Sexuality has, especially in recent memory, been a point of contention in the Church and in the wider culture. By some, it is idolized as the means by which we affirm our identity and our humanity. By others, it is wrongly seen as a result of sin.
We live in a culture rife with dichotomy—with the most obvious display of this in our sharp distinction between those on the left and those on the right. The labels “heterosexual” and “homosexual” within the culture and the Church have been extremely unhelpful in the discussion around sexuality and its inherent meaning and purpose. Each term is unhelpfully loaded with assumptions, biases and cultural coercion—which ultimately reduce a person to what they do with their genitalia.
The terms, a relatively recent development of the 19th and 20th centuries, are now clearly a norm within all facets of society — to the point of taking them for granted and assuming their timelessness. Not only is this sexual binary reductive, it is also socially constructed.
Michael Hannon, in an article on sexuality, quotes historian of human sexuality Jonathan Ned Katz’s book, “The Invention of Heterosexuality.”
“Contrary to today’s bio-belief, the heterosexual/homosexual binary is not in nature, but is socially constructed, therefore deconstructable,” Katz said.
Hannon goes on to say, “It [orientation essentialism] has displaced the old marital-procreative principles of chastity, without offering any alternative that is not entirely arbitrary.”
I would argue that the categories and labels utilized by our society are harmful in that it replaces a theological understanding of the person with one that is psychiatric and hyper-generalized. This has suggested, and continued to suggest, that “heterosexuality” is the norm, with “homosexuality” being historically considered “a species,” to use Michel Foucault’s words, also quoted in Hannon’s piece.
The problem with all of this is that it reduces human beings to “human do-ings,” and with the entrenchment of sexual identity in the very idea of personhood, to the point of even overtaking it in common parlance, it becomes very difficult to engage in dialogue about things like sexuality and moral theology.
The Christian idea of what a person is coincides with the fact that they are created in the image and likeness of God — with inherent dignity and infinite worth in that alone. The modern idea of a person’s action defining them is antithetical to the gospel, in that it reduces the identity of a person to their attraction towards a particular act, all the while giving “heteronormative” couples a pass, even though they can just as easily commit the same act. Hopefully, we as a society, as a Church and as a university, can have an honest discussion about what sexuality is and what it fundamentally means to be a human person.
Luke Nolan, Staff Writer
nolanl17@bonaventure.edu
