Homosexual Acts: Image and Tradition Robert Cooper An Episcopal psychiatrist, Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, defines homosexuality as an adult adaptation characterized by preferential sexual behavior between members of the same sex. 1 intend here to concentrate upon some possible ‘meanings of homosexual activity, and upon some possible judgments upon them which can be ‘brought to bear from within Christian biblical interpretation and Christian tradition. I intend also to discuss the discourse and ideology of some views which directly or indirectly afford support to homosexual activity. I will not deal directly with what Dr. Barnhouse refers to as “homosexual identification,” since for me to do so is to encroach upon expert knowledge which I do not pretend to have. ‘The present essay is consciously dogmatic. It is dogmatic with reference to the Scripture, in two particular instances; and with regard to the received traditions of the Church. For me that dogmatic position is positively to be valued with respect to traditions and authority (and I will rely upon H. G. Gadamer and Philip Rieff in these areas). Against such authoritativeness are opposed ‘two contemporary ways of seeing things: the Positivistic view of things, and the technological- ‘quantitative view of things. Thave no notion that those wedded to some “life-style,” i.e., those who are deeply affectively habituated (identification) to some style of life and specific determination of behavior (behavior pattern) will be brought “round, let alone be converted, by argumettt, or by appeal to greater images. Atleast some of us, however might—and not -unreasonably—be expected to be persuaded from ‘or confirmed in our present reasoned views by rational argumentation and by appeal to images. Itis principally to the latter group, viz., those susceptible to argument and image, that the following remarks.are addressed, though'| am not without hope that if there be any of the former ‘among us, they too may find something suasive in them. Ic is my thesis that every homosexual act is directed against the basic images given us in ‘Scripture of how God is related to the world and ‘of how Christ is related to his church;! and is Phimblone Vol. 6, rau, + Sen ATE directed against the massive weight of Christian traditions up until our own time (if our own time can yet be spoken of as traditional). The thesis can also achieve a more positive, partial, statement: Every marital act of sexual intercourse is given life by the image of God as the creator and by the image of Christ as the bridegroom of his church, Every marital act of sexual intercourse reaffirms and instantiates the truth of that act’s enabling image: humanity is male and female, and in that union of male and female with each other there is wholeness. Non-marital heterosexual acts have only a parasitical “‘integrity.”” Such non-marital acts have whatever worth they have by virtue of the images already referred to above. This is not to ‘deny that persons find gratification, a species of healing, a “therapy” in heterosexual actions outside of marriage. Such extra-marital liaisons remain, however, a travesty upon the images of God-creator, male-female wholeness, and Christ- ‘church; and against the sacrament of marriage: Such acts constitute an abasing of the imagery and ‘an abasing of the theological truth about us and about God. ‘A homosexual act is not only a travesty upon ‘those images and their truth, but itis an aggressive action, a destructive action: aggressive and destructive with respect to the images. Every “adult preferential" homosexual act constitutes a lie directed against the truth about us. Worse than that, it isan action which proclaims that the fundamental image, truth, is ali. Such acts are ‘Der secontemptuous of the images, treating them ‘not only as if they did not matter, or as if they had. ‘no power, but as if they, indeed, were not. Such acts are directed against the images of God as creator and Christ as bridegroom of the church. Not only are homosexual acts directed against the images, they are directed against the derived integrity of every sexual act within marriage, indeed against every heterosexual act. Each such ‘act stands over against the marital condition and casts scorn upon it. The same is true, with the Qualifications mentioned earlier; of any heterosexual act. The homosexual act says to the hetetosexual act, to the conjugal sexual act, “Mine is as good as yours—or better.” Its‘necessary here, because my views are strongly Stated (remaining to be argued for, as they will be), to mention that there is frequently a failure of charity when the heterosexual actor persecutes or ridicules the homosexual actor. That homosexual actors (persons) have been maltreated, persecuted, held in contempt, etc., is beyond doubt, though perhaps not beyond excuse. Such behaviors are to be ceased from and are to be lamented for what they at the least are, viz., failures of charity. Probably the caveat for charity will not shore ‘me up against rebuff or reproach. That such a view as I have sketched is utterly unpalatable, utterly repugnant, to a large segment of the ‘contemporary positivistic mind cannot, I think, be ‘reasonably doubted. For it is the mark of the, positivistic mind that itis arbitrary, setting out ‘what will constitute its world, setting out what is given for it. The positivistic mind is the determiner ‘of what is given for it. In short, it determines what isa situation, and what is and what is not to be encompassed in the ‘‘situation."” ‘The situation is reduced to-some function of what is presently, delimitedly, of interest. Its precisely forgetful of continuity, of beyonds, of pasts, of what is—or even may be—beyond present interést. In its concentration upon who or ‘what is, it mistakes who or what is for what is presently a function of its attention or interest. ‘The positivistic mind thrives on episodic, discontinuous, consciousness. The mind of positivism is essentially the mind of the barbarian, Jf thats not a contradiction in terms. Philip Rieff thas claimed thatthe barbarian hasno memory. I would add that he has little future. Language, in any usual non-technical sense, requires memory—miemory that is cultural, traditional, cultic and many other things as well. ‘The language of the positivist, like his consciousness is episodic and discontinuous. Language will miean what he wants it to mean. detail, fora culture such as ours in whieh ideologists of the homoxesual act tell ys solemnly that the only difference between hhomose and heterosexual aets is that of penis-va ‘contact! It is really only a matter of th fitting together. The meaning is the fit together of-the purts, narrowly specified pa ‘We arestil, in this advanced twentieth century, genitally fixated, yender-erazed, mist ‘masculine/ Feminine wonder of Man made in the imago Det, That fixation upon genitat connection, upon parts, upon technique isa type of specification of Function. We narrow human being 10 be and fo mean something that is a Function of our givens, givens whieh are highly cclectically détived. This problem has a parallel in the formation of dogma by the ehurch: typically it has been heresy which has called forth dogma, Heresy is always caricature. Genital fixation, technique, is caricature. Caricature, in turn, elicits an effort to recover wholeness, that wholeness which alone makes possible caricature. ‘One is to measure, to judge, the act against the ‘maxim of the action. More importantly, however, how do we judge the maxim of the action? What, ‘more loosely (than by Kant) put, may be held to have such authority that it could judge the maxim of the action, the maxim in this case governing homosexual acts? And what, beyond that, might ‘govern, judge, the maxim of any action at all? ‘That authority for Kant is, of course, the I Imperative. I ite but two of the ns of the Categorical Imperative, First, there is “the universal imperative of duty”: “Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will (0 become a universal law of nature."” Second, theres “the practical imperative’: “Act so that ‘you treat humanity, whether in your own person. ‘or in that of another, always asan end and never asa means only.’ ‘We know, and Kant knew, that all acts are in the world, in the phenomenal world. Two people are either engaged in a sexual act or they are not “We are still, in this advanced 20th century, —_(Barnhouse), These acts inthe world (and there : Ate are acts outside the world) are necessarily genitally fixated, gender-crazed, missing the teteronomous. There enters here, therefore, the - masculine/feminine wonder of Man made in greathost of conditioning or mitigating the imago Dei.”” ‘Such ““language’’is typically sloganistic or verges upon being sloganistic. Philip Rieff says that “A. slogan is an uprooted saying.”” It is not infrequently jargon, not infrequently scientist or—if I may be permitted my own barbarism— technique-ish. ‘Technique is a principal preoccupation of our time, Jacques Ellul has convinced me that proper definition of technology is the one best way ‘of doing something. Nuance is suppressed by technique. The personal and the beautifully singular things of human experience are forced by technique into the one best way of doing whatever iis that is being done, This isa pertinent consideration, as will try to show later in some circumstances. This host embraces ints vanguard the usual (and not infrequently supportable) caveats about the bloodlessness of Kant. Gadamer quotes Dilthey on Kant: “*No real blood runs in the veins of the knowing subject that Locke, Hume, and Kant constructed.” Gadamer, in Truth and Method is finally not sympathetic to Kant, for there is a species of positivism in Kant ‘whose quest for autonomy removes one in the end from his eavironing world, the human world; orin my theme, from the world of images and our being traditioned in the Christian faith. We all know that the Categorical Imperative, unlike life (phenomenal life), is contentless; that it isa formal criterion for judgment of the maxim of actions. ‘Whatever else may be said, Kant’s Categorical Imperative places such a maxim as “If you val homosexual contact, then do a homosexual act”into question. The Christian doctrine of sin (heteronomous consideration) leads us to believe that for the most part people will do what they want to if they can, and that if necessary they will find some justification for doing so and continuing to do so. In Kant’s terms, the persons homosexually in actu (I am thinking here of two ‘consenting adults, so that there are no complicating factors of “‘group sex”” or “homosexual rape,"") are willing that by their act that homosexual action become a tniversal law of nature. One consequence of this willed activity would be that soon, because by their act all would engage in homosexual acts, there would be no ‘more people—it being impossible to concei human beings homosexvally—to engage homosexual acts. That, therefore, which is valued isa value which finally is impossible to actualize. In short, such enacted values are self-defeating. But who can take this seriously? ‘The quesion of homosexual acts is commonly discussed with reference to precisely those conditioning or mitigating factors, with—if you will—heteronomous considerations. How, then, will we adjudicate those factors? Leaving aside the special pleading of myriad others, mention only the approach of Fletcher and Wassmer.|? Grossly, but not inaccurately put, for those two ethicists homosexual acts are natural. They are natural for human beings because they are passible for human beings. What one has with Fletcher and Wassmer, then, is the positivism of human being. What is, valued by human beings, given the condition of foving (whatever that equivocation means), is justifiable by that condi love. Love too Possible, and therefore natural for human beings. Is there any consideration of a judgment that might transcend these positivistically valued human actions for Fletcher and Wassmer? There is not. Functionally, these ethicists are atheists. ‘The world is adequate to itself, and instrumental reason reigns over that world, justifying in the ultimate court of human possibility what is valued. ‘Any account, as I have said, of heteronomy, of the conditioning or mitigating factors, has to take account here of our Christian traditions, has to deal at Jeast in part with our being christianly traditioned. We are always other than and more than we know. We are always other than and more than.that of which we are conscious. We are ‘always other than and more than that which we value because value is largely a function of consciousness; but existence is not a function of consciousness. I turn now, and finally, toa Further elaboration of what Fhave called the technological-quantitative view which stands over against our images and our traditions. ‘have already said in the preceding discussion ‘much of what f want to say about the technological-quantitative view. I claim that our views of human sexuality are presently largely. technologized. Technology thrives on that wiiich it ‘enables: mass production and the standardization, of parts. Technology is an epiphenomenal world; itis a world on a world, It isa succubus, or incubus, which we willingly take to ourselves. Itis technology more and more that has come to ‘govern our imaginations. We become fixated on things and the ways (often marvelous) in which they work. We become fixated on the parts and {ose easily any perspective upon the whole. Those who claim to own their bodies are in good fortune, for there is an ever-growing spate of owner's ‘manuals promising them the way to bodily health and beauty, finesse in sexual intercours ecological hints for our bodies in their “bio- environment," etc. Those in search of “alternate lifestyles” and those in—if there are any more of them—‘counter cultures”” have sought to give us back the world upon which the succubus/incubus eee “It is my thesis that every homosexual act is directed against the basic images given us in Scripture of how God is related to the world and of how Christ is related to his Church.” ee hhas been fastened. I have claimed, however, from the outset of this paper-that what can give the world back to us is our images and our traditions in the Christian faith. ‘The images give us our true selves, for it is the Christian claim that we have forgot ourselves, that we have strayed from who we are. The images enable humanity according to the intention of humaaity’s creator. In a journal entry, Sdren Kierkegaard remarked that, Imagination is what providence uses to take ‘men captive in actuality [Virkeligheden], in tence [Tilvaereisen], in order to get them far ‘enough out, or within, or down into actuality. And when imagination has helped them get as far out as they should be—then actuality genuinely begins. 14 Imagination gives us back actuality. It gives the world back to us, and it gives us over to the world. ‘That is a central truth of incarnational thinking, ‘Weare given over, but we are not given up. We are not our own. We have been made for God, in the image of God in the wholeness of male and feinale. That image is restored in Christ, the new Adam. Were it not so pitiful it would be ridiculous ‘that we are governed mightily now by a search for creating an ‘‘image’* for ourselves, and we search for a.tlife-style.”* The homosexual organization which—in a violent and perverse distortion of language—cals itself “Integrity,” seeks for its ‘members the enablement of “‘self-affirmation”” and “‘self-actualization.”’ This makes a travesty of baptism. “Life-style” is our preoccupation, It is another ‘name for se/f-shness. It is an evidence that we have lost sight of *‘character,”* which for the Christian was the perduring identity of himself before God, what used to be called the soul. Soul