Late 1990s, at an International Sexaholics Anonymous Conference, in a breakout meeting for those with same sex attraction (SSA), a middle aged businessman shared a story. He was out of town, depressed, in his hotel room where he called for a male prostitute. When the young man arrived, he assured him "I will pay you your normal fees but I don't want all your services. I only want one thing. I want you to hold me." The young man responded "Sure. I get that a lot." At that moment a silence fell upon the group of about 75, mostly men. The silence continued. Slowly quiet weeping was heard. This increased. Soon the entire group was crying. There was not a dry eye in the room.
Yearning for Masculine Affection
This story unveils the second interpretive key for understanding male SSA: the longing for masculine affection.
For human persons, sex is never only about sex. It is about our deepest cravings, wounds, emotional needs, moral and spiritual intentions and aspirations.
Sex is not a human need. It is a drive, not a need. Most of us, most of the time, are abstinent from sexual activity. No one misses a day of work or goes to the emergency room because of a lack of sexual activity. If it becomes a pressing need, a compulsion, than the pathology of sexual addiction has taken hold, as in pornography and masturbation.
What we do need, all of us, is intimacy, attention, affection, tenderness. This is absolutely a human need. A man who is attracted to men does not "need" to have sex with them. He needs, as do all of us, loving, chaste, intimate connection with paternal and fraternal friends. What happens is that such genuine male longings can become sexualized, unconsciously and involuntarily, in puberty so the adolescent discovers himself attracted to men, sexually and romantically.
Born that Way? No.
A false binary is often proposed about the cause of this attraction: choice or genetics. This is ridiculous on the face of it. None of us deliberately choose our attractions, or any of our emotions. We discover them. We receive them. What we do with our passions and feelings is a choice; as is our attitude or philosophy about them. But when it comes to the romantic or erotic desire itself, there is no choice. It comes upon us unsolicited, often with frightful violence. The idea that one wakes up one day and says "Let's see which option I want: I think I'll go homo; and now have eggs over easy with bacon" is comical.
On the other hand, humans, unlike animals, are not born with prefixed sexual instincts. All of our experiences and learning in the 10-12 years preceding puberty influence our sexuality. First and foremost, of course, is our engagement with mother-father figures; then with peers; and notably incidents of abuse. So that the eruption of sexual feelings at that point occur within a boundlessly deep and complex personality: social, emotional, moral, spiritual, intellectual as well as physical.
Famously, there has been no discovery of "the gay gene" or a clear natal source for this attraction. A study of almost half a million people, in Scientific American of 2019 concluded that genes may account for 8 to 25 percent of the attraction. Another encyclopedic survey about that time estimated about 30 percent due to nature rather than nurture. This later was led by a prominent gay activist and elicited anger in the movement.
The "born that way" thesis is entirely unscientific. It is a dogma of the ideology intended to gain sympathy and affirmation from the public. It is not really coherent however. Imagine: if some biological cause (DNA, or hormones, or neural patterns?) were found than the possibility of scientific engineering to change it would raise more pressingly the moral and social questions about it.
This scientific evidence confirms a common sense intuition: as with so many human patterns, there is a given, temperamental predisposition that then is or is not triggered and developed by social interactions. In general, we don't apply the "born that way" to Nobel prize winners, scientific geniuses, or mafioso hit men.
Experiential Contributors to the Attraction
There is a coherent body of research and experience that shows a network of patterns that often, but not always, contribute to the attraction. This study is anathema to gay ideology and viciously cancelled as in woke mainstream psychology as homophobic. This is not to claim that all fall under one pattern. I can think of someone close to me that seems to be free of almost all of them. Every person is unique. An imagined stereotype is to be rejected. Nevertheless, frequently the male (I lack familiarity with the female attraction and lesbian identity which I take to be quite distinct) attraction to men is identified with:
1. Poor connection with father or father-figures and weak masculine self-confidence.
2. Insecure relations with boy peers including disinclination or incapacity to compete athletically ("sports wound") and establish solid friendships.
3. Poor body self-image: too skinny, too small, too fat.
4. Smothering mother or failure to accomplish the oedipal passage from maternal enclosure to identification with masculine father figure.
5. Sexual abuse by a man or older boy.
We can easily imagine that a boy temperamentally sensitive, disinclined to competitive physical play, inclined to music, art, and conversation might find himself detached from masculine connections, closer to Mom and girls, and be triggered by some combination of the above into the subconscious channeling of his longing for male connection into erotic/romantic desire at puberty.
The root causes of the attraction are not in an alleged "inborn sexual orientation" but an isolation from the masculine and a longing to connect.
Sexual Orientation? No Such Thing!
The word "orientation" (from "orient" or "east") indicates a direction, a purpose, an intentionality. One might speak of a career orientation (to law, health care, education) or a political orientation; but not a sexual orientation. If one accepts some sexual attraction to define identity, purpose and destiny than he is in the grip of a delusion, an idolatry, a compulsion. The idea of "sexual orientation" was fabricated as a faux-dogma, a myth to justify the cult of "gay" sexuality. The term was popularized about 50 years ago by the notorious John Money known for his "experimental" sex abuse of small children and his heralded early sex-trans-operation which led to the suicide of his victim. The expression was not part of the world in which I was raised.
The alleged binary of "hetero-homo" orientation is a fabrication. It has been extended to bisexual and asexual. And then we have bisexuals who like men and women but not trans-men-or-women and so are trans-phobic-bi-sexuals. This becomes an alphabetic collage of incoherence and confusion.
Each of us, in our romantic-erotic cravings, is a boundless universe of desire, loneliness, tenderness, generosity, resentment, heroism, despair, hope, trust, suspicion, and the entire gamut of human passions and emotions. To take some attraction, such as SSA, and inflate it into one's "life orientation" is blatant foolishness.
Regarding sexuality, there are two fundamental orientations: to God and to the darkness of sin. This is a simple, hard binary. Sexual expression is intended by our Creator for the spousal union: exclusive, permanent, free, fruitful, faithful, generous, generative, chaste. Sexual engagement outside of that context is sinful and evil: adultery, polygamy, pornography, cohabitation, contraception, masturbation, homosexuality, and the rest. This is simple. This is the moral order of creation.
In our Catholic world, we have the two states of life: marriage and priesthood/religious life. The first is structured by chastity and fidelity to the one spouse (present or future). The second by chastity as abstention and sublimation of the longing for intimacy into friendships, family, service of the Church/community and above all a privileged closeness to the Lord Jesus in prayer.
The expression "sexual orientation" is an incoherence; it has no place in the glossary of Catholic life.
No Labels! Please!
I hate to label people! I deal with paranoia and psychosis on a daily basis but I refuse to label my dear friends: "She is A Schizophrenic". Yes, she has this condition. But it does not define her. It is not her identity.
Recently, an ornery character, with whom I have exchanged unpleasant words about him parking and blocking our Magnificat Home driveway, told my manager: "I don't want to deal with that white guy." I do NOT accept that designation. I am not a "white guy." Just as I am not "heterosexual" or "cis-gendered." I reject the entire white/black binary as itself racist; as I reject the false definitions of sexual liberation. I would not object if he called me "that sardine eater" or "the tall, distinguished good-looking guy" or "that Uber-Catholic." But I will NOT be labeled according to color of skin or sexual feelings.
In my youth, I despised words like "queer" or "faggot" as expressions of contempt for a man in his virility. I have already made clear my absolute rejection of the word "gay" as a labeling in sexual identity. I even avoid use of the word "homosexual" as a noun as in "he is a homosexual." As an adjective the word itself is neutral and objective: "homosexual inclinations.". As I would not label one with bi-polarity a "maniac" so I refuse to identify anyone, even if they so self-identify, as "gay" or as "a homosexual."
Conclusion
Sexual and romantic attractions spring from the mysterious depths of the human heart...in its loneliness, woundedness, concupiscence, nobility, tenderness and generativity. It is a huge mistake to exaggerate an attraction such as SSA into an identity, a "born-that-way-orientation," an ideology and culture. We do well to recognize the underlying, entirely human hunger for connection and seek to satisfy it in ways that are chaste, sober and wholesome.
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