Unsurprisingly, it’s hard to find modern pictures of anonymous large families.
I was reading Matt Walsh’s piece on the unfortunate hypocrisy of pro-traditional-marriage divorcees when my memory kicked in and I realized that I still hadn’t written about a topic I’ve been meaning to write about for some time.
Here it goes: Gay marriage and contraception are kinda the same thing.
No, really. They are. I mean, they each include details the other doesn’t, and homosexual activity is more gravely evil on the basis of sodomy, but when you really look at them, they are very similar.
As a high school theology teacher, I get asked pretty often by students why “gay marriage” is unacceptable. I also get asked why Catholics (by which I mean “Catholic-doctrine-following Catholics”) have so many hang-ups about contraception.
I’ve noticed that I tend to answer both the same way. Now, I could always give a biblical answer or a doctrinal answer or a moral answer, but when one finds oneself trying to evangelize a room full of individual, personal magisteria - each deciding for himself whether to accept or reject a source based solely on whether it agrees with his opinion – one tries to find the most obvious source possible. I use plain, clean, simple philosophy. I don’t even go back to the greats like Plato or Aristotle or Aquinas. I just use what my students themselves, if they are honest, have to admit that they can observe about nature.
“What is sex?”
It’s a pretty simple question, and after the giggles die down, it gets a simple answer: “The union of two persons in the reproductive act.” Let’s examine that:
- Obviously, sex is a union. If you didn’t know that it involved two people getting together, back to 5th grade bio for you.
- It involves two persons. Basic mechanics.
- What are the two persons doing? Taking part in the reproductive act. Yes, there are other aspects to it – spiritual, emotional, physical – but what is biologically, naturally happening? The reproductive act. How can you tell? The reproductive organs are doing what nature intended.*
So what if the reproductive organs aren’t doing what nature intended?
Well then, it’s not sex.* And if it’s not sex, then they’re using their bodies in a way that contradicts nature. Contraception stops the act from being open to reproductive fruitfulness; contraception therefore contradicts nature. Homosexual activity is naturally incapable of reproduction; homosexual activity therefore contradicts nature. In both cases, a definitive part of sex is missing; in both cases, it’s the same definitive part. Neither is open to reproduction.
We have seen in the past few years a shocking increase in homosexual presence in the media. Less than two years ago, homosexual activists pushed a movement against the Christian owners of Chick-fil-a. It didn’t work. Since then, the movement to redefine, distort, and destroy marriage has become increasingly bold. Just the other day, I wrote a piece exposing a brief, pro-homosexual shot in a recent Facebook product ad. A few days later, I witnessed a fleeting scene celebrating gay marriage in the latest TurboTax commercial. Now there’s a Coca Cola commercial featuring a homosexual couple and conservatives are up in arms (albeit some for the wrong reasons).
Yet out of the many Christians who fight to defend marriage between one man and one woman, how many contracept? How many willfully remove from their sex lives the one most definitive thing that makes their marriages different from gay marriage? How many are, by the contraceptive lifestyle they choose, passing on values to future generations that separate sex from procreation?
It’s a big number - if we consider only marrieds of child-bearing years, the percentage is probably in the high 90′s – and that number matters. That’s the number of people who romanticize the idea of sacred marriage, but don’t live it out. They contracept for most of their relationships and teach what children they do have to disassociate sex and procreation. These defenders of traditional marriage are hypocrites defending an institution they themselves abuse in the same way as the gay marriage crowd. Their actions bear poor witness to the dignity of marriage. With the institution emptied of its meaning, no wonder it’s being given a new one.
What’s to be done? Obviously, the fact that many pro-traditional-marriage folks are hypocrites doesn’t invalidate the argument against gay marriage. On the contrary, their convictions about sex should call them to an honest assessment of their own actions, to repentance, and to more faithful witness. In this, the Church can be a great help. You, faithful readers who follow Church teaching – and nature’s laws – against contraception, go out and be honest with the world about the great dignity of sexuality and procreation and love and the family. Be living witnesses of good marriage and let those around you know the reason for it.
We will win the debate over “gay marriage” if only we respect the nature of sex and the inherent meaning of marriage.
—
*This argument is about sex on a natural level. There are, of course, circumstances in which two persons are following the nature of sex but in their particular case – due to health, age, or other factors – are unable to reach the natural ends of sex. It remains true, nonetheless, that what they are doing is, in the order of nature, the reproductive act. That is, by their nature as man and woman, the act is reproductive potentially, even if not actually. The Church herself makes this distinction even of heterosexual couples; those who are sterile (cannot conceive) may be married, but those who are permanently impotent (cannot engage in the reproductive act at all) from before the marriage may not be married (see Can. 1084 §1-3).