Our sex therapist idol, Dr. Margie Holmes, avoids writing on religion, but she writes about sex with an appealing and winsome candor and naturalness. It's almost like: there's good wine and there's good sex. Some wine turns bad. All sex is good until a person turns it bad.
Father Norman Pittenger, the eminent world-renowned theologian, says sex is essentially good. Whatever works toward true love is good. Whatever works against it -- harming or hurting -- is not good. It may be unsatisfactory or improper to the extent that it is selfish, cruel, impersonal, or irresponsible.
Human beings are sexual beings, and this is a good thing. We should never be afraid of sex, Father Pittenger says, nor try to run away from it. When men and women accept and rightly use their sexuality, it can be an uplifting and splendid part of their wholeness.
Furthermore, when it is combined with love, it points to the Creator of the world, who is Love. Sex is a gift from God, the Creator, the Creator of sex.
In Church law in England in 1290, execution by burial alive was prescribed for "sodomites." In 1533 the "crime" was transferred to the civil courts under many-times-married King Henry VIII and punishment was death by hanging.
In 1895 Oscar Wilde said during his trial in England for homosexual acts, "It is beautiful; it is fine; it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it." Finally in 1967 England decriminalized homosexual sex between consenting adults in private.
Father John McNeill in the U.S. and Father Maurice Shinnick in Australia in their excellent books on being gay and Catholic described homosexuality as a gift from God.
Father McNeill said, "Our gayness is a gift, not a curse." In prayer one day he "felt a marvelous liberating feeling of peace," and he was overwhelmed with "an intense feeling of being loved just as I am, a gay man and a gay priest." (Father McNeill has been barred from the priestly ministry because of his ministry to gays and lesbians and lives in New York with his lover of more than thirty years.)
Fr. Shinnick recounts experiences of gay and lesbian people who came to realize that their homosexuality "was an essential part of who they are." "It is natural for me…" "It is linked to the most true and good and beautiful emotions I've ever experienced." "I must accept my sexuality as a matter of honor, a matter of being true to myself, a matter of being at peace with the world."
Another gay man said he found his peace when he was lying in bed with his partner and "I looked into his eyes and saw love and acceptance so deep that I felt I was forgiven for all the fear, shame, anxiety, and confusion I had constructed around being gay."
A lesbian describes her moment of liberation. "I decided it was SIN for me to continue to put myself through such anguish, to reject and try to change the way God made me." Another woman said that she feels "God loves us more for being honest than for trying to conceal the simple truth and (pretending to) be something we aren't."
We are not disgusting or pitiful or silent. We are not criminal or sick with perversion. We are not deviant, but different, a minority in society, but in society with rights. And, of course, responsibilities. Our love is no less honorable, no less to be respected, no less deserving of protection.
Many of us urgently desire union with a human being who shares a mutual attraction. Many of us desire a relationship with stability and permanence. Many want to "make love," not just "have sex." In terms of human fulfillment, Father Pittenger says, "to make love is to give sexual contact its finest and most enriching content."
While "having sex" is a highly pleasant experience, and a wonderful gift in itself, for many it is incomplete, an unfinished substitute for the real desire of human beings, sexually speaking.
Many gays and lesbians, like many boys and girls who marry in their parish churches, want, perhaps desperately, a shared life in love.
Those who have experienced it say their sexual union, their sexual giving to one another are expressions of their love, and that sexual gratification alone is incomplete.
This is part of the story of sex and wholeness.
Wholeness extends to all facets of human personhood.
When a person functions on all four levels of human reality, one can be said to function wholistically.
If an accident victim is lying on a bed -- perhaps for weeks -- unable to come out of a coma, subsisting on injected nourishment -- people refer to a vegetable existence because the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional elements of a wholistic human life are missing, and the physical component is functioning only partially.
If you watch the animals craftily applying their instincts for survival in the National Geographic Channel -- you will see that the specific human characteristics are missing. If you watch them mating, you will observe, they are only mating, not even really having fun. Just mating.
They are not conscious of any spiritual dimension, nor do they engage in any intellectual exercises about "keeping the species from extinction." Even emotion is absent. Slam, bam, thank you, Sam. Not even a "hello" the next time they meet.
When human beings function on a fully human level, they bring to their life and interactions all the human potentials, involving their spiritual, intellectual, emotional, as well as physical capabilities.
Even if it is only walking down the street and saying or not saying "hello" to a passing friend or stranger, fully human life will be able to "shift into gear" on all four levels. For example, you decide to speak, or not. You have feelings of some kind, and you are aware, no matter how vaguely, of the meaning of life and your own goals.
And all the while, you have the potential to expand your consciousness to the maker of the universe and all the wonderful dimensions of God's working, saving, empowering action in your life and your role in that.
How much more does fully human sex involve all these elements of wholeness? If a rape or a child molesting is going on, some human control is missing; not functioning.
But if a man who is attracted to men is having sex (making love) with a man of his affection -- in a fully human way with all his being, not merely with his genitals or erogenous areas -- then all four levels will be there. Consciousness will shift, as in shifting automotive gears, from the physical to the intellectual, to the emotional, and even to the spiritual, one to the other interactively.
If you are having sex or about to have sex with your boss, if you are fully human, you will think about it -- the consequences, the rewards, the dangers and how all that fits into the meaning of life or your goals in life. You may have a whole range of emotions, associated with love or otherwise -- mad, sad, glad or scared.
So when two fully human persons, two women, or two men or some other couple, enter into a fully human sexual liaison, it can be "wow" in many ways, but unless one is a vegetable -- God forbid -- it must be more than two cats thumping on a hot tin roof or in a verdant jungle.
Sexual wholeness gives meaning to sex. It brings sex within the meaning of life. Fully human sex involves the whole person.
(Many of the preceding paragraphs are paraphrased from the writings of the late great world-renowned theologian, author (of more than 100 books), seminary professor, and priest, Fr. Norman Pittenger, whose friendship and encouragement inspired me to the life-long ministry of advocating a sensible sexual theology, especially for gay and lesbian people. On his recommendation some of my earlier books were written.)
For more information about these or similar issues, e-mail your questions or comments to me at saintaelred@gmail.com (just click on the moving envelope)