"In addition, sexuality is largely conditioned. Despite the same sex attraction that many may feel sometimes, and if it weren't a thing common to man I don't think there would have been a law given concerning it, that doesn't bar someone from having a fulfilling sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex any more than a 'heterosexual' man's attraction to the 25 year old hottie that moved in next door mean that his wife of thirty years suddenly won't do."
Could you word the above a little differently. I'm not understanding what you are saying. I think I understand but I'm not sure.
I think you're saying that everyone has the capability of same sex atrraction, otherwise, there wouldn't have been a need for Moses to warn against it but that, that doesn't mean one can't have a fullfilling relationship with the opposite sex. Is that right?
My statement is meant to be read in light of the information in the article I cited, and I would word your paraphrase a bit differently, but essentially you're correct.
Everyone at some point, especially when children, may experience same sex attraction, but how it goes from there is the nurturing one receives and the things to which he is exposed.
But no one can really be "identified" by his "orientation," and orientation itself is a construct.
From the article:
Of course, given our immersion in a culture for which these categories seem as connatural as the English language, uprooting them from our vocabulary and worldview will not be anything like a simple task. So why bother? As long as we do not succumb to sinful acts, why does it matter if people—even we Christians—continue to identify as homosexuals or heterosexuals?
First of all, within orientation essentialism, the distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality is a construct that is dishonest about its identity as a construct. These classifications masquerade as natural categories, applicable to all people in all times and places according to the typical objects of their sexual desires (albeit with perhaps a few more options on offer for the more politically correct categorizers). Claiming to be not simply an accidental nineteenth-century invention but a timeless truth about human sexual nature, this framework puts on airs, deceiving those who adopt its labels into believing that such distinctions are worth far more than they really are.
A second reason to doubt whether this schema is one that we Christians should readily use is that its introduction into our sexual discourse has not noticeably increased the virtues—intellectual or moral—of those who employ its concepts. On the contrary, it has bred both intellectual obscurity and moral disarray.
...
There is a third reason this categorization should be disposed of, this one theological: It is at odds with the freedom for which Christ set us free. My future prior in religious life, Fr. Hugh Barbour of the Norbertine Fathers, has expanded on this idea in an essay in Chronicles Magazine , entitled “Do Homosexuals Exist? Or, Where Do We Go from Here?” As Fr. Prior argues, “Traditional moral theology evaluated acts, and did not generalize so unsatisfyingly about the tendencies that lead to these acts. That was left to the casuistry of occasions of sin, and to spiritual direction. If the sin is theft, then is the standard of evaluation kleptomania? If drunkenness, alcoholism? If sloth, clinical depression?” Even orthodox Christians, he writes,
have given in to the custom of treating sexual inclinations as identities. Pastorally, we are meant to preach the freedom whereby Christ has made us free. In treating the sin of sodomy as a prima facie proof of an identity, are we not, in the guise of compassion and sensitivity, helping bind the sinner to his sinful inclination, and so laying on him a burden that is too great to bear without perhaps moving a finger to lift it?
The article goes into the dangers of using the 'heterosexual' identity as well. For a simplistic summary, it tends toward a destructive self-righteousness, and a false assurance of one's standing with God simply for the fact that one likes the opposite sex. Hence the title "Agaist Heterosexuality"
"So you just chose to hobnob with a bunch of fundamentalists who pretty much think you're bound for hell unless you repent?
C'mon, Gringo.
I don't think you're being necessarily dishonest, but I can't help thinking there's more to it."
Could you expound? What is it that you think I'm up to?
I don't know if you're "up" to anything or not. You may feel a need to maintain ties to your Christian heritage. You may know someone here outside of the forum. You may be on a kind of mission to say, "Hey, we gay people aren't anything to be afraid of."
Or you may be searching for something.
If I thought I knew, I wouldn't have asked.
