Tim Otto (I reviewed his book here<\/a>) asks a question about those of us who call for a revival of devoted, intimate same-sex love within the historic Christian sexual ethic:<\/p>\n [I]f Wesley is encouraging people of the same sex to \u201cgo all the way\u201d in spiritual, emotional, and intellectual ways, why not \u201cgo all the way\u201d with the body as well?\u2026<\/p>\n I\u2019m curious as to how Wesley would respond to concerns that by singling out physical intimacy as wrong, his proposal is dualist or even gnostic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (from here<\/a>, though I got it via Wesley Hill\u2019s response<\/a>)<\/p>\n This is a question I think about a lot, as it happens, so let me ramble through a few different ways of approaching it.<\/p>\n The first way is a sort of standard debate<\/strong> model: What are the consequences of this worldview? What are its unstated assumptions?<\/p>\n So like, I am extremely sympathetic to the anti-gnostic element of Otto\u2019s thinking. Part of the story of how I became Catholic was realizing that my stereotypes of Catholicism as a life-hating, sex-hating, body-hating, anti-sensual religion was basically entirely front-to-back wrong. The God I came to know was a Creator God, Who creates and sustains the physical world through His love, for (among other things) His pleasure and our joy. Given that, it seems intuitive that the highest and deepest forms of human communion would require physical union, and the most obvious image of physical union is good old sex.<\/p>\n But if we accept (our culture\u2019s underlying assumption) that sexual union is the highest form of communion between humans, the Christian practice of monogamy gets kind of weird, no? It starts to look like you shouldn\u2019t<\/em> love anyone \u201cas much as\u201d you love your spouse, rather than maybe saying there are many kinds of love that reach infinitude in different ways. A whole lot of women have experiences of friendship that are at least as intimate and rich as their love for their husbands, and this isn\u2019t (or isn\u2019t always) because their marriages are lacking anything. Historically men have expressed the same feelings, though nowadays straight men in our culture have a super hard time articulating a longing for same-sex love.<\/p>\n Does monogamy make friendship inherently gnostic? Or inherently a lesser love? I don\u2019t think either of these positions square well with the Gospels and with the Christian history<\/a> of friendship<\/a>.<\/p>\n Moreover, the idea that celibate love<\/a> can\u2019t reach the heights of sexual love requires us to ignore or denigrate the love found in the monastery. Monks and nuns give their love in a startlingly unreserved and abandoned way to God; they also form communities of love (I mean, when monasticism is working this is what they do) in which your brothers or sisters are as inescapable, as infuriating, as beloved and as sanctifying as a spouse.<\/p>\n So I believe all that stuff and I think it\u2019s an important corrective to an ahistoric (lol code for \u201cProtestant,\u201d sorry guys I gotta do me) cultural narrative. It is also not the reason I believe what I do.<\/p>\n So the second way of thinking I\u2019d like to try here is thinking with the Church<\/strong>. My beliefs about specific issues of sexual ethics flow from my love of and relationship with Christ\u2019s Bride, the Church. She has asked certain things of me and I will do what I can to fulfill my promises to Her\u2013or like, when I don\u2019t do what I can, at least I won\u2019t try to justify myself!<\/p>\n My body is a gift from God; and so is my sexual ethic. There are certain ways we as Catholic Christians have been given, to make our bodies altars; we have not been given others.<\/p>\n This is a way of \u201cliving as church\u201d which I know not all branches of Christianity focus on (or require? what I know about what Protestant churches require could fit comfortably in a thimble). But I want to note my actual commitments, which are not to specific theological arguments I make and understand but to Christ\u2019s Church, out of love and gratitude.<\/p>\n Which brings me to my third point, which I guess I will call a pastoral approach, or better, an argument about trust<\/a>: about witness and counterwitness<\/strong>. In comments on Wes\u2019s post, Kathy says\u2013I mean she says a lot of important stuff, most of which I disagree with, but she says this one thing I want to flag:<\/p>\n It takes a leap of faith to even believe God accepts me with my authentic desires let alone bless me either in a marriage or with celibacy because many of the churches I tried to participate in did not accept me no matter what I did. The only church I was fully welcomed in was an affirming church and that says volumes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n more<\/a><\/p>\n It really does say volumes, doesn\u2019t it? I mean that hasn\u2019t been my experience. I have been ridiculously lucky. But I have met so many people whose experiences have looked more like Kathy\u2019s than like mine; I go to the cathedral church in what used to be DC\u2019s gay ghetto, I\u2019ve found it easy to get competent and compassionate spiritual direction<\/a>, I basically lead the world\u2019s weirdest gay Christian life. And I am 100% sure that this statistically-improbable good fortune is part of why I can believe Catholic teaching. How can you love a church where nobody seems to love you? Why would you trust that church\u2019s claims that they can help you surrender your life to the God Who is Love?<\/p>\n Pretty girls are the best theology. But the second<\/em>-best theology is humble love for neighbor and stranger.<\/p>\n And the fourth approach is to try to ask the questions Tim Otto might<\/em> ask if he believed what I believe. How do his concerns look when expressed in my worldview? How do celibate people love others with our bodies?<\/p>\n