Beauty and the Horde of Ruiners

Does Belle have Stockholm Syndrome?

No.

Thank you for watching. Like, share, and subscribe to my channel. Thank you of course to all my lovely patrons, I couldn’t do this without y- … oh. You want me to actually, like, talk about the thing.

—Lindsay Ellis, Is ‘Beauty and the Beast’ About Stockholm Syndrome?

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So listen. I am here for weird, creepy readings of films. The Brazil reading of Sleeping Beauty, for example: it makes more sense to think that after Prince Philip’s capture by Maleficent, the rest of the film is an illusion crafted by her to keep him quiescent. After all, she knew about Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather (fairies so incompetent they can’t bake a single cake in secret), and Maleficent is the mistress of all evil—how plausible is it that she would leave the one person with the ability to break her revenge spell, unguarded no less [1], in a dungeon that her principal rivals can enter and leave at will? It makes much more sense to suppose that the vision of Aurora in the castle is only the beginning, and that the rest, fairies, dragon, and triumph, is still part of the vision. Prince Philip never gets out.

Or, this woman lost. Which is plausible. Sure. Sarcastic? Why would you ever think I'm being sarcastic?

Or the interpretation of 101 Dalmatians that it’s secretly a coded anti-nuclear satire, in which the dogs are the ordinary people who will be both metaphorically and literally skinned by the H-bombs crafted by the wealthy and insane elite, and—wait, this was the actual premise of a bizarre sequel to the novel? Really? Huh.

Or the incredibly uncomfortable reading of I, Robot, which, well, was just not a very good movie in the first place; but it becomes rather nauseatingly lucid if you read it as a race allegory, with the humans as white people and the robots as their black slaves. Detective Spooner is an abolitionist, not although but because he’s a racist: basically he doesn’t trust the robots to be slaves, which is an unkind but not wholly false interpretation of the original Republican Party (look up how Oregon handled the slavery controversy); meanwhile Sonny, the good robot, is a race traitor, raised to the level of human free will by a kindly, white-man’s-burden-minded scientist. Through the race lens it is a super fucked up movie, though to be fair I doubt this was intentional on the part of the filmmakers.

But there is a steaming cold take that I am not here for: partly because it ruins the single best Disney film ever made, yes I will fight you, but chiefly because it isn’t actually justified by the story. And that is the obnoxious ‘Beauty and the Beast is about Stockholm Syndrome and/or falls into the toxic I-can-fix-him trope’ take. [2] These takes typically rely on the fact that the Beast is savage at first, but later Belle falls in love with him. Which, yes, that’s the plot of the movie. What it isn’t is an adequate analysis of Stockholm Syndrome or the I-can-fix-him trope.

Now, there is dispute in the psychiatric and law enforcement professions about whether Stockholm Syndrome is even real; it has not been thoroughly researched and does not appear in the DSM-V. So rather than beg that question, and since the trope of abuse victim who is loyal to their abuser due to affection-based denial does have a basis in reality, independently of the events the putative disorder is named for, I’m going to refer to this trope as Frollery. Frollery, thus defined, would include all varieties of loving and trusting an abuser or believing that one can ‘fix’ an abusive partner with enough longsuffering sweetness and obedience. The question, thus re-termed, is this: is Belle a victim of Frollery?

The answer is still no: Belle maintains her freedom, her own judgment, and (most importantly) complete clarity of mind throughout.

Let’s start with Belle’s captivity in the Beast’s castle. She agrees to this under some duress—well, she suggests it under duress; the Beast either isn’t mean enough (not likely, he’s still in jerk mode at this point of the story) or isn’t cunning enough (more plausible) to suggest this; but it is still under duress, insofar as it’s to save her father from imprisonment and possible death. [3] So I’m prepared to agree that she’s being held against her will. Captivity, check.

… Except that it’s quickly made clear that she has no intention of respecting the promise she made if the Beast gets intolerable, as he does over the enchanted rose. He acts violently, maybe not toward her per se but in a way that could certainly have injured her; she leaves immediately, and to all appearances for good. Whatever implicit threat there may have been in living with the Beast, there is evidently no threat involved in leaving the Beast, implicit or explicit.

And even after he saves her from wolves, there is a clear moment of hesitation in Belle’s face over whether to take him back to the castle and patch him up, or to just leave. She chooses to take him back out of compassion—which is demonstrated even further by her repeated, point-blank refusal to accept his blame-shifting or excuses in the scene where she tends his wounds. She gives absolutely no weight to anything he says, and isn’t even intimidated by his roars of anger, insisting that no, both this situation and this narrative are going to go down her way. This is not only uncharacteristic, it’s the exact opposite of how a victim of Frollery behaves. Placating and agreeing with an abuser are the traits of Frollery, not telling him in no uncertain terms that this mess is entirely his fault.

Moreover (though this is a less important note), it’s worth pointing out—as Lindsay Ellis does in the excellent video that I’m more or less ripping off—that the animation of the Beast and the backing score after his rose-rage episode, showing a sudden devastating realization that he’s made a horrible mistake, reveals a genuine example of something that abusers like to pretend to have: genuine regret. An abuser exhibits their regret to the victim as a manipulation tactic. The Beast, though he has this beat of regret, never brings it up to Belle at all; it is shown exclusively to the audience: the Beast, in a moment where he can gain nothing by it, experiencing and exhibiting remorse. Taken together with his trying to save face with Belle in the wound-tending scene, as opposed to trying to manipulate her by saying how sorry he was that she drove him to his bad behavior, that is one of several reasons we have to credit his change of character as the film proceeds.

And speaking of that change of character, while it’s occasioned by Belle, she doesn’t prompt it. That is, she doesn’t take it upon herself to be his therapist, or threaten to leave again if the Beast doesn’t clean up his act. He feels for her, wants to be better because of her, and she responds to him actually doing that. At no point does she set out to fix him. He fixes himself. The literary parallel is Darcy's change of character in Pride and Prejudice after being called out by Elizabeth, not the dubious penitence of Christian Grey.

Grey is a Gaston type when you think about it; he only gets away with it because 

Jamie Dornan's smouldering gaze and sharp jawline and perfectly sculptured torso, 

which is set off so perfectly by the lines of suit, and, uhh, what was I talking about?

The famous library scene has been criticized on the grounds that the Beast was really just informing Belle of an additional room in the house that she hadn’t known about, which is stupid on two different levels. To begin with, him giving her the library as a gift is not just telling her about a room. It’s a transfer of ownership (i.e., what a gift is, guys). That library is now hers. She could ban the Beast from it, like he banned her from the West Wing, if the mood struck her. She could demand to take the books with her if she ever decides to leave again.

Which leads us to the second point. Belle, as she has demonstrated, is prepared to leave; she’s staying because she made an agreement, but she doesn’t think that agreement outweighs her safety. There’s no indication that the Beast could leave even if he wanted to, but even supposing he could, where is he going to go? He’s not only a monster, he’s one who has a curse to break that’s intimately connected with his castle. Other than (i) the castle itself or (ii) some of its contents (like, say, a library), what the hell was the Beast supposed to give Belle? And the choice to give her a library, i.e. something that’s transportable at least in principle, suggests that this is not an attempt to bribe her to stay. He’s doing this because he likes her and wants to do something for her that she will enjoy. Remember your fairy-tale rules: something other than genuine love wouldn’t have broken the curse.

And speaking of the agreement and of fairy-tale rules, here, as so often, the fairy-tale tellers show a very sound instinct for orthodoxy and even for canon law. Westley in The Princess Bride is a similar exemplar, quite correctly pointing out that Buttercup’s putative marriage to Humperdinck was invalidated by both defect of form and lack of consent on her part. Belle being held in the Beast’s castle is cited by some critics of the story as a diriment impediment to their possible marriage, a diriment impediment being one that voids a marriage (as distinct from a prohibitory impediment, which simply makes it an act of disobedience to the Church but still a valid marriage).

But what the crucial Canon 1089 of the Code actually states is this: No marriage can exist between a man and a woman who has been abducted or at least detained with a view of contracting marriage with her unless the woman chooses marriage of her own accord after she has been separated from the captor and established in a safe and free place. Well, the captivity itself was suggested by Belle in the first place and had nothing to do with marriage, even on the Beast’s end (since it is mutual true love that he needs, not marriage); but even if we fudged those facts, Belle was separated from the Beast and established in a safe and free place when she went to rescue her father from dying of exposure. True, her village rapidly became unsafe for her—thanks to Gaston, who had been stalking her and ignoring her No for months at least, and who is the only character in the film who does imprison her against her will, in the cellar, while he leads the townsfolk off to murder the Beast. And speaking of Gaston, his increasing violence throughout the film and especially his threat to commit Maurice does arguably bar him from ever validly marrying Belle: Canon 1103 says, A marriage is invalid if entered into because of force or grave fear from without, even if unintentionally inflicted (an ameliorating clause, but Gaston clearly can’t plead even that), so that a person is compelled to choose marriage in order to be free from it.

A last-ditch effort I’ve seen to make Beauty and the Beast problematic is the argument that Belle is self-isolating, even that she has Schizoid Personality Disorder—which is characterized by a lack of interest in relationships, detachment, apathy, and emotional coldness—on the grounds that she has no real friends in the village. This, it is argued, is why she doesn’t respond to Gaston’s advances either, and it also explains why she is more at home with a castle full of animated objects than she is in the town.

But here again, the actual facts of the film refuse to fit that narrative. For one thing, Belle does have relationships she cherishes, not only with her father Maurice but with the bookseller; she’s even shown trying to be friendly with the baker, telling him about the book she’s reading, but he shuts her down with a dismissive ‘That’s nice’ and immediate pivot to his business concerns. And the notion that Belle is emotionally self-isolating and cold is ludicrous. She’s introverted, certainly, and it doesn’t help that the villagers harp ceaselessly on her oddness, that being the only thing other than her beauty they’ve bothered to notice—of course it’s going to be hard to make friends in that environment. But she’s capable of everything from casual kindness to animals and strangers (as shown in “Bonjour!”) to finding compassion for a hideous monster. Cold, she ain’t.

Critique is so limiting and emotionally draining.

So yeah. If you want a bona fide example of Frollery romanticized and justified, try the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, or Overboard (which is a fun romp and was also Problematic Romance: The Movie before E. L. James ever set pen to royalty check). Or hell, look to something like Interview With the Vampire for a toxic romance acknowledged and deconstructed within the narrative itself. But get your grubby illiterate paws off Beauty and the Beast’s innocence, ruiners.

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[1] And don’t give me any ‘But there’d be no point in guarding him because her minions are incompetent’ stuff. She’s well aware of that after their failure with Aurora, and if Maleficent can transmogrify herself into a dragon, I decline to believe that she can’t magick up a simple home security system with fairy-oriented facial recognition software.

[2] Note that I am not saying the film couldn’t be used as a manipulative pretext by an abuser; it absolutely could. But I don’t consider ‘An abuser could lie about it’ to be a particularly damning critique of anything.

[3] Not that the Beast was planning to kill Maurice or anything. But it was a freezing, drafty cell, and Maurice was an old man.

Fear and Trembling

An adherent of the Enlightenment, a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him, too, and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi's room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, 'But perhaps it is true after all.' The scholar tried in vain to collect himself -- his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Yitschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: 'My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true.' The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible 'perhaps' that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance.

—Martin Buber, Werke [1]

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Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation

This was a tough post to write, and may be a tough post for some of you to read. However, if you’re going to read it then I beg you to read the whole thing. Each part of it is important to hold together with each other part.

You may have heard of Josh and Lolly Weed, a Mormon couple in a mixed-orientation marriage whose coming out post, ‘Club Unicorn,’ went viral about six years ago. This wasn’t a late-in-life gay identity epiphany or an ex-gay conversion therapy success story; Josh knew he was gay before he even met Lolly, he told her before they started dating, and he never claimed to be a straight man (or an ex-gay one, for that matter). A couple of weeks ago, they announced on their blog that they are getting divorced.

It’s an eloquent, heartbreaking piece. I admire the Weeds for their courage and honesty. And it left me physically shaking, and mentally shaking, too.

Some key excerpts from their (justly) lengthy post, ‘Turning a Unicorn Into a Bat.’

[Josh:] About three years ago, I finally saw how important it was to love myself, to truly love myself as a gay man. It happened when my dear friend Ben Shafer (who himself is straight) turned to me one day and said, ‘Josh, you realize your sexual orientation is beautiful, right? Not just tolerable. It’s beautiful …’ I could hardly even register what he was trying to say. … ‘But what about it being so obviously not what God or biology intended? I’ve just always believed that I was meant to be straight, and that God will fix me someday so that I fit in with the rest of His children. I’ve always believed I was a broken straight person …’ And it was as I said those last words that my therapist-brain kicked and listened to the words coming out of my mouth. And I was stunned. People who view themselves as fundamentally broken, I knew, are not healthy. What I had just said was not healthy. 

… That night I talked to Lolly and told her all Ben had said, still with a vein of skepticism. ‘Can you believe he said that?’ was the feeling behind my words. And she sat for a moment thinking, then said something that surprised us both. ‘Josh, Ben is right. You aren’t just a broken straight person. Your gayness is a part of who you are. And your sexual orientation is beautiful. You are as God intended you to be.’ Though we had never fully embraced these ideas as reality before, we felt the spirit confirm them powerfully in that moment. The truth of Lolly’s words rang in our bodies. … And we were suddenly able to see more clearly the pain that my sexual orientation brought to our marriage. It hurt us both very deeply, and we spent many long nights holding one another and weeping as we thought of the decades to come for us, neither of us experiencing real romantic love. 

… Probably the most motivating factor of all that got me to actually really consider what God had been telling us for a while was my recognition of my own internalized homophobia—the layers of disgust and self-loathing I felt for myself that I was in denial of—and the way that led to my own suicidal ideation. … Guys, my life was beautiful in every way. My children, my wife, my career, my friends. It was filled with so much joy. The things I talked about in my coming out post in 2012 weren’t false. The joy I felt was real! The love I felt was real, but something in me wanted to die. …

My suicidality was not connected to depression. That’s how my mind could hide it from me. With no context and no warning, I would occasionally be brushing my teeth or some such mundane task and then be broadsided with a gut-wrenching, vast emptiness I can’t put into words, that felt as deep as my marrow—and I would think in a panic ‘I’m only 37. I’m only 37. How can I last five more decades?’ That thought—the thought of having to live five more decades, would fill me with terror. It was inconceivable for a few moments. 

And then it would pass. 

But the other thing I hadn’t been looking at was something I read, with horror, in a text message I sent to a dear friend during my week in Jacksonville. By the time I read what I had sent, the denial had broken down. Lolly was sitting next to me, holding me as I wept, and I was reading these text messages to her, and it felt like reading the words of another person … The text I had sent one week earlier said: I have thought of putting a gun in my mouth more times than I can count. 

… Do you realize how wrong it is that I have had to face the following cost/benefit analysis: if I stay in my marriage then I won’t disrupt my daughters’ sense of continuity. But I also might take my own life. And if I did die, wouldn’t that end up being way worse for them in the long run …? Is it worth the risk? 

[Lolly:] For me, giving my whole heart to Josh while knowing that he did not love me the way a man loves a woman has always been devastating. We were best friends, but he never desired me, never adored me, never longed for me. People who read our previous post might be confused because we mention having a robust sex life. That was true. We put forth a lot of effort and were ‘mechanically’ good at sex—and it did help us to feel intimate, and for a time that did help us to feel content … Whenever he held me in his arms, it was with a love that was similar to the love of a brother to a sister. That does eventually take its toll on your self-esteem. No matter how much I knew ‘why’ he couldn’t respond to me in the ways a lover responds to a partner, it wears a person down, as if you’re not ‘good enough’ to be loved ‘in that way.’ 

… Almost everyone has said to me, with an air of protective emphasis, ‘Oh, but Lolly, you deserve to be loved in that way! You will find someone else who can love you like that. You deserve to love and be loved in that way!’ And I agree with them. … The thing that’s so interesting to me is how few people think of Josh in this way. How few people in his life have ever thought these things about him—things that are so obvious, so clear, so emphatic when talking to another straight person.

Christian, when you talk or think about sexual ethics, when you study and articulate and defend Catholic teaching on the subject, this needs to be held firmly before your eyes, too. Not only are you not speaking in a vacuum; not only are you speaking to human beings; you are speaking to loving, devout, perceptive people, who have spent time and thought and agony in trying to practice their beliefs faithfully and gained nothing from it but more anguish. It’s easy enough to rationally disapprove of the man who gets high and has unprotected sex with four complete strangers in the back room of a bar; it shouldn’t be so easy to turn that same disapproval against a man like Josh Weed. I don’t say it’s impossible to affirm Catholic doctrine in the face of this kind of testimony, but I do say that any affirmation of Catholic doctrine must acknowledge and grapple honestly with this kind of testimony, with the cost the doctrine imposes. If you refuse, you’re printing counterfeits.

Take time to think, actually think, about the effect of pious clichés. ‘Just take it one day at a time’ is among my least favorite, because what it sounds like is: ‘It doesn’t matter that you’re lonely, because after all, you can survive as long as you don’t think about the fact that it isn’t likely to change.’ ‘We all have a cross to bear’ is, please note, not a quote from St Simon of Cyrene. ‘Your sexuality doesn’t define you’: well, no, but this isn’t about what defines people; it’s about whether they can be happy, healthy celibates if they don’t seem to be called to celibacy. And I’ve seen in the lives of others that relationships and marriage aren’t everything, sure, but masturbating into a sock while crying quietly still gets old after a while.

But what I think I hate the most is when people turn us into mascots. Those of us who are able to lead chaste lives as celibates are exceptional, for exactly the same reasons that chastely celibate heterosexuals are exceptional. And mixed-orientation marriages are very exceptional indeed, again for the same reasons that straight people getting into gay relationships, while it does happen (and adorably), is exceedingly rare. [2] Saying that so-and-so can do it, and therefore so can anybody, is not only a blatant error but a terribly cruel one. No two people enjoy identical circumstances, nor identical graces. Using the transparency of one person to shame or pressure another is hideous behavior.

If our religion is true, Catholic reader, then a lot of gay people have to lead lives of intense suffering. We need you to respect that.

For me personally—like I said, this post left me shaking for hours. I’m scared for myself, I’m scared for my gay brothers and sisters, I’m scared for my Church. I don’t know how to deal with this kind of thing: and as a self-appointed quasi-apologist, I need to say that, publicly and clearly. Anything less would be spiritual fraud.

About the most sense I can make of this experience is in something Pope Benedict wrote:

Both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt. … Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sides from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication. It prevents both from enjoying complete self-satisfaction; it opens up the believer to the doubter and the doubter to the believer; for one, it is his share in the fate of the unbeliever; for the other, the form in which belief remains nevertheless a challenge to him. [3]

Note how ‘solving the problem’ is not at all what His Holiness tries to do here. Eliminating doubt isn’t his goal. Facing the truth is.

And to those of my LGBT readers who may be moved to write me words of instruction, urging me to slough off the unhealthy beliefs my Catholic faith has imposed upon me: please don’t. I’m not in a place where I can process that kind of thing. For all her warts, I love my mother the Church very deeply, and being unsettled about her is not merely unpleasant; it’s a shock to my sense of self. I need to spend my own time with that.

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[1] Though I admit I know the passage only through Benedict XVI’s Introduction to Christianity.

[2] Some people (of various orientations and philosophical alignments) insist that a single instance of erotic interest in the same sex should always be classified as bisexuality. I personally don’t find this a very helpful use of the term; falling in love outside of one’s normal attractions once doesn’t necessarily mean that you had been repressing your other attractions, nor that you are attracted to both sexes in general, &c. But I’m not deeply invested in the terminology here: the only distinction that I would want clearly made is that between people who are attracted to both sexes in general, and those who are generally attracted only to one sex but experience an exception.

[3] Also from Introduction to Christianity.

A Suggestion for Lent

Ash Wednesday is just the day after tomorrow. If you haven't yet decided what to do for a Lenten discipline (and remember, you don't necessarily have to give something up -- the point is to do something that fosters spiritual growth, and fasting is one highly appropriate means for that, not the sole means), I'd invite you to consider reading Theology of the Body with me. I have tried to read the tome before, and it has defeated me -- it is a colossus, both in subtlety and in sheer size. However, I couldn't help noticing all the same that any time I would read part of it, even if I barely understood what Blessed John Paul II was talking about, I just sort of felt better after reading it. That seems like a good sign.

I'm too lazy and/or ADHD to do it alone, though I have one of my tweeple joining me for it. I'm using the Waldstein translation, which is the only one I'm familiar with -- if you want that one specifically and are shopping offline, look for a big honking volume with Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the front. If you would like to read along, I've made the following schedule for myself, leaving out Sundays (partly because Lenten disciplines aren't required on Sundays, and partly because, given the size and difficulty of the material, catch-up days will probably be necessary):

March 5th (Ash Wednesday): pp. 131-146 (audiences 1-4)
March 6th: pp. 146-156 (audiences 5-7)
March 7th: pp. 156-169 (audiences 8-10)
March 8th: pp. 169-183 (audiences 11-14.4)
First Sunday in Lent
March 10th: pp. 183-196 (audiences 14.5-17.3)
March 11th: pp. 196-210 (audiences 17.4-21.1)
March 12th: pp. 210-223 (audiences 21.2-23)
March 13th: pp. 225-238 (audiences 24-26)
March 14th: pp. 238-251 (audiences 27-30.4)
March 15th: pp. 251-263 (audiences 30.5-33)
Second Sunday in Lent
March 17th: pp. 264-278 (audiences 34-37)
March 18th: pp. 278-297 (audiences 38-42)
March 19th (Solemnity of St. Joseph): pp. 297-309 (audiences 43-45)
March 20th: pp. 309-325 (audiences 46-49)
March 21st: pp. 326-338 (audiences 50-52)
March 22nd: pp. 339-353 (audiences 53-57.3)
Third Sunday in Lent
March 24th: pp. 354-364 (audiences 57.4-59)
March 25th (Solemnity of the Annunciation): pp. 364-378 (audiences 60-63)
March 26th: pp. 379-394 (audiences 64-67)
March 27th: pp. 394-408 (audiences 68-71)
March 28th: pp. 409-422 (audiences 72-75)
March 29th: pp. 422-436 (audiences 76-79)
Laetare Sunday
March 31st: pp. 436-453 (audiences 80-84.7)
April 1st: pp. 453-462 (audiences 84.8-86)
April 2nd: pp. 465-478 (audiences 87-90)
April 3rd: pp. 479-491 (audiences 91-93)
April 4th: pp. 491-507 (audiences 94-96)
April 5th: pp. 507-518 (audiences 97-100.4)
Passiontide Sunday
April 7th: pp. 519-529 (audiences 100.5-102)
April 8th: pp. 531-547 (audiences 103-107)
April 9th: pp. 548-558 (audience 108)
April 10th: pp. 558-573 (audiences 109-110)
April 11th: pp. 574-587 (audiences 111-112)
April 12th: pp. 586-598 (audiences 113-114)
Palm Sunday
April 14th: pp. 598-615 (audiences 115-117)
April 15th: pp. 617-630 (audiences 118-122)
April 16th: pp. 630-647 (audiences 123-128)
April 17th (Maundy Thursday): pp. 647-663 (audiences 129-133)

Raw Tact, Part VI: Oh the Feels

I have a confession to make.

I don't handle weddings well.

Being a Christian gay twentysomething is a drag* during the summer. It's a parade of weddings. It isn't that you're not genuinely happy for your friends, or that you don't want to celebrate with them. You really are, and you really do. It's just that the emotions invoked by weddings for someone who can't really look forward to getting the same thing are rather more complex, and rather less nice, than just being glad for someone. And it isn't easy to figure out how to handle the negative emotions, either -- it would shockingly selfish and tasteless to say anything to anybody there, obviously, and there's only so long you can hide in the bathroom trying not to cry because you are a rampaging, jealous narcissist.

And people look at you funny if your coping mechanism is belting out Gloria Gaynor in the middle of the reception.

The difficulty isn't our exclusive property. A dear friend of mine, a quick-witted and delightful Catholic woman who is one of my favorite fag-hags, has made the same complaint; she's said, and I tend to agree with her, that the church can feel a bit like a commercial for marriage sometimes. It's too bad that feeling guilty about the negative feelings doesn't make them go away, because if it did, that would be boss.

I quite truthfully don't know what to do about this. I have an uncomfortable feeling that it may be one of those problems that just doesn't have a solution. Some problems are like that. Some kinds of suffering, including the suffering involved in being self-centered (once you've realized that you are self-centered and are trying to become less so) just have to be waited out, I think; call it a penance, I suppose.

And even if there is a solution, I have a hunch that it would not be a straightforward one. Dorothy Sayers, a friend of C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton, wrote an essay contrasting her work as a mystery novelist with the work of life in general, in which she said the following:

"The detective problem is always soluble. It is, in fact, constructed for the express purpose of being solved, and when the solution is found, the problem no longer exists. ... But it is unwise to suppose that all human experiences present problems of this kind. There is one vast human experience that confronts us so formidably that we cannot pretend to overlook it. There is no solution to death. There is no means whatever whereby you or I, by taking thought, can solve this difficulty in such a manner that it no longer exists. From very early days, alchemists have sought for the elixir of life, so reluctant is man to concede that there can be any problem incapable of solution. ... The only two things we can do with death are, first, to postpone it, which is only a partial solution, and, secondly, to transfer the whole set of values connected with death to another sphere of action -- that is, from time to eternity. ... 'Whose, therefore, shall she be in the resurrection? For the seven had her to wife.' In the terms in which you set it, the problem is unanswerable; but in the kingdom of heaven, those terms do not apply. You have asked the question in a form that is far too limited; the solution must be brought in from outside your sphere of reference altogether."**

What to do? Daydreaming about what I would have liked to have with Victor, or what my ex-boyfriend and I wanted, only feels good for about twelve seconds. After that things get decidedly worse.*** And faking cheerfulness -- even if anybody could feel authentic and comfortable doing that for more than about twelve seconds -- has the defect of not working very well. Loneliness and its children of self-pity and jealousy, that fear fathers on it, are extraordinarily powerful emotions that do not take kindly to being ignored; especially when, with respect to celibacy, you feel you've been backed into a corner by the conflict between what you feel and what you think -- or, from another perspective, between what you want and what you love.

So what creative thing can be done with such emotions? I'm not sure. Recognizing them for what they are -- flawed, but natural, reactions to the situation of unwanted singleness -- is a necessary first step. Learning to will the singleness God has willed for you is, I presume, part of the solution, but learning to want something is about as easy as carving a statue out of solid marble with a spoon. It can, in principle, be done, but you may be there a while. And in the meantime, there's the feels. Oooh the feels. They're awful. And I really think there's nothing to do but acknowledge them, try not to go nuts, and wait for them to go away.****

So ... I guess this post basically amounts to "Life's a shit sandwich sometimes." I hope you all ... found that edifying.

*Heh.

**From the essay 'Problem Picture,' in the collection The Whimsical Christian, pp. 133, 135, 141. I cordially dislike anthologies, especially ones with cutesy titles, but it's what I've got. I believe it was originally published in her book The Mind of the Maker.

***Which, naturally, means that I do it over and over. "I give myself very good advice ..." (Disappointingly, this doesn't even lead to an encounter with mome raths.)

****Okay, this helps too.

Raw Tact, Part II: The Brother of Beatrice

In keeping with my last, I want to continue from a highly subjective point of view. I consider objective truth infinitely more important than subjective truth; but subjective truth is still, in its fashion, true, and all truth must be communicated in a personal -- that is, a subjective -- context, because people are not objects but subjects. (If you happen to be squeamish about descriptions of homoerotic affections, even without any question of overt acts, you may want to skip this post.)

I fell in love for the first time when I was seventeen years old. I had just started college (long story), and that's where I met Victor.* He was a year older than me -- well, I suppose he still is a year older than me, but anyway. He was uncommonly good-looking, in that sort of rough-around-the-edges way that outdoorsy guys so often have: scruff, callused hands, a hilariously graceless dance step. But the things that really captivated me were his intense devotion to Jesus and his friendliness to me. I told him, trembling and ashamed, that I was gay while we were on a retreat with one of the campus ministries we were both involved in, and the first words out of his mouth were grace and acceptance. He radiated grace; meeting him was for me what meeting Beatrice was for Dante: Hic incipit vita nova, "Here beginneth the new life."

I don't think I'm overstating this. Falling in love is, of course, a very ordinary experience in one way, and does not have any intrinsic spiritual significance. Yet for many people, it is in fact a means through which God makes Himself manifest, and my enchantment with Victor was -- and remains -- one of those: thinking of him always calls me to a higher level of focus upon and surrender to God, irrespective of the cost. (That isn't to say I always heed the call by any means, but the calling remains.)

But of course there was conflict too. Not conflict with him, although we did disagree about some things, but conflict within myself. I knew already that gay sex was wrong; did it follow that gay affections were wrong? Must I abandon my romantic feelings? Could I even if I had to? That question was easily answered: I was powerless to feel otherwise than as I did. I spent two years pining in agony, wishing for the impossible requiting of my affections from a man who was not only a serious, not to say scrupulous, Christian, but quite possibly the most emphatically heterosexual guy I knew. (Not that he was a homophobe; I never once had a harsh or disdainful word from him about that.) His very holiness made me love him more -- was that better? Worse?

I came out of those two years an emotional wreck, tired and desperate. In retrospect, I don't think it's a coincidence that it was after Victor and I more or less parted ways (since we transferred to different colleges) that I tried to persuade myself that pro-gay theology was correct.** I was spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, even physically exhausted.

I did recover, largely through my conversion to the Catholic faith, which gave me nearly all the tools I needed -- Confession, spiritual direction, the writings of the saints and mystics, the Rosary, a ritual language with which to process my turbulent and often mysterious emotions, and, above all else, Christ in the Eucharist. But I could not have come to those very things -- not, at any rate, as I did -- if I had not fallen in love with Victor first. It broke me down in the way I needed to be broken down to be able to accept the Catholic faith, not as the conclusion of my own triumphant reasoning, but as salvation.

It is largely this which forbids me to regard homoerotic affections as being wrong or bad. There are other reasons -- as, for instance, that I don't think of romance as exclusively or chiefly a by-product of sexual desire, and so to make the jump from the wrongness of gay sex to a hypothetical wrongness of gay romantic love is an invalid inference, at any rate on the premises I hold. But my love for Victor so transfigured me -- saved my life, in fact -- and pulled me so consistently closer to Christ, and does even now, that I just can't react to it as something dirty.

Why talk about all of this? For two reasons: one is that everything has to be put in a personal context, as I have carved into the table before me and keep hammering with my shoe.

The other is that this is the matrix in which the discussion of homosexuality really has to take place. Whether or no a person falls in love, or, in doing so, experiences the affection sacramentally, this is one of the chief places where straight and gay experience both intersect and prove themselves alien to one another. The passionate sense of worth, beauty, and meaning -- hardly to be expressed save by the word glory -- that attends erotic love is something that lovers of every kind are acquainted with. There's a reason that Brokeback Mountain works about as well as Romeo and Juliet (and it isn't only that Jack and Ennis are less annoying than a pair of Veronese teenagers with no sense of proportion). But the divergence shows itself already in the dawning experience of first love: for a straight person, the first time your heart stops, it's thrilling and beautiful and you suddenly know what everyone was talking about all this time. For a man like me, that element is there in first love; but with it -- guilt, confusion, fear. The swoop in the stomach that one adolescent boy feels for a girl is matched by the swoop in the stomach that another boy feels for a boy; but the one has a public tradition of sexuality, including romance and theology as well as pop culture, to guide him, while the other may well be rudderless.

This is also part of why gay marriage is such a sensitive topic, and why the commonplace polemical attitude adopted by so many Catholics has been far worse than useless, speaking from an evangelistic perspective. The heterosexual traditionalist Christian has a sacrament by which romantic love, a perception of glory in an individual creature, is made a formal vehicle of Divine grace, as well as a respected institution in society, and among one's Christian friends and one's family in particular. That, as related specifically to erotic love, is something that the gay traditionalist Christian normally does not have.*** When that experience of loneliness crowned with loneliness is met by lectures about disordered inclinations, and left at that, it is idle to protest that accusations of homophobia are a conspiracy to silence the Church -- because even if Catholics aren't homophobes, their actual behavior is so clumsy that it seems a more economical explanation than otherwise.

Of course, rather than trying to imagine what it would be like to feel what I felt for Victor, a much simpler expedient can be used. Imagine for a moment (if you are straight) that the shoe was on the other foot, and that the person whom you loved was out of the question -- not because they were claimed by someone else, but because it was wrong to act on your heterosexual impulses. How would you feel? How would you propose to live? How would you relate to God?

*For his privacy, I have of course used a pseudonym and changed a few personal details. Everything else is accurate to the best of my recollection.

**I do not for one instant suggest that this is true of pro-gay theologians in general. Of some, it is doubtless true, but only because every belief has adherents who cling to it for bad reasons, Catholicism included; conversely, there are Christians who differ with the Catholic Church on this point, as on others, of whose sincerity and devotion I am quite confident. In this essay I am talking about my own bad motives, and do not consider the possibility of others' bad motives my business.

***Gay Christians who espouse the traditional doctrine of sexuality can, and sometimes do, still contract valid and sacramental marriages with people of the opposite sex, and I'm not decrying this -- two of my favorite authors are in mixed-orientation marriages to straight spouses. I am talking specifically here about the link between the subjective experience of eros and the objective institution of the sacrament of marriage, which isn't in my view the most important element of marriage by any means, but is one of the most profound human experiences and should be treated with profound respect.

The Spear and the Distaff, Part Four: Love and Respect

Here is where you can find Parts One, Two, and Three of The Spear and the Distaff. More to come.

But how is this essentially different from patriarchalism -- from the idea that women are not, or should not be, contributors to the grandeur of the human race, but should simply pipe down, take care of their men, and pump out babies? After all, that is basically what the old notion of hierarchy was.

Well, not exactly; but that would divert us into a historical study of gender relations, which, while fascinating and important in its own right, and relevant, is nonetheless a separate topic. Suffice it to say here that the progressivist view of history -- that all human rights were subject to tyranny and brutality in our dark beginnings, and have continually improved and are continuing to do so -- is a result and a cause of extreme ignorance of history. History shows neither continual improvement nor continual decline; it simply wobbles, as we might have expected from something human.

Yet we still have the issue of misogyny to deal with. I don't expect my treatment to be exhaustive -- I have never been a woman, so half the appropriate perspective on the topic is missing; and even if I had, I am only one person, in one generation of one culture. But here it is for what it is worth.

One thing I have repeatedly emphasized is that gender is about relationship. There is a particular kind of relationship appropriate to marriage, and in that case the genders of the parties do determine which role they have been cast in; but the entering into that relationship in the first place is something freely chosen (or at any rate it should be, and, to be a validly sacramental marriage, must be). The woman has as much right to free decision in this regard as the man. And this dynamic is something that governs their relating, not their every endeavor. Marie Curie's pursuit of chemistry was not unfeminine, or a flaunting of hierarchy, nor was her husband unmasculine or remiss by helping her. Nor was St. Catherine gender-bending or insolent in remonstrating with Gregory XI and convincing him to return the papacy to Rome from Avignon; pointing out the truth is not a specially masculine privilege.*

So what does all the talk about initiation and receiving mean, then, if it doesn't apply to life in general? I tend to think that St. Paul was hinting at it in one of his unpopular passages:

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it ... So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. ... This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband. -- Ephesians 5.22-25, 28-30, 32-33

The reasoning the apostle gives here is theological. Yet he knew his flocks well, as we can see in the particularity of each letter he wrote -- he was not laying down only general principles, but addressing specific needs of the churches he wrote to. Considering the placidity with which other authors (like Aristotle) wrote about the supposed superiority of men to women and of wives to husbands, St. Paul's instructions to wives look almost perfunctory in historical context, and the fact that he addresses the obligations of husbands (and spends rather more time on those) suggests an attentiveness to the realities of gender relations which we would rather hope for in a bishop.

But that's icing. Looking at the coinherence of gender as an example of the coinherence of reality in the first part of this series, we might consider whether the theological reasoning set forth by St. Paul might tell us something more about gender than simply who has what formal obligations in a marital context. I think that this says something about the psychology and the needs of women and men. I don't think it is too gross a generalization to say that respect is for men what affection is for women: a sort of social currency, the psychic need through which personal interactions are instinctively and even subconsciously measured. Take insults: as a rule, women tend regard them as, well, insulting; but men frequently use them as a sort of roughhousing gesture of fondness -- an implicit statement that the man being spoken to is tough enough to handle the insult. This is of course not universal, with respect to either gender; but I think it significant that the generalization can even be made. The point is that where one gender tends to speak the language of affection, the other tends to speak the language of respect -- which perhaps explains why each can and does take the other to be selfish and irrational.

Yet St. Paul inverts this. He urges wives to respect husbands, and husbands to be affectionate (indeed, more than affectionate) to wives. In other words, he is instructing each spouse to speak the other's emotional language, as it were. Perhaps that is part of why, in the verse immediately preceding this passage, he gives the general command, "Submit to one another in the fear of the Lord."

While the authority spoken of by the apostle is assigned specifically to marriage, the illumination provided into the common functioning of each gender is more broadly useful. Male and female, masculine and feminine, coinhere outside of the specifically sacramental context of marriage, and it never hurts to understand half the human race better. In other words, while the specifically hierarchical application may be limited, one of the functions of marriage may well be to teach us -- whether directly, in the person of our spouse, or through seeing other people's marriages -- how to relate to the half of the human race that we aren't.

And why, then, should initiation and receptivity be spoken of as characteristically masculine and feminine, if it is not always the man's job to initiate and the woman's job to receive, in every relationship? Well, I think full weight should be given to the word characteristically -- I tend to agree with Jung that there are feminine elements in a man and masculine elements in a woman; again, coinherence. But additionally, I have a hunch that there is an internal need for these things in men and in women. A man who cannot open himself up and make himself vulnerable will not be everything he could be, and a woman who is unable to initiate will not be everything she could be; yet such imperfections are common enough, and seem rather to limit a person's happiness and sense of self than to ruin them. But a man who cannot initiate, cannot take risks and responsibilities, is not likely to respect himself (an essential ingredient of masculine self-worth), and it could be argued that he doesn't have a right to. Conversely, a woman who (metaphorically) will receive nothing and no one -- the woman to whom the door held open is a chauvinistic implication that her arms are too weak, rather than a gesture of courtesy -- it is impossible, for me anyway, to imagine such a woman being happy.

*There have been believers who, on the basis of I Corinthians 14.33-35 and I Timothy 2.11-15, have thought precisely that women ought not to make theological contributions to the Church or to rebuke male members. I fully assent to the authority of these Scriptures, and don't think they mean that at all. Because the Greek words for husband and wife are the same as the words for man (as specifically male) and woman, my interpretation (in part) is that St. Paul is guarding against wives embarrassing their husbands in the congregation, which would be damaging to the individual husbands and to the Church's reputation. Whether that interpretation is adequate or not, the idea that women ought not be theologians is, for a Catholic, given the lie by the female Doctors of the Church if nothing else. One can imagine, say, the simultaneously self-deprecating and devastating reply that St. Teresa might have given to those who would try to defend Catholicism by attacking the authoritative declarations of the Church.

Thoughts on Gay Marriage, Part Three: Deus Caritas Est

So! Having discussed the theoretical dimension in Part One and Part Two, how about something practical? There are two practical questions to be considered: first, how to draw the hearts of our society back to marriage; second, how to relate to gay men and lesbians who are (in law) married.

The first depends partly upon the second, but we'll get to that. Now, the first answer to the question of how we can convert the heart of our culture, is that we can't. God can do it, and we can offer ourselves as His instruments; but if we approach it as a victory that we are aiming for, we will probably lose, and (more importantly) even if we win, the victory is likelier to corrupt us than bless us. For the more we think of it as a victory, and the more we think of ourselves as victors, the more our eyes turn inward, to look upon ourselves rather than our Savior. And the more we think of ourselves and of our victory, the more, too, we are disposed to trample and disgrace those against whom our victory was won. This is not just theoretical moralizing; its hideous truth is a fact of Christian history. "No, somehow we must be saved together."

Which means that, as far as our own duties are concerned, the first thing is -- what the first thing always is: trust in God, expressed and nourished through prayer and the life of the sacraments. These are the means whereby we lay ourselves open to the supernatural operation of the Holy Ghost, "who broods over this bent world / With warm breast, and with ah! bright wings." If we do not offer ourselves as victims of divine Love, then whatever else happens, it won't matter. And if we do, then whatever else happens, it will be to us a sacrament of that Love.

The second thing is ourselves to recover an authentic attitude toward marriage and toward the different kinds of love -- something which commanded our Pontiff Emeritus' attention in his first encyclical. This means taking marriage out of the center of our lives, hopes, and affections, and putting God there, as having probably the better claim. It means making a distinction (in thought, speech, and practice) between eros as a potent and beautiful experience, and the deliberate decision to build a life with someone, this latter being part of what marriage is with or without eros. And it means opening every decision we make, every institution we are a part of, and every relation we have to every person, to the movement of love-in-grace.

Other than that, I think the chief thing is for each of us to discern our own vocation (marriage, lay celibacy, priesthood, or consecration to a religious order) and live it to the hilt. Being ready to answer when we are asked what we believe is important; sometimes -- though less often than zealous and talkative Christians are apt to feel -- initiating a conversation on the subject is the thing to do; but every intellectual defense will ring hollow without a life lived as a sacrament of the grace of God. And by grace here I do not simply mean mercy: I give the word its full, Catholic force, as a participation in the supernatural life of the Trinity. If we wish to display that the natural and supernatural meanings of marriage are really true, then we need to show in our own persons, our own bodies, that they do what we say they do. And this is displayed not only in marriages lived in fidelity, fertility, and charity; it is also manifested in celibacy, not only priestly and monastic celibacy but that of laymen. A celibate life, lived in the grace of Christ and the communion of fellow believers, can be a vivid sign of the holiness and significance of the flesh, necessary prerequisites for any thoroughly Christian approach to marriage.

On this point in particular there is some room for improvement. When I was an evangelical, I found that, with a very few exceptions, I would be positively opposed and discouraged if I made bold to talk about being celibate. This trend is not universal, but it is common (especially in America, I gather); it is also radically unbiblical. Justin Lee pointed out in his excellent book,* Torn, that many churches have no tools at all for making celibate Christians either feel welcome or figure out how on earth they are supposed to conduct their lives: "American culture tends to obsess over romantic relationships -- just turn on the radio, watch TV, or go to the movies for proof -- and people who make it to midlife without having married must face the perception that something is 'wrong' with them. The church has the power to be a family to single people and to give them a place to feel fully welcomed and included. All too often, we fail to do that. Even when churches offer special classes or programs for single adults, many of them only consist of some combination of general Bible knowledge and teachings designed to prepare people for meeting their future spouse; few of them adequately address the unique needs of single people as single people." (Torn, p. 239)

In other words, don't be this guy:

The Catholic Church has a tradition of celibacy far stronger than that of most Protestant bodies; indeed, that is one of the things that drew me across the Tiber. But its devices are aimed primarily at priests and members of religious orders; celibates who do not find themselves called to these specialized vocations can find themselves feeling that they are neither beast nor bird, like the hapless bat in Aesop. Moreover, as a (heterosexual) female friend of mine said to me, the kulturkampf can make the Church seem almost like a commercial for marriage at times, exacerbating the difficulties that already attend a vocation to celibacy with a feeling of isolation and strangeness. I don't know that we need more in the way of structures to support single believers; what is really needed is clear teaching about the whys, hows, and whats of celibacy outside the priestly and religious paradigms, together with integration into the whole community of faith: married, priestly, religious, and lay celibate. Support for celibate Christians, both in pursuing their vocations, and in seeing that they are embraced and held up by the community around them, is vital. And the word community, remember, means that you and I should do something, not that other people should do something.

I had originally thought I'd be able to deal with the second practical consideration after a concise treatment of re-evangelizing our culture about marriage, but the giant wound of how Catholics interact with queer people is proving more difficult to dress than I'd given it credit. Once again, I defer it to my next.

*Some Christians may be puzzled or discomfited that I describe this book as excellent, when it defends and promotes a view of homosexuality that is categorically discountenanced by the Catholic Church. I see no more difficulty about this than about my deep love for C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams, who even at their most Anglo-Catholic dissented from the doctrine of the papacy, which I on the contrary treasure. Few things have so degraded the quality of intellectual discourse in our culture as the false idea that one must despise things merely because one disagrees with them -- a point, coincidentally, made in rather different language by Justin Lee in his book.

Thoughts on Gay Marriage, Part Two: Loose Ends

I received such a volume of feedback on Part One, including a collection of very intelligent critiques and questions, that I am postponing my original plan to delve straight into the life and social implications of the traditional view of marriage, and will instead devote this post to responding to them to the best of my ability. I've tried to arrange them into a natural progression from one thought to the next. (Special thanks to my friends Dave Brown and Aaron Hershkowitz for their assistance.)*

What distinguishes civil marriages from sacramental marriages?

A civil marriage is a natural marriage rather than a sacramental one. Marriage as a sacrament is something specific to the Church, and was instituted by Christ (cf. Matthew 19.3-12, Ephesians 5.25-32), to confer grace on the participants, which is the purpose of every sacrament. However, in so doing, He did not abolish the institution of natural marriage -- otherwise it would be immoral for anybody but Christians to get married, which is patently absurd. Every sacramental marriage is therefore a natural marriage, but not all natural marriages are sacramental. I am given to understand that there is debate among theologians as to whether a natural marriage can be dissolved by divorce; the laws laid down in the Torah suggest that it could. The Church teaches that a sacramental marriage cannot be dissolved by anything but death. (Annulments are something else again, which I touch on further down.)

The argument is that gay marriage (or, strictly speaking, its underlying assumptions) tries to alter the definition of marriage, but isn't that what the Catholic Church has done in making marriage a sacrament?

A very good question, to which the answer is, of course, yes and no. More simply, the answer is no. The principle here was enunciated by St. Thomas Aquinas: grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it (gratia non tollit naturam sed perficit, for you Latin fiends out there). The Catholic notion of sacramental marriage does not do away with natural marriage in its own right. More importantly, while it deepens the significance of marriage for Christians, it takes natural marriage as its premise: it adds meaning, but takes no meaning away. The modern idea of reducing marriage to a celebration of romantic love is precisely that, a reduction -- it takes away one of the purposes of marriage. The sacramental idea keeps all the previous purposes of marriages, and then infuses the institution with a supernatural in addition to a natural significance.

If man is made for love, then how can identifying marriage simply with love be a bad thing?

For much the same reason that identifying government with love is a bad thing. Love is a good thing (provided, of course, that we define what we mean by the term), and man is called to love in every circumstance and institution life involves; but this does not mean that everything draws its meaning simply from love, unmodified. I personally would go to great lengths to avoid the Ministry of Love, if it came to that. (I don't think there's a moral equivalency between this altering of the social significance of marriage and a bureaucratic "love," naturally -- it is the logical parallel that I am citing, not a similarity of degree.)

More specifically, it is the identification of marriage with romantic love that is problematic. Romantic love is of course a good and beautiful thing, but it is not intrinsically connected to either marriage or family (though I do think it a good thing to have is as a prelude to both): many, if not most, families in history have come into being without, or before, the intervention of romance in their lives. The love for which man is meant is supernatural love -- participation in the life of the Trinity, what the Eastern Orthodox (in the language of St. Peter) refer to as theosis or divinization. This is not identical with any kind of natural love, nor with any institution; they can serve as means to it, but only if we choose to use them in that fashion -- which means using them according to their natures.

Since the state performs civil marriages (e.g., between divorced parties) that couldn't be sacramental marriages, doesn't this mean that it could equally perform gay marriages even though these couldn't be sacramental?

No. The reason here is that it is precisely the character of natural marriage, according to the natural law thesis, that prevents couples intrinsically unable to procreate from entering it; the Scriptural prohibitions would reaffirm this, but the principle is derived from the essence of marriage with or without the sacraments, not from a specially religious imprint upon sacramental marriage.

If the appeal here is to natural law, as understood by the Catholic Church, should there be civil restrictions on contraception too?

I don't know. I am strongly inclined to say no, out of respect for personal privacy; but I don't know exactly how far the state ought to go in enforcing even natural morality upon its citizens. (This may seem like an ironical attitude in the first place for someone with professedly anarchist symapthies, but here, I'm working on the assumption that -- whether as affirmation or as concession -- there is a state, and trying to determine where its power to make a nuisance of itself needs to be stopped.) My general disposition is that, while society in general should acknowledge more ethical strictures than this, the law per se ought probably to recognize only two: consensuality and breach of covenant, i.e. adultery (this latter only on the grounds suggested by C. S. Lewis in Present Concerns, where he pointed out that it violates the principle that "men make their covenants"; that the violation happens to be sexual would not be the important thing). However, I am open to further education on this point, as I am ignorant of the consensus of theologians (if there is one) on the subject, and haven't worked out my own philosophy thoroughly on this point.

To digress slightly, it is worth saying that there ought -- not simply on Christian grounds, I think, but on grounds of common sense -- to be a much more serious attitude toward marriage generally as a secular institution, especially among Christians. The ease of divorce in this country has done considerably more damage to marriage than gay marriage is ever likely to, and it gravely discredits the Church's witness that she has done virtually nothing to encourage a stronger character for civil marriage in the face of rampant divorce. The harm done to society, especially to children, by this casual acceptance of divorce is profound, and will take generations to repair, even supposing we start right now and don't stop.

If marriage is intrinsically oriented toward the begetting of children, what about marriages that are never consummated, married couples who choose not to have children, or people who marry after childbearing age?

A very intelligent critique. Three distinct issues to be addressed.

Marriages that are never consummated are, from a Catholic perspective, open to annulment, i.e. a declaration that a supposed marriage never in fact took place, because one of the essential ingredients was lacking. These essential ingredients include but are not limited to: free consent, together with the age and maturity required to give such consent; sufficient biological distance between the parties that the marriage is not incestuous; the intention of fidelity; openness to children; and, after the union is performed, consummation -- which is why the word consummation is used. There are legal annulments as well, though I don't know their conditions, not being closely acquainted with American law (or distantly acquainted with it, actually).

Married couples who never intend to have children, in my view, are really entering into a civil union rather than a marriage properly so-called. Ideally, they would do so. I don't know how possible it would be for this principle to be enforced, though: it seems intrusive to ask a couple, before granting them a marriage certificate, whether they intend to have children. (In the style of the brilliant and neglected C. Northcote Parkinson, "How many children have you and why? Have you had chicken pox and why not? The penalty for a false declaration is life imprisonment.") Additionally, it would be perfectly easy for a couple in that position to lie, so that the practical prospect of enforcement seems a dim one.

Those who enter into marriage after childbearing age pose a more delicate difficulty. The Bible of course records multiple miracles of fertility, of which the most famous is probably that of St. Elizabeth, the mother of St. John the Baptist. But this would properly form part of a case in favor of the Church permitting sacramental marriages for those of advanced age, not a case for recognition from the secular state, since we have been working on the premise that revelation is outside the state's purview. I think the answer is that a medical advance could in principle redress the decay of fertility, and therefore it would in principle be possible for such a couple to have children -- though perhaps inadvisable. Conversely, a homosexual couple, whatever their other virtues, could not bring forth children no matter how much their health was improved, save by changing the terms of the problem (e.g. through surrogate motherhood, in vitro, or a sex change). Once again, I am quite amenable to further instruction on this point.

*Readers who notice that sort of thing may observe that I have left aside my usual habit of quoting from the King James, and instead made reference to the English Standard Version. This is because I quote the King James for aesthetic reasons rather than strict theological and linguistic accuracy. Though it regrettably doesn't have a Catholic edition (or, as I'm fond of calling it, the director's cut), the ESV is the most accurate translation of the Bible with which I'm acquainted, though the NAB and the RSV are more popular in many Catholic circles.

Thoughts on Gay Marriage, Part One: Framing the Problem

I approach the subject of gay marriage* with some nervousness, and rather more pessimism. My views probably go rather too far, from a traditional Christian perspective, and not nearly far enough from a gay perspective; and since gays, Christians, and Christian gays make up a decided majority of my friends, I don't see how I can address the topic at all without upsetting and angering people. So I take this opportunity, before the post proper has begun, to beg every reader to read with an open mind and -- more importantly -- an open heart.

As I've stated a couple of times before, I am gay, and my beliefs about homosexual conduct are those of the Catholic Church. Interestingly enough, I've rarely been taken to task for this by any of my lesbian, gay, or transgendered friends, or by allies. Most people are willing to accept it as a matter of personal belief and personal choice. The Catholic contention that it is not merely a religious obligation (religion being freely chosen), but a question of universal moral principles proper to all humanity, edges into more uncomfortable territory. And when we get to gay marriage, conceived of in strictly civil terms, things can get downright hostile, on both sides. The only time I was ever contemptuously called "sodomite," it was by a Christian pastor; while, when I was at the state legislature a couple of years ago, for a hearing on the gay marriage bill, a total stranger leaned over to me while a woman from the Maryland Catholic Conference was speaking and said, "So we should just allow them to be pedophiles?" Stay classy, America.

Though they didn't have to be, traditional mores -- and, I say with great sorrow and bitterness, nowhere more than in Christendom -- have been frequently accompanied by a hideously unjust suspicion of, and hatred for, homosexuals. There were worse and better times, and not always the ones you might expect; the authorities of the fastidious Victorian era often turned a blind eye to those who did not parade themselves (one of the many reasons the Oscar Wilde case made such a splash), while the Late Middle Ages, which saw a definite decline in the power of the Church, ranked homosexuals with heretics, and burned both at the stake. We've gotten out of both eras, for which I'm grateful, though I wonder whether it represents a real moral advance or a mere collapse. Charles Williams said of the rise of religious toleration that we fancied ourselves as having mastered charity, when in fact we were merely sick of the sight of blood. I prefer that to the prior bloodthirst, but it is no great advance to congratulate ourselves upon -- nor any great security.

The job of disentangling moral stands from their legal expression is a difficult one, even when not complicated by the task of distinguishing an authentic moral stand from a phobia dressed in theological language. Nor is it easy today. The casual assertion from many Christians that love for homosexuals demands disapproval of homosexuality, due to the actual attitudes displayed by many believers, is as unconvincing and repellent as is the tendency of many in the queer community to label absolutely any opposition to, or even uncertainty about, gay causes as homophobic.

Let's see if we can't clear away some of the smoke, and consider the issue from multiple perspectives, so as to approach a greater objectivity.

The case for gay marriage is straightforward enough: marriage is the legal union of two persons, and religious mores are not relevant, because of the separation of church and state. To obtrude a specifically Christian character into the civil institution of marriage is inappropriate; and, given that there is debate, not only between the churches and society in general, but among the churches themselves, about the gravity and even the liceity of homosexual practice, gay marriage can scarcely be rejected on grounds of a commonly held morality. Grounds for accepting that gay sex is moral vary, but most appeal to consensuality as the basic principle of sexual ethics, and point to the appearance of homosexual behavior throughout nature as a proof that there is nothing that weird about it.

It must be said that this does more or less demolish a case against gay marriage that we commonly hear set forth, that which appeals to Biblical prohibitions and Christian values as such. A lot of Christians, especially of my generation, on realizing that this case -- the only one, often enough, that they had ever heard -- was, truly, an appeal to the authority of revelation, which is outside the state's purview, have consequently abandoned opposition to gay marriage. I did so for several years (not that I ever opposed it very enthusiastically to begin with). Of course, there are also those who abandoned it out of the desire to be modern and fashionable; but equally, there are surely people who oppose gay marriage out of a general self-righteous disapproval of all things recent. I propose, at least for now, to ignore the motives of all segments of the population as irrelevant to the argument, and resume the discussion.

I find that many if not most people on both sides of this discussion are not acquainted, or only imperfectly, with the argument actually set forth by the Catholic Church. Her contention is that marriage as a natural institution (i.e., an institution arising from human nature both biological and spiritual, yet apart from that special divine intervention we call revelation) is oriented, not simply toward the romantic coupling of the partners, but toward the generation of the family. Romance is a beautiful, good thing, but it is not one of the essential qualities of marriage, as evidenced by the fact that most societies in the past, and many still today, arranged marriages, sometimes years or even decades in advance. Likewise, they all agreed on the nature of marriage: namely, that its purpose was to bring a family into being. If a couple found themselves infertile, of course, that was a saddening irregularity, but not one which affected the essential character of the institution. Nor was this necessarily due to ignorance of, or hostility to, homosexual couples, including monogamous ones; classical Greece is a good example. This being the nature of marriage, a couple that, intrinsically -- not simply by something reparable in principle, such as infertility -- cannot bring forth children cannot enter into a marriage, not even because of any question of its being wrong for them to do so but by the nature of the case. I don't like this doctrine, and never have, but I find it convincing and so I accept it.

Most contemporary Americans find it harder to swallow. Its characterization of marriage as something with a definite purpose in mind, and one that not all Americans are eager to engage in, is repellent to our sense of liberty. Moreover, the appeal to history seems rather backward: we've redefined so many things, made so much progress; why not this, too?

Speaking of the ancient Greeks, though, altering the essence of one of the basic institutions of human society strikes me as a little hubristic; that sort of thing tends to have consequences, and not nice ones. Moreover, it seems to me to miss its own aim. For what are we trying to do in redefining marriage? If we are trying simply to secure legal and social benefits for same-sex couples, I personally have no objection; that is why civil unions do -- and, in my view, should -- exist (not that they are everything they could be, but that's a story for another time). But in that case, why bother appropriating the term marriage?

I think the reason is because gay and lesbian couples want their love recognized and legitimated by society at large. Note that I have written love, not sex; I have yet to meet a fellow queer person who identifies primarily with their sexuality (much religious rhetoric aside), but I have met plenty of people, straight and gay, who want their relationships to be acknowledged as an integral part of them. And our culture has taken the institution of marriage and made it primarily a matter of the parties being in love -- which a lot of gay and lesbian couples are. (The palpably counterfactual claim that two people of the same sex cannot fall in love is, to my mind, beneath serious reply.)

Here, I believe, the churches have already fallen down on the job. Part of the reason the Catholic argument falls on such deaf ears is that the general Christian sentiments about marriage have exactly followed those of the culture at large, changing the definition from a deliberate, sacramental choice to pursue a family, to a social, symbolic affirmation of how deeply two people love each other. It is scarcely surprising; the shift has been taking place since the nineteenth century, and has been the cause of radically altered attitudes to divorce, contraception, and extramarital sex. American Christians, meanwhile, have tended more to oppose such things as they found them personally inconvenient or ideologically embarrassing, than on the basis of a consistently held philosophy of marriage. The idea of gay marriage hasn't redefined marriage, nor will it; marriage has already been redefined, as far as American culture is concerned. The Church has allowed the World to invade her, and the World has correspondingly elected to plunder her. For that, we have ourselves to blame, not gay activists, who are only carrying to their logical conclusion the principles that we found it too bothersome to examine or oppose.

"How shall we then live?" Two answers to that question are necessary. One is the answer regarding how we are to reinfuse our culture with a true understanding of marriage; the other, how we are to behave towards legally partnered lesbians and gay men; both are a part of the New Evangelization. I will answer them in my next, and commend myself and all who read this post to the Holy Family.

*A lot of writers will put a phrase like this in scare quotes. I find this habit unaesthetic, childish, and alienating, so I haven't; I feel that my views on the subject speak for themselves.