Altered relationships
Once we as a society eliminated the prospect of begetting a child from the popular understanding of the sexual act, we altered our notion of the role that sex plays within marriage. That alteration led naturally to another, and the work was accomplished in the 1960s by the children of the first "altered" marriages: the breakdown in the assumption that sexual activity should be confined to marriage. And then, having disposed first of the prospect that sexual activity might involve reproduction, and then of the assumption that sexual activity was a prerogative of marriage, our society next perceived a need to eliminate one more obstacle by arranging for the legal disposal of a child who might be inconveniently conceived, inside or outside a marriage. This was the work of the 1970s. Finally, having eliminated both the prospect of reproduction and the need for a marital commitment from the popular understanding of sexuality, our society has begun to perceive homosexual acts as just another set of variations on the new, self-absorbed version of sexual activity.
Notice, by the way, that all of the social and psychological disorders described above-the broken homes, the child abuse, and so forth — are present within the "heterosexual culture." While it is true that the "gay"subculture shows even higher levels of dysfunction on comparable issues, the culture of sexual inversion is not confined to homosexuality. Among heterosexuals, too, the transformation of sexual activity into a self-absorbed process sustained by no commitment to children or to a spouse has produced disastrous social and psychological results.
In a traditional society adults take on social burdens and accept the blows of life, thereby protecting their children so that they may grow up in secure and undisturbed surroundings. Today it is the children of our nation who bear the burden — all too often, by living in the insecurity of a broken home — while parents seek their own ends. In fact, the psychological burdens on the rising generation can often be traced precisely to their parents' unwillingness and/or inability to make the lifelong marital commitment which was once a precondition for sanctioned sexual activity.
Children — the rising generation, the next iteration of the nation — are the chief reason for the family. But if consideration for children does not even enter into the thinking of the adult couple, the situation is irremediably changed, "People do not live together merely to be together. They live together to do something together," wrote Ortega y Gasset. He continued: "No social group will long survive its chief reason for being." Northern America and Western Europe, with their negative population growth rates, will soon be forced to come to terms with the observations of Ortega y Gasset and of Roosevelt. Can a culture that does not reproduce, and does not protect children, still survive?
Defining deviancy down
One of the public functions of religion is to shore up society's adherence to the natural moral law. When the institution of religion caves in on a moral issue, the other institutions (family, education, government, and the marketplace) cannot be expected to maintain the societal defenses. When the institutions of religion "define deviancy down" (to borrow the memorable phrase of Daniel Patrick Moynihan), other institutions are likely to follow. And that is what has happened on the issue of contraception.
The family-planning movement, the vehicle for the advancement of contraception, had its mots not only outside of Christianity, but among groups that were quite actively hostile to Christianity The attack on the traditional moral principles upheld by the Judeo-Christian tradition was already well advanced early in this century. By the same time, the birth-control movement had recognized the need to achieve some sort of religious sanction-and had even acquired a primary target for its lobbying efforts. In 1919 the Anglican divine C. K. Millard wrote in The Modern Churchman:
Although many Malthusians; are rationalists, they are well aware that without some religious sanction their policy could never emerge from the dim underworld of unmentioned and unrespected things and could never be advocated openly in the light of day. To this end birth control is camouflaged by pseudo-poetic and pseudo-religious phraseology, and the Anglican Church is asked to alter her teaching. Birth controllers realise that it is useless to ask this of the Catholic Church but as regards the Church of England, which makes no claim to infallibility, the case is different, and discussion is possible.
If a single date could be identified as marking the historical break from the Christian consensus on traditional, natural-law principles of sexual morality — if one desired to highlight the West's very first official step down the slippery slope — then August 15,1930 must be chosen as that unhappy date. That was the day when the Lambeth Conference of the Church of England, by a vote of 193 to 67, approved a resolution which read in part:
Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipleship and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception-control for motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience." [emphasis added]
With that vote, the traditional moral unity of Christendom on this issue was broken.
In the preceding years — at the Lambeth Conferences of 1908,1914, and 1920 — Anglican Church leaders had felt the pressure for a change in traditional moral teaching. But they had responded to that pressure by reiterating their traditional stand.
We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers — physical, moral, and religious — thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race. In opposition to the teaching which in the name of science and religion encourages married people in the deliberate cultivation of sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must always be regarded as the governing consideration of Christian marriage. One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists — namely, the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of children; the other is the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control.
Similar debates were under way in many other religious denominations. Orthodox Jews held to the traditional moral norm, but Reformed Jews had already broken from the old consensus. The Central Conference of American Rabbis had taken a stand in favor of contraception in 1929.
The United States' Federal Council of Churches (which today is known as the National Council of Churches) had apparently been waiting for some other group to take the lead in "modernizing" the Christian stand on birth control. In March 1931, that group followed the Lambeth Conference and endorsed "the careful and restrained use of contraceptives by married people," while at the same time still conceding that "serious evils, such as extramarital sex relations, may be increased by general knowledge of contraceptives."
However, the statements released in the aftermath of the Lambeth statement by leadership groups in other Christian churches, and even by the secular media, vividly illustrate how differently the churches viewed the sexual act in those days. Quick on the heels of the statements from the Anglican Church and the Federal Council of Churches, there followed radically different statements from:
Dr. Walter Maier of Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary:
Birth Control, as popularly understood today and involving the use of contraceptives, is one of the most repugnant of modern aberrations, representing a 20th century renewal of pagan bankruptcy."
Bishop Warren Chandler of the Methodist Episcopal Church South:
The whole disgusting [birth control] movement rests on the assumption of man's sameness with the brutes .... Its [the Federal Council of Churches] deliverance on the matter of birth control has no authorization from any churches representing it, and what it has said I regard as most unfortunate, not to use any stronger words. It certainly does not represent the Methodist Church, and I doubt if it represents any other Protestant Church in what it has said on this subject.
The Presbyterian (April 2,1931):
Its [Federal Council of Churches] recent pronouncement on birth control should be enough reason, if there were no other, to withdraw from support of that body, which declares that it speaks for the Presbyterian and other Protestant churches in ex cathedra pronouncements.
The Southern Baptist Convention:
The SBC hereby expresses its disapproval of the ... bill, now pending before Congress of the United States, the purpose of which is to make possible and provide for the dissemination of information concerning contraceptives and birth control; whatever the intent and motive of such proposal we cannot but believe that such legislation would be vicious in character and would prove seriously detrimental to the morals of our nation.
Even secular journalists were shocked by the new teachings emanating from some church organs. The Washington Post reacted to the statement from the Federal Council of Churches with a heated editorial, arguing:
Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee's report, if carried into effect, would sound the death knell of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be "careful and restrained" is preposterous.
Two days later, reluctant to let the matter he, the Post added another helping of editorial scorn:
It is the misfortune of the churches that they are too often misused by visionaries for the promotion of .reforms" in fields foreign to religion. The departures from Christian teachings are astounding in many cases, leaving the beholder aghast at the unwillingness of some churches to teach "Christ and Him crucified." If the churches are to become organizations for political and scientific propaganda, they should be honest and reject the Bible, scoff at Christ as an obsolete and unscientific teacher, and strike out boldly as champions of politics and science as modem substitutes for the old-time religion.
To no one's surprise, the Catholic Church remains firm in her condemnation of contraception. Several weeks after the revolutionary statement from the Lambeth Conference, Pope Pius XI explained in Casti Connubi:
In order that she [the Catholic Church] may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, she raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through our mouth proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.
While the doctrinal position of the Catholic Church remains clear, and has been frequently reiterated from Rome, the response of most Catholics in the United States has been muted at best; the actual practice of Catholic couples is similar to that of most other Americans. The most comprehensive study on the birth-control habits of Americans was the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth, which also gathered data on the religious affiliation of the respondents. In 1988,72 percent of all married Catholic women of childbearing age used artificial contraception. Of these, 55 percent said they relied on the birth-control pill, 22 percent on tubal ligation, 12 percent on vasectomy, and 11 percent on other methods.
Consequences of contraception
The change in the attitudes toward contraception involved a change in man's understandings of his relationships to God, to the opposite sex, and to himself.
As far as reason can know, God's highest creative act is the creation of man. In the sexual act the Creator makes man his "co-creator," as man and God join in bringing another human being into existence, to live for all eternity. In the Orthodox Jewish tradition the sexual act is compellingly described as comparable with entering the Holy of Holies in the Temple-meeting God where he is most especially present.
For the resolutely contracepting married person who goes to worship God on the Sabbath, an inherent contradiction has crept into his stance before God. In effect he says: "I worship you as my Creator, but I refuse to join with you as co-creator in conjointly exercising our highest acts . . . in bringing into being that next human creature you want to endow with existence for an eternity." The contradiction is profound, as are the consequences.
The practice of contraception looses man from his ontological and psychological moorings. The sexual act, as long as it is open to life, has the effect of keeping man, at a minimum, oriented toward "the other." Without that minimum restraint, man tends to transform the act into a totally self-absorbed one. The most pleasurable of acts is transformed from being other-centered to being self-centered. The rearrangement of psychological approaches, attitudes, and dispositions, quickly produces a changed relationship with the spouse, with members of the opposite sex, and with children. The results-so clear in the data-include divorce, out-of-wedlock births, abortions, and abused or abandoned children.
The policy debate
The future of society depends on the emergence of competent young adults. This emergence depends in turn on the efforts of loving parents. Loving parents are those who have generous hearts: a disposition to give of themselves. Contraception inverts the natural tendencies of parents, and hardens their hearts. This psychological inversion has inevitable effects on the children, who are likely to develop the same warped approach to sexuality, and convey the same attitudes to the next generation.
The current public debate on homosexuality is only the latest stage in an old conflict, which pits a Gnostic view of man against the natural-law view, in which the meaning of human life and human action is centered on the Creator. The struggle to control society's understanding of the meaning and purpose of the sexual act is at the core of this old conflict-one of the oldest and most far reaching clashes inhuman history.
At the same time, this profound dispute can be expressed in fairly simple terms. If heterosexual people cannot take on the responsibilities implied by heterosexuality, how can they ask the homosexually inclined person to take on the burden of his struggle for chastity? If heterosexuals distort the relationship between man and woman at its most intimate level, through their decision to avoid begetting new life, how can they reasonably ask those who are oriented differently to resist their own particular temptation to distort their own lives?
In fact, the mainstream of "heterosexual America" today is now perilously close, in its attitudes and its orientations, to matching the symptoms that lie at the very heart of the homosexual affective disorder: the inversion into the self. The United States has created a culture of rejection, which is incapable of providing the antidote to the homosexual culture. Heterosexuals cannot affirm the sexual humanity of husband and wife while denying its fruit. The child-fearing, child-rejecting heterosexual community cannot affirm the homosexual in his more complex cry for acceptance and love. Heterosexuals who insist on arrested sexual development for themselves cannot help but condone the same behavior when it is exhibited among homosexuals
The massive social and psychological disorder we see all around us is not the making of the "gay community." Our current problems — including even the gay-rights" movement itself — arose as a result of disorders that first became prevalent among heterosexuals. If we want to take the mote out of our "gay" brothers' eyes maybe we should first remove the beam from our own. If we are to develop the attitude of love and affection that is central to helping members of the "gay culture" overcome their inversion, then we Americans must first recover our understanding of the relationship between love, sexuality, and permanent commitment to spouse and children. We must first acknowledge the children each of us has been called to "co-create" and to love, and we must show our love both for those children who are already in this world and for those who may yet come to be. Otherwise, if the two inversions — heterosexual and homosexual continue to compound each other, the future is bleak indeed — especially bleak for children, and for the society those children will be capable of building.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Fagan, Patrick F. "A 'Culture'of Inverted Sexuallty." Catholic World Report (November, 1998).
Reprinted with permission of Catholic World Report an international news monthly.
THE AUTHOR
Patrick F. Fagan is the William H. G. FitzGerald Senior Fellow in Family and Cultural Issues at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. A version of this essay was originally presented at a seminar sponsored by the American Public Philosophy Institute; the proceedings of that seminar are forthcoming in a two-volume set, with the first volume to appear in January 1999 from Spence Publishing in Dallas, Texas.
Copyright © 2000 Catholic World Report