Through a glass darkly

I am down with a nasty cold, which has been making both my thinking and my feeling functions wobbly. Feeling, especially.

Two thoughts that have occurred to me before, to blog on. So why not now? My eloquence is low, but...well, hardly a world crisis.

First. It has not escaped my notice that I am deaf to a music that the vast majority of men (and women) throughout history have heard and moved to: the primal attraction of one sex for its opposite. I can tell a beautiful woman from a plain one; while her beauty may impress, it does not move me to awe. Does not draw me or arouse me.

But I am not unmusical. At all. On the contrary. My primal attraction is to my own sex, other males, other men. This music fills the universe for me. To me, it is the most utterly natural thing in the world. I hardly ever feel more my full true self than when this almost divine force is enacted between me and another man whom I love. Most people find this kind of human sexual connection, to put it mildly, deeply problematic. But for me, it is the only music that makes me want to dance.

Second. The sexual-moral teaching of Catholicism is crucial to its identity and survival. I have expressed some surprise about dissident Catholics who expect the Church to overturn this in order to accomodate people who are outside its boundaries. Homosexuality is, of course, the issue closest to home.

But my respect for the Church's position and tradition does not include me submitting to it. That is in very large measure why I left it. What does throw me is knowing of people whose sexuality is for their own gender and who accept the orthodox judgment that their kind of lovemaking is always essentially a sin. That is beyond me.

What must their experience be like, that they could believe such a thing?