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Eunuchorn(imgur.com)NSFW

33 points32 points35 points submitted by [deleted]

IridescentAnaconda 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun 1 year ago

Excellent point. And now I wonder how this played out with older cultural conflicts around homosexuality. I've always been an advocate of conditional acceptance: gay OK if you conform to otherwise heteronormative standards. While I disagree with Christian zero-tolerance, I understand that this position is most often proposed out of love/concern (not "hatred"). But I've never understood the liberal green-lighting of debauchery and degeneracy, it seems designed to facilitate self-destructive behavior.

FlippyKing 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun 1 year ago

I have been thinking about two of the points you raise, one for a little while and another only more recently.

The Christian position on homosexuality is pretty varied and I think it is because you have two "poles" of thought among Christians: one that applies reason to the scriptures (as in Thomism) and one that takes it as God word regardless of what we see in the world around us. The latter, not being well thought out, breaks into two ends of a continuum and that is playing out in the break up of nearly all the major protestant denominations along "liberal" and so-called "conservative" lines. The Catholic church is on the precipice of such a break up for the same reasons. I think the liberal side uses disingenuously bad translations to create confusion over biblical prohibitions against homosexual activity, but I think they are all just missing a concept of what "rightly ordered" sexuality and the purposes of rights and licence and freedoms are from a Thomist perspective at least as I'm understanding them.

Virtually all sexuality and sexual expression and sexual activity today is just as sinful as homosexuality, even spite of it being labeled by previous popes as a sin that cries out to heaven. That "we" drew a line at homosexuality (not so much in the Hellenic classical world, but that was a major aspect of the conflict between the Jews and Greece/Rome) is more like a hypocrisy than a "good Christian values" kind of thing. Everything has a purpose towards which it is ordered. You build something to serve your purpose. Everything in this world view is ordered towards some end. Sexuality is ordered towards reproduction, so the proper use of it is to reproduce. That you get your rocks off while doing it is a bonus, not a bug. It entices you to reproduce. If you focus on the rocks off part and all you want to do is get your rocks off, it's become disordered in that you put your focus on something other than the purpose. If you play music, the purpose is to communicate music to others. If all you do is practice scales, and you perform essentially scale exercises (way too many "shred" guitarists either build their careers doing this or waste far too much time doing this and not making music and either go back to a day job or teach and exasperate the problem) your musicianship has become disordered. It's an easy trap to fall into, just like getting your rocks off is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3ZCZjhjguA

If that idea about what a well-ordered sexuality is the party-line for all Christians, then their position would be more consistent and probably not open to changing with the times. But not even the Catholic Church, which is supposed to defer to "the angelic doctor" Thomas Aquinas on matters where there some confusion, holds consistently to Thomism on a whole lot of matters. The Eastern Orthodox and protestants have no real love for Thomism and I don't think the Oriental Orthodox would ever even consider it as they were "schismed" off long before he was born.

But the bottom line the lusts we feel are called passions in all the "apostolic" churches (I can't speak for protestants as there is something like 30,000 regisitered "denominations" in the US alone). Passions come over us passively and they distract us from what we should be doing (like, my desire to type here). They can have good purposes, like sharing information or hoping to clarify things (which if you can clarify anything I'm saying, please do), or to share love or companionship or communion between people or fill the "god sized" hole in all of us that men and women are supposed to do for each other. Those would be virtuous pursuits. But, virtue blocked leads to vice because we have to do something and even doing nothing is doing "something" in a sense of squandering time and stewing in frustration. Some used to respond to the desire for sex by working hard and being "worthy" or attractive to the object of their own desire. It's kind of disordered maybe, if it is seen obsessively and not seen as sort like the work you have to do to seeds and to a field and to all the things you have to do to plant a successful crop protected from critters. Some respond very badly to the passions though. That's where we are.

The liberal green-lighting of debauchery and degeneracy is called the error of liberalism. It treats freedom as an end of its own. You are free ... to be free? What does that mean? You are free to find the right course of action, that's the purpose of freedom. You have licence in pursuit of that. You have rights, but what are they? Today they are synonymous with licence. Guys in ill-fitting mini-skirts claim the "right", really licence, to enter women's spaces, because the idea that right is that which you must do in pursuit of a responsibility you have is lost. Men have a responsibility to protect women. The state took over that responsibility, as men pretty much sucked at it too often anyway. But we're pretty lost now if we can't even define what a woman is because some highly-disordered men claim they are women because of some subjective criteria.

This subjectivity, and it's undermining of objectivity and realism, is the underlying source of the errors of liberalism. And beneath that is the error of nominalism.

This is an hour long talk about the errors of liberalism from a series of videos called "the crisis in the church". It is very much Catholic insider-baseball, but the "crisis" they are discussing is the exact same crisis of the modern world (though, explained better here by the spiritual offspring of Lefevre then by Rene Gueron) and the exact same crisis that has been brewing for over 500 years. Bad ideas that don't seem so bad take a little while to set you off course, but longer to set you off your destination, and a bit longer til you see the destination you're heading for is not the one you set out for. So, that's the time scale these guys are dealing in. The series is extensive but I found it riviting from episode 1 all the way to like I think 55.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSu0-q845Wg

This covers the highlights of that material in about 20 minutes, but is more church focused. The whole series this is from is worth listening to and is a much shorter listen, but the focus is different as it is more about the church in the world. Both though deal with the problems of the world, and the Catholic Church's problems reflect those worldly problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UnQgPz2b68

You can hate the catholic church and still benefit from listening to these. I think critics within the church and outside it can find common ground and see the need for unity in the world as it is.

IridescentAnaconda 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun 1 year ago

Thank you for this long response, it was though provoking and I may need to read it a couple of times. I would also like to watch the videos. My initial impression is that I agree with everything you write.

I have mixed feelings about the Catholic Church. On the one hand, despite its awful history, it is the least corrupted form of Christianity we have widely available to us in the West (aside from scattered Eastern Orthodox churches in large cities). However, I can't shake the feeling, when I go to mass on occasion, that most of the people in attendance are on a kind of spiritual autopilot. I'm probably wrong, and it may just be that I haven't invested time in the parish and gotten to know its members, but that is how I respond intuitively.

I should lay my cards down: I am what I would call a very committed pagan with a serious and longstanding meditation practice (Christian prayer is part of my spiritual practice but since my spiritual practice goes beyond Christianity I cannot in good faith call myself a Christian in any way). I am also what is usually called a "gay man", in a legal same-sex marriage (monogamous I might add), although both my legal spouse and I have a very hard time identifying with the LGBT community. I understand completely what you are saying about purpose, order, and disorder. Here is where I am stuck: homosexuals exist, and from my experience and the self-report of almost every other homosexual man I've met -- even those who were once married to women -- this is an indelible characteristic that emerges at a very young age. What is the divine purpose? It is certainly not endless degeneracy. What I have come to is that it is, or should be, about advocacy of male friendship. Men are by nature solitary beings and thus the corrective mechanism in the universe is some force that corrects the resulting isolation. However, the problem is that when you open the doors to male-male sexual exploration, in any kind of conurbation that can concentrate homosexuals, then it inevitably ends in debauchery, due to properties of the male sex drive. The only solution may be prohibition. As recently as 5 years ago I still believed that if we as a society could encourage same-sex couplings in a legal sense, but discourage all other forms of sexual expression (i.e. treat it the same way heterosexual marriage was treated in the 1950s) then we could some how solve the problem in a more compassionate way. Now I don't think so, as I know only maybe one other long-term male-male couple I believe is fully monogamous (and whose monogamy is not forced by inability to find external partners) -- that couple is also an exemplary model of male-male friendship (interestingly both men were raised as Catholics, as was I).

I may respond a bit more later but I wanted to get my initial thoughts down first.

Thank you again for your message.

FlippyKing 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun 1 year ago

Thank you very much. I often have to reread my own posts a few times so I know what you mean. I know I'll need to reread yours, and grab a dictionary. You're sharing a lot of great information, but also sharing your own experience which as very down to earth and rational you're writing is, I have to think you've had to wrestle with a lot of stuff inside. Either you're very strong or you've been through a bit of hell. Gay people in a straight world often do. I had an older relative who was gay (passed away now) and he was at early gay rights marches (and anti-war rallies, as it was the 60s). I know of only one long term relationship he had, and the guy turned out to be a jerk. But he was a close member of my close family, and his being gay never really came up other than as a plain statement of fact. We were not religious, at least over my life time but that may have been different before that.

I know we're told sexuality is immutable but I'm not sure the science is all that solid on that. I've been listening to a woman who worked on California's prop 8, an extremely conservative Catholic with a PhD in something (I don't know). I find her views somewhat jarring, but had I heard her 5 years ago or even 3 years ago I would have wretched probably. But she talked about how no one on the other side would go on the record and say, let alone prove, that sexuality was an immutable characteristic. That, apparently from her description of the fight, was integral to the arguments that equated gay rights with racial equality. I can't affirm or deny any of those ideas as it's not every going to be an area of expertise of mine. I haven't really looked enough to see if the nuts and bolts of the arguments fit together.

But to talk about these matters as statistics or public policy is one thing, and to talk about it as an aspect of someone's actual life is different. I have a easier time seeing the catholic stance on abortion and birth control IN A RIGHTLY-ORDERED WORLD than this, mainly because I'm not gay and I can't really talk about the attraction. Too many gay men of the baby-boomer generation went into religious life for the wrong reasons, I think everyone on both sides of the matter can agree to that.

I know curbing my own sexual urges, something I never even thought about doing, took a bit of reflection and a lot of prayer, and a lot of failure, and still fingers crossed and hands clasped in prayer I hope to ... keep my hands to myself, no not to myself either, uhm to keep my hands where everyone can see 'em I guess. I think the idea that carrots need scrubbing or monkey's need spanking or chickens need choking is not exactly true, but I did accept it as "the science" most of my life. But I can look back on relationships I had and relationships I pursued to the detriment of the relationships that I had, and seeing too many women as objects even when I saw them as more than that and even primarily more than that. None if it was good. Honestly, I forgot more than I should have, I realized. I also know my own selfishness and ego led me to do things I should not have done in those relationships. I can abstract that dynamic and see it in play in a lot of people's lives. We're fed lies about what can be and what we "deserve" in life and what we can accomplish and all that, and all we have to do is not get bogged down in the ramifications or our own actions, and everything eventually will be fine-- that's the kind of lie I bought a couple of times and I see others tricked by it.

I know there are groups that help Gay Catholics resolve what they are dealing with, but I don't know what there deal is.

I never considered myself pagan, but I played around in a lot of different systems, considering myself "gnostic". I read a lot by people who I guess would be pan-theists but I never really accepted that one groups set of gods were the same as another, even if they had similar myths and similar attributes or planetary associations. I always felt it was too reductionist and served some other corrupting force that was really turning them into their own system and calling it "wicca" or neo-pagan or whatever. I know a little about the publishers of those books and the sort of big movers say 50 years ago and they had ... less than higher aspirations let's just say. But, the are separate from the cultures and mythologies they draw from. I could just dismiss it all as "the error of naturalism" or other such errors. "The error of gnosticism" is weird because there were so many different variations of thought that get labeled as "gnostic" that, after not accepting this idea, I've accepted the idea that the term is misused and misapplied more than it is used well. I might be "in error" but I think a lot of the gnostic ideas I held are not incompatible with "church doctrine" or scripture, but It might be a while before my reading takes me back to pull it all apart again.

I think the biggest error I see being made is a denial of the supernatural being literally super-natural but just as real. I wonder if there is a sub-natural equally out of "sight" but just as real. I think this is why Christianity was able to spread as far as it did I don't think the sword or desire for commerce was all that effective really. I think it comes down to the question: is the supernatural ordered or in chaotic? You see in the belief systems in Mesopotamia before Zoroastrianism a belief in spirits but seemingly no hierarchy and people thinking they could manipulate them to their own gain as if the other side was just happy to help-- a realm of menches maybe. The Book of Enoch is pretty revealing in that regard.

I kinda just typing away here losing focus. You gave me a lot to think about.

IridescentAnaconda 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun 1 year ago

Interesting, and a lot to think about. I appreciate your struggles with sex and relationship, also your commitment to something closer to Christianity. My take on paganism is that, while there is One ... God? ... This Being/Intelligence/Aeon/Whatever is far too big for a human mind to interact with on the plane of reality at which He/She/They/It exists. In order to relate to us finite beings, us fragments, God has to fragment as well, into personalities that facilitate interaction. This is what I think the minor deities are, merely personalities or interfaces with the One. Jesus is one such personality, and Christian prayers are a way to interact with this particular Face, which is why Christian prayers are part of my practice. But there are other faces as well, and they are sometimes easier to connect with, for some people (including myself). They are real enough, maybe even more real than what we take to be the physical world. But they are less real than the One. I don't think they can be manipulated (I wouldn't try), but a human can be in relationship with them. It's OK to sometimes ask for things from people/beings you are in relationship with, but it's never OK to manipulate. I accept that I could be in a state of error. I have been before! All I can do is the best I can in any given moment.

Is the supernatural ordered or chaotic? Both: it's a fractal. It's too big to understand.

On the subject of immutability of sexuality. I don't know. It has never been mutable for me, nor has that been the case with homosexual men I know well. But I rarely deal in absolutes. But here's the thing: our society is disordered and lust is one of the values that predominate (for both heterosexuals and homosexuals). If we lived in a chaste society, it wouldn't matter if I married a woman and had children because sexual fulfillment was not a goal, not even subliminally. But in the culture we have, there is an expectation of sexual fulfillment on both sides, so it would be cruel -- and dangerous -- to try to force the issue. Thus the most moral decision is to partner with another gay man. But the morality of that decision is conditional on the factors I just mentioned. It would not be the moral decision under a different set of circumstances.

I was telling my partner (who is not a jerk) today, on our dog walk, about your first post and said that we are always moving towards one of two poles: everything has meaning or nothing has meaning. Our society is very close to the nihilist pole. But if we were closer to the opposite pole, every little act (including each foot step we were taking through the woods during that walk) and especially sex acts, would have great meaning and that meaning would have to be factored into every decision. But we don't live in that kind of society, and most gay men see sex as a meaningless act. I've seen a lot in my time.

This may be a bit rambly (if you can't follow, I apologize). But it's nice to have this kind of conversation. I really appreciate it! Hope to hear more from you.