humility, chastity and tolerance. The new soul would be expected through the relatively greater sacrifices of homosexuality in a conservative polity - recall what I said about sacrifices in a previous post - to use this precious gift of sexuality in an uplifting way, in a spiritual way, to avoid perpetuating its suffering.

Individuals that define themselves as homosexuals who are monogamous and endeavor to raise families are obviously more spiritual than those who simply visit gay bars and have sex with every person they meet, wherever they meet, just like monogamous heterosexual couples are more spiritual than prostitutes and active nymphomaniacs. But even this better circumstance is less than the ideal of celibacy. The yardstick in either case is restraint, heeding the call of chastity. Through sacrifice, the feelings of frustration or deprivation that the individual who defines themselves as homosexual may experience upon restraint are replaced with hope in a next life or an eternity filled with sexual fulfillment and freedom. In such an eternity, God will endow the soul with a filling vision of sexual emancipation and peace.

In this material world in any case, from a strictly political perspective, because individuals that define themselves as homosexual fulfill all the obligations of Citizenship, the Court was legally correct and within its jurisdiction to allow them rights to marry, just like heterosexuals possess. It was the politically correct thing to do. Because these individuals pay taxes and serve the land in many honorable ways, they do have the right to enjoy what material allowances government has to offer. Plus, sociopolitical progress is moving more and more toward inclusion in all its ramifications. All of this is politically proper. But from a spiritual and moral perspective, individuals who self-define as homosexual need not act out their antecedent emotions. They can sacrifice them in this life for the awesome reward of the next. "Eye has not seen and ear has not heard" what God has in store for the people who felt antecedent emotions of homosexuality in this life but refused to act on them because of respect for their bodies, for the higher principle of the soul, and in willingness to obey the Holy Spirit, and the age-old customs of the majority of the population. I encourage these individuals to continue to sacrifice the physical expression of their sexuality, in view of a greater reward waiting for them in the afterlife, for its spiritual and moral design.

In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), the wealthy fellow was right to enjoy his money. Politically speaking, he was legally permitted to enjoy his privileges. But he was insensitive to the poor and needy man that lived at his gate, who longed to have the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. The rich man clearly did not love Lazarus, but cared only for materiality. When the rich man died, he went off to the flames of hell, and in his pain asked Father Abraham to send Lazarus to give him water. Abraham replied that there was a gulf separating heaven from hell; plus the rich man deserved his current suffering, having already enjoyed his life on earth, oblivious of the pains of Lazarus. Similarly, the physicality of the human sexuality, like the relatively short life on earth that we have, is nothing compared to the enduring beatitude of spiritual and moral expressions of charity, as shown in care for the needy; soul sharing, and multiple works of charity to all the brothers and sisters in the world to whom we owe spiritual love.

Teleologically speaking also, our sexuality was designed for procreation and the preservation of the human species, with bodily pleasure only as an incident result. With homosexual acts conversely, pleasure is paramount, and child adoption among monogamous, recently-married homosexuals is only an incident result, and is not the majority occurrence. But let me be generous here: I know a homosexual couple that was married for many years and raised three healthy young boys. They reared these boys from childhood to adulthood, and now these young men are themselves married, and to heterosexual partners. Also, there was a gay couple that benefitted from the recent Ruling concerning gay marriage and are using their newfound status to help raise four disabled children from the foster and orphanage systems. There are other stories like these, and the humanitarian acts they describe are honorable and blessed, and noble. So granted, homosexual couples depopulate orphanages, but perhaps not quickly enough: not all homosexual couples are so altruistic, plus chaste homosexuals can work as single people in the foster system, or as staff caregivers in orphanages.

In short, even though, materially and politically speaking, homosexuals deserve every legal right politics give them in this temporal world, individuals who feel antecedent emotions that are homosexual can choose not to act on these desires. They can understand firstly that, morally speaking, homosexual acts are expressions of lower concepts of love. Helped by family and friends, these individuals can choose higher forms of love, as expressed in the soul and the spirit and in the customs of the majority of the human population. Also, they can sacrifice their desires and exchange possible feelings of frustration or self-denial for the enduring beatitude of the afterlife or the more permanent reward of spiritual love. They can also embrace the teleological concept of human love founded in procreation, and perennially strive to tow the Cartesian it affords.

And while individuals that define themselves as homosexual struggle to sacrifice their sexuality for the greater good, Mother Church should continue to be supportive, and sensitive. This is a mark of humility. No name calling; no overreaching into sexuality politics; no strictures - just love and gentle admonishing. Love conquers all. In 1 Corinthians, love is patient and kind. We, as priests and seminarians, should be patient and kind to our brothers and sisters that self-define as homosexual. Indeed, personally, I would prefer that Holy Mother Church stay out of politics, even if this might be asking for too much. We do have social truth to impart to the world, but there is a saying that one can lead a camel to the stream but cannot force it to drink. Other than via politics, we can bring about positive change through popular influence. But even then, education, the media, and various social and interest groups are strong competitors for individual minds and hearts, and we should deal with this reality humbly and graciously. We should realize that, for the percentage of the population that is not Catholic, the human conscience - formed through education, the media, and various social and interest groups - is the interpretive arbiter of morality and spirituality. Yet we can progressively seek to influence the human conscience with the powerful help of the Holy Spirit.