Great stuff. Among my favorite parts: how the whole essay is framed by one of marriage’s best aspects, as one spouse helps direct the other towards greater understanding and virtue. Nice job, R.

Thanks for sharing, Nate Beautifully written.

I enjoyed this as well.

Thanks, guys. Consider this my perhaps brief flirtation with long-form blogging. There are a lot of things in here that I’ve wanted to express for a while, and the confluence of the Rick Warren flap, Milk, and the discovery of the excellent Write Room via Mr. Pollack led to what amounts to a personal essay. I must admit to suffering a bit of interest overload on it now: I got R to do a fair bit of editing on it and then rewrote some myself. I think that, objectively, it improved what is a rather dangerously ambitious piece, but it’s hard for me to see anything but its imperfections at the moment.

I hope if it does anything, though, it gives some window into the way in which a person could be on the wrong side of the issue of homosexuality’s morality for reasons other than bigotry. At any rate, to V, HB, Erika, Amanda, Julia, Mirabai, and anyone else that waded through the whole thing: thank you!

I’m still not clear as to why the degree to which one feels predisposed to something has any bearing on whether it is morally acceptable or ought to be promoted by society. The Joker may feel as though he has no choice but to make the world burn, but that does not mean it is somehow ‘OK’. If one wants to claim that whatever is natural is permissible, then, well, truly anything goes.

Then again, I don’t see any evidence here that homosexuality is /not/ a learned disposition. You supply anecdotes that seem totally inconclusive. I could just as easily offer several from my own experience that strongly lead me to believe that nearly every aspect of my sexual appetite has been shaped by experience and exposure. Without being graphic, I vividly recall seeing certain images that repulsed me, almost to the point of physical illness, only to later find those same images extremely arousing.

I don’t doubt that there may be some rudimentary sexual instinct that is genetic in origin, but it is beyond my admittedly feeble mind how that would be anything other than heterosexual in orientation. Homosexuality is a negative trait in terms of survival fitness, and presumably would be strongly selected against over millions of years.

@ Dan: I’m not sure you’re right that disposition towards something does not automatically make it moral. I cited the examples of pedophilia and kleptomania in my first post, but in the first case, especially, the majority of people far prefer viewing such acts as perversions, choices by the people involved to go against their nature. The idea that pedophilia, for instance, could be genuinely natural would be very troubling to Paul, to pick someone whose writing we’ve both thought a lot about.

Romans 1, for instance, makes it abundantly clear that Paul sees what is most natural as essential to his understanding of sin.

Romans 1:20: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Romans 1:26-27: Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.

Paul, at least, seems to be describing sin as a crime against what is most deeply known and what is most natural in us. Clearly natural cannot be defined here as “whatever one feels like”, but as something more fundamental. In other words, Paul is saying that if it is truly natural to the Joker to desire that civilization burn, that he doesn’t need to subvert or go against anything in his understanding and self to do so, then it is utterly impossible to describe that desire or actions springing therefrom as sin.

It sounds, though, like you’re just saying that one cannot use “whatever one feels like” as grounds for determining what is most natural, a perfectly intelligible position. I attempted to describe the way in which I was convinced that sexual orientation as we now understand it can only be properly understood as something most natural and not as one of the kinds of impulses that lead us all, every day, to do things we think are wrong.

Clearly sexual behaviors can be learned — the omnisexuality of the Romans themselves is testament to that. But this does nothing, in my opinion, to address the reported data of fundamental homosexual orientation reported by thousands and thousands of people to their own personal detriment.

Your Darwinistic question about heterosexuality/homosexuality relies upon the supposition that homosexuality would be a hereditary trait, something that, to my knowledge, absolutely no one claims. Things can be determined by one’s biology without being hereditary traits.

Nate says to Dan:

Your Darwinistic question about heterosexuality/homosexuality relies upon the supposition that homosexuality would be a hereditary trait [… .]

I think it also supposes the individual organism as a sort of principle object of evolutionary transmission, rather than the genes, or by extension, the group of closely related organisms sharing those genes. There are obviously many hereditary characteristics that only benefit the individual’s survival opportunities in the context of the group; and there may be some that do not benefit the individual’s survival opportunities yet do benefit those of the group (and therefore the genes).

So it is clear, like Dan suggests, that homosexual orientation would hinder the caveman’s likelihood of reproducing; yet it is not so clear that having gay cavemen around would not benefit the group, and therefore the propagation of the group’s genes.

A related example: why don’t we die soon after the end of our reproductive years, like so many other animals do? Men, of course, can go on reproducing right to the end (so maybe they do die shortly after their technically reproductive years), but women can continue to live decades after they are biologically incapable of propagating their genes. Why? Because it’s good for the community to have old women around. Grandma can’t continue spreading her genes, but she can continue to play a role in the success of those organisms to whom she has already given them, and so longevity in women is a reproductive advantage — not to them, as individuals, but to their genes.

Nate, in my reading of the Romans passage, I feel like Paul’s emphasis is that people do bad things /in spite/ of knowing the greater good of God. I don’t think Paul would fail to see the Joker’s actions as sin, no matter how intrinsic they are to his sense of self. I think Paul would say that even if the Joker feels that murder is as natural to him as eating, the Joker is capable of recognizing the glory of God in the world and therefore should attempt to not follow his desires and instead follow the decrees of God. Whether the desire for the world to burn is truly natural to the Joker doesn’t stop him from having the freedom to choose whether to act in accordance with his desire or the will of God.

The problem is that many serial killers use similar terms to those expressed in Sullivan’s recollection of childhood desires. They frequently say that it is simply their nature to crave murder, torture, etc. I can supply examples if needed, though I’m not sure anyone here will want to learn about such details. Considering the frequency with which this is claimed by such men, I cannot discount it. That they feel such urges as having always been with them and as inescapable facets of their beings does not legitimize either the desires or the actions that fufill them.

Also, our culture condemns pedophilia, but many other cultures throughout history have tolerated, and even celebrated, such practices. It seems that in decrying these as ‘clearly unnatural’, you would be availing yourself of a casual reliance on local, contemporary norms to buttress a position, a reliance not unlike that used by evangelicals to condemn homosexuality.

Nate,

I feel compelled to point out that you’re equivocating on the term “natural”, confusing “human nature”, that which makes us all human, and “my nature”, that which makes me unique and special. The same equivocation seems present in the A. Sullivan quotes you present. It seems clear to me that St Paul is talking about human nature, not the “haecceitas”, the unique individuating difference which makes us each ourselves. If this is true then it’s perfectly sensible to say that what is—or seems—natural to me might be unnatural in the sense of contravening what is natural to humanity as such. The very notion of there being a human nature at all implies that all men have it equally, and whatever my “individual nature” adds over and above that human nature, if it subtracts from it I can’t be human. This doesn’t address the correctness of Paul’s claim, of course. One could argue that “sexual orientation” is not a part of human nature at all. But then Paul’s argument isn’t about sexual “orientations” but about sexual acts. St Paul doesn’t call gayness unnatural, but “unnatural relations,” sodomy.

It also seems difficult to me to claim homosexuality or “being gay” as a natural phenomenon of any sort, since, as you almost point out yourself, the very notion of “being gay” is an extremely modern, even a brand-new one. The very notion of “sexual orientation” is modern, and loaded with presuppositions, and foreign to pre-modern mindsets. St Paul doesn’t recognize it as a phenomenon to reckon with; is it so clear that the phenomenon was even around at the time? It’s certain that there was sodomy, homosexual acts, among ancient peoples; is it at all clear that there were “gays”? [A word which annoys me, by the way, much like the trying-to-get-in-vogue “brights”.] By which I mean not just people who enjoy committing homosexual acts, but people who see this fact as intrinsic to their identity. “Gay” people do not like having sex in some ways and not in others the way I like beer and not gin, but in a way which seems to involve their notions of selfhood, culture, “lifestyle”, and so forth. But is it clear that such people existed in, say, the Greco-Roman world? Was there “homosexuality” as well as sodomites? Or is “gayness” a modern cultural construction, even if one that is extremely important and almost all-encompassing for those who experience it? I really don’t claim to know, and I would be interested to see evidence either way.

In any case St Paul, and Churches today like my own, condemn sodomy and not “gayness”. Perhaps there have been people or groups that have condemned gayness itself, but that seems problematic to me. It’s hard to define, for one thing. Is it the physical urge? The emotional tug? The perceptive disposition? The self-image? Even male “effeminacy”, which has been widely derided and persecuted by numerous pre-modern cultures, and therefore recognized by them to exist, is clearly not gayness, an “orientation”, but a set of behaviors. One can, I take it, be gay without ever committing sodomy or cross-dressing or mincing. And clearly many people on ships and in prisons and so forth have committed sodomy without seeing themselves as gay, and gone back to women when they could. In any case for religions like mine it’s sodomy that is the sin, like masturbation, not the dispositive cause of the desire to commit sodomy, anymore than the loneliness, etc., that can lead one to masturbate is itself a sin.

St Paul therefore, it seems clear to me, is not condemning “straight” men who commit sodomy which is unnatural to them, while saying nothing relevant to “gay” men for whom sodomy is natural. Rather he’s condemning sodomy itself, as being unnatural to Man, in the obvious sense: namely that it is contrary to the innate teleology of the organs in question. The “natural” sexual act leads by its nature, though obviously not in all individual cases, to procreation, while “unnatural” ones lead to disease, or nothing. Note that I’m talking about the act, not the social relationship in which it occurs. There are all sorts of ways that sex is morally weighted however it’s done, just as with, say, eating. But leaving aside the social and cultural and familiar contexts of eating, each of which has its own moral dimension, it could be plausibly argued that the physical act of eating itself becomes immoral when it is divorced from its fundamental biological teleology (i.e. chewing and swallowing and digesting), and becomes instead a pleasurable social act culminating in a trip to the vomitorium. In such a case the fact that the banquet takes place in a mutually enriching social relationship becomes irrelevant, as does the argument that it’s okay because I can still receive my nourishment in other ways, say through an IV.

I realize that arguments like these have no pull for those who don’t recognize intrinsic natures or teleologies. But I think that it’s important to recognize what you’re arguing against as well as what you’re arguing for. Much of your argument, frankly, seems to boil down to “How can it be so wrong when it feels so right?” The other side does not simply say “You’re wrong to feel that way.” Instead it regards the feeling as morally irrelevant and insists that it doesn’t matter how strongly or deeply one feels something if the actions one wants to perform in consequence remain wrong. The gay person says “I didn’t choose to be this way!” Maybe not, and if not he’s in a difficult position. But whether or no he can still choose to do this or not to, and that’s where the only real moral argument is interested.

Mr. Sullivan asks:

But is it clear that such people existed in, say, the Greco-Roman world? […] I really don’t claim to know, and I would be interested to see evidence either way.

How about the myth presented by Aristophanes in the Symposium? Am I remembering right that the pre-torn-asunder man was either male, female, or androgynous?

(It would be quite easy — even expected — to tell that myth without the three initial genders, and it would explain heterosexual attraction. Is he not allowing for homosexual natures?)

Knowing that several people here have read The Symposium I wrote quickly, but it occurs to me that maybe I should add a little more in case some readers have not.

This summary is from Wikipedia:

Before launching his speech, Aristophanes warns the group that his eulogy to love may be more absurd than funny. His speech is an explanation of why people in love say they feel “whole” when they have found their love partner. It is, he says, because in primal times people were globular spheres who wheeled around like clowns doing cartwheels (190a). There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the “androgynous,” who was half man, half woman. The creatures tried to scale the heights of heaven and planned to set upon the gods (190b-c). Zeus thought about just blasting them to death with thunderbolts, but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half.
After chopping the people in half, Zeus turned half their faces around and pulled the skin tight and stitched it up to form the belly button. Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature. He says some people think homosexuals are shameless, but he thinks they are the bravest, most manly of all (192a), and that heterosexuals are mostly adulterous men and unfaithful wives (191e).

So what I meant, was that you might expect the myth simply to explain that the human — who in some sense had “male” and “female” natures together — was torn apart, and thus we (heterosexual) mere half-humans always run around looking for our other half, and feel whole upon our reunion. But it has the perhaps surprising detail that the “whole” humans didn’t all have both “male” and “female” natures. Some were just one or the other, and this explains homosexual attraction and love and “wholeness” in coupling in exactly the same terms as the heterosexual forms.

Mr Pollack,

that’s an excellent piece of evidence against my suggestion, and I should have thought of it.

I’ve got more to say on the subject of physis vs. nomos in this context, but it’s Christmas Eve and I’ve got presents to wrap.

The moves in this type of discussion are going to be pro forma, so I’ll just lay them out in advance: if naturalness is the standard for acceptability and we’re referring to biological naturalness, then rape is acceptable. But rape isn’t acceptable, so we must have a different standard. But we’re determined to argue from revelation, and revelation must be correct, so God must mean something different than biological naturalness by nature. In which case nature isn’t an especially meaningful standard for judging about the acceptability of homosexuality, because it seems to be defined by whatever you willing to let into the circle of social acceptability.

If you ask me, nature isn’t anything but a range of possibilities. Perhaps we could say that our core nature is to be beings who have preferences and who experience feelings of love, hate and disgust. It’s natural to be disgusted by deformity. With effort we can overcome disgust. What would be the standard that would make one contradict one’s nature in such a way? Care, interest, rationality, etc. The realization that someone’s desires are “natural” wouldn’t be determining without these original “urges”. There are ways to take others as “natural freaks”.

Mr Method,

one may certainly dispute whether nature ought to have any place in moral questions, but I’m sure you can see that your objection is directed towards a straw man.

if naturalness is the standard for acceptability and we’re referring to biological naturalness, then rape is acceptable.

I don’t know any moral thinker who’s claimed that “naturalness is the standard for acceptability”. No doubt you’re aware that the same moral framework which objects to sodomy also objects to many kinds of sexual acts which it would nevertheless recognize as “natural” in the present sense? For instance, fornication, adultery, polygamy, and, yes, rape, which are all called immoral on various grounds—just not on the ground of being unnatural. “Naturalness” then is not a guarantee of a sexual act’s morality, but merely a precondition for it.

This points to something I found odd in Nate’s original essay. Nate writes an extended passage on whether perceived differences between men and women can be used to justify the exclusivity of heterosexual marriage and concludes that nearly all masculine qualities can be found in some women, and vice versa, shattering his notion of the strict dichotomy of the sexes. He ends with

Could I articulate one single thing that separated us, phenomenologically, from every homosexual couple? That bound us together with every heterosexual couple? There is one thing: genitals. Chromosomes. Physical sex characteristics. That was it.

His That was it is very strange to me. It seems like saying that the only thing that separates a house from a hole in the ground is walls and a roof—that’s it. No other single thing. Such a narrow definition doesn’t take into account comfort, quality of design or materials, location, emotional attachment, or any of the myriad things that make a house a home. Well, that’s true, but no matter how comfortable or fine a hole may be in many ways, without walls and a roof it’s not a house, is it?

Nate is obviously correct that there are many things necessary for a good and successful marriage other than complementary genitals, which by no means guarantee emotional, intellectual, or personal compatibility. But that fact is irrelevant to the question of whether complementary sex characteristics are not a necessary precondition for having a marriage at all, however good or bad.

Nate’s reflections on the subject are pervaded with “sexual orientation,” love, virtue, and so forth, and he reprimands himself for having been “fixated on sex acts.” I would argue, on the other hand, that in determining the moral question Nate isn’t fixated enough on acts. Only acts have moral weight, not emotions or orientations. “Being in love” is, all things considered, morally neutral: it’s what one chooses to do as a result that has moral weight.

The other odd thing that struck me about Nate’s essay is the fact that in all his reflections on love, sex, orientation, and the complementarity of the sexes, there isn’t a single mention of procreation. I say that this struck me, not that it surprised me, because I think there’s a case to be made that the only reason homosexual acts have entered the popular consciousness as a live moral option at all is because of prior decades of steady erosion in people’s minds of the connection between sex and procreation in heterosexual acts. But one ought to recognize that the same moral system (if consistent) that objects to homosexual acts also objects to artificial contraception and sodomy in heterosexual acts, and on similar grounds.

Mr Method,

one more point. I’m not sure you’ve grasped the relevant sense of “natural”. When you say It’s natural to be disgusted by deformity you seem to me to be making the same equivocation I objected to earlier. Surely a feeling of disgust is not natural in the sense that using my GI tract to digest food is natural, while using it to smuggle drugs is unnatural and, not inconsequently, very dangerous to my health. In this way heterosexual sex acts are natural—they are in accord with the biological function and design of the relevant organs, and serve a clear biological purpose—while homosexual sex acts produce pleasure but serve no biological function, and tend inevitably to lead to many kinds of disease and injury, since they use the relevant organs in ways that contravene their design.

It’s wrong then to say that “natural” seems to be defined by whatever you willing to let into the circle of social acceptability. That is avoiding altogether the difference between physis and nomos. The claim is that heterosexual marriage, in all its cultural differences, and governed by various customs and standards good and bad, is still rooted in something transcending all cultural differences, and which is ordered not only to the love and mutual benefit of the participants but also, and even primarily, to the propagation both of the species, the family, and of the culture or society of its members. When one removes from marriage, the claim goes, this orientation to procreation—regardless of whether some marriages by choice or by accident fail to actually produce offspring—it becomes some other sort of social arrangement, whether or not love or sex or both are involved. Homosexual relationships are by nature infertile, while marriage is naturally fecund. Nature, says Aristotle, is what occurs always or for the most part; that some natural marriages are infertile is an accident of choice or disease or whatnot; that homosexual relationships are infertile is not an accident.

Speaking of social acceptability, let’s not forget that even when the Greeks saw homosexual behavior as perfectly socially acceptable, they still didn’t call it marriage. It was something that happened outside of marriage. This should warn us about confusing the question of the morality of homosexual acts and the legitimacy of calling homosexual relationships “marriages”. One could easily make the claim that homosexual relationships are both morally and socially acceptable but are still, by definition, unable to be marriages.

and tend inevitably to lead to many kinds of disease and injury, since they use the relevant organs in ways that contravene their design.

???!!!?

No, seriously.

??!!??????!!?

Nate, thanks for this post. I thought it was well-articulated and enjoyed reading it.

I would just like to remind the people who are talking about nature and what is natural and such in the comments that you are actually talking about PEOPLE here, real people who read this blog, not just some philosophical abstraction.

Whether or not it much effects an underlying point, Mr. Sullivan —

a) “homosexual sex acts […] serve no biological function [….]”

is unclear, since by some understanding of these words they are biological functions, or they involve or include biological functions, and produce biological benefits, and,

b) “homosexual acts […] tend inevitably to lead to many kinds of disease and injury […]

is manifestly untrue, though I’m unclear of the force of your (hedging?) “tend inevitably.”

Robbie,

I am unaware of any biological benefits produced by homosexual sex acts, unless you mean things like endorphin releases, but that’s also true of, say, recreational drugs.

Robbie and Fafnir,

I am told by physicians that people who regularly engage in sodomy expose themselves to a large variety of unpleasant-sounding medical complications. I’m not talking about STDs here but more direct physical problems. Apparently most of them can be avoided with especial care, but such care is generally not needed when engaging in your garden-variety procreative-type acts. About this I speak subject to correction, but this is what I’ve heard from medical folks.

Tania,

in fact I’m not actually talking about PEOPLE here, except insofar as any ethical discussion alludes to people. I’m not talking about “real people who read this blog,” since I haven’t mentioned any of them directly or indirectly. If what I say applies to someone that’s another matter, but it applies to all people equally. I don’t see why the discussion of the morality of sex acts is any different from, say, a discussion about the morality of music piracy. If you tell me that music piracy is wrong and I happen to pirate a lot of music, I don’t take that as a personal insult.

I pondered for a while whether to weigh in on Nate’s essay, and already I kind of regret doing so. But he said earlier:

I hope if it does anything, though, it gives some window into the way in which a person could be on the wrong side of the issue of homosexuality’s morality for reasons other than bigotry.

I hope the same thing could be said for my comments, although of course I don’t think now that I’m on the wrong side. But I thought it might be made clear that Nate’s own past thoughts were not all that could be said on the matter, and that there are actual arguments and reasons aside from bigotry, which I hope is not an issue here. Of course you’re all free to think those reasons are stupid. But they don’t simply boil down to “Yuck!” or “I feel threatened!” or “The Bible says so!”

“Copulation […] is an excellent thing,
having many virtues
and conferring
many benefits.
It lightens the body
and relieves the soul,
it cures melancholy,
tempers the heat
of passion, attracts love,
contents the heart,
consoles in absence,
and cures insomnia.”

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night

Just for the record, anal sex IS more medically risky than vaginal intercourse due to the fact that the rectum is 1) much more delicate tissue and 2) has such a RICH blood supply in its walls that it promptly carries away any viruses or bacteria into the blood stream and disseminates them to the whole body in no time flat: basically it puts one at risk for a MUCH higher transmission rate of STI’s (anything blood-borne or semen borne) because there is usually some (microscopic at least) trauma. Condoms to some degree help, but aren’t great. This is why HIV spread so much more quickly in the homosexual med community: it’s not just that they have more partners, it’s that every time they have sex their risk of contracting disease is MUCH higher.

Also there is some amoebic(parasite) disease that only gay men disseminate, though I can’t remember the name off the top of my head…I just remember a funny 70 yr old med school professor stating that it is only found in “The Gays” as he liked to say.

Also one other infection is MUCH more prevalent in gay males where their lymph nodes and soft tissues in the groin starts to ulcerate, called granuloma ingunale:

http://www.mamashealth.com/stds/granuloma.asp

And yes, gay men are more likely to have fistulas, anal fissures, stool impaction, or even get things “stuck” in a way that cannot possibly happen physiologically with a vagina that can cause serious medical headaches:

http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/articles/a114_rectal.jpg

http://alaskapride.blogspot.com/2006/08/nature-of-homosexuality-continued.html

Moral of the story:

Please don’t show up in my ER with a mannequin arm or light bulb up your rectum!

It’s an absurd line of argument, but if you were to take it to its logical extremity, it’s vastly less risky, both in terms of STI transmission (and epidemiology) and in terms of pain or injury to each partner, for women to have sex only with other women, as opposed to men. Lower rates of cervical cancer, HIV, vaginismus, pregnancy (an often terminal condition), you name it. So by your reasoning, it makes much for sense for women to have sex exclusively with women and for men not to have sexy with anybody.

Or, you know, for both men and women who are interested in anal intercourse to do it slowly and gently with ample lubrication, and for those whom it makes uncomfortable to have oral, manual, vaginal, intercrural, or any other form of intercourse that takes their fancy. Male-female vaginal intercourse is the second riskiest form of sex. It’s very, very far from the least.

But none of this is particularly helpful to resolving the argument: namely, whether homosexual love and homosexual relationships are harmful or beneficial to the souls of the people involved in them, and, by extension, to the society in which they participate. I could say a lot about it, but I don’t have time right now. Anyway, Nate’s made a pretty damn strong case on his own. I think I’ll wait to see whether he feels that it’s necessary to add anything.

whether homosexual love and homosexual relationships are harmful or beneficial to the souls of the people involved in them

This isn’t really what the discussion is about, though, is it? It’s about the morality of intrinsically non-procreative sex acts. Nobody, I believe, is saying that men should not love men or women women. It’s about the kind of sex that they want to have in consequence.

Since the Symposium has already been alluded to, I might just mention that again as containing an argument for it being appropriate in some circumstances to leave the sex out of love.

This isn’t really what the discussion is about, though, is it? It’s about the morality of intrinsically non-procreative sex acts.

Uh, it is? Because I didn’t get the impression that anyone in the argument so far was against heterosexual marriages in which no children were born… Am I wrong?

I don’t want to presume too much, but considering that Nate has previously mentioned that he doesn’t want children, and I doubt that he would be in an entirely sexless marriage without mentioning the fact, since it’s pretty relevant to this series of posts, it’s logical to conclude that he himself has non-procreative sex on a regular basis. So that’s not what his change of opinion was about, and not what he was initially arguing in favor of. I realize you’ve broadened the scope of the debate, but at the cost of missing several of Nate’s main points.

It’s about the morality of intrinsically non-procreative sex acts.

So, heterosexual couples on the pill or using condoms or couples in which one or both are sterile can’t have moral sex?

I’m sorry, but this is just getting ridiculous.

Mr. Sullivan,

“Naturalness is a precondition” does make more sense to me as a place to put nature in a moral argument, but my point was that this shows how naturalness is not really a necessary component of the moral argument. Does an act not being natural make it immoral, or beyond morality? I honestly don’t know what unnaturalness would mean in this case. I take it that using sexual organs improperly is one example of unnaturalness, but what else? Is human contortionism immoral? Skydiving? Tuvan throat-singing? Choosing not to have children? And as you’ve pointed out, naturalness isn’t sufficient for an act to be moral. It seems that the necessary and sufficient condition for an act to be moral is that it be moral—in particular that it respects others’ autonomy and personhood, increases good and decreases harm.

One thing that strikes me is that Aristotle probably doesn’t worry about aberrant sex acts—I could be wrong about this—because they would be too specific for him to consider in terms of vice or virtue; the physis of humans is more general than to perform this or that act in particular. On the other hand, it seems that Christians are concerned with an original nature and the extent of deviation from this nature and the capacity for return to this nature. In other words, for Aristotle it is nearly impossible for us to transcend physis, because we are like the beavers and their dams. But for Christians, it is easy for us to be outside of nature, because that is the symbolic meaning of the expulsion from Eden. For this reason in the Edenic state of nature lions don’t have destructive desires toward lambs, no one wants to commit sodomy, etc. The reference for nature isn’t our nature, but original nature. Aristotelianism and the scientific view of nature come in to confuse that simple message. Anyway, that’s my bit of armchair theology.

I don’t understand the distinction by which digestion is natural but disgust is not— is it because naturalness is about objects and actions rather than affects? I suppose I was going on the idea that there are biologically natural responses with diverse objects and that these responses are often taken as the signs of naturalness and unnaturalness of the objects. I think on the basis of the modern sense of “nature” it’s easy to see that these signs are not completely compelling. A reprehensible act is “disgusting” but so is a burn victim. Maybe physis or “always or for the most part” is a better standard but how on earth is it possible to distinguish between local and timely social convention and what is truly “for the most part” for all of humanity in all time?

To the thing about homosexual sex acts being more dangerous because they involve unintended uses of organs, well fine, but it strikes me as a purely technical argument; we’re not talking about risk-management here. It’s also not true that these acts are more dangerous because they’re unintended; as Fafner pointed out, there are safer ways to engage in non-procreative sex than heterosexual penetrative sex. We come back to the dividing point, which is in fact whether it’s morally important for an act to fulfill a natural teleology. I would argue that it’s not.

The morality of sexual acts was a central theme to the first part of Nate’s post. He recalled his early belief that “the idea that it would be possible to have sex immorally was absolutely fundamental.” I think most people would agree that it is possible to have sex immorally, rape being one example of it. This would indicate that mutual consent is considered fundamental (though perhaps not necessary) to the act of sex. For some people, the scope of morality in the act of sex, goes beyond mutual consent.

To me, Nate’s history, was about changing his thinking of sex from one in which the act itself (and therefore, its morality) was of primary consideration to thinking about whom he was longing to have sex with. In some sense, I see this as a transition from thinking of a means to an end. It seems like both things are fundamental to understanding sex, particularly in a relationship. That is, I hope that one’s partner is just as important (if not more so) to someone as the act itself.

I’m curious, Nate, what scope you now think morality has in the act of sex. For instance, do you still think it is immoral to engage in hetrosexual sex outside of marriage? I suspect you do not, but I could be wrong.

Spend two days doing almost nothing but watch seasons five and six of The X-Files, and all sorts of things can have happened while you weren’t looking.

Just a few comments on the things that are toward the end of this thread; hopefully I can return to some of the questions directed my way earlier on later today.

Missy wrote:

To me, Nate’s history, was about changing his thinking of sex from one in which the act itself (and therefore, its morality) was of primary consideration to thinking about whom he was longing to have sex with. In some sense, I see this as a transition from thinking of a means to an end. It seems like both things are fundamental to understanding sex, particularly in a relationship. That is, I hope that one’s partner is just as important (if not more so) to someone as the act itself.

I’m curious, Nate, what scope you now think morality has in the act of sex. For instance, do you still think it is immoral to engage in hetrosexual sex outside of marriage? I suspect you do not, but I could be wrong.

Missy, that’s an interesting angle to take on my account, but it’s certainly not the one that was foremost in my mind. I do not think belief in the morality of homosexuality requires the transition you describe. I do not think that the act of sex, abstracted from the relationship of the desires and identity of the person or persons involved, is sufficient for moral judgment.

To pick a colorful example, do you think that if a man is able to wholly impersonate a woman’s husband (as in Face Off, I hear, or an episode of X-Files I just watched) and thereby have sex with her, that the act is morally equivalent for both of them? The act itself is one of straightforward adultery. The wife, however, in her desires and understanding is blameless, while the man is clearly a certain kind of rapist.

Morality clearly still has an enormous role in sexuality, and one of the best reasons—to my mind—for gay marriage is to allow the holy sacrament of marriage to nurture and benefit homosexual relationships in the same way it does heterosexual ones, explicitly and implicitly teaching the lifelong development of sexual virtue.

I do still believe that it is immoral to have sex of any kind outside of marriage, though I must admit to being much more of C.S. Lewis’s mind these days on the subject. In The Great Divorce, the man with the lizard of sexual depravity is the only visitor to heaven able to accept the invitation to heaven, and the lizard is promptly transformed into a beautiful winged horse. Others who have sins like possessiveness of other people return proudly and stubbornly to hell. We do much wrong to sexuality by elevating it, in our persistent Puritanism, to such a tyrannical position in the worlds of vices and virtues.

Fafner wrote:

I don’t want to presume too much, but considering that Nate has previously mentioned that he doesn’t want children, and I doubt that he would be in an entirely sexless marriage without mentioning the fact, since it’s pretty relevant to this series of posts, it’s logical to conclude that he himself has non-procreative sex on a regular basis. So that’s not what his change of opinion was about, and not what he was initially arguing in favor of. I realize you’ve broadened the scope of the debate, but at the cost of missing several of Nate’s main points.

I have previously written that, haven’t I? I do, however, want to have children at some point. In the spirit of frankness, however, I openly grant that my marriage has been filled with deliberately non-procreative sex. I grant that for the Roman Catholics that read Monadology, this issue may be paramount in analyzing my discussion of the morality of homosexuality, but it is certainly not paramount for me. I must confess that, personally, I find the argument that non-procreative sex is immoral so patently unpersuasive that I fear to even touch on it without being disrespectful of the views of my friends. This is one of the reasons I tried to make my post as purely an account of my own story as possible, without being hostile to the many who will, of course, have very different questions than I have.

Michael Sullivan wrote:

Nate is obviously correct that there are many things necessary for a good and successful marriage other than complementary genitals, which by no means guarantee emotional, intellectual, or personal compatibility. But that fact is irrelevant to the question of whether complementary sex characteristics are not a necessary precondition for having a marriage at all, however good or bad.

Nate’s reflections on the subject are pervaded with “sexual orientation,” love, virtue, and so forth, and he reprimands himself for having been “fixated on sex acts.” I would argue, on the other hand, that in determining the moral question Nate isn’t fixated enough on acts. Only acts have moral weight, not emotions or orientations. “Being in love” is, all things considered, morally neutral: it’s what one chooses to do as a result that has moral weight.

The other odd thing that struck me about Nate’s essay is the fact that in all his reflections on love, sex, orientation, and the complementarity of the sexes, there isn’t a single mention of procreation. I say that this struck me, not that it surprised me, because I think there’s a case to be made that the only reason homosexual acts have entered the popular consciousness as a live moral option at all is because of prior decades of steady erosion in people’s minds of the connection between sex and procreation in heterosexual acts. But one ought to recognize that the same moral system (if consistent) that objects to homosexual acts also objects to artificial contraception and sodomy in heterosexual acts, and on similar grounds.

Michael, you’re right to point out in your last paragraph that the very platform I began upon, as an Evangelical Protestant, was already far removed from the Roman Catholic position on sexuality. I can certainly see how a RC might see all of my hand-wringing as a tremendously predictable and straightforward ideological drift as a consequence of having removed the act of procreation from its seat of primacy in determining the morality of sexuality.

The fundamental difference between deliberately having sex on days a woman is infertile and any other act of non-procreative sex still strikes me as sophistical. Moreover, granting morality to sex acts by virtue of their relationship to procreation strikes me as having gotten the whole fact of human sexuality the wrong way round, like trying to justify ice cream by virtue of its nutritional content.

The purpose of human sexuality, to my mind, is very straightforward: to make man in erotic relationship to another reflect the image of God, the profound dynamism described by the idea of the Trinity. That this divine purpose cascades down in myriad other benefits is one of the many ways in which creation is explosively filled with the blessings of God.

But this is hardly likely to be satisfying to you. I disagree very much with the idea that only acts have moral weight, and that emotions are morally neutral. I don’t believe that anything at all is morally neutral: all things are fundamentally good. All of creation is created by God to reflect his goodness: only by the twisting and bending of things into destructive forces does what we describe as “evil” occur. (It does not, importantly, “come into being”.) Sin is not a black goo that fills the heart, as it is described by people like Frank Peretti, it is “missing the mark” (hamartia), something not aiming precisely the way that is best for it.

The human soul is, then, properly understood as a menagerie of good things, with the sole caveat that many of them may be disordered, like exhibits of dinosaur bones that may or may not have been properly reassembled by their archeologists. It is up to the moralist to develop the canniness to distinguish between ordered and disordered desires, and, importantly, to be able to sort out the disordered desires and present them in their restored form. My posts were the story of my attempt to be such a moralist, and examine sexual desire and attempt to discern order and disorder.

Nate, I’m a bit confused by your explanation of the purpose of sex. If man’s sexual relationship is supposed to reflect the image of God, wouldn’t a threesome be the best sexual act? I don’t fully understand how you are interpreting God as a Trinity and man being made in His image.

I can’t help but see the procreative purpose of sex to be essential to man being made in the image of God. Just as the Holy Spirit procedes from the Father and the Son, offspring procede from a man and woman.

It also strikes me as odd that you would compare the creation of a new human being to the nutritional value of ice cream. Procreation is such a divine mystery, one in which we are more like God than any other, that to negate its value in the very act in which it can occur, dismisses the incredible awesomeness of life itself. I just don’t understand how these things can be so easily separated, and would appreciate further clarification.

Like Nate, I’ve just returned to this thread after several days of holiday-related internet separation. As usual, I find myself agreeing with a lot of the foundation of Michael’s arguments, but disagreeing on where they end up. In trying to sort that out, Missy’s last comment was helpful, although I’m not sure any of what I’m about to say will meet Michael or Missy on the grounds they’re expecting.

Missy wrote: Procreation is such a divine mystery, one in which we are more like God than any other….

I sense this is one of my biggest differences with the Roman position. There are some who believe in natural teleologies who find this emphasis on procreation misplaced. Yes, it’s one end of man. It’s also an end man shares with all other life.

There’s another end for man, however, that seems to be much more difficult and complicated than procreation (and possibly more divine). I guess I think that that other end of man, to know, seems to take a kind of precedence over the end we share with animals. I mean, we’ve got this other ability that seems to be divine in its own way, such that it requires a reevaluation of all of our other actions and possible ends. Procreation seems to have to take a modified and potentially lesser position, then, when we look at what is the best way for men to live.

So, it’s in the context of this higher and more complicated end that I look at ethical choices like how to act on desires. The admirable consistency of the Roman position seems to falter for me when it admits that people can be born with (or at least feel throughout their lives) erotic desires for persons of the same sex, but be required never to act sexually on those desires. Sure, I say, but is such a life truly consistent with virtue? I mean, for some people, maybe, and not just those with homosexual desires—some people are saints, by which I mean I’m willing to grant that for some category of people a life of celibacy would be a life consistent with virtue. But for most humans, the education of eros is not so readily accomplished. That’s why it’s better for them to marry than to burn. Among the many excellent aspects of sexual acts is their astonishing educational potential. It just seems like for non-saints, the education of eros can’t begin or is unlikely to proceed very far without the proper attention being paid to the desire for beautiful bodies. And for most people, that attention can’t be paid without some experience of the exercise of those desires physically. Otherwise, they’ll just be repressing eros instead of channeling it, and repressing or ignoring or hating desire is always destined for failure. Only by acknowledging and somehow properly directing our desires can they come to assist us in excellence.

The Roman position, it seems to me, comes back and says, You know, it’s okay for two men with exclusively homosexual desires to live with each other, be intimate with one another, and even lie down with each other, so long as they don’t act on their desires to have sex with one another, just like Alcibiades and Socrates, or like Socrates and Diotima (if you so read the dialogue). To me, that seems like a position not only fraught with practical peril and inaccurate (do we suppose that Alcibiades or Socrates were virgins?), but also one that denies from most of such people the path towards virtue that Diotima sets forth.

I’m not saying, “if it feels good, do it,” but instead asking, with the premise I stated above, How best to deal with eros so as to bring about virtue?

@Missy:

“If man’s sexual relationship is supposed to reflect the image of God, wouldn’t a threesome be the best sexual act?”

How open-minded of you!

More seriously:

I can’t help but see the procreative purpose of sex to be essential to man being made in the image of God. Just as the Holy Spirit procedes from the Father and the Son, offspring procede from a man and woman.

It also strikes me as odd that you would compare the creation of a new human being to the nutritional value of ice cream. Procreation is such a divine mystery, one in which we are more like God than any other, that to negate its value in the very act in which it can occur, dismisses the incredible awesomeness of life itself.

Life is, indeed, awesome. The first statement of God to creation in the Genesis story is a blessing: “Be fruitful and increase in number”. Shortly thereafter God says: “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” Food is a divine mystery. The ability of the body to metabolize the material of the earth and use its energy to nourish us is an abundant miracle.

But how do you treat this miracle of food? Must all the food that you consume be for the purpose of nutrition? Do you eat a rigidly controlled diet of the things that serve the end of bodily nutrition? Or do you take a different attitude: that one of the miracles of food is that the blessing of nutrition is so abundant that it is almost impossible to miss, that food contains in it myriad blessings in addition to nutrition, such as beauty and pleasure, to name but a few? And instead of condemning all food that is not perfectly nutritive, don’t you attempt to consume food with the goal of a kind of more general health, one where the different goods of food are ultimately balanced?

Human procreation is a divine blessing: it’s such an abundant miracle that it happens all the time. It’s so abundant that placing it as the sole ground for moral sex seems as absurd as my telling you that the only way to eat morally is to drink only protein shakes. Sex has so much more to teach us: about pleasure, about beauty, about self-discipline, about inter-dependence, about our need for the other, about our dependence on eros, about the goodness of the flesh, about our unique characters, about love’s maturity… that the creation of new life is made part of this is a profound gift of our natures. To make procreation king of these virtues, however, is a tyranny that subverts and disorders our God-given sexual natures.

I’m concerned, then, about our health as sexual beings, and just as in eating, I think our culture is filled with self-destructive habits. Our focus on marrying later so people can focus on careers seems to me to be more of a threat to our sexual health than homosexuality, which, as Robbie described, can be argued (for me, persuasively) to be a useful and healthy aspect of our collective lives.

Thanks, by the way, for your comments on this thread (and to Michael, Dan, Robbie, Joe, Julia, Mirabai, Tania, hb, and Rachel, too); I’m enjoying the discussion immensely.

Food is a good thing, and it is even more wonderful that we are often able to nourish our bodies with food that is also pleasing to our senses. That does not mean that all food and all forms of eating are morally equivalent. Gluttony can occur in a variety of ways, some of which have little to do with the nutrional value in a given kind of food. Eating too many vegetables can be gluttonous in the same way as eating too much ice cream. The pleasure that can occur when consuming food is not a bad thing, but food consumed solely for the purpose of pleasure is generally considered sinful.

Obviously, given the abundance of nutrional food, there are many things that can be eaten other than protein shakes to nourish the body. Therefore, eating morally is not a matter of what you eat but how it is eaten. Despite their nutrional value, protein shakes could still be eaten immorally, if say, you kept drinking them for the taste after already being full.

I would by no means say that procreation is the sole ground for moral sex, but I fail to see how the abundance of babies being born has anything to do with whether procreation is involved in the morality of sex. I also fail to see why giving more weight to procreation in determining the morality of sexual acts ‘subverts and disorders our God-given sexual natures.’ Obviously, it is naturally possible to have sex and not reproduce. It is a huge blessing from God that sex serves other purposes in our lives in addition to procreation. Fertility is a natural goodness of humans, and it is particularly wonderful that couples who experience infertility are still able to take part in the joy of sex, just like coulples who are capable of getting pregnant but are not in a position to do so.

I’m afraid this will digress into an argument about contraception, in which I see little point. I’d rather ask on what grounds is the morality of a sexual act determined, particularly if procreation is dismissed?

I’d also like to say that while in the past I’ve spoken out against the legalization of homosexual marriage, I now am almost entirely of the belief that the legal recognition of any kind of marriage by the government serves no purpose. As Nate has pointed out, marriage is a way to cultivate sexual virtue, but I see this as only happening inside of a religious institution. I’m not sure what value this would be to the governemnt. I also wonder what benefits, if any, the governemnt should bestow on a married couple and why.

Mr. Sullivan wrote:

I am unaware of any biological benefits produced by homosexual sex acts, unless you mean things like endorphin releases, but that’s also true of, say, recreational drugs.

I was assuming, perhaps carelessly, that we would all casually agree that sex has benefits other than procreation, and then claiming that homosexual sex ought to have most or all of the same ones. I didn’t have much particular in mind, but for the things you sometimes read in the popular press about lower rates of prostate cancer and so on — things of the sort outlined in places like this. Of course you may find all of that silly or something. But I called your statement that “homosexual sex acts produce pleasure but serve no biological function” unclear, since I’m not sure what you mean by “biological function.” I suppose that you might mean some sort of “high” function, allowing very few like metabolism and reproduction, and then your point may be granted, but then I’m not sure what’s at stake in it. By some other meaning of biological function, it seems to me that the sex acts themselves may be understood as such, or that many such occur during sex. Of course it is true that emergency room doctors can remind us of all sorts of shocking and unhealthy consequences of sexual activity, homosexual and heterosexual, but it nevertheless seems to me manifestly true that sex can be understood, on the whole and in the most straight-forward ways, as healthy and healthful, whether heterosexual or homosexual. If the claim is that homosexual sex is somehow harmful in a more subtle way, despite its appearance to the contrary, I don’t think appeals to emergency room statistics make that point.

(Also, I wonder if the greater incidence of damaged rectums in the ER than damaged vaginas isn’t due — in addition to the more delicate tissue, as Mrs. Sullivan pointed out — to the fact of men’s having the former and not the latter. I expect there’s also all manner of astonishing penis-stuck-in-object tales as well, again, both hetero- and homosexual.)

Also, most of your references to “homosexual sex” and “sodomy” seems to refer only or principally to anal sex. It has already been pointed out here that many heterosexual couples have anal sex; I don’t think it’s yet been pointed out here that not all sexually-active homosexual men do. There are apparently (I’m reading from Wikipedia) many studies spanning many years showing vast differences in the rates of anal sex among both heterosexuals and homosexuals; some of them — which are not outliers, though variation is wide — that suggest something between 1/3 and 1/2 of heterosexuals (in the US, or North America) reporting having had anal sex, or those that have similar percentages of homosexual men claiming not to. One assumes the rate for homosexual women is still lower.

I don’t mean by this to speak at all to your argument about natures and teleologies, but to undermine the easy conflation of “homosexual” and “anal,” since the statement of yours to which I was initially responding (“homosexual sex acts produce pleasure but serve no biological function, and tend inevitably to lead to many kinds of disease and injury”), though it might be expanded upon or clarified, as it stands does seem to me false and also stigmatizing.

Also, I sense that there’s a deeper problem here over our understanding of what the word “morality” even means. Method reveals something of his view of it, which might be the one pluralistic and democratic societies tend toward generally, when he says: “It seems that the necessary and sufficient condition for an act to be moral is that it be moral—in particular that it respects others’ autonomy and personhood, increases good and decreases harm.” I am inclined to doubt that everyone here would agree on that.

I admit I’m inclined toward Method’s view. Sure, eating gluttonously only to visit the vomitorium is wildly decadent, certainly not virtuous — but immoral? Maybe so, but in a fairly deep way, I think, the application of that word immediately sends my mind to elaborating on the scenario with other people who are suffering from deficiency. For me, and it sounds like for Method, and I would wager for most modern Westerners, morality is basically and fundamentally about other people. With this talk of teleologies, it sounds like for some of us here it may also be about that, but perhaps not principally.

Certainly my sense of my own difference in this is more clear with the less decadent example of ice cream. I do agree that gluttony is a vice, but if my body manages to extract any nutritive value from an ice cream cone or a piece of candy, as far as I am concerned that is entirely accidental. Is it thus immoral of me to eat an ice cream cone or a piece of candy now and then? Or to have a drink? I do these things in moderation, but they are, for me, rather straight-forwardly sensual pleasures. Are they immoral? It is very hard for me to understand that they might be.

Great post, Nate, and excellent comments everyone else. I’ve little to add to this discussion, save this from a few weeks ago:

http://derebusvitae.blogspot.com/2008/12/2-year-anniversary-thoughts-on-marriage.html

Mainly I want to say that I found Nate’s essays compelling because of how he came to understand himself-and not just homosexuality-better. And I’m impressed at his articulateness and candor in explaining why he originally disapproved of homosexuality and what made him change his view.

As for the idea that sex is primarily for procreation, the main image I have is of Tristam Shandy’s father dutiful winding his clocks and then equally dutifully mounting his wife. Like Robbie, hb, and others, I believe sex is valuable regardless of whether it can result in a child. Denying that seems, well, blinkered, albeit amusing.

Any case, I am a devout sinner which perhaps explains something. Taking pride in my wickedness, after I post this I plan to have a chocolate truffle: not because I’m hungry (which I’m not) or because I need more saturated fat but simply because I’m a glutton.

NICK! So glad to see you here. I think I disagree with you that enjoying a chocolate truffle purely for taste reasons makes you a glutton, but I also think you might not agree with yourself on that one. I, for one, think it’s okay to drink white wine (a nutritionally void substance, according to modern research) and eat dessert sometimes.

Nate - I got all the way through part 1 and 2 and really appreciate your thoughts. Thank you.

Dear Nate,

Thank you for your essay. I found it carefully and thoughtfully written. Your earlier positions on the subject conveyed in Part 1 enlightened me about Evangelical values on sexuality more than anything I have ever read. And I was raised an Evangelical Lutheran!

Your description of what is so right in your marriage to your wife is exactly what is so right to me in a same sex relationship. Indeed, the knowledge is in ourselves. The simplicity of your discovery seems as divine to me as anything ever could to a secular person. Compared to the verbosity that inevitably follows an essay like this, it only seems that clearer.

Concerning your delight on your discovery: Do not feel burdened by your privilege. I see nothing arrogant in your acceptance of gay people, as there is nothing condescending about it. Simple, pure acceptance is, after all, what Harvey Milk strived for. And personally, I sincerely thank you for accepting me.

Yours,
HoF

@Robbie: I appreciate your making that particular point about the non-universality of sodomy in male homosexuality; Bek told me about Stephen Fry making that point in one of his books, something I found surprising and interesting.

@MJ & HJ: Thank you!

@Nick: I, too, am glad to see you here, Nick! Your comment made me spend a while reading the Tristram Shandy Wikipedia entry, thus significantly augmenting my cultural literacy. I appreciate, too, your focusing in on my essay’s description of my self-understanding: I tried very much not to write a comprehensive argument for the case of homosexuality being moral. I’m not adequate to that task, frankly. But I hoped that a frank and broad representation of my own inner life and how the issue affected me would make the story interesting even for people who disagreed with my conclusions. I meant the title to be very specific: it is, first and foremost, simply an attempt to explain why this matters to me.

@Huckleberry of Finns: Thank you for your gracious comment. I was particularly pleased to have you respond to the first part of the essay. As I was in the process of writing this, the Rick Warren flap happened, and I felt some significant grief and frustration over the demonization of Warren as a bigot. Much of the case against homosexuality is strengthened by straw-men arguments against it. For me, it was tremendously important to my conversion that someone making the argument for homosexuality really understand my actual position and arguments, rather than attack me for being a bigot or a homophobe. I’d love it if my experience could help people who’ve never been Evangelical Christians to feel less anger at Evangelicals and to have better arguments against their condemnation of homosexuality.

@ Hayden: I meant to give some witty reply like how I didn’t agree with your taste in white wine but would defend your right to drink it, but they all sounded forced. So I won’t.

@Nate: I’m surprised I never mentioned Tristram Shandy before: it was one of my favorite books when I was at St. John’s (still is, though I’ve been planning to read Locke before rereading it). There is a surprisingly faithful movie adaptation that came out a few years ago.

and while this is much too late, @Michael Sullivan at 16: Chinese “ghost marriages” (冥婚), which apparently originated in the Zhou and still occur, make it difficult for me to believe that the orientation to procreation is a universal feature of marriages. If I was to make a sweeping generalization about the purpose of Chinese marriages it would be: marriages are necessary to produce an heir to carry on the ancestral rites. Having a son is one method, adoption is another. And I can think of other purposes for marriage, e.g. uniting two families or lightening one’s mother’s duties. I do not really think any one purpose includes all marriages in China, though all are recognized as marriages and not as some other social arrangement.

As for Chinese views towards homosexual marriages, Li Yu’s short story “A Male Mencius’ Mother” (the “mother” is male) is one, though probably not mainstream. Still, Bret Hinsch mentions in his introduction to “Passions of the Cut Sleeve” that “many times homosexuality acted as an integral part of society, complete with same-sex marriages for both men and women.” I haven’t read the book, so does anyone know more?

Sorry for the lengthy and belated reply, but some of my parents’ friends are married homosexual couples (we had a liberal pastor), I think the statement is false, and I like showing that studying Chinese culture is useful.