Young people’s sexuality has always been a source of anxiety to their elders (for a variety of reasons), and in many religions it is seen as both an enemy to faith and a battleground for control. I’m not sure this is a healthy thing, as young Origen was reputed to have discovered too late. Of course pleasure deferred is not the same as pleasure denied, but the commoditization of virginity is simply the other side of the coin of the commoditization of sexuality. Good Christians, it is true, are promised only one virgin rather than 70 (albeit one who is apparently 600% more “hot”), but I reckon we see here a similar, although less extreme, form of an unhealthy obsession with “purity” presented as a means to a supposed higher sexuality, when in reality it’s a form of social control.

Recent events should make us suspicious of those who would seek such control. It ain’t always benign.

What we should be asking is for whose benefit. The promotion of “chastity” is not as effective at protecting young people from the negatives of sex as its proponents assume:

http://www.jahonline.org/article/PIIS1054139X05000558/fulltext?browse_volume=36&issue_key=TOC%40%40JOURNALS%40JAH%400036%400004&issue_preview=no&select1=no&select1=no&vol=

An alternative, and I think healthier, approach is to skill young people to treat their sexuality as something to be valued rather than feared or as a source of continual internal conflict. And that their sexuality both belongs to them and is ultimately their own responsibility. This means equipping them with the knowledge to make sensible choices (for example about contraception and STI prevention), and also requires both the validation of the individual’s desire and also the space to be non-sexual, the space to have ones sexuality to oneself without it becoming a public commodity. This is not something we always do well.

As an aside, many young people today reject the designation “gay” because it has become so entwined with a commercially oriented gay scene that there is little to separate the term from a marketing category. For many younger “queers” the older labels no longer work.

Snout thank you for such a thoughtful, well written reply, and your civility is contagious.

Nothing you've said contradicts Catholic teaching.

The Incarnation more than any other doctrine emphasises the beauty of sex. God himself entered our world through the vagina. Matter and the body are good - afterall God deigned to become one of us.

"For God so loved the world He gave His only Son" John 3:16.

A full picture of reality aswell as the above includes the doctrine of the Fall - something good has been corrupted and hence the natural state of human nature is civil war among its elements. Strong prohibitions and a culture of shame when breaking them are necessary to protect us from ourselves.

The Catholic Church is strongly FOR sex, it is a precious gift from God and hence the Church is rightly concerned with its propriety.

"Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness. Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit

and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility. True, eros tends to rise “in ecstasy” towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing." Deus Caritas Est (PopeB XVI)

Among Jesus' harshest criticism:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean." Matt 23:25

You're right to believe emphasis on outward purity to the neglect of the chastity of the heart is just creepy. It is a 'humble sanctity that reveals things that would otherwise remain hidden' CS Lewis – not prideful conceit at the defeat of sexual desire.

To us the spiritual life often seems thin compared with our sensual life and many conclude then that spiritual life is a substitute for unattainable earthly delights. But introspection alone cannot tell which is the reality and which is the substitute. Eg. we can ruin our good taste

- to the pervert, normal love, when it does not appear simply repulsive, appears at best a mere milk and water substitute for that ghastly world of impossible fantasies which have become to him the 'real thing'.

The authority of many wise men and women in many different times and places forbids me to regard the spiritual world as an illusion. We can believe restrictions on sex to be social control when we cannot imagine the reality it is attempting to reveal - the presence of God.

"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God"

God forbids us to enjoy sex outside marriage not because there is anything wrong with sexual pleasure, but because we must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than we ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.

Martin Ibn Warriq,
I have enjoyed reading your intelligent posts.

...As I have, despite (or perhaps because of) our differing points of view.

Kind regards,

Martin and Snout, I’ve benefited hugely from your thoughtful posts. Together you’re a great lesson in the effectiveness of measured and considerate dialogue. Naturally, I find more in Martin’s to dispute, and if I may ...

Essentially, my support for Prendergast’s claim that churches need to be more accommodating towards same-sex attracted people is based on the view that all human beings are equal, and all human beings have natural and normal needs which others should accept. Among these needs are sexual and spiritual fulfilment.

Homosexuals drawn by their spiritual needs to the catholic church are arbitrarily told that while the church accepts that the sexual needs of most of the community are worthy, theirs are not. The recommendation that homosexuals remain celibate is merely a re-direction of this discrimination. The claim that homosexuality can be “cured” (dealt with above by Snout), is likewise an insistence on selective accommodation of basic human needs within the catholic church.

It’s also possible to re-train left-handers as right-handers, but out of respect for left-handed people, catholics no longer do this. Sexuality is the one human attribute which the church has chosen as an arbitrary ground for exclusion.

Celivia mentioned a new beginning, and Snout a third way - I think science may lead us there. Cognitive science is demonstrating that belief is a fundamental human trait, as deserving as every other. Early days yet, but I suspect that science may enable us to position belief in relation to all other human attributes, in a way that honours them all. Conversely, it may give believers the logical tools to accommodate human attributes that apparently contradict their deeply held values.

Then we won’t need to have gatherings of christian parliamentarians http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4768#51317 claiming that christianity is under consistent attack. Science having drawn boundaries which we can all understand, consistent respect for all human values is achievable. I recommend this discussion http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2006/1717032.htm as a taste of where this debate is going.

Once again, thanks for the thoughtful contributions.