Desmund Tutu is for me one of the enlightened religious leaders of our time. Recently, he has brought to light the plight of homosexuals in Africa when he said that he would rather go to hell than to a homophobic heaven. In response, a Catholic blogger retorted that first and foremost, homosexuality is against natural law. Let me get to the definition of natural law, according to dictionary.com, natural law is "a principle or body of laws considered as derived from nature, right reason, or religion and as ethically binding in human society." It further adds, natural law is also "an ethical belief or system of beliefs supposed to be inherent in human nature and discoverable by reason rather than revelation" and finally, it can also mean "the philosophical doctrine that the authority of the legal system or of certain laws derives from their justifiability by reason, and indeed that a legal system which cannot be so justified has no authority."
It can be gleaned therefore that there are many definitions of natural law, it seems that natural law is not only a belief system, it is also a philosophy, hence, it cannot be said that it is a scientific fact in the conventional sense of the word. Besides, the definition of Lisa Graas of natural law is not just the definition of natural law as shared by all religions, but more specifically, it is a definition as taught by the Catholic Church. Hence, it can be given no more credence than one subscribed to by a Muslim or a Hindu or a Jew or even an animist. To insinuate that natural law as defined by the Catholic Church, which decries homosexuality as a sin, is like saying that all other religious traditions are wrong if they define natural law otherwise.
Lisa Graas pretends to lend a credible tinge of truth to her post by saying that to reject homosexuality is right and proper as it blends well with the natural order of things. Really? Science has proven that homosexuality is prevalent in the animal kingdom, in the same way that masturbation is prevalent even among insects. So yes, homosexuality is not against nature, if it were, it wouldn't have occurred in the first place. What is unnatural is the Catholic teaching on forced celibacy for priests, that is unnatural. What is unnatural and certainly against reason is when dogma is given credit to determine and condemn people for simply being the way they are. Remember, the Catholic Church is no credible institution to dictate on matters of morals, indeed, it is complicit in many immoral, inhuman and plainly brutal murder episodes in its violent history - think the Inquisition!
And Lisa Graas, even the so-called Catholic teaching on monogamy is arcane and is not shared by all animals. Science has taught us that in an overwhelming majority of animals, monogamy is NOT the norm. Of course we see animals that mate for life like the Jack ass penguins of South Africa, but they are actually the natural minority.
What Ms. Graas refers to as natural is a misnomer, it simply means what is natural law as defined and codified by the Catholic Church. And please, even if the homosexual debate tilts in favor of the LGBT community, your right to free speech will not be impaired as most LGBT's are actually humanists in the broad sense of the world. They are humanists because of the experience of brutality and shame heaped upon them by the likes of religious people like yourself. I have seen young people disowned, humiliated and ostracized no less by their own families because they do not fit, as you say, the "natural law" order of things.
Your claims of the death of free speech if your one-sided, Catholic medieval beliefs on homosexuality are not sustained by modern, rational thinking man will cause the curtailment of your freedom to speak your discriminatory inclinations is just too conspiratorial, even to conspiracy prone netizens like myself. Please, we are in the twenty-first century, a time in our human history were knowledge is more open, more dynamic, more comprehensive than it ever was in the history of humanity. Open yourself up, if you believe that homosexuals will go to your own eternal version of the holocaust, that is your right, but to say that homosexuals are unnatural aberrations is like saying that Down's SYNDROME children will go to hell simply because they do not have the mental faculties to tackle the Bible. Please, please, read more, and read intently. Do not just dwell on your Catholic beliefs, beliefs that over the centuries were proven to be brutal, inhuman and plainly immoral.
If anything, Desmund Tutu is a great humanist. Although brought in the tradition of the Abrahamic faiths, he has the common sense to say that if indeed there is a just God, they why the hell did he make homosexuals in the first place if by doing so they will just end up, in your words, in hell for their immoral acts? Is that the actions of a rational, reasonable, not to mention fair and loving God you are so adamantly committed to?
And oh, just because Tutu was not ordained under the Holy Orders of the Catholic Church does not make his statements regarding a so-called god any less credible, by what reasonable assumption has any church or religion exclusive and unilateral authority to claim it speaks for and in behalf of an entity that for all intents and purposes, has never even been proven to conclusively exist?
Religious fanatics and dogmatists, they never fail to amuse me.
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