In our society the month of June is increasingly labeled “Pride Month.” This observance originated to commemorate the June 1969 Stonewall riots that launched the modern gay rights political movement. In recent years Pride Month has achieved a wider cultural significance focused on celebrating gay, lesbian, transgender, and related lifestyles and identities under the banner of the LGBT movement.
Pride Month celebrations raise questions for Catholics. Can we take part in these observances and celebrations? The movement behind Pride Month often describes its goals with words like “equality” and “inclusion” – words which ostensibly appeal to the basic sense of justice and decency that Catholics share with all people of goodwill.
Yet while the content of Pride Month uses the language of justice, it celebrates specific sexual activities outside of marriage as Christians understand it. Pride Month also promotes an understanding of sexual identity that distorts or denies the truth and dignity of the human person.
In response, Catholics must remember that our obligation to bear witness to the truth means that we cannot take part in any event that celebrates sexual actions or identities that contradict God’s plan for sexuality.
Sexual identity refers to being male or female. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: “Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity” (2333), meaning that every person should embrace the fact of being made male or female in body and soul. This is an integral part of being made in God’s image (Gen 1:27).
This proper understanding of sexual identity is necessary for a proper understanding of sexuality as the inclinations and attractions that lead to the personal union of man and woman in sexual intercourse.
We read in Genesis that God created man and woman “in His image,” and that a man becomes united to his wife and the two become “one flesh” in their sexual encounter (Gen 2:24). Only the union of man and woman can fulfill God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). When Jesus discusses marriage in the Gospels, it is these verses from “the beginning” which are His explicit frame of reference (see Mt 19:4-6).
Based on the Scriptures, the catechism therefore teaches that each person should accept his or her sexual identity (2333), and that “Sexuality is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another until death” (2361). Any sexual act which fails to fully embody the nature of marriage falls outside God’s design for humanity.
Sexual actions between persons of the same sex are one example; sexual actions between persons of the opposite sex who have not made the lifelong commitment of marriage or who use artificial contraception to close the sexual act to life are other examples. Speaking of such acts, the catechism is clear: “Under no circumstances can they be approved” (2357). It follows directly from this that under no circumstances should such actions be celebrated.
How should Catholics respond to those whose experience of sexuality includes homosexual or transgender inclinations? The Church speaks the truth in love – and invites us to do the same – when it calls every person to recognize the objective truth of his or her sexual identity and to live by that objective truth in the expression of his or her sexuality, regardless of what inclinations or attractions they may experience.
This means seeking to accept rather than reject the fact of being created male or female, even if embracing this identity is at times a struggle. It means practicing the virtue of chastity by refraining from any sexual act outside the lifelong marriage of a man and woman open to life.
In “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Francis reminds us that our bodies are a gift from the Lord, and through marriage, a man and a woman share a complementary, life-giving relationship that brings them into union with God and through procreation makes them “a visible sign of His creative act” (“Amoris Laetitia,” 10). This is the “good news” about sexuality that we should celebrate and promote.
The Church does not by any means wish people who struggle with homosexual or transgender attractions to suffer alone or to be separated from the pastoral care of the Church. The catechism calls us to treat them with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity” and to avoid “every sign of unjust discrimination” (2358).
But it is not “unjust discrimination” to invite our neighbor to live according to the truth of God’s love and His will in their lives.
Love of neighbor and concern for his true good demands that we do no less.
Father Peter Ascik is parochial vicar of St. Matthew Church in Charlotte.