This post is a follow-up to Homosexuality Is Abnormal, Unhealthy & Unfortunate — In The Church & Everywhere. See at the bottom for answers to that post.
Here is all we need know about Father James Martin, SJ:
During an interview for his book, Fr. James Martin, SJ was asked what he would say to one who identifies as “LGBT” and is struggling with this. Martin stated, “God made you this way. You are wonderfully made just like Psalm 139 says you were knit together in your mother’s womb … this way. This is a part of your identity.”
These are lies, hideous lies. Damning lies.
God did not make necrophiliacs. God did not make a man want to simulate sex with dead bodies. God did not make zoophiles. God did not make a man want to simulate sex with animals.
God did not make it part of a person’s identity to want to have sex with pre-pubescent children. God did not make it part of a person’s identity to want to have sex other men’s wives. A person who engages in serial self-abuse is not wonderfully made: he is broken. Are we to look forward to Incel pride parades?
God did not create the desire for a man to masturbate into the colon of another man. (Fr Martin said the word sodomy is “offensive and needlessly hurtful”; hence this replacement which I learned from P.T Carlo.)
All of these are sins. All of these can be overcome. All can be forgiven. But to overcome and be forgiven of these sins requires acknowledging these sins are sins. It requires acknowledging that the desire for sin—any kind of sin—is not part of our identities. It is sin and nothing more than sin—a violation of the natural law.
There is nothing super extra special fabulous about the sin of masturbating into another man’s colon from other sexual violations of the natural law. Having this particular desire does not imbue any man with secret insight or give him extraordinary powers. Would we say the same of necrophiliacs? Homosexual desire does not in any way make a man better. It makes him worse. Worse than the man he ought to be. That we are all worse than the men we ought to be does not in any way excuse any sin.
We are not our sexual desires. Are sexual desires are not our identities. We are men—nothing more, nothing less.
Because sin is sin, it must always be hated. Sin can never be loved, or cherished, or celebrated, or countenanced or encouraged in any way. Hate is always a proper response to any sin. (I hate my own sins most of all.) Just as forgiveness is always a proper response to repentant men. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.
Since hate is a proper response to sin, it is therefore insane to call a man “necrophobic” because he calls out the sin of necrophilia. It also be insane to hire a prideful self-labeling necrophiliac at the funeral home or morgue.
It is insane to call a man “homophobic” when he calls out the sin of sodomy—a sin that cries out to Heaven for vengeance. It would be just as insane to hire a prideful self-labeling homosexual as a priest or as a teacher or to other positions where he might easily indulge his desires.
Fr Martin is therefore insane when he calls out “homophobic” pastors, as he did to large and adoring audiences. He is simply wrong, wrong fundamentally, in his talk “Showing Welcome and Respect in our Parishes for ‘LGBT’ People and their Families”.
There are no such things as “LGBT” people in an essential sense. If there are LGBT people, then are also pedophiles, woofies, necrophiliacs, pansexuals, objectum sexuals, and on and on. There is no coherent way to draw a line separating homosexuality with any of these other (so-called) sexualities in Fr Martin’s philosophy. Men wanting to masturbate into other men’s colons do not somehow have a superior position among those with non-procreative sexual desires. Every sexual desire must by Fr Martin’s philosophy become a type of human creature (vaguely or never defined). All sexual desire must also be seen as equal in value in his system. It is only prejudice which judges any sexual desire as being immoral.
And that is insane.
It is insane for Fr Martin to call for the Church to apologize to its treatment of sinners. That is the Church’s job. It is no coincidence that when Church leaders gave up calling sin sin its priests and bishops began to increasingly indulge themselves in the sins which were no longer called sins.
Don’t listen to me. Listen to Joseph Sciambra, a man who gave up the “homosexual” label. He is angry with Fr Martin for promulgating lies.
Fr Martin is the “Catholic Church’s Lady Gaga in a collar” and “a self-satisfied disruptive force”, Sciambra says. “James Martin leads the LGBT community to a candy-covered cottage in the forest”, a path which leads “directly to the grave.”
Fr Martin, we remember, looks forward to the day a man pretending to be wedded to another man can kiss in Church. At the holy sacrifice of the mass. Call it the kiss of death.
Answers to Homosexuality Is Abnormal
There was some good commentary, and some natural questions, arising from the original post, along with some idiotic comments and questions. Let’s handle the dumb ones first.
It is not uncommon to hear something like “Since you condemn homosexuality, you must secretly wish for it.” This is so stupid that I hesitate answering it lest future stupid comments are encouraged. But it’s so very common, I’d better.
First, suppose it’s true. Suppose the man condemning, say, child molestation secretly desires to molest children. Does this man’s desire make child molestation therefore good? I will ban anybody who needs this rhetorical question answered.
The opposite is true: those who support, say, homosexuality wish for it.
Second, a related non sequitur. “You have committed sexual sins, therefore you cannot condemn them.” This is really the same argument as the first. If this argument works, then it works, for instance, on ex-inmates who lecture school children on evil ways. Because these men (and women!) have fallen, their warnings have no value. Therefore these men (and women!) must be banned from warning anybody what sin leads to. And that’s stupid.
Third, as hinted, why draw the line at sodomy? Is there something especially wonderful about it? If the argument from secret desire works, then nobody could come out against anything anywhere lest they reveal themselves as desiring their object of condemnation.
Like I said: stupid.
A slightly better, but still poor, argument is that a chaste bachelor has the same reproductive effect as an exclusive male homosexual; therefore, at least with regards procreation, there is no difference.
If that silly argument works, then it is also true that the man who does not try to kill himself is the same as the fellow who holds an accidentally unloaded gun to his head. Both have the same survival effect. The question whether non-procreative simulated sexual acts are moral is—do I really have to say this?—not the same as whether abstaining from all sexual activity is moral.
Now for the better argument, or rather disagreement over the term non-procreative simulated sex and natural law. It’s too long and prone to misunderstanding. I prefer perversion, but like I said, that causes people’s ears to stop up.
A mated male and female can copulate and not know they will conceive; indeed, there are times and reasons to expect conception unlikely. But it is never impossible. Here is the terse definition: All sex open to the idea, however remote, of conception (and eventual parenting) is pro-creative: anything else isn’t.
Medical knowledge is incomplete and fallible.
Sarah was listening to this conversation from the tent. Abraham and Sarah were both very old by this time, and Sarah was long past the age of having children. So she laughed silently to herself and said, “How could a worn-out woman like me enjoy such pleasure, especially when my master–my husband–is also so old?”
Sarah had a son a year later. Vasectomies, hysterectomies, run ins with sharp-toothed Dobermann pinschers, whatever. If water can turn into wine, a barren womb can be filled.
There are sorts of niceties and peculiarities of custom and culture and parenting to add atop this, enough to please any lawyer or nitpicker. But you get the idea. A certain vagueness in the term does not, in some unstated way, excuse necrophilia, bestiality, masturbating into another man’s colon etc. etc. etc. Stop carping about the term and tell us just why having simulated sex with a tree isn’t perverse.
Also, it is worth pointing out that pederasty is the main problem with priests, not pedophilia (via the Maverick Philosopher).