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The Difficult Tribe
In various controversies on the issue of homosexuality, I have noticed two opposite, and (to my mind) erroneous tendencies. The first is to treat the state of being homosexual as something unspeakably strange and dreadful, hardly to be mentioned except by wide circumlocution. The second is a brassily clinical approach – ‘Ah, well, there always have been homos; there always will be – let’s just legalise the situation and forget about it. . . .’
Personally I bring the matter up for several reasons. Very lately I reviewed page 363 a fine book of verse by an English poet; and noticed, (though from care for another’s reputation I didn’t mention it in my review), that there were several homosexual love poems in the book. Lately also I was conversing with a friend of mine who has the disadvantage of a homosexual temperament; and he pointed out rather bitterly that it was not so much the reproach of other people as their hypocrisy that troubled him, their surface tolerance and violent underlying prejudice. These factors and several others combined to make me try to re-think my own attitudes; and I would like to give you the fruit of this thinking, relying as always on the charitable judgments of my fellow-Catholics.
It is plain enough that homosexual acts are in the eyes of the Church objectively sinful. There is, however, a somewhat barbarous tradition that the special wrath of God is reserved for those who perform such acts. I doubt if the tradition is theologically valid. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven (for the purpose of this argument I take the story as being an actual reported event, not just a legend) would seem to have happened because of the general moral dereliction of the inhabitants of those cities and because of their gross violation of the spirit and forms of hospitality, so important in the lives of Semitic peoples. At least this interpretation is quite possible. If it is correct, the sin of Sodom, for which, along with several other sins, according to my catechism, the wrath of God is especially reserved, would not be deliberate homosexuality but a deliberate gross breach of the laws of hospitality. I think anyone who holds the first view should seriously consider whether he or she may not have been labouring under a misapprehension.
In justice one has to distinguish clearly between the possession of a particular temperament and the acts that may or may not proceed from the possession of such a temperament. If Joe Blake or Fanny Adams happen to be saddled with a homosexual temperament (which may show itself plainly in various secondary characteristics, such as manner of speech or style of dress, or a prudent avoidance of the state of marriage) this is plainly enough their business, and God’s business. No doubt a good many of the saints had homosexual temperaments. I doubt if any of us have the right, let alone the capability, to interfere and try to rectify the complex psychological and biological mechanisms of other people. To those who may reply that the possession of a homosexual temperament is a disease, I offer the suggestion that they may be jumping to rash conclusions. The place of people who have such a temperament in the Divine economy is obscure to me. I find it reasonable to suppose that they have a special place; and that it is too easy a way out to say bluntly: ‘I’m normal; you’re abnormal. You’d better do something about it pretty smartly, mate.’
The whole issue of what is normal and what is abnormal is complicated deeply by the fallen state of man. I doubt if human psychology or biology ever functions entirely normally; for the ‘normal’ state of human beings is actually page 364 paradisal, and we have no direct knowledge of such a state. In the meantime it would be wiser to say to the person of homosexual temperament: ‘Good luck to you. Your problems are sometimes hard for me to understand. But you have my full respect, and if I can help you in any way, I’ll be glad to try. . . .’
The common liabilities of the homosexual temperament are obvious enough – a tendency towards narcissism, temptations to a particular kind of impurity, and a mental and physical bias that makes it highly dangerous for them to marry. Those who advocate marriage as the solution for homosexual problems seem to me peculiarly blind. What man or woman is likely to live happily with a partner whose deepest preference is for members of his or her own sex? I have seen lives badly wrecked by this imprudent attempt at a solution.
On the other hand, either by total celibacy – a surprising number of homosexuals do heroically achieve this – or by a struggling growth (such as we other sinners ordinarily manage) towards a final integration and altruism, with no doubt many moral lapses – by these roads homosexuals are able to develop. But one has to remember that the love of a homosexual has a different timbre and quality from that of his or her heterosexual neighbour.
I am unable to count this as a liability. I remember too clearly how in the last stages of my own singularly painful adolescence I had the good fortune to make friends with a man of homosexual temperament – and how his charity and tolerance and a personal love, essentially motherly and protective in quality, helped me to grow and survive and understand myself. He most scrupulously avoided influencing me towards a homosexual way of life. I regard his intervention in my life at that time as providential. And I am glad God gave one man the power to love his fellows so well. His conversation incidentally was humorous and scatological. It was what I needed most to add some salt to the porridge. And he had a deep understanding of the processes of art.
The central problem of the homosexual, like that of the heterosexual, is to learn to love well. A person who loves well will avoid harming others, out of love; and biological inclinations then become secondary. I cannot see that the salvation of any of us can ultimately hang on any other issue. It ill becomes a heterosexual man or woman, who has perhaps committed various ‘normal’ faults of impurity or at least made poor use of their own domestic opportunities, to carry a burden of prejudice against homosexual people. I once set down what I feel to be the basic moral equality of both kinds of people in a little sour quatrain:
Hunting pignuts on all fours
In the great funfair none do well.
Tom likes boys and Bob likes whores
And both will share a bunk in Hell. [Uncollected]
The verse was a way of letting off steam, and does not really indicate that I think I know anybody’s supernatural destination. Yet I can well understand the fear from which most violent prejudice springs – in its sharpest form, a fear, for example, that one’s teen-age son may be corrupted by an adult homosexual. I think, though, that we need to bring this fear to the surface and look at it without sliding into panic, using our gifts of rationality.
In the first place it seems to be very rare for any young person of heterosexual temperament is likely to be so ‘corrupted’ unless they are placed in special social circumstances – segregated schools with a homosexual tradition in army barracks or borstals or gaols. The strongest argument against segregated schools is that such corruption may readily occur; it is the habit of most adults to turn a blind eye to the possibility, because of a prior prejudice in favour of some particular school; and from my own observation I would judge that girls are even more often affected than boys – by a permanent psychological conditioning rather than by obvious and biological factors. A woman who has had this kind of emotional background may get married and rear children, and yet be quite incapable of developing an adult sex relationship with her husband, and this in turn is likely to affect the emotional growth of her children in an adverse way. This is to lay crosses unnecessarily on the backs of others.
Because of the military tradition of cleanliness and simple vigour, the danger of homosexual corruption in barracks life is often overlooked. Yet Pope John has spoken with grief and horror of the destructive effects of army life on the purity of young men – his words are too often forgotten by our zealous militarists. And again, the strongest single argument against the gaoling of homosexuals springs from the fact that gaol is the place where homosexuals are made, by example, by assault, and by conditioning. The chief point I wish to make, though, is that, outside these special circumstances, heterosexual persons are free to form ordinary associations with the opposite sex and the danger of homosexual corruption is negligible. I think the notion of an automatic and magical ‘corruption’ is quite unrealistic. The person who is readily corrupted is already at least partly homosexual in temperament; and he or she would have to cope with the problem at some level sooner or later.
I do not intend to try to look deep into the complex issue of the way in which a person who might have been heterosexual may become homosexual because of adverse emotional conditions in early youth. Yet perhaps the saddest cases are those in which a strongly puritanical and protective mother has tried to train her son in habits of purity, without any knowledge of the differences between male and female psychology or the dangers of thus pushing the lad along a homosexual track. If a boy develops a horror of all sexual thoughts concerning the opposite sex; if this is further strengthened by a strong emotional tie and identification with the mother, so that in a sense he is living out her life rather than his own – then the stage may be page 366 set for various avoidable calamities. All this may be done in the name of religion; and the unfortunate lad will feel further obliged to blame himself for the result of what is in effect highly imprudent obedience. These cases are common enough; and it is necessary for Catholic parents to avoid creating them in their own families by an ignorant zeal for purity. Here in a sense the parents have innocently corrupted the child.
It is most unjust to suppose that more than one homosexual in ten is morally unscrupulous. Among homosexuals, the pederast (the man who corrupts boys) is generally regarded with disapprobation. Personally, I think such a man is peculiarly unfortunate; and it is evident that special care should be given to him, and special ways have to be found of protecting his potential victims. The argument for legal sanctions has here considerable validity, as in the case of the man who corrupts young girls.
Nevertheless I would count myself no Christian if I refused a man in this situation my sympathy and understanding. Such actions are generally highly compulsive in character; and they may well be aggravated by the sense of the man concerned that he is already an outcast from the community. They occur not uncommonly in the advanced stages of alcoholism, and among very old people, when the conscious controls have tragically slackened. But the pederast is a special case. In my estimation the moral attitudes of the ordinary homosexual show the same range and variety as those of his or her heterosexual neighbour.
It is difficult to understand why there is often violent prejudice against the male homosexual (embodied in our ignorantly punitive laws) and little or none against the female homosexual. The moral issues are surely precisely the same in both cases. I think the special distinction made comes either from ignorance or hypocrisy – either because most people don’t know that there are any female homosexuals, or because they would have to re-examine their idea of the homosexual as scapegoat and moral monster if they recognised how common the occurrence of the homosexual temperament is, at all social levels, among all kinds of people, and among both men and women.
For a Christian, I think the approach to the problem must be governed by knowledge, prudence and charity. This approach will never in itself constitute a solution. But it may mean a prudent support for those groups who are now pressing for the abolition of penal laws against homosexuals. There may be innocents who have never learnt to distinguish between a crime and a sin; perhaps they are to be congratulated; but it leads to much chaos and cruelty if they are allowed to enact legislation against homosexuals. There is also a matter of open justice. If I, a married man, would not receive a gaol sentence if I corrupted a seventeen-year-old, lived in sin with her, and left my wife and family without my emotional support, why on earth should my homosexual neighbour be gaoled for acts that are certainly objectively sinful but far less socially disruptive?
page 367It troubles me greatly that many homosexuals, drawn to the Church, may feel that they could never belong there, because many members of the Church hold still to a cruel and irrational view of homosexuality. The deepest Christian intuition on the matter was exhibited by the poet Dante, when he envisaged heterosexual and homosexual people moving among the flames on the topmost cornice of the Purgatorial Mountain, each group in separate directions and by a separate path, yet calling out words of encouragement and friendship from one group to another as they expiated their essentially equal faults of the flesh.
Again, in the words of a classical poet – Homo sum; humani nihil ad me alienum puto – ‘I am a man; I count nothing human alien to my own situation’ – this type of approach contains the necessary humility so often tragically absent from our appraisal of the problem of homosexuality.
1967 (445)