Elizabeth Scalia on Homosexuality

Over at First Things, Elizabeth Scalia has a thoughtful post on homosexuality.  I confess that I often find her too snarky and almost didn't click on the link.

In fact, snark is where she begins, rolling her eyes at an awards-show winner, as he claims exuberantly that gays are "exceptional people."  But then she pauses, and wonders...

Perhaps homosexuals are in fact “special and exceptional others,” whose distinctions are meant to be noted. Perhaps they are a “necessary other” created and called to play a specific role in our shared humanity...

I have a theory that our gay brothers and sisters are, in fact, planned, loved-into-being “necessary others,” and that they are meant to show us something of God from a perspective that we cannot otherwise broach...

If that is so, our homosexual brothers and sisters deserve a full participation in our human adventure, right down to the “plans of fullness, not of harm; to give you a future and a hope.”

But those plans, in the life of every fully-engaged human, involve not just gifts but also challenges, not just “yes” but also “no,” not just satisfaction, but also sacrifice, not just ourselves but also obedience. That’s the fullness; it comes from embracing the plan, but it is not easy.

What she is saying, I think (but check out the comments, they're all over the place), is that being gay is a gift from God that comes with a special mandate to love -- and, I suspect, she'll add that that such love is only fully realized as the gift it is when it is expressed in ways other than having sex.  Indeed, if being out means being sexually active, Scalia argues (crediting Camille Paglia) that gay artists work best in the closet.

Maybe I mis-read her.  I agree with her that gender identity and sexual orientation are primary modes of being human, not social constructs that can be endlessly deconstructed. So then, if hetero-sexual sexual activity is primarily about procreation, must a same-sex orientation be primarily about something other than sexual activity?

Or is it possible that same-sex sexual activity is the "necessary other," part of plan of the "fullness" of sexuality?

I am not sure.  I do appreciate that Scalia is assuming that there is a particular integrity in the same-sex orientation, and asks, in a careful way, what it might be.

But still, I wonder about the potential extension of this argument as, in the background, I hear an application of it to another "very special" group, women, whose form is claimed to be so special that it literally cannot receive the sacrament of holy orders.

Hmmmm. What if most of us are "necessary" "others?"  Necessary to whom?

Stuart Koehl, in FT: Same Stuff, Different Day

In the last two posts, to my thinking, we've been having a conversation about the nature of Catholic faith.  Some have argued that the Church is so damaged that we need to withdraw from the institution to practice our faith in the integrity of our individual selves (see my previous two entries, on Charles Pierce's recent essay in the Boston Globe magazine).  I have disagreed, saying that no matter how damaged the institution, it is vital to the very nature of Catholic faith; that Catholic faith is inherently sacramental, communal and "ordered."  In this sacramentality, I'd like to further argue, it is also profoundly "public."

Here comes another way of thinking about the same principle, from a different quarter.  In today's "On the Square" entry at the First Things blog, Stuart Koehl suggests, in "An Independent Witness to Marriage," that, to solve the problem of the state increasingly favoring same-sex marriage, the church should stop co-operating with the state as a partner in the process of marriage.  Marriage by the state and marriage by the church would simply be separate things.

Koehl argues that this would free the Church to hold fast to its belief that marriage is to be reserved for heterosexual unions.   It would be free to "witness" to a specific understanding of Catholic marriage that is counter, perhaps in many ways, to the understanding of civil marriage.  It would be free to set its own standards, and -- though he doesn't say this -- it would make sacramental marriage a much more freely (though perhaps even less frequently chosen) sacrament.   All that freedom, what American could object?

Uganda 's proposed anti-homosexuality legislation

I'm not a big signer of statements.  But the proposed anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda, that would criminalize same-sex relations -- "criminalize" as in life in prison or the death penalty -- is simply wrong.  David Waters, at the Washington Post's On Faith blog, gives an overview (see also NCR here and here) and quotes the following summary of the proposed legislation, as reported in Foreign Policy:

"In addition to outlawing 'any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex' with penalties up to life imprisonment, the proposed bill criminalizes attempted homosexuality, the aiding and abetting of homosexuality, and promotion of homosexuality -- each carrying a possible prison sentence of seven years. Failure to disclose an offense is also punishable by a fine and three years in prison. And anyone with knowledge of crimes committed is obligated to report them to the authorities within 24 hours. The legislation also creates a new category of offense, 'aggravated homosexuality,' which is punishable with death. The latter crime would include having homosexual sex with a minor or someone with a disability or having homosexual sex while HIV positive (the bill makes no distinction about whether offenders must be knowingly infected to qualify.) "

The difficult point, in commenting on this effort in Africa, is that much of the energy behind it -- the legislation is put forward by an evangelical Christian and, if passed, would likely be signed by the leader of Uganda, an evangelical Christian -- comes from an emphatic rejection, by African Christians, of what they see in the Christianity of the West, particularly with regard to sexual ethics.  Western statements condemning this may simply add fuel to this fire.  So I hesitated about signing.

But this punitive bill violates the most basic standards of human tolerance.  Christians around the world should speak out against it.  Thus I'm signatory to this statement, organized by the group Faith in Public Life.

Update:  Dan Gilgoff asks:  "Should U.S. Religious Conservatives Denounce Uganda's Anti-Gay Bill?"  And Mark Silk, noting the silence of the Catholic hierarchy, says it is "A Time To Speak."