Why is Same-sex Marriage Wrong?

By Deacon Nick Schwartz

Several months ago a teenage girl came up to me after Sunday Mass and asked me why is same-sexual marriage wrong? The question caught me off guard and I wasn’t prepared to give a detailed explanation of the Church’s position. I do remember answering along the lines that the Church considers homosexual acts to be gravely disordered. She then argued that if everything God created is good, and since homosexuals are born that way, then how can homosexual behavior be wrong? Again, not ready for this debate I could only disagree with her that it has been proven that people are born homosexual. We were only able to talk for a few minutes and we parted agreeing to disagree. It is almost certain that she wasn’t satisfied with my answers, and I know my response was less than adequate in explaining the Church’s teaching on this subject. So the goal of this article is to better answer this young lady’s questions.

It is true that in the beginning God created everything out of nothing, and everything God created was good. However, one thing God did not create was sin. Sin was the result of our first parents using their free will to disobey God. Original sin had many undesirable results, including the genesis of human illness and death. Because of original sin, for example, babies may be born with birth defects. Another effect of original sin is concupiscence, an inclination to sin found in all human beings.

Now, many homosexuals argue that they have not chosen their condition, but that they were born that way, making homosexual behavior natural for them. But just because something was not chosen does not mean it was inborn. Some desires are acquired or strengthened by habituation and conditioning instead of by conscious choice. For example, no one chooses to be an alcoholic, but one can become habituated to alcohol. Just as one can acquire alcoholic desires (by repeatedly becoming intoxicated) without consciously choosing them, so one may acquire homosexual desires (by engaging in homosexual fantasies or behavior) without consciously choosing them.

Even if there is a genetic predisposition toward homosexuality (and studies on this point are inconclusive), the behavior remains unnatural because homosexuality is still not part of the natural design of humanity. It does not make homosexual behavior acceptable; other behaviors are not rendered acceptable simply because there may be a genetic predisposition toward them.

For example, scientific studies suggest some people are born with a hereditary disposition to alcoholism, but no one would argue someone ought to fulfill these inborn urges by becoming an alcoholic. Alcoholism is not an acceptable “lifestyle” any more than homosexuality is.

Same-sex (or gay or homosexual) “marriage” is not really marriage at all. Marriage was instituted by God as a relationship between a man and a woman. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). The Church does not have the power or authority to change this, nor does secular society. Even if the legal definition of the word “marriage” were changed to include homosexual couples, those couples would not ever be truly married.

Some people equate denying homosexuals the right to marry with denying freedom to blacks or not allowing women to vote. However, the situations are quite different, and it is natural law that reveals the difference to us. Natural law is a sense of good and evil that is written on the heart of every person. It tells us which acts are good and rational and which are evil and irrational. Natural law tells us that not every kind of behavior is a right. The act of murder is not a right, nor is incest, nor is bestiality. These go against human nature. We inherently know that these are wrong.

If, for example, many people began telling us that incest is a right and that to deny such a right is similar to discrimination because of race or sex, our first reaction would be moral outrage. For a parent and child to have sexual relations with one another violates the very nature of who they are in relation to one another. Something is out of sync.

But eventually we might be swayed by such argumentation because of the sheer volume and intensity of the propaganda, not because of the rationality of the argument. This is what has happened with the so-called right to same-sex “marriage.”

The natural sex partner of a man is a woman, and the natural sex partner of a woman is a man. For two members of the same sex to have genital relations violates the nature of who they are in relation to one another. Their bodies are simply not designed for it. Something is out of sync.

The problem is that our culture insists that everyone has a “right” to sexual gratification and we tend to put feelings before reason. Reason would tell us that in such a situation, one ought to put feelings second. For rational creatures to make reason subject to feelings is to court disaster.

Homosexual desires are not in themselves sinful. People are subject to a wide variety of sinful desires over which they have little direct control, but these do not become sinful until a person acts upon them, either by acting out the desire or by encouraging the desire and deliberately engaging in fantasies about acting it out. People tempted by homosexual desires, like people tempted by improper heterosexual desires, are not sinning until they act upon those desires in some manner.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church informs us that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” (CCC 2357). And while the Church calls us to accept people with homosexual tendencies with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity,” (CCC 2358) it also clearly teaches that, “under no circumstances, can homosexual acts be approved” (CCC 2357).

(Sources: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, This Rock Magazine, and Catholic Answers Website.)