Class will be meeting next Sunday, February 14.
We'll be having the long-awaited "open mic" class to address your questions!
Last time, we discussed Steve's story from the Digging Deeper section of Chapter 7.
- Like all persons, people who experience same-sex attractions deserve love. In particular, Christians are called to an attitude of love, support, and compassion.
- The Church encourages her children who struggle with same-sex attractions to acknowledge their struggle, seek support, and commit to a life of purity. Courage is an apostolate that seeks to help with this.
- Of course, we are all called to a life of purity.
- There are real differences between men and women. We are simply not interchangeable, rather we are complementary. (We looked at some of the evidence in our first few classes last fall.)
- All our bodily systems are complete within a single body -- except one. The reproductive system is incomplete, and can only be completed by a person with a complementary body, i.e. a member of the opposite sex.
- This complementarity enables husband and wife to truly become "one flesh" in a union of persons that can give each other the reality of children.
- That "one flesh" union is the bodily basis for the community, the family, that is begins with the married couple and grows to include their children.
- In addition, it means both that children can be conceived within the marriage as the fruit of their love, and that they can be raised by both Mom and Dad.
- All societies until the last 15-20 years or so have defined marriage as between persons of opposite sex, because it is the institution that best provides for the procreation and raising / education of children, aka future citizens.
- The idea of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples is based on a radically different notion of marriage, as satisfying adult desires for romantic fulfillment.
- All the evidence supports the traditional view. However, the culture has a trump card: silencing dissenting views by simply declaring them "bigoted" and refusing to even consider the evidence.
Most important point:
- No matter what our sexual desires are, those desires are not our identity.
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