Two interesting bits here: (1) Republicans seem to care a lot less about same-sex marriage than they used to.  (2) Catholics are apathetic about this as well, if not outright opposed to what their Bishops and leadership is saying about it.  I think that this has a lot to do with the public role of reason.  Honestly, there are compelling and logical reasons available to public reason about why abortion might be wrong.  This is why plenty of atheist and non-Christians can jump onboard.  This is clearly not the case about homosexuality.  Let’s face facts: one is an argument, the other is an assertion.  And assertions always wind up losing to better arguments.

I am frustrated.  I’ve been looking back at my blog posts, particularly the ones that have gotten attention, and they’re almost always about authority, particularly the authority of the Church to talk about abortion, homosexuality, and condoms.  That’s fine.  People respond to what they respond to.  

But let me tell you what I wish they would respond to.  I’m all about discussions of whether or not any disagreement with the Pope should be allowed.  I’m interested in how the Magisterium works.  But I really wish that people would respond to a post about art or culture or broader cultural trends, and that they would respond as Catholics.  Let’s face it: our religion, among all Christian religions (except the Orthodox) is, I would argue, uniquely capable of dealing with issues of art and culture because of our sense of embodiment and our commitment to physical practice.  I think a great example of this is the novel, My Name is Asher Lev, in which Asher, a Hasidic Jew and painter, takes on Catholic themes in his work because of the just great material.

So what happened to the Flannery O’Conner’s and the Walker Percy’s?  What about Graham Greene?  Why is so little visual art indebted to religion anymore?  What about all the great movies and TV shows about being Catholic or at least religious (Scorsece, for example, and there are many others who are less Catholic but just as interesting).  And all of these ask compelling questions about the nature of belief, of the role of faith in the world, and how we ought to exist in a universe where the True is increasingly in doubt. 

I’m not saying not to talk about abortion or homosexuality.  I’m just saying that, for God’s sakes, isn’t there more to talk about?

Read a take here.  Blair compares the Catholic Church to political parties, which is a bit crass, even if it’s probably sociologically accurate. The difference, of course, is that parties, even if they do care about principles, have a bit more at stake in terms of keeping power, while at least the argument about institutional religion is that it cares about truth first, then power.  Now clearly that’s often not true, but it’s at least the hope in a way that such hope can’t exist in politics.  

Anyways, his point on homosexuals is pretty solid.  Thanks to some great comments on a lot of the previous postings about homosexuality, particularly those that call to question whether the ban on gay acts is “natural”.  I think there’s a ton of compelling evidence to question the existence of a “natural” at all barring some pretty mundane things–I think that humans are naturally selfish, afraid of heights, desirous of community in some form, averse to pain, able to recognize patterns and causation, and a few other things.  But there’s a big jump from those to a natural way to have sex, which anthropology makes pretty clear simply does not exist.  If we want to say this is how the West, or even the Catholic Church, has traditionally done something, that’s one thing, but to argue that it’s natural seems a bit off.

Mark said a few more things worth commenting on:

1. Males and females not fitting together is I suppose true from one point of view, except for the women and  men in gay relationships who think they fit just fine, thank you.  Hands don’t fit together either.  Neither do kissing lips.  So hand-holding and kissing: none of that is natural or achieves a purpose.  Yet it’s still okay, right?  Because it’s unitive.  In terms of what humans were “designed” to do, you either have to take in on authority that certain parochial Western practices are what they were designed to do or ignore the vast amount of other practices that seem obvious and normal to other cultures.

2. The woman accepting the sperm of the man is what sex is about?  What about kissing?  What about long, close hugs?  And this doesn’t even get into the many and sundry forms of sodomy that the vast amount of heterosexuals do.  And then, of course, there are the infertile couples, or those on NFP who know they won’t get pregnant on a certain day and that’s why they have sex that day.  Of course, these are all just exceptions to the rule.  I challenge the rule too: except on an argument by authority, why is sex designed for procreation first?  I don’t believe there’s a good reason.

4. Lastly, there is no good sociological evidence that gay couples raise worse kids or raise kids in an inferior way (unless you count thinking gay relationships are okay is inferior, which is fair enough, but then you’d have to ban liberals from having kids too).  I know the field pretty well, and while I’m open to being corrected, I’d be quite surprised.

Maybe.  That’s what this poll says, anyways.  But it’s my hunch that we Catholics are actually just more understanding and forgiving–we see the universe as bigger and more complicated than simple right and wrongs, which makes it hard for us to be interviewed in surveys.  But that’s obviously not an empirical assertion.  Anyways, read the article here:

American Catholics are more liberal than the general population on social issues like divorce and homosexuality, despite the Catholic Church’s longstanding conservatism on both issues, according to a new survey.

Catholics are more likely than non-Catholics to say that homosexual relations, divorce, and heterosexual sex outside wedlock are morally acceptable, according to an analysis by Gallup pollsters released on Monday (March 30).

That’s not, by the way, neccesarily a bad thing.  The Eucharist, for example, is essentially an argument from authority when you boil it all the way down.  There’s an attractive logic to it thanks to Aquinas, but we have to believe that logic works, and we have only the word of tradition’s authority that it does.  So saying homosexuality is wrong–well, it does seem to lack any real empirical referent, and I’ve yet to find anything indicating that gay marriage would actually destroy, well, anything, that is, except heterosexual definitions of marriage.  Again, I’m not sure it’s bad if we recognize that the Church opposes gay marriage based only on faith, but then it seems like an easier thing to change too.  After all, we are the Church of faith and reason.

A smart debate on this from Damon Linker and Rod Dreher.  Below is Linker’s side, but you should read Dreher too (he’s a great writer).  I think, by the way, that Dreher is totally right that much of the left accuses people who don’t like homosexuality of being sick, ironically in just the same way society used to accuse homosexuals:

In the end, I suppose our disagreement boils down to what Rod says in the last sentence of the paragraph I quoted above: The legitimization of homosexuality, for Rod, “would be a profound distortion of what it means to be fully human,” whereas for me nothing nearly so profound is at stake. All I know is that a few of my fellow citizens love, and feel sexual attraction to, members of the same sex. And as Jefferson might have put it, that neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Rod and those with similar convictions obviously take a very different position. I just don’t see how over the long term they can possibly make their case in our public life if their position boils down to nothing more than a profession of faith: “I believe being fully human requires that my fellow citizens consider it evil to do this and that to each other in bed.” Don’t get me wrong: Such professions might inspire a handful of conversions. But they are unlikely to persuade anyone, because there is no argument involved. If you believe that scripture and tradition are right to condemn homosexuality, then you’ll believe that it’s right to condemn homosexuality. And vice versa.

A new report is out–read more about it here and read Jim Martin’s take here.

Fr. Martin, a Jesuit (and sometime writer for BustedHalo) doesn’t mention this bit, about religious orders (and some might say, a muted reference to the Jesuits):

“Of course, here and there some case or other of immorality - again, usually homosexual behavior - continues to show up,” according to the report. “However, in the main, the superiors now deal with these issues promptly and appropriately.”

The evaluators had no such praise for schools run by religious orders, which critics consistently condemn as too liberal on celibacy, homosexuality and church teaching in general. The report said “ambiguity vis-a-vis homosexuality persists” within institutes run by religious orders. The report also cites those schools for failing to fully adhere to Catholic theology.

Nearly one-third of the 40,580 U.S. priests belong to religious orders.

Here’s the thing.  The’re not the evil badboys that folks want to paint the Vatican as.  They don’t want anyone to be killed for being gay.  I disagree with the church on this too folks, but they’re not the bogeyman people are making them out to be.

The Vatican Friday urged governments around the world to decriminalize homosexuality but said a proposed U.N. resolution on the issue went too far.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Holy See’s delegation explained the position at the United Nations late on Thursday, criticizing the wording of a European-backed text that champions decriminalization of homosexuality.

“The Holy See continues to advocate that every sign of unjust discrimination toward homosexual persons should be avoided and urges States to do away with criminal penalties against them,” read the delegation’s remarks, released by the Vatican on its website (www.vatican.va) Friday.

“This diocese stands for orthodox Christianity,” said Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker on Saturday, “and we are increasingly at odds with the revisionist practices and teachings of the official leadership of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church we once knew no longer exists.”

See, it’s stuff like this that ultimately makes me a Catholic moderate.  I’m torn up about it, because I do really want the Catholic Church to take more liberal stands, yet I also want us to operate as a community.  And when that doesn’t happen–a la Episcopalians–there are nasty ruptures of community.