Using modern science to treat homosexuality
Homosexuality is an issue that has been shaped by Western
values, and is now front-and-center in almost every country and culture
around the world, especially those societies influenced by secular humanism.
But even more traditional societies, such as those in Africa, have not gone
unaffected by it, given how social media shrinks our globe.
In polemics over homosexuality, Catholicism is often falsely
accused of being both “homophobic” and “anti-science.” But the Catholic Church
is far from being against science, a fact that can be seen by the large number
of priests who have been top scientists, such as Georges Lemaître, who proposed
the Big Bang theory, and Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics. In fact,
the Church encourages the upright work of scientists in all fields. Simply
reading what the Church officially teaches about science—today and
historically—would easily confirm this positive view (e.g., see parts 1 and 2
of the Introduction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1987
“Instruction,” Donum vitae).
Moreover, the Church shows respect for science in affirming that
scientific inquiry proceeds according to its own particular laws and
principles. Vatican Council II’s Gaudium et spes proclaimed
that science has a legitimate autonomy (see
36 and 59). The recognition that science has a legitimate autonomy does not
mean, however, that there are no moral principles it must respect. Indeed, the
Church reminds scientists—many of whom are Catholic Christians and other
persons of religious faith—that the integrity of their vocation and work
depends on its conformity to moral truth and respect for the dignity of the
human person.
The Church also warns of a reductionist account of the human person,
e.g., reducing our understanding of the person to what can be known by means of
the positivist scientific method alone. As much as we need the investigations
carried out by modern science, we need reminding that science alone cannot
answer every question. This is why it is so important for everyone to listen to
the testimonies of those who consider
themselves as having same-sex attraction (SSA). Of course, scientists too from
relevant fields (e.g., genetics) should listen to that lived experience, as
they have done. But other disciplines, such as philosophy, theology, and
psychology—more humanistic in their approach and aims—should also be part of
this listening and learning process.
This work is needed now more than ever. Our culture is greatly
confused about the person, sex, marriage, and the family. Again, not exactly
the newest of news! This confusion has only grown over the past several
decades, especially in the West, as witnessed by the legalization of same-sex
“marriage” in America and other countries. Yet the secular culture bullies the
Church and others who might offer hope to persons with SSA seeking to live
chastely and/or to change their sexual orientation in order to cease these
efforts, even going so far as to legally ban “reparative therapy” for children
and teenagers—”junk science,” they disparagingly call it.
At the same time, in utter contradiction, when individuals
struggle with gender dysphoria, i.e., transgenderism or transsexualism, the
culture often condemns those who merely raise questions about the advisability
of the radical transformation of a man to a “woman” or a woman to a “man.” This
“transitioning” can only be affirmed, never criticized, say the Thought Police,
in this ideological atmosphere of selective non-judgmentalism.
This is why I believe that clinical psychology—at least one with
a sound philosophical anthropology—is most advantageous. These clinicians
actually work directly with individuals who suffer with SSA. Of all scientific
professionals, the clinical psychologist is probably best situated to treat, as
well as gain insights into, the homosexual/lesbian orientation. These
therapists are the best suited for the task, because they are the most familiar
with the struggles of these clients. They see the psychic wounds, and hear the
often-tragic life stories of people who have been troubled by their same-gender
sexual orientation. (Of course, family and close friends, priests and
ministers, etc., are also often aware of these struggles, but are not usually
involved in a professional therapeutic relationship with the person with SSA.)
They are also most attuned to, and willing to maintain, the
“normal–abnormal” distinction when it comes to mental health. In some way, they
have to uphold the distinction in order to help their patients: for they come
face-to-face with it every day and see the negative effects of this
abnormality. (I purposely avoid using the older terms employed in psychology
and moral theology, “perversion” and “deviancy,” which, to me, imply a certain
element of choice which the term “abnormal” can, of course, allow for, but does
not explicitly indicate.)
This explains why I find the comment by the respected French
priest-psychotherapist Tony Anatrella, who specializes in clinical and social
psychology, so telling. In his 2006 essay in the Pontifical Council for the
Family’s Lexicon titled
“Homosexuality and Homophobia,” Anatrella observes that the view which denies
there is a psychological problem at the root of homosexuality “does not
correspond to the opinion
of the majority of practitioners, who are forced to keep quiet so
as not to be punished in the name of the politically correct orthodoxy in fashion”
(p. 427; the first emphasis is mine).
This forced silence of those most familiar with SSA is not only
deafening, it is destructive for those who suffer with the inclination. If
homosexuality “corresponds to a sexual inclination that occurs during the
affective development of the person but which is based on an unresolved
psychological conflict,” as Anatrella argues, then we do an injustice to SSA
persons who do not receive the best treatment they deserve.
In my observation, most physicians who treat bodily illnesses do
not have a worked-out theory of human nature. They simply recognize from
medical training and experience the difference between healthy and unhealthy
functioning. In the area of psychotherapy, many therapists and counselors are
in the same boat: they do not always have a theoretically detailed knowledge of
human nature and mental illness, but rather an experiential understanding (a
“working model”) gathered from their education and practice. Nonetheless, they
know well a neurotic mind from a healthy mind.
Psychotropic drugs have worked miracles in restoring normal
mental functioning in all sorts of troubled patients, e.g., those with
schizophrenia, among others. The “pharmacological revolution,” as Francis
Fukuyama has called it, coupled with the discovery of the biological basis of
much mental disturbance, has enabled psychiatrists to work wonders treating
patients with various debilitating afflictions of the mind having a biochemical
basis. If cancer and schizophrenia are clear-cut cases of physical illness and
mental illness, respectively, certain bodily ailments, however, remain
mysterious in their origins and/or treatment. Such is true as well in the
mental health field, where the interplay between nature and nurture or
environment and choice is involved. I think of the issue in focus, i.e.,
homosexuality: its causes, cures, and cultural aspects. There are still many
things we simply do not know, or do not know well enough.
Presupposing the historic truth of Christian teaching on
homosexuality, there is, unfortunately, no drug available (as of yet!) that one
could take in order to restore or create normal heterosexual functioning.
Today, of course, the majority of psychologists and mental health care
professionals deny that there is anything abnormal about homosexuality. Famously, the
American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental
disorders in the early 1970s. This was due primarily to political pressure more
than anything having to do with the objective findings of an impartial
psychiatric science (cf. Anatrella, p. 431).
My point here is that with sexual appetites or
inclinations—whether heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual—we are faced with a
complex phenomenon that exists on a wide spectrum. It has refused to be
mastered by the methods of empirical science alone. Unlike many physical
diseases, one cannot, as said, just give a person a drug: either to make him
gay/make her lesbian, or to make this “gay” person heterosexual. (That is not
to deny the possibility of a genetic component.)
Many of the clinical psychologists who treat patients seeking
relief from their SSA have, in fact, a true assessment of this condition. They
understand that the inability to establish a true marital relationship with a
person of the opposite sex is harmful to the person with SSA. Without a
one-flesh union, the possibility of a family—the very biological purpose of
sex—is also obviously impeded. (Unless of course artificial reproductive
techniques are used; but even then the natural family is still seriously
compromised.) This is nothing less than a disability. To be precise, it is a psychological disorder before
it is anything else. This disorder can impede the exercise of one’s freedom. To
what degree we are not always certain. But we do know that it can lead to forms
of behavior that are both physically and morally harmful, regardless of the
matter of one’s responsibility for those behaviors. There’s nothing
“homophobic” about saying that. The unwillingness of much of our culture, for
whatever reasons, to admit this will, in fact, doom many SSA-afflicted men and
women to lives of misery. You cannot help someone—and we all need help in
dealing with our various moral and non-moral afflictions—you do not consider to
be in need of help in the first place. True happiness is based on a realistic
assessment of one’s own condition—the physical, mental, moral, spiritual, and
intellectual aspects—and another’s.
But man-woman sexual complementarity is so fundamental and so
obvious—literally rooted in our bodily and psychological make-up—that only
sin-induced blindness could prevent us (and our culture) from acknowledging it.
The loss of (human) nature has, in fact, blocked many persons from seeing this
anthropological fact as a
fact. Our postmodern culture likes to think of itself as having moved beyond
such “outdated” ideas as truth, reality, objectivity, identity, absolutes, and
so on. Everything now is, as the saying goes, “socially constructed.” And that
includes such givens as nature, sex, and gender.
But without the acceptance of such created-by-God givens as
these, we really have no stable and universal standard for determining if we
have attained authentic progress, or pseudo-progress (cf. St. John Paul
II, Veritatis splendor,
53). Everything, then, exists in flux without a fixed point of reference for
evaluating changes and developments in politics, culture, science, medicine,
ethics, and so on. In healthcare, including mental healthcare, notions such as
normal and abnormal, sick and healthy, are basic and essential to the
diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of pathology. Part of the effectiveness of
the care—not only psychological, but also pastoral, and so on—offered to
homosexually-inclined persons depends on (re)affirming (often in the face of
opposition!) these fundamental givens of our human nature.
Reprinted with permission from Crisis
Magazine.