In the debates that have sprung up on the place within the Church for homosexual and lesbian persons, many point toward the argument over a biological basis for sexual orientation. Apart from the fact that there is no real credible science regarding a biological basis for orientation, the argument misses the mark by a mile… on both sides.
I often ask students to consider that heterosexual orientation and sex drive is in all likelihood rooted in brain structure, as well as biochemical and genetic function. If that is true, then a biological basis for same-sex attraction can be stipulated (if only for argument’s sake). Such stipulation does not rule out the effects of child rape and imprinting as a neurological mechanism that follows on environmental factors. In that case, a biological mechanism can rightly be seen as an intrinsic disordering of normal function.
But let’s stipulate, for a moment that sexual orientation, especially heterosexual orientation is indeed biologically rooted and determined.
What has this to do with moral law, or reshaping moral norms?
It is a fallacy put forth by homosexuals that biological orientation ought to be the basis for changing the rules on marriage and sex within the Church. It supposes that all heterosexuals are free to marry by dint of orientation. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Every diocese in the United States has a Marriage Tribunal with stacks and stacks of active annulment files on any given day. There are all manner of impediments to the valid exchange of vows, and it is the investigative work of the tribunal to ascertain whether any impediments existed at the time vows were exchanged.
Among the impediments to marriage is impotence on the part of the male. If a man cannot engage in intercourse, the couple cannot consummate the marriage. These denials of applications for holy matrimony between two people who love one another with all their hearts are some of the most difficult to deal with. Homosexuals and lesbians cannot consummate their “marriages,” cannot enter into that physical exchange of radical self-donation that brings forth new life from such an embrace. They cannot consummate God’s wise design. Neither can many other heterosexuals.
There are people who cannot marry because of emotional or developmental disability or delay. There are many who are developed enough to desire the good of marriage, and KNOW that they are not deemed desirable enough for marriage. It is at once heartbreaking and at the same time an opportunity for channeling the desire to love, to sacrifice for another. There isn’t a false dichotomy between marriage and an “everyone else” category, with everyone else living in limbo. There are all sorts of dynamic single states.
That is where our priests and religious, our consecrated single laity are the examples of credibility. Not all are called to, or capable of marriage. “Some freely renounce it for the Kingdom” (Matt 19:12), and the Church has a long and rich history in doing it all very well.
So arguments over biological basis of orientation are really irrelevant within the Church. God has a wise design, and that wise design excludes many heterosexuals from sacramental marriage and leads them into equally fulfilling lives of sacrificial love outside of marriage. There is no room within that design for surrogate motherhood, with childless couples of any orientation using women as broodmares and bitches, reducing the glory of womanhood to that of human livestock.
There is no room for lifestyles that have as a celebrated principle that motherhood and mothers are entirely unnecessary in the life of a child.
There is no room for lifestyles that have as a celebrated principle that fatherhood and fathers are entirely unnecessary in the life of a child.
The only orientation that matters is God’s wise design. There are all manner of moral means to bring oneself into conformity with that wise design. The difference between virtue and vice is the assertion of the will toward or against God’s design.
Biology has nothing to do with it.