Same Sex Acts, the Sexual Inclinations and Their Reasonableness

Same Sex Acts, the Sexual Inclinations and Their Reasonableness

Published in "Josephinum Journal of Theology" Vol. 19, No. 2, 2012, Columbus, Ohio. The Italian original of this article was a talk given at the Symposium on “The Homosexual Debate” organized in Rome by the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. The author is Professor in the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome

by Martin Rhonheimer




ABSTRACT

Building upon the renewal of Thomistic virtue ethics in the wake of Veritatis splendor, this essay offers a contemporary explanation of why same sex acts are contrary to human nature because they are contrary to reason ( which itself is embedded in and dependent on the natural inclinations); and thus they are opposed to virtue and to human flourishing. The fundamental reason given for the disorder of such acts resonates with – but is far more robust than than – traditional arguments, namely that such acts are structurally opposed to the truth proper to human sexuality, which is the truth of conjugal love and matrimonial community, a truth that includes not only friendship and love but the responsible service of a procreative task. In his argument, the author follows the clear but often neglected teachings of Aquinas that reason is the rule and measure of human acts.He offers an explication of what he calls the “constitutive relationship between reason and nature” according to which the ends of the natural inclinations (e.g. the sexual inclination) are grasped by reason as “human goods” (bona humana) and “goods of reason” (bona rationis) within the order of virtue (ordo virtutis) and love (ordo caritatis).   In this way, he is able to explain the moral relevance of the sexual inclination and human sexuality corresponding to the bodily-spiritual nature of the human person. He further explains why, although same sex acts may seem reasonable and loving in light of same sex affections (and the broad cultural separation of sex and procreation), they are not due to their structural (i.e. natural) opposition to the procreative mission of transmitting human life and founding a family, a mission that distinguishes human sexual activity as a determinate kind of moral behavior.

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The purpose of this article is modest: I wish to investigate the central idea of the “truth of sexuality,” the idea that human sexuality possesses a truth proper to it, which without relativizing or devaluing its intrinsic goodness as affective and sensual experience, nevertheless transcends and integrates it into the whole of the spiritual dimension of the human person. I will explicate this “truth of sexuality” – making use of an argument that seems to me to be fundamentally Thomistic – by arguing for the intrinsic reasonableness, and therefore the morality, of heterosexuality. To anticipate the basic point of what follows: the essence, and thus the ultimate truth, of heterosexuality as a human good is that reality which is called "coniugium", i.e., conjugal love and matrimonial community. The sexual acts of this reality and this type of love essentially include a procreative aspect and purpose (even if actual fertility is lacking). Sexual acts between persons of the same sex by their very nature cannot be an expression of this truth.

To demonstrate this thesis, I will proceed in four brief steps: first, I will point out the constitutive relationship between reason and nature; second, I will speak of the connection between the sexual inclination and its cognition as a human good within the horizon of reason: third, I will try to show why heterosexuality is the condition of reasonableness of sexual activity; fourth and finally, I will arrive at the conclusion of the structurally unreasonable, and therefore immoral, character of homosexual acts.


The Constitutive Relationship between Reason and Nature

For St. Thomas Aquinas, from whom my vision draws its inspiration, there exists a constitutive relationship between nature and human reason: like all cognitive acts, human reason also always directs itself to a reality (res), given as its object. Even if reason is the rule and measure of human acts, it is not the rule and measure of what exists “by nature” (a natura). The first reality that is constitutive for practical reason is given by the natural inclinations and by the goods to which these inclinations naturally tend. In this sense we can say that there exists what is naturally reasonable: for practical reason, what is “naturally reasonable” is that which, with natural spontaneity, reason affirms as good (even if reason can also, mistakenly due to disordered passions, consider what is naturally reasonable to be not good, or what is naturally unreasonable to be good”). In a most fundamental way, it is naturally reasonable to tend to happiness; also naturally reasonable, however, are those goods which the natural reason discovers as ends of its particular natural inclinations. Without a prior orientation toward what is naturally reasonable, and thus good by nature, practical reason cannot be the directing reason of human acts and fulfill its task as guide of moral action.

An alternative understanding of the relation between nature and reason would be to assert that there exists a kind of a priori of the practical reason; this alternative understanding would claim, for example, that there are acts of practical reason that are independent of the natural inclinations, originally exempt from any material determination by what is naturally given. This position conflicts, however, with the exposition on the formation of the first principles of practical reason as found in St. Thomas’s "Summa Theologiae." Here Thomas presents these principles as formed in the context of the natural cognition of the ends of the natural inclinations as human goods. The Kantian-inspired, and opposing, claim of an a priori practical reason that is independent of the natural inclinations must be rejected. The practical and moral reason of the human person, as a being composed of body and spirit, is always and originally integrated into the complex of the natural inclinations. There is no “pure” aprioristic and transcendental practical reasonableness which, of itself – without already being informed by that which is “nature” – can formulate, or reformulate, the moral good.

On the other hand, and precisely because of the bodily-spiritual unity of the human person, “nature” can be understood as a moral good only to the extent that it is understood within the horizon of reason. Practical reason grasps the ends of the natural inclinations as “human goods” (bona humana) at the level of that intelligibility which corresponds to the very nature of reason. This is to say to that the spiritual nature of practical reason as an act of the intellect opens itself to a truth of the good, a truth that cannot be understood from sensible perception alone. The end of a human inclination is, therefore, in every case grasped and affirmed as “a good of reason” (bonum rationis): that is, these ends are affirmed, not in their mere “naturalness” (at the level of bodily nature), but as goods for reason (corresponding to the properly rational nature of human persons) and within the horizon of reason. They are, therefore, affirmed as goods at the level of the spiritual nature of the person. Natural inclination, therefore, possesses its own proper intelligibility and reasonableness which, while being natural, also includes the ordination of reason. Ordered according to reason in this way, the natural inclinations belong to the “natural law,” which according to St. Thomas – as with every law – is an “ordering act of reason” (ordinatio rationis) and “something constituted by reason” (aliquid per rationem constitutum).


The Sexual Inclination and its Truth at the Rational Level

A particular case of the natural inclination is that which the Roman legal tradition and medieval scholasticism called the inclination toward the union of man and woman (inclinatio ad coniunctionem maris et feminae). This natural inclination, as described by the Roman jurists and later by medieval theologians, is not merely sexual attraction as such, which could also occur between persons of the same sex. The tradition calls only heterosexual attraction a “natural inclination.” As a natural inclination, it considers not merely another body, but the entire person, including his or her spiritual dimension. Moreover, it is an inclination that considers not only another human individual, but also the good of the human species, that is, its propagation and preservation. This seems to imply that “natural inclination” would not designate merely empirical or de facto sexual experience at the sensual level, but an inclination that presents itself as “natural” precisely and solely within the horizon of reason and its capacity of grasping goods which transcend the immediacy and one-dimensionality of sensible perception and its corresponding impulse. For the Roman jurists and medieval theologians, therefore, the sexual inclination is more than the simple sexual impulse; it is a reasonable inclination, open to a rational evaluation that must necessarily also enter into the moral evaluation of its actuation.

We see, therefore, that the sexual inclination possesses its own proper intelligibility or truth. This “truth of sexuality” is a truth proper to man. Even if, as Ulpian says (regarding the preservation of species and procreation), this inclination between male and female (as belonging to the ius naturale) is something “that nature has taught to all the animals” (precisely for the preservation of the species), in the case of human beings this inclination acquires a significance which, though not entirely unrelated, is nonetheless superior and richer, because it is the union not only of naturally driven living animal bodies, but a union of persons. For Aquinas, the inclinations are the seeds of the virtues; we might say that they are in potency to being formed in virtue. Since a thing is more intelligible when it is actualized than when it is merely in potency, we look for the full intelligibility of the sexual inclination not merely in the inclination itself, but in the virtuous shaping of that inclination. For the sexual inclination this full intelligibility is the truth of the virtue of conjugal chastity which we find in marriage.

The truth of sexuality is marriage: union between persons in which the inclination is lived as a preferential choice – "dilectio" – and in which it becomes love, mutual gift, indissoluble communion open to the transmission of life, and friendship in view of a community of life that endures until death. It is in this way, in this specific context – that of conjugal chastity which includes the good of the other person and transcends itself toward the common good of the human species – that sexual activity, including its affective, impulsive and sensual dimensions, is also seen as an authentic “good of reason” (bonum rationis), something intrinsically reasonable and good thus good for reason.


Heterosexuality as the Condition of Reasonableness of Sexual Activity

At this point the question arises of whether only heterosexual acts can be truly such a good for reason, intrinsically reasonable and thus a moral good. Why should we not allow that there are also other forms of love, based in types of sexual attraction between persons of the same sex? Why cannot sexual acts that follow from this kind of attraction be equally acts of “love,” of mutual gift, and of the expression of true and genuine friendship among persons? Why are such acts unreasonable, contrary to reason itself and therefore contrary to the human good? Why must transcendence toward the good of the propagation and preservation of the species be joined to every kind of sexual activity – or why can’t such openness be lived in other ways, e.g. through openness to adoption, or to conception through reproductive technologies?

To such questions I would respond as follows: in the case of sexual attraction between persons of the same sex, it is the sexual activity itself that is incapable of being seen as a good by reason (because reason grasps the order stretching from the body and its natural inclinations, to the formation of the sexual inclination in the virtue of conjugal chastity at the service of life, to the order of charity). Indeed, same sex activity remains a good only at the level of mere affectivity – which, separated from the order of reason, is not a criteria of morality. I do not want to deny that two persons of the same sex can love one another, in the sense of having a mutual affection that then moves them to carry out sexual acts which would be, at least at the moment and subjectively, lived as expressions of love. What I do deny, however, is that attraction and sexual activity between persons of the same sex can be a "bonum rationis," a good of reason and for reason. They cannot, in fact, be reasonable. And for this reason neither can they be judged positively from a moral perspective.

In my view, there are two reasons for this inability of homosexual acts to constitute a good of reason and for reason:

(1) sexual acts themselves are, biologically, acts ordered to procreation in view of the preservation of the species (“that which nature has taught to all the animals”), and as such include a task and a meaning that reason can assume as a human good;

(2) sexual acts between persons of different sexes are an expression of love as a mutual gift that is already defined in its specificity by this procreative task: it is a type of love that is at the service of the transmission of life. Only in this way can love also reasonably express itself in sexual acts, which thus can acquire the character of a bonum rationis.

It is worth adding here that even if a homosexual couple were to decide to put themselves at the service of life (i.e., through adoption or artificial reproduction), this would not change the character of the sexual acts themselves performed by them (i.e., in their bodily behavior), which would continue to lack the meanings cited above.

The two reasons just enunciated draw all of their force from the anthropological truth that considers the human person to be a substantial unity of body and spirit. What is merely physical and “biological” is also an anthropological presupposition for the spiritual dimension into which it is assumed, since it confers a specific meaning on the person’s spiritual life; on the basis of this assumption, human corporeity itself is enriched with significance and acquires a new fullness of meaning. This is not to say that openness to the transmission of life is the only meaning of marital acts and that the expression of mutual love would not constitute for these acts a meaning that is similarly essential and worthy. What is being said is that to be an authentic expression of marital love, these acts presuppose the intentional openness – or the lack of an intentional impediment – to the naturally procreative meaning of human sexuality.

Sexual acts – i.e. sexual intercourse – and sexual activity, as reasonable acts, are therefore necessarily and by their very nature the expression of a love in the context (“ethical context”) of the transmission of life. Sexual activity that in principle excludes this transmission of life, whether as intentionally procured (as with contracepted heterosexual acts) or “structurally” given (as with homosexual acts), is not a good for reason precisely as sexual activity. It falls to the level of a mere good of the senses, a truncated affectivity, structurally reduced to the sensual, instinctive and impulsive level.

Such a sensual reduction of love and affectivity is also logically possible with heterosexual acts, even apart from contraception, and in marriage. In the case of homosexuality, however, this reduction is not only intentional and voluntarily sought, but “structural,” i.e. given by the very fact that it involves two persons of the same sex who, for biological reasons and by their very nature, cannot be procreative. The ultimate cause of this reduction is in the fact that we are dealing – as a result of conscious and free choices – with a sexuality without a task or without a “mission, a sexual inclination that does not transcend itself toward an intelligible human good beyond the sexual activity itself, and that cannot therefore become the expression of love between persons and mutual gift.

Experience – including that of practicing homosexuals, often deeply anguished – confirms this: the practice of homosexuality is structurally focused on sexual acts and on sexual experience in a way that, in heterosexual activity, is found only incidentally, and especially in its vicious forms (i.e. in promiscuous behavior, fornication, and habits opposed to chastity generally). A practicing homosexual is by definition unchaste because his sexual activity is structurally incompatible with the procreative task; a practicing heterosexual, on the other hand, can be chaste, by living and practicing sexuality according to its truth, as conjugal love.


The Structurally Unreasonable Character of Homosexual Acts

With homosexual acts, therefore, the separation between sexuality and procreation is structural. This is why its acts are structurally non-reasonable and therefore morally non-justifiable by their very physical structure or nature (they are what moralists have traditionally called a sin "contra naturam"), even if such acts can seem reasonable and justifiable in the context of an affectivity oriented toward the satisfaction of the sensual impulse.

The separation of sexuality and procreation in contemporary culture makes the understanding of the intrinsic non-reasonableness of homosexual acts more difficult. This culture of separating sexuality and procreation, which is encouraged at the global level by easy access to contraceptives, is now the norm; it is the distinctive character of that “sexual revolution” that is a true and proper cultural revolution. One consequence of this revolution is the increasing loss of the understanding of marriage as a project of life, and more specifically, as a project with a social transcendence, capable of uniting two persons who look to the future with the common objective of founding a family that will endure through time. Homosexual unions cannot define themselves as families in this sense, even if children are present (either as adopted or as “made” through reproductive technologies). Such “families” formed by same-sex couples are only an imitation of a true family, which is a project carried out by two persons through their love and their reciprocal gift in the fullness of their bodily and spiritual being. The “families” of homosexual couples can never realize this project of spousal love at the service of life because the love that is at the basis of these same-sex unions – that is, the sexual acts that claim to be acts of spousal love – are structurally and necessarily, based on their very nature, infecund.

Different, certainly, is the case of a heterosexual couple which, for reasons independent of the wills of the partners, cannot have children and for this reason adopt one or more children. In this case, in fact, their union is by its nature – that is, structurally – generative. For this reason the intentional structure and moral character of the act of adoption also changes, taking on the value of an alternative way of realizing something to which conjugal union is by its nature predisposed, and in their case is only per accidens impeded. The infecundity of such heterosexual couples is not from the nature and structure of their acts but unintentional (praeter intentionem); their infecundity is, therefore, not the result of moral disorder so their act of adoption is able to participate in the structure of the intrinsic fecundity of marital love. The same cannot be said about a couple formed by persons of the same sex: in this case the infecundity is structural and intentionally assumed through the free choice to form precisely this kind of union. In this case there is no link between authentic marital love and adoption, since the former – a marital love that includes an openness to the procreative dimension – is completely absent. For this reason the act of adoption in a homosexual union is purely an imitation – a counterfeit – of that to which marriage is predisposed by its nature.

A final observation: any judgment on homosexuality and its intrinsic non-reasonableness and immorality refers, obviously, solely to sexual acts between persons of the same sex. This does not include a judgment on the mere disposition to such acts which, even if it is considered unreasonable, to the extent that it is not acted upon does not have the character of a moral error. Even less are we dealing with a judgment on persons with homosexual tendencies, on their personal dignity or their moral character. These are undermined not by tendencies but by free choices to engage in homosexual acts and to adopt a corresponding lifestyle. Precisely these are morally erroneous, and thus evil, choices which alienate their agents from the true human good. A non-practicing homosexual, on the other hand, who abstains from the practice of homosexual acts, can live the virtue of chastity and all of the other virtues, attaining even the highest degree of holiness.