Two Catholics differ on same-sex marriages; let's invite gay and lesbian Catholics to a church wedding.

Let's invite gay and lesbian Catholics to a church wedding

The time has come for the Catholic Church to invite gay and lesbian Catholics to the celebration of Matrimony. Such an invitation would have a positive impact on the lives of many gay and lesbian Catholics and would be equally beneficial for the life and health of the institutional church.

Access to Matrimony would be a great boost to the self-esteem of gay and lesbian Catholic couples. It may be more acceptable to be gay today than it was a generation ago, but many lesbian and gay adults still carry considerable internalized shame from messages received while growing up. They have been taught that there is something deeply flawed--"intrinsically disordered," to use the phrase of a recent church statement, in being attracted to someone of the same sex.

"Guilt is when you make a mistake; shame is when you are a mistake" goes a shorthand explanation of the difference between these two emotions. Most gay and lesbian adults have grown up with such toxic shame. It manifests itself in all sorts of unhealthy and destructive behaviors. Abuse of alcohol or drugs, promiscuous and careless sex, and transitory and sometimes abusive relationships within segments of the gay community can be traced to low self-esteem.

With same-sex Matrimony, the church could help gay and lesbian Catholics construct healthy, loving, nurturing, and lasting relationships. Matrimony would encourage stability by bringing the entire faith community to the aid of the couple. Is this not what church and society do for heterosexual couples? We witness their commitment, pledge our' support, and give them the best send-off possible, materially as well as spiritually. Why not do the same for same-sex partners who seek a permanent and faithful relationship?

By opening Matrimony to gay and lesbian couples, the church will gain greater access to their lives and will be in a better position to teach and support the values the church upholds for all human relationships: compassion, justice, honesty, and generosity. These noble values are not absent from the gay community-witness its compassionate response to AIDS that set new standards. But at the same time, gay culture is quite vulnerable to the influence of a materialistic consumerism that encourages an obsession with sexual attraction, youth, and fashion. The church at its best holds up an alternative vision--the vision of Jesus, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Dorothy Day. The gay community would benefit from hearing more of this message. Absent the alternative vision, much spiritual energy is wasted: "Without vision, the people perish."

The church can and should call gays and lesbians to a high standard of behavior, but one that is based on the core values of compassion, justice, honesty, and generosity. Instead, church leaders have focused on something beyond a person's control--sexual orientation (something even church teaching has acknowledged to be morally neutral)--and have condemned certain sexual behavior regardless of context, merely on the basis of orientation. This kind of thinking heightens, rather than lessens, the alienation gay people feel and perpetuates discrimination and ostracism.

The sheer amount of energy and attention the institutional church devotes to sexual issues suggests an adolescent obsession with the topic. This is not to denigrate the holy witness and chaste, healthy lives of many of those in religious life, but on the level of church teaching and discipline something seems clearly out of balance. Given today's pressing social issues and the hunger for spiritual leadership, it is a shame to see the church squander so much of its moral capital on issues best left to mature adults in the privacy of their bedrooms.

To accept the validity of gay and lesbian Matrimony, the church would need to embark on a major rethinking of its sexual ethics. Such a reexamination would be as refreshing to church life as was Pope John XXIII's call for a new opening--an aggiornamento--at the Second Vatican Council.

A church that calls itself Catholic should be catholic. There are enough exclusive churches and sects out there, with stringent requirements for membership. That has never been the Catholic vision of community. One doesn't have to be ready to jump up and down with joy for same-sex unions to support--on the principle of catholicity alone access to the sacrament for those who choose such unions. If, as the church teaches, grace is conveyed through participation in the sacraments, and if, as it appears, lifelong commitments can survive only by the grace of God, shouldn't all members of the church family who desire to live in faithful unions be entitled to this central opportunity for grace?

Plain and simple, the ultimate danger facing the institutional church with regard to gay and lesbian Catholics is growing irrelevance. As couples settle down, form families, and move through life, if they continue to face rejection, they will look elsewhere for support and inspiration.

The most compelling argument for gay and lesbian Matrimony may reside in the very heart of Catholic sacramental theology. In the Latin Church, it is ordinarily understood that the spouses, as ministers of Christ's grace, mutually confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the church. In fact, one could make the case that faithful gay and lesbian Catholic couples are already living in Matrimony, having mutually conferred upon each other the blessing of their lives, and that it is the church--as invited, valued, and cherished witness--that has failed to arrive, and like an important but tardy guest, is holding up the celebration.

Is it not time, then, for a reconciliation between gay and lesbian Catholics and their church? A great way to start down the aisle together would be to open the sacrament of Matrimony to all committed couples who desire to partake of it. Now that would be a reconciliation made in heaven!

By Dwight Daniels (a pseudonym), who works for a Catholic publisher. Unfortunately, his employment would be in jeopardy if he were to use his real name.

Why we never married

As a Roman Catholic man, former gay activist, and veteran of over a decade in a same-sex relationship, I must admit to a certain degree of bewildered frustration when it comes to the question of so-called gay marriage. My feeling of disappointment with career homosexual activists on this issue stems not from their desire to celebrate significant emotional relationships, but from the insistence that such friendships, first, must include sex and, second, must be seen as marriages or the "equivalent" of marriage.

I have no problem with the fact that strong same-sex friendships and relationships exist. My partner and I have shared one for more than ten years. But though we could have chosen to have our friendship recognized as a "marriage" by any one of a half-dozen U.S. denominations, and still could, we did not, and here is why.

One of active homosexuality's sharpest lessons came when I realized that more than boredom or one-night stands underlay my sexual life's pervasive emptiness. Over the years I had enough "innovative" sex to fill a short novel and had traded in promiscuity for long-term commitment. Neither made a difference. Although slowing the sexual pace and choosing a single partner were physically and emotionally healthier choice they couldn't allow me to escape.

My sexual life felt empty because the acts themselves were empty. No matter how sexually pumped my partner and I were, no matter how loving, tender, demanding, considerate, gentle, powerful, or affectionate we might have been--and we hit peaks and valleys in all of these-in the end the acts came down to no-thing. In bed we performed a great drama involving almost all of our physical and emotional selves, but afterwards, all that remained were two naked guys, a bed, and four walls.

I came to understand, as a man, that God and nature had intended a different end for my sexuality and sexual expression. My sexual expression, as a man, is meant for marriage, in part because it is a marriage that helps the act move from the merely selfish to the selfless. Sexual expression in marriage allows people to share in possibly doing something far larger than anything my partner and I could ever do--participate in the creation of another human being.

It doesn't even matter whether each sexual act has that happy result. They may never. The sad witness of persistently infertile couples is that every child conceived and born embodies a miracle, and God is not always free with miracles. But as long as the man and woman give themselves fully to one another in the sexual act and trust God and one another with their full sexuality, which includes fertility, then their actions take on a meaning far greater than themselves and their own agendas.

Procreation is not the only end of married sexuality, but its possibility gives the other ends their special meaning. Unlike the emptiness my partner and I experienced after sex, the afterglow of married love extends far beyond the couple, the bed, and the walls. It includes the possibility of a new son or daughter, a new brother or sister for the children already here, a future aunt, uncle, and cousin, a future spouse for someone else. Marriage exists so that this new web of relationships survives, grows, and flourishes under the responsible eyes of two parents who will do their best to model for their children what it means to be man and woman.

This is why, in the end, no matter how deeply I might love my partner, what we share can never be enshrined as a "marriage."

We both care deeply about our friendship--indeed even more so as it enters its fifth year of chaste expression. But we are not married and do not suffer unduly for remaining single. We own property together, which we cover with insurance. We mingle our retirement obligations, share our promissory notes. If, heaven forbid, either one of us winds up in the hospital, we have prepared papers that explicitly indicate to whom decision-making power is to be granted and to whom it is not.

Gay activists may counter that it seems unfair that we have to take these "special steps" to order our lives and cannot live in the sort of sloppy abandon that characterizes some families. But again, we are not married. We aren't responsible for any of the precious future that represents, after all, the largest part of society's interest in marriage in the first place and that justifies the special status our culture accords marriage.

I know many find the message of strong and healthy marriage difficult. Many marriages today fail to live up to the ideal of the one-flesh union, and I have encountered enough victims of contraception to know that homosexuals are not the only ones who have experienced empty sexual lives. But we know enough, I hope, not to water down--or even tear down--the ideal because it is not something in which we can all participate.

Sometimes I long to be married; often I long to be a father. Yet God has granted me enough faith to believe that I am right now just where I am supposed to be, and that my partner and I share a friendship that burns none the less brightly for our not being married.

By David Morrison, the editor of the Population Research Institute Review and a former gay activist. An active supporter of Courage, he can be reached at [e-mail].