The Catholic Church and Same Sex Marriage

They teach acceptance, love and tolerance and yet, it is difficult to comprehend the Catholic Church's stand on homosexuality. While Catholic teaching tells us to embrace all in loving brotherhood, there is that nagging feeling that homosexuals are only half embraced. Religion teachers the world over still teach that homosexuals are sinners and that Christians must love the sinners but not the sin. In a convoluted kind of way, labeling homosexuals as sinners is equal to only minimal acceptance. If homosexuality cannot as yet be fully accepted as normal in the Catholic point of view, then neither can same sex marriage (SSM).

Presently proponents of SSM have gained some ground with the implied social and legal acceptance of SSM or at least some other counterpart among some North American and European countries. To date, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa have legalized SSM. While it is civilly legal, the law cannot prevent religious groups from likewise religiously condoning SSM.

While some Lutheran groups and the Jewish Conservative Tradition have expressed selective support at least for the concept of SSM, the Catholic Church has remained adamant.

Contrary to popular belief, Catholicism does not go about inventing divine laws on its own. As a religion, its doctrines and teachings are Bible based and the Bible is perhaps where we should look into first to gain a deeper understanding of what the Catholic Church believes about homosexuality and SSM.

In the Bible the most obvious reference to homosexuality can be read from the Book of Genesis in which reference is made to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which God destroyed because its residents were fornicators and engaged in same sex intercourse. Other references regarding homosexuality are also found in Leviticus and again in Paul's Letters to the Romans and the Corinthians.

The Bible also says that one of the most important roles of married couples is to procreate as according to the will of God. Since homosexuals therefore cannot naturally procreate, their unions are against the will of God. For the Church, man and woman compliment each other and their union is the only true one and to go against this is going against the law of God.

The Church however, has been largely attacked by its critics for its logic. The argument of procreation for example does not hold water since the Church in itself is promoting natural family planning as something that may be practiced and is not sinful as opposed to medical contraception. The argument also of complimentarity has also become disagreeable to many since it implies that men and women are different in so many ways. Complimentarity is opposed to the more gender sensitive concept of marriage as mutuality in which married couples share what they have in a mutually supportive atmosphere.

At present the apparent gradual social and legal acceptance of homosexuality and SSM should alarm the Church. Among its own herd are people who are beginning to believe that homosexuality and SSM are but normal human states. While homosexual Catholics may continue to be devout Catholics, they have no moral qualms about who they are.