The doctrine of original sin is important for Christians, not only because it fleshes out the consequences of the Fall, but also because it explains why we need grace and healing.  Unlike some popular depictions of it, original sin doesn’t mean humans are junk or that our human nature is destroyed.  Rather, it teaches that we are cracked icons, sin-sick, broken but still in the Image of God.  That distinction is important, points out Alison, because it means no part of human desire is intrinsically evil, meaning it is incapable of being healed or ordered rightly.  It does mean that all our desire is damaged, but that “we can trust that even what is most base in a person’s life is capable of being transformed into something which will be a reflection of the divine splendour” (146).  That is why many churches, including mine, would say you can come to Jesus even if you are a homosexual (or divorced, etc.), because there is nothing so intrinsically evil that it cannot be healed by God’s grace.  What isn’t always said is what should happen next.

Now, until fairly recently there was no problem saying what should happen next, because the church’s teaching on sexual acts, including homosexual ones, were simply about that, acts.  It was assumed that sexual acts between people of the same gender came from a disordered heterosexual desire.  Thus, it was common (and still is in many sectors) to say to someone who confessed to such an act: “hurry up and get married, that will solve the problem of your disordered libido.”  However, over the last few decades there has been an increasing recognition, in society and the church, that there “seems to exist some people, a minority which occurs more or less regularly in all societies and cultures, as well as in the grouping of other animals, that just are ‘like that’” (147).  Now we have a problem, because as there is more and more recognition that homosexuality is about being and not just acts because it makes it problematic to hold together “Don’t do that!” and “Flourish, sister,” because if someone is just ‘like that’ then at least some aspects of flourishing will include living into this aspect of her being.

It is this recognition of homosexuality as an aspect of one’s being, that comes into conflict with the doctrine of original sin.  On the one hand the church can’t say that the desire is intrinsically evil (i.e. unable to be healed, only suppressed) because then we are saying that some humans are more than just cracked icons, they are fundamentally broken.   On the other, the church also cannot say “being ‘that way’ is something neutral or positive, and we just prohibit acts which flow from it” because it simply doesn’t make sense that acts which are always and intrinsically evil could flow from a positive or neutral desire.  One final option offered is to say that “the homosexual inclination, though not itself a sin, constitutes a tendency towards behavior that is intrinsically evil, and must therefore be considered objectively disordered” (the official Vatican position).  However, this third option is also problematic because it’s not at all clear that the “homosexual inclination” does in fact lead to an “objectively disordered” life.

Another way of saying that the “homosexual inclination” is a matter of being objectively disordered is to say that people with those desires are defective and misguided heterosexuals.   Therefore, what heterosexuals need is a cure and thus there are the myriad ex-gay ministries.  As a Prop 8 sidenote, it also makes sense that if someone agrees with the Vatican’s statement then they would also vigorously oppose same-sex marriages.  If there are no such people as gays and lesbians, only deluded heterosexuals, then any legislation which compounded the delusion would represent a serious social threat.  But more on that in a later post (maybe!).

Problematic, in the Vatican statement, is the insistence that the desire is “objectively disordered.”  What this word “objectively” means is that if humans are all intrinsically heterosexual and some of them continue to live as though they were gay or lesbian, we should be able to observe them and see “a growing corruption of their human nature which would affect all the areas of their lives” (153).  In other words, if there is no such thing as actually being a gay or lesbian, then we should be able to see the effects of holding on to that delusion. This is what we see in the disordered desires behind anorexia or alcoholism which are also considered objectively disordered inclinations.  For example, we can affirm the person who wants to shed a few pounds while seeking help for the anorexic, or we can enjoy a drink with friends while recognizing the line when someone needs to give alcohol up completely.  How do we recognize the difference? By objectively observing the results of their behavior.  We see that the behaviors that go with alcoholism and anorexia are not only in the minority, but that if they are not controlled the health and flourishing of that person is in danger.

In the same way it should be possible to detect if self-acceptance as gay tends to put in jeopardy a person’s health and flourishing, or if, in the case of people who have these desires but do not accept them as part of their being, it is rather this non-acceptance which puts their health and flourishing in danger….[we need to ask] does a person of homosexual inclination who accepts himself as such tend, because of this, to be more capable of personal responsibility, of developing interpersonal relationships in a serene manner, of truthfulness, of compassion… or less? (156)

Alison boils it down to this: either there are homosexual people or there are only deluded heterosexuals. Frankly, I just don’t buy the latter based on the “objective order” of the lives of many homosexuals and on modern science.   “Welcoming, but not affirming” is problematic because what it must mean is that the church welcomes a homosexual through the door but affirms neither their acts nor their being.  The church may want to say “no, no we do affirm that there really are homosexuals out there, but they shouldn’t act like it.”  However, the doctrine of original sin, with its insistence that our desires are twisted but not intrinsically evil, can’t be reconciled with that statement.  God does make people with good desires which have been twisted by the Fall, such as the desire to be healthy, which may at times get warped into the sad situation of anorexia.   But what God does not do is make people who have a desire which cannot be healed or rightly ordered.  Since I do think God has created people who are actually homosexual it follows that they can live that out in ways that are either ordered or disordered and that denying who they are will lead to more harm than good.