PLAYGROUND TWIST: What follows is a) extremely speculative and b) even more a “purely private opinion” than most of what I post here. Please refrain from importing stuff from this post into how you read anything I write in my professional capacity, since what I’m trying to do here is talk out some thoughts and see if I get helpful, illuminating responses; I’m not laying out a firmly-held or well-understood position.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that homosexual attractions are treated so differently in our culture from many other temptations to sin. This was more true in the recent past, but it’s still pretty obviously true. Kids say a pencil sharpener or a t-shirt they don’t like is “so gay”; they don’t say it’s “so gossipy” or “so cruel” or “so klepto.” People who realize that they have strong homosexual desires quickly learn to feel alienated and isolated in a way that is simply not true of people who feel strong temptations to many other sins. (Even if we’re not counting the sins, like heterosexual lust, that are praised and supported in our culture.) Two things may result from this:

1) A hardening of identity–your sense of self-as-homosexual is strongly reinforced. You start to think of yourself as deviant, and thereby strengthen the deviant aspects of your personality. Most people spend most of their lives living out a persona–a mask–and so how we view ourselves can have deeply damaging, even tragic, consequences. People whose sexualities might otherwise be more fluid end up reinforcing the homosexual self-image so intensely that the lost fluidity can’t really be recaptured (or only with great difficulty). I know this happens because I just described lots of people I know.

2) Sort of the same thing that happens with overblown anti-drug programs in schools. Our school foisted this ridiculous stuff on us, like if you smoke one joint (or drink too much caffeine!) you’ll end up a slavering acid casualty who thinks she’s a potato. So then your friends smoke up, or you do, and you find out that it’s really not that big a deal. And the credibility of the program is just gone. Similarly, if your culture builds up this totally stupid, unrealistic depiction of homosexuality, in which, e.g., sin never accompanies love, and gay people are weird twisted alien freaks, you’re bound to meet actual humans with actual loves. And so you swing over to the other extreme, thinking that, because people in homosexual relationships are (gasp!) real people with real emotions and real commitments, there can’t possibly be anything wrong with it.

St. Augustine was not so naive; he well understood, and emphasized, that sin can be woven into the fabric of a loving relationship (or, if you like, that loving care can be woven into the fabric of a sinful relationship). He even argued, if memory serves, that the root of all sin was misdirected virtue.

I wrote here about the ways in which Courage, the Catholic ministry for people with same-sex attractions, avoids this “your temptation is uniquely horrible and defining!” trap, unlike the “ex-gay” movement.

Anyway, just some scattered thoughts. I may or may not write more on this later, when I’ve mulled more.