"After all, rare doesn't mean strange or monstrous. Rare only means rare. It might just be people about whom stories are told less often."
Carolin Emcke, 2017, 140.
There are a number of ethical and legal issues surrounding the phenomena of transsexuality and intersexuality that arose in the 20th century, for example when we think of possible medical interventions or issues such as civil status law and the right to legal equality in the area of marriage and family. The Catholic Church and theology have no genuine regulatory competence for such ethical and legal issues. No generally binding answers of an ethical or legal nature can be derived from Christian revelation or the Christian view of humanity - if this exists at all in the singular.
In my opinion, the task of moral theology is to critically examine which moral claims circulate within Catholic Christianity as commandments of God or as instructions of the order of creation. I will therefore focus on the thinking with which the Catholic Church positions itself socio-politically in the debates on the rights of queer people and which guides its dealings with queer believers. In doing so, I share the premise that it is not homosexual, trans or intersex people who have to justify "why they are entitled to the right to free development of their personality, but all those who want to deny them this right."
I am aware that the approach I advocate of an autonomy of morality seems theologically inadmissible to some. This is not the place to go into this in detail. Just this much: those who perceive morality as a theonomic-vertical arrangement are all too quick to grant religious authorities the licence to dispense with moral truths. Such a religion cannot provide ethically convincing answers. And isn't that the situation that Catholicism has manoeuvred itself into over the last, say, two hundred years? Anyone who attacks autonomy turns religion into something morally obscure.
The Catholic gender protocol
The expectation of the traditional Catholic gender protocol for the correct behaviour of people is: "Every person, whether man or woman, must acknowledge and accept (agnoscere et accipere) their sexuality (sexual identitatem)" (Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 2333). From a magisterial point of view, this says the essentials. The Catechism explains what it means to accept one's own sexuality in the same number. In the second sentence, gender identity is suddenly confronted with the behavioural expectations of Catholic marriage morals. The relationship of the person to themselves as a sexual being is subjected to a sexual instruction from the outset: "The physical, moral and spiritual difference and mutual complementarity (differentia et complementaritatis) are directed towards the goods of marriage (bona matrimonii) and the development of family life." The sexual identity of the first proposition is therefore the identity of either a female or a male body, which is associated with specific moral and spiritual characteristics. Male bodies are complemented by female bodies, female bodies by male bodies. The purpose of this addition is the goods of marriage, i.e. according to the traditional view, primarily the procreation of a child. Meanwhile, the sexual enjoyment of man and woman is also considered a good as long as they are married.
A sexual orientation that deviates from this orientation towards the opposite sex is judged to be "objectively disordered". Homosexuality contradicts the original plan of creation, as Benedict XVI put it. Sexual behaviour that is not performed in the opposite sex therefore signifies a non-recognition, a non-acceptance of gender identity. A person whose body does not want to or cannot represent the complementarity of man and woman in the magisterial sense or live it out sexually is condemned to remain alone - because they are considered unsuitable to form an intimate partnership in a truly human way. Queer sexuality is an irregularity, so to speak. On the other hand, the mutual complementarity exemplified by the spouses - the moral and spiritual dimension should be considered here - shows their children the beauty of the Catholic gender order.
The third sentence of number 2333 of the Catechism concludes by asserting that the "harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on how reciprocity, neediness and mutual help between husband and wife are lived." If people adhered to Catholic protocol, the well-being of marriage and family as well as society as a whole would be in good shape. The catechism promises harmony and order, because complementarity prevents rivalry and conflict between the sexes. This does not require much, just the recognition of one's own male or female gender identity. St Paul already knew that God is not a God of disorder but of peace (1 Cor 14:33).
The Catholic protocol statement contains the promise of a harmonious and peaceful society, on both a small and large scale. And who does not keep to the commandments of objective order? Who steps out of line? He is someone who causes trouble by rebelling against the wisdom of the Creator, who stirs up conflict, jeopardises social peace and thus the common good.
"Heretics of love"
But love, as we know, does not adhere to Catholic protocol: "Feelings do not like to be put into a fixed order", writes Yukio Mishima in "Confessions of a Mask", this famous autobiographical novel from 1949 about homoerotic desire, whose otherness is not intended and cannot be imagined by love. Homosexuality is "that zone of eroticism", as Thomas Mann recognised in 1922, "in which the universally believed law of gender polarity proves to be eliminated, to be invalid, and in which we see the same connected with the same (...)." The struggle for the moral judgement of homosexuality on the basis of its otherness anticipates much of today's debates about queer lifestyles.
It is obvious that the Catholic concern for the preservation of the 'objective order' is about people's sexual lives. All non-marital and all non-heterosexual relationships are structures of temptation to sin from a doctrinal point of view. The phenomena of homosexuality, transsexuality and intersexuality share the characteristic that they are associated with a love life that deviates from the norm, which the Church fearfully scrutinises as a permanent opportunity for sin. For this reason, church doctrine still shows little empathy for the "heretics of love", for the outsiders of sexuality, be they homosexual, bisexual, transsexual or intersexual. I will limit myself to this aspect of the church's assessment of sexual minorities because it forms the centre of the magisterial discomfort with sexual and gender diversity. It should be noted that the Magisterium has so far only commented in more detail on homosexuality, and even then only many decades after the term was established in the sexual sciences. The judgement on same-sex sexuality formulated in the relevant documents is based on principles that make it easy to evaluate the love relationships of other queer people. The magisterium does what it is trained to do: it provides answers to new questions in a self-referential manner so that there is no collision with earlier statements.
Love that does not conform to the conventional gender order is deeply suspect to the Catholic Church. The feelings of lovers are not worth mentioning for the guardians of the objective order. The taboo silences them. Non-compliant desire can therefore only express itself in code. This was true well into the 20th century. The literary scholar Heinrich Detering, who examined the "literary productivity" of the taboo of heretical love "from Winkelmann to Thomas Mann", draws this conclusion at the end of his studies: "Lots of productive effects of the compulsion to camouflage, lots of small victories of literature over speechlessness and prohibition of speech, even a 'counter-discourse' against restrictions, threats of sanctions, pathologisation: In the end, the admiration for the literary achievements of these texts could make us forget that they are all determined by an overpowering compulsion, by humiliation and isolation, that they not only represent a series of victories, but also a single defeat. Cunning, resourceful, artful slave language, determined to self-assertion and a counter-world, but slave language nonetheless."
Sexual utopias?
I would like to illustrate what Detering means with two examples. The first is from the 17th century and is interpreted by Stephen Guy-Bray from a queer perspective as a rare testimony of friendship between two women in the Renaissance. The author Katherine Philips (1632-1664) writes in a poem entitled "Friendship's Mystery, To my Dearest Lucasia":
Come, my Lucasia, since we see
That Miracles Mens faith do move,
By wonders and by prodigy
To the dull angry world let's prove
There's a Religion in our Love.
Guy-Bray interprets these lines as the poetic proclamation of a new religion of same-sex love. This religion can only be understood through the experience of the two women - just as the Christian faith is revealed to people through miracles that happen on earth. In the second verse, Philips chooses Christian metaphors and figures to express same-sex love.
Our Election is as free
As Angels, who with greedy choice
Are yet determin'd to their joys.
Theology is familiar with the task of thinking together what at first glance appear to be opposites, such as freedom and predestination. The author applies this to her love for Lucasia. The intimate relationship between the two women is like the existence of angels: destined for joy and gripping her "with greedy choice". Same-sex love is completely natural and willed by God. In the rest of the poem, the friendship unfolds as a union between two people who overcome their loneliness and recognise each other better. Above all, it is a relationship that lives mutuality and equality, including sexually.
The second example is a poem by August von Platen (1796-1835), whose diaries published in 1896 and 1900 are "the first authentic autobiographical testimony of a German poet about his homosexual self-realisation and the suffering of his homosexuality". Platen's erotic "inclination" towards "male love" (these are his words) cannot be denied. "I need not be ashamed of what my own conscience approves," Platen noted in his diary. Even if he "will never find a person", as he melancholically adds, to whom he "can give friendship and love". In his life, Platen suffered desperately from the "conflict between homoerotic feelings and their stigmatisation". He conducted his "counter-discourse" with the following famous lines:
I am as the body to the spirit, as the spirit to the body to you;
I am as woman to man, as man to woman to you,
(...)
I am the sun's arrow, the moon's disc to you;
What else do you want? What else is your longing looking for?
Throw down everything, everything: you know I'll stay with you!
The speaking ego defines itself, its homoerotic love "in its relation to the addressed you." Here, "a paradoxical opposition of diametrically opposed things is asserted (...). The I is at the same time 'like woman to man' and 'like man to woman'". The text lays a trail for interpretation, but remains a camouflage. However, if one reads the verses in the knowledge of the homoerotic ego, homoeroticism is "brought to the fore" in a way that contains both a private and a social utopia. Detering once again: "Only in the homosexual relationship is that completely equal interchangeability and thus that abolition of gender roles possible that must always remain utopian in the heterosexual relationship. From the private utopia of a freely lived sexuality, which Platen had sketched out in the poem, which he tried to suppress in life, a utopia that is human in its claim is developed."
Homoerotic literature shows how socially imposed identities of femininity and masculinity can be undermined. It demonstrates that there are more ways of being human than previous categorisations allow.
Hurtful speech
The difference between male and female bodies, to which the Catholic gender protocol is orientated, gives way to free mutual desire and love in the two examples of homoerotic poetry. The Catholic Church does not honour this human utopia with a single word. It only thinks of two things, sexuality - and itself, i.e. authority. To put it bluntly: for them, there is no right sex with the 'wrong' bodies. She doesn't just think she can determine the positions in which male and female bodies should interact sexually; above all, she thinks that sexual behaviour is not okay if it involves bodies that cannot perform or at least simulate an act of procreation. "The sexual organs of men and women fit together perfectly. They disappear into each other, as it were, and thus enable personal encounters and the procreation of new people in sexuality". People who assume that the anatomical shape of their body does not determine who they can love in order for it to be recognised are considered victims of gender ideology.
The accusation of gender ideology, which has been circulating in the Catholic world for more than two decades now, is a form of hate speech, of linguistic violence. Anyone who characterises dissenters as ideological is accusing them of turning the "real, actual circumstances" into their opposite. From a linguistic point of view, accusations are a tried and tested aggressive means of escalating communication. The ideological accusation is intended to disavow the credibility of the person who is of the opposite opinion. Truth and reason can only be found on one's own side. Anyone who thinks differently merely represents particular interests. In everyday language, ideology is "usually used in an antonymous relationship to something that presents itself as truth, reality, science, knowledge (or even more crudely as 'common sense')."
Those who use the accusation of ideology in public communication are seeking "acclamation by third parties". Those who use the accusation of gender ideology in the Catholic sphere presumably see it as a form of evangelisation in a certain social milieu. A prime example, in which the argumentum ad hominem is also used, is the following statement: "For common sense, the acceptance of homosexuality is of course unthinkable. But people, if they are stubborn, are capable of defending any absurdity until the end of their lives. So if one encounters such an absurdity again, it is much more appropriate not to concentrate on it, but rather on analysing the personality of the person who utters it (...). The following rule of thumb is usually confirmed: the apology of the deviation stems from the deviation itself or from another." It is true: Doubting one "could not be so beside oneself. To hate, you need absolute certainty. Any maybe would be disturbing."
Four obstacles
Coded love poetry on the one hand, hate speech on the other. Is the Catholic Church in a position to revise its judgement of the heretics of love? Does it accept queer identities and lifestyles and abandon the claim that these are contrary to creation? It is well known that the Magisterium has not yet been able to bring itself to change its position. I see four obstacles that stand in the way of accepting sexual and gender diversity.
(1) The first hurdle is time-honoured and is still used in Christian theology today. As is well known, it is nature that draws the moral line between what is permitted and what is not permitted in human sexuality. It is emphasised that this nature, "something that is 'natural' for everyone", is superior to the person and therefore beyond their control. On closer inspection, the argument collapses. On the one hand, it is often merely 'common sense' - or: men's common sense - that declares what is socially customary to be natural. On the other hand, the law of nature in the area of sexuality appears less as the law of human rational nature (secundum rationem) than the law that relates to certain biological laws of reproduction (secundum naturam), which we have in common with animals.
Measuring human sexual behaviour against biological laws undercuts a central intention of natural law, which is to defend the freedom of personal existence. In the area of sexuality and gender, the variant of 'naturalised' natural law outlined above has been regarded as a protective barrier against the emancipation claims of sexual minorities right up to the present day. If one understands natural law as a right to freedom, because without freedom it is impossible to speak meaningfully of the nature of human beings, the natural law of biological regularities loses its strict normative validity. The question is justified: "Why should an altered or ambiguous body be accorded less dignity, less beauty or less recognition?" Theologically speaking: Why should the will of God show itself more in biological processes than in personal fulfilments of freedom?
So as not to be misunderstood at this point: I can see no reason not to agree with the scientific statement that the human species belongs to the genus of living beings that reproduce in a bisexual manner. The basis of this definition of sex is the evolutionary fact of the human reproductive strategy, which is based on two different germ cells that constitute two sexes. At this biological level, we can still speak of two sexes with typical characteristics, even if these characteristics are not realised in the same way by every individual. It is part of the nature of the human species, as we are increasingly realising, that there are variations and intermediate forms in sexual development, sexual orientation and gender identity - as well as the phenomenon of intersexuality, which as such, with its gender ambiguity, does not deny bisexuality in the sense defined above. In my opinion, it is scientifically proven that there is male and female gender with variations that form a continuum, a spectrum between male and female with regard to a variety of biological characteristics. Binarity and diversity or ambiguity are not mutually exclusive, which could possibly be an offer of understanding for the heated debates about gender. I therefore do not think that "the assertion of the naturalness of the genders is always linked to the claim of their unchangeable unambiguity".
The way in which humans, as living beings naturally capable of and determined by cultural transformation, shape and standardise their own sexuality and gender in a variety of ways is subject to social and cultural conditions and changes that can be reconstructed scientifically. In the last half century, the term gender has become established for this old insight. The moral order of gender is a product of human autonomy that takes natural phenomena into account without directly deriving a moral obligation from them. This means, for example, that the demand to morally respect only heterosexual intimate relationships ignores the natural "fundamental condition" and "fixed inner structure" of the ability of non-heterosexual persons to love.
To find out what moral standards should be applied to sexual behaviour, it is not enough to point to the factuality of desire; what counts here is the nature of human freedom, which above all demands mutual respect for self-determination and integrity. Because homosexuality, transsexuality and intersexuality do not violate any goods or cause any harm, they do not raise any moral questions. With regard to homosexuality, authors such as Kurt Tucholsky already articulated this in the 1920s: "The harmfulness of homosexuality has not been proven."
(2) The second hurdle is erected with the Holy Scriptures and can be found as an example in a magisterial document from 1986. The biblical evidence for the condemnation of same-sex sexual contact is clear. We would therefore be dealing with a theocratic law. With this judgement, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wants to correct those who, since the 1960s, have come to different exegetical conclusions in the interpretation of the relevant biblical texts. Their judgement that the Bible neither recognises nor condemns homoerotic love relationships is not decisive because this interpretation contradicts tradition, which has always judged same-sex behaviour negatively.
The opposite conclusion is reached by church documents that regard the finding that the Bible speaks of loving relationships between men or women as an argument in favour of accepting same-sex relationships. Biblical texts can obviously be used both for a queer-hostile and a queer-friendly stance. This dilemma of drawing opposite conclusions from a reading of the Bible is not new. From a moral theological perspective, it can be resolved. Whether or not a moral conviction agrees with the sentences of a Holy Scripture is of secondary importance for the validity of a moral norm. It is not the Bible that interprets morality, but morality that interprets the Bible.
(3) The third hurdle is a certain concept of sacramentality. The idea is that God's relationship with human beings has certain characteristics that can only be symbolically represented in a heterosexual marital partnership: "If one asks which of the two - man or woman - can personify or represent the creative word of God, and which of the two - man or woman - can personify or represent the receptive (responsive) character of creation, then it becomes clear why Judeo-Christian iconography always connotes creation, synagogue and church as female and the Creator and the divine Logos as male."
This perception of reality sees itself as sacramental because it surmises a deeper layer beneath the visible, a mystery "that ultimately only reveals itself when we look at Jesus Christ." The church is "possibly (...) with its sacramental understanding of gender difference the last bulwark against a tremendous comparative validity" - a comparative validity that is evident in the superficial treatment of sexuality in Western societies. Karl-Heinz Menke's aim with these considerations is to demonstrate why women cannot be ordained as priests. But this sacramental understanding of gender difference also plays an important role in sexual morality, where it is used against the recognition of same-sex relationships. This means that anyone who judges sexual relationships autonomously, i.e. using moral categories, is thinking superficially. The asymmetry between Creator and creature must be mirrored and represented in the asymmetry between man and woman. Only those who recognise this theological depth of marriage can understand why sexualities that deviate from this are theologically inconceivable: They cannot represent God's relation to man because they are same-sex. The Bishop of Passau, Stefan Oster, seamlessly endorses this concept and proclaims: "If (...) man himself is called to be a sacrament and if the Church is also described as a sacrament of 'the most intimate union' of God and humanity, if the Scriptures describe Christ and the Church as bride and bridegroom, then the meaning of sexuality from its origin is also 'most intimate union' and thus also faithfulness, permanence and fertility. (...) In this sense, marriage and the sexuality practised within it are 'holy', sanctified by God and originally intended by him in this way."
The "relationship between bride and groom" is so firmly linked to the mystery of creation and redemption that it should be recognised as the norm for human sexuality for people of faith. Conversion to the sacramental understanding or adaptation to "liberalism in matters of love" - the church has to decide between these options. Vertical knowledge of faith (for Oster, this means the knowledge given by Scripture and the Magisterium of what was 'originally intended by God') beats "horizontally gained knowledge of the human sciences and the consideration of the normality of life." Faith purifies "scientific analysis" and human freedom. This idea amounts to a religious self-empowerment to dispense with ethics. The moral judgement is always already fixed in the act of submission to religious authority. Those who deviate from this judgement are not presented with reasons of practical reason, but are called upon to repent. An ethics-free ministry does not want moral freedom for the faithful - in the end it wants servile submissiveness.
I am like woman to man, like man to woman to you, Platen had written. The sexual relationship between I and you was thus liberated from the heterosexual protocol. The qualities attributed to masculinity and femininity are available to both men and women; they are human abilities. They are fluid. In the Catholic model, they solidify again in the old polarity. There it is then said that the male/female role model is also realised in homosexual relationships (as a copy!) - a truly limited view of human sexuality compared to Platen. No ethical commandments can be derived from free religious associations about the sacramentality of marriage. Is it cluelessness to try anyway - or an authoritarian attitude that does not care whether one's own morals can be reasonably communicated to the other person?
But it could be different, even in orthodox thinking. Men are expected to submit to God, which has a feminine connotation, which is why there is a symbolic feminisation of masculinity. Men should become Marian, women should remain Marian. You can read about this in Joseph Ratzinger. Catholic queerness is a male prerogative. The reason is easy to guess. In this way, men protect themselves from women in office. The asymmetry of the sexes remains while gender identity is transgressed at the same time. This could be one reason why Catholicism appears so attractive to queer males, a well-known example being Oscar Wilde. On the level of aesthetic design, for example, he stands for a different form of masculinity.
From an ethical point of view, the dogmatic train of thought is not a strong argument. You can look at reality the way Menke and many others do. But to derive moral demands from religious symbolism deprives morality of its point. For who protects people from the arbitrariness of those who claim to be able to make moral prescriptions to others based on their better insight into the depths or symbolism of reality? It seems to me that in the end it is not about ethics if the acceptance of queer love life is discredited as an expression of a superficial culture. This leads me to the fourth obstacle.
(4) Last year, the Trier moral theologian Johannes Brantl presented the following consideration in the Theologische Quartalschrift: The "concern of a further development of sexual doctrine [should] not be orientated towards the expectations and plausibilities of society as a whole, the particular interests of individual groups or questions of opportunity, but rather start with the sources of Holy Scripture and tradition that are decisive for the Church and theology and make its own profile quite self-confident in the midst of the current plurality of ideas of a successful life".
The central norms - the exclusivity of marital sexuality, the primacy of generativity and the disapproval of same-sex practices and relationships - are justified with Benedict XVI "human ecology", i.e. with the book of nature, from which man can take certain duties towards his either female or male physicality. It should also be noted "that the biblical creation narratives that are decisive for a Christian anthropology particularly recognise the model of heteronormativity and the aspect of reproduction in connection with the bisexuality of humans." The "characteristic of opposite sex" is "biblically founded" and part of the Catholic moral teaching's own profile. The demand for the blessing of same-sex partnerships finds "no evidence whatsoever in the Bible", as the Pontifical Biblical Commission once again stated in 2019.
At the end of his reflections, Brantl draws on the "experience advantage of church tradition and community over the individual", which gives the church's magisterium "an argumentative advantage, so to speak". Whether women or sexual minorities feel comfortable in this Catholic advantage of experience and argumentation, one would have to ask them; or is it a matter of the aforementioned "particular interests of individual groups"? It irritates me how it is taken for granted here that the Church's magisterium is particularly well versed in the sanctity of morals.
Brantl's text is a document of concern that a change in doctrine is not compatible with the preservation of the profile or identity of Catholic moral teaching. This identity is to be defended against the plausibilities of society as a whole (rather than against ethical objections). Criticising the Church's moral teaching on the basis of moral autonomy is therefore not permissible. Other standards apply here. The normative statements defended by Brantl belong more to the category of church commandments. They are commandments imposed on the faithful by the church hierarchy in order to fix certain habits in the interest of the identity of a community experience. Those who adhere to them should be sure of being and remaining Catholic. The recourse to Catholic identity cancels out the ethical objections. It excludes the heretics of love and transforms their struggle for dignity into a particular interest. The disregard for the concerns of sexual minorities is reinterpreted as a Catholic advantage in experience. Moral teaching crawls into the Catholic snail shell.
Negated phenomena
This fourth obstacle to identity has a characteristic that makes it particularly treacherous. The question of how queer lifestyles should be judged from an exegetical or natural law perspective can be argued about in the theological-ethical debate. Gaining knowledge from the Bible or humanities can lead to changed judgements. In this way, there is no doubt that Catholic theology has gained momentum in the assessment of homosexuality. However, if denominational identity becomes the criterion, such findings fall behind - as can be seen from the fact that they are relativised or sometimes completely called into question. How semantics can be used to negate homosexuality and transsexuality is shown by the statement that people who "have homosexual or transsexual feelings" should receive "pastoral and psychological counselling".
This corresponds to the Catechism, which went unnoticed by many in 1997 and only recognises deep-seated homosexual tendencies that are objectively disordered (CCC 2358) - and no longer, as before, speaks of a non-self-chosen disposition. This means that it is not about the feelings of homosexuals or transsexuals, but about homosexual or transsexual feelings. Is it spoken in this way in order to be able to accuse the subject again of their non-conformist feelings (and the resulting sexual acts)? Or is the option of conversion (or at least abstinence) being propagated?
It is also a sign of negation not to make room for the experiences and feelings of queer people in theology. That is why we learn much more about the nature of human love in literature than in church documents or theological treatises. Should the acceptance of sexual diversity and gender fluidity not find a home in the religious community for fear of jeopardising its traditional identity and firmly established asymmetrical order? I suspect that this motive is often behind the criticism of changes in doctrine. Those who want to live autonomously can and should do so elsewhere in modern society. This counter-cultural strategy in dealing with diversity may be understandable from a socio-psychological or church-political perspective, but from a moral-theological point of view I see no convincing argument for not finally siding with the heretics of love.
The formula from the Catechism quoted at the beginning (Every person, whether man or woman, must recognise and accept their sexuality) turns out to be a formula for preventing the recognition and acceptance of diversity in the area of sexuality and gender. It assumes a sexual-ethical duty of the individual towards a certain difference between female and male bodies associated with the bisexuality of the species. In an ethics of autonomy, the norm is: You should respect every person as a person and recognise and respect the rights that protect their dignity, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is not the anatomy of the other body that sets limits to my (sexual) self-determination, but the freedom of the other person.
