#3: Miss Ogilvy<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n \u2026But for now, on to \u201cRomoeroticism\u201d (my reaction is kind of lengthy). [Also, by way of identification: I\u2019m also SSA, female, and a recent adult convert (well, grad student convert, which isn\u2019t quite adult) to Christianity. I\u2019m still trying to figure out the ethics of same-sex love.]<\/p>\n One of the comments-boxers accuses you of \u201ctrying to see the world through the prism of same-sex attraction.\u201d But I wonder if it might be more accurate to say that you\u2019re simply noticing ways in which Catholicism enables celibate same-sex attracted Catholics to receive God\u2019s love corporeally. Let me flesh this out (pun intended). <\/p>\n As I was reading \u201cRomoeroticism,\u201d I kept thinking of Rowan Williams\u2019 essay \u201cThe Body\u2019s Grace.\u201d For Williams, the question of embodiment is central to the problem of same-sex sexual ethics. In sex one learns that her body can be the cause of happiness to herself and to another person, and, as Williams puts it, \u201cThe life of the Christian community has as its rationale \u2013 if not invariably its practical reality \u2013 the task of teaching us this: so ordering our relations that human beings may see themselves as desired, as the occasion of joy.\u201d And the problem of embodiment, of knowing ourselves to be desired, doesn\u2019t go away for the single person: <\/p>\n All those taking up the single vocation \u2013 whether or not they are, in the disagreeable clinical idiom, genitally intact \u2013 must know something about desiring and being desired if their single vocation is not to be sterile and evasive. Their decision (as risky as the commitment to sexual fidelity) is to see if they can find themselves, their bodily selves, in a life dependent simply upon trust in the generous delight of God \u2013 that other who, by definition, cannot want us to supply deficiencies in the bliss of a divine ego, but whose whole life is a \u201cbeing-for,\u201d a movement of gift.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019ve thus often bristled at the fact that so much of the Biblical picture-language for God\u2019s love focuses on heterosexual marriage. How can I understand the tenor of divine love when my experience excludes me completely from the vehicle of these metaphors? <\/p>\n I think you\u2019ve come up with an awesome solution in the way you look at Mary and the Church and Dante\u2019s Beatrice.<\/p>\n That said, I have a couple of questions re: your desire to renew the practices of same-sex friendship blessing:<\/p>\n I take it that in your view one of the main reasons for recovering this tradition is to sublimate same-sex desire. But what if we saw the chief end of such friendships differently, focusing instead on its material and social benefits? In that case, what would you make of the possibility of a vowed, lifelong, liturgically-blessed friendship between a gay man and a gay woman? Or between a gay woman and a straight woman? Or between two straight women or two straight men? I know I would find a lifelong vow of sexless yet intimate friendship much easier to undertake with a gay or straight man \u2013 and maybe even with a straight woman \u2013 than with another lesbian: it would be heartache to live with a beautiful woman who also loved women and to remain chaste.<\/p>\n The \u201cRomoeroticism\u201d project implies that we can isolate the sex in same-sex relationships and call it wrong, while seeing the rest of the relationship as fine (the comment-boxers noticed this). I want to think carefully about what makes this sort of theological move possible. At first blush it seems silly \u2013 if the friendship structurally resembles marriage (sharing finances, caring for the friend\u2019s aging parents), what makes having sex so bad? Is it simply a question of procreative potential?<\/p>\n The English poet W.H. Auden, a gay convert to Christianity, has an interesting take re: question-cluster #2. In a letter to Wendell Stacy Johnson in the early 50s, he writes: \u201cHave you seen the C of E report on homosexuality? In its wish to be fair, it falls into the odd position of declaring that only the act is sinful which is, of course, heretical and, from a practical point of view, ineffective. Nobody, where there is mutual consent and pleasure, can possibly feel an act is wrong: if it is, the reason must lie in the personal relationship which desires the acts.\u201d But from your comments in the Romo-thread, it seems like you imagine that personal relationships which become vowed friendships probably won\u2019t include desire for sexual acts (I note your example of the eroticism w\/ your striking, brilliant friend that pointed toward education, not sex). I get this \u2013 maybe it would help your argument if you talked about the (hopefully communal) discernment process that would lie behind such vowed friendships. On your chaste model, it would be important to partner w\/ people w\/ whom shared eros very obviously didn\u2019t point toward sex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Eve says<\/strong>: Hmmm, first of all, I\u2019m so glad the Beatrice stuff made sense to you! Second, I think possibly <\/em>my basic vision of how vowed friendship could work will be a bit clearer in a moment when I\u2019ve posted my next installment of wiggy ponderings on the subject. <\/p>\n Third\u2026 I find both Williams\u2019s and Auden\u2019s quotes here very odd indeed, especially the latter! The act of sex makes a difference because our bodies make a difference. (And I would argue that some form of iconicity\u2013la difference<\/em>\u2013is primary<\/a> in the Christian vision of sex, and procreation is secondary.) I genuinely don\u2019t understand his argument w\/r\/t \u201cNobody, where there is mutual consent and pleasure, can possibly feel an act is wrong: if it is, the reason must lie in the personal relationship which desires the acts.\u201d I can consent to and take pleasure in all kinds of acts with another person which in fact I should sublimate and express in another way. This seems so obvious that I think I must <\/em>be misunderstanding! If so, please just ignore all this, as I don\u2019t mean to waste your time with unhelpful ranting. (I can give examples and analogies if needed, though I\u2019m trying to avoid that since analogies, as I\u2019ve said, generally beg their questions in this kind of discussion.)<\/p>\n I\u2026 see your point, re communal discernment of a vocation to a specific vowed friendship, since it\u2019s easy to fool ourselves and assume that the sacrifice we want <\/em>to make is the sacrifice God wants. And yet every fiber of my being revolts against the idea of trying to explain my love to a parish committee! In fact, there seems a danger of \u201csincerism\u201d there, if we believe and require that love can be fully articulated and brought under the sway of juried evidence and common sense. I am unwilling to recommend specific forms of communal discernment to everyone, though I will recommend getting outside perspectives from people you trust. I know that\u2019s very individualist\u2013you are most likely to trust the people who will give you the answer you already want!\u2013but I don\u2019t see a better alternative. More on the necessary <\/em>humiliations involved in renewing vowed friendship in a moment. But I wanted to say that you make an important and difficult point here.<\/p>\n