On legislating sexuality.

After an excellent (though tragically shortened because of the nature of radio) conversation with a libertarian Catholic about the rightness of legislating sexual morality yesterday, I think some clarification may be in order.

Christians believe that sexual union is only proper in the confines of permanent marriage between a man and a woman because this is God’s single best natural symbol for revealing Himself to His Creation. This is why He made them together in His image and told them to be fruitful and multiply (with their bodies!) during the crescendo of creation prior to declaring everything He had made “very” good.

God built us sexual as the premiere method of disclosing His own Triune nature through marriage and reproduction. That’s why every other form of sexual expression is at its core a form of blasphemy and why they’re inherently unsatisfying to people made to bear God’s image. On this all Christians agree.

Where we sometimes differ is over the appropriateness of imposing this view of human sexuality on others through the law when they don’t see things our way. There are two ways to justify this.

First, we already do something similar when we tell them not to murder because it violates the sacredness of life. Since sexuality and marriage are every bit as sacred as “mere” life, they therefore also demand society’s protection. This truth is every bit as fundamental to human reality as the right to life, fundamental enough that we should not cater to or accommodate in our laws the ignorance of other people who do not grasp it.

Second, another essential Christian doctrine is the corruption and depravity of man’s desires. This means that every American Christian considering legislation must start with the tension between letting people having a say in their government and yet knowing they will unavoidably desire the wrong things from that government. We must honor their choices to some degree, but we must not deceive ourselves into limitlessly trusting their choices to be good ones. By holding the human will as an inviolable sovereign and the protection of its corrupt desires as the objective of society, Christians seduced by libertarianism forget that there is no dignity to be found in permitting people to defile their most significant human quality: their sexuality.

As John Paul II so clearly and rightly explained, the society that debases the image of God in sexuality will also unavoidably destroy it in bodies physically. This is why solving pornography and abortion require the same basic steps. And although law is always a weak external form of control, the stigma it carries as the moral argument of last resort is still better than the neglectful silence of libertarians who claim to honor humanity by permitting people to dehumanize themselves.

It’s just no coincidence at all that regard for sexuality, life, marriage, and family all crumble together, just before the entire society turns to dust…because the breath of God’s life is no longer in it.