I am not a heterosexual.
You read that right.
What’s even more surprising (at least perhaps to you) is that if you think you're straight, you're not. And if you think you're gay...think again.
It turns out that we have spent our entire lives living under a misconception. The misconception is called “sexual identity” (SID). It turns out that there really isn’t such a thing as heterosexual, homosexual (gay, lesbian), bisexual, transsexual, etc, and the sooner we can dispense with those terms the better. The people who identify as such are real, of course, but the categories are fairly recent constructs. And we keep getting new ones (like “hasbian” to designate formerly gay but now – supposedly – straight individuals). What does this tell us? That the whole concept of sexual identity is flawed and hopelessly confused. In Against Heterosexuality in First Things magazine, Michael Hannon walks us through the confusion and claims that the idea of sexual orientation is artificial and inhibits Christian witness. I think he’s right. Ironically, in wishing to dispense with hard-and-fast sexual identity categories, Hannon is in league with queer theorists: but their end game is very different. Whereas queer theorists want to dismantle all sexual identity categories to further their libertine ends, Hannon wants to sweep them away in order to focus on the results of behavior as opposed to self-identification. One of the main problems with the current categories, he claims, is that it lets heterosexuals off the hook for their behavior while holding homosexuals captive to their identity. Or, as he says, “If homosexuality binds us to sin, heterosexuality blinds us to sin.” Sexual identity categories separates ‘us’ from ‘them’ and makes it more difficult to engage in Christian witness. Hannon’s article makes intuitive sense to me due to its stripped-down simplicity: it allows us to focus on what is right and wrong instead of stumbling through ever-expanding and artificial categories.
Maybe an analogy can help. Say that I self-identify as a
‘pyromaniac’. Burning things down is who I am and what I do. What would happen
if I joined other self-proclaimed pyromaniacs and demanded that the state
recognize our condition as a protected class and as a legitimate alternative to
the non-pyromaniac lifestyle? If the state relented and caved in to our wishes,
needless to say there would be constant fires to put out. But who could judge
us because of our identity as a persecuted minority: a condition affirmed by psychologists
and a growing segment of society? Of course the point I am making is that just
because individuals have a propensity to engage in certain acts does not mean
they are that act or trait. The best way to handle pyromaniacs is not to
affirm, justify, and approve of their condition, but to stop their behavior. Their
behavior can’t be stopped by reinforcing their self-identification as
pyromaniacs; it needs to be stopped by focusing on why the behavior is wrong.
As a pyromaniac, I need my behavior to be corrected, not my self-image affirmed. The former will more easily lead to proper societal re-integration,
the latter to dysfunction. The distinction between who I am versus what I do is
a very important one, probably a critical one.
Throwing away sexual constructs puts us all on equal footing
and therefore equal accountability when only the behavior is analyzed and not
our (supposed) innate and immutable sexual identity. We are not our sexual identity, but sexuality is part of who we are. Focusing on
behavior frees us from the shackles of predestination or fate. We can all
change our behavior, but we can not – in theory - change our identity. Of
course, the reality is that we can
and do change our identities - as ex-gays can attest - which further proves the
inadequacy of such categories (but they still remain a potent psychological
force).
By my reading, Pope Francis seems to agree with this understanding. In his
interview in America
magazine he said: “A person once asked me, in a
provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another
question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the
existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must
always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being.
In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from
their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that
happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.”
In Against
Heterosexuality, Michael Hannon says that, “Over the course of several
centuries, the West had progressively abandoned Christianity’s marital
architecture for human sexuality. Then, about one hundred and fifty years ago,
it began to replace that longstanding teleological [goal oriented] tradition
with a brand new creation: the absolutist but absurd taxonomy of sexual orientations.
Heterosexuality was made to serve as this fanciful frameworks’ regulating
ideal, preserving the social prohibitions against sodomy and other sexual
debaucheries without requiring recourse to the procreative nature of
sexuality.”
He continues, “On this novel account, same-sex acts were
wrong not because they spurn the rational-animal purpose of sex – namely the
family – but rather because the desire for these actions allegedly arises from
a distasteful psychological disorder.”
Of course, when homosexuality was no longer deemed a
psychological disorder in the 1970’s the stage was set for a new disorder: the re-definition
of the family. Regardless of the validity of whether or not individuals who
engage in same-sex acts have a psychological disorder, in the end it doesn’t
matter; the acts are wrong because they subvert the integrity of the “marital
architecture” - as does fornication and infidelity.
Behavior that goes against the natural order of the marital
architecture should be, at the very least, discouraged. We recognize it by the
damage it does to the male-female bond and that of their offspring. Conversely,
behavior that reinforces the marital architecture should be encouraged. There
is nothing in any society that is more fundamental and important than this, and
yet a cloak of deception is thrown around us that blind many of their ability
to properly reason and see the forces allied against the family. When the family
becomes weak and vulnerable, society becomes weak and vulnerable. As long as our
society continues to focus on “individual rights” instead of the rights of the
family we will continue to decay, and, as Michael Hannon tells us, it is
through the constant pushing of the boundaries of individual license that
“contemporary queer theorists…aim to genealogically explain away the rigid
orientation schema precisely because they believe this will give them the
freedom and the power to make, unmake, and remake their sexuality as they see
fit.” “They want to tear down these failed social constructs not so that
something better can be constructed in their place – or, perhaps, rediscovered
amid the rubble – but because they hope to achieve an even greater degree of sexual
libertinism than we have today, even if it comes at the cost of endorsing a
wretched sort of sexual nihilism.”
Toward the end of his article Hannon asks, “The question is,
once this sexual-orientation structure collapses, what will come to replace it:
the queer theorists’ nihilistic anything-goes ethic, or the classical Christian
view from which all of this is a departure, the view that takes the
marital-procreative as its end and organizing principle, evaluating passions
against nature rather than vice versa?”
Both, perhaps. When the queer theorists’ construct itself collapses
under its own perverse weight, a new order will rise to replace it. Whether that
new order will be modeled on a tolerant and rational Christian construct or
take on a less tolerant form only time will tell…and it may not be in any
hurry.
