The example for this week’s analysis is brought to you by the website for “Catholic answers” by www.catholic.com. We will compare the contents of this website with the summary for Thursday’s articles which relates to the effect medical authority and the dynamics behind sexual desires and sex addiction. Jennifer Terry’s article “Medicalizing Homosexuality” from An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society— dives into the use of medical authority as a means of embracing homosexuality in society with scientific evidence, in which physicians who were proponents of homosexuality would try to use their credibility, respected by most people, to change views on gay men and women who were victimized in discrimination and prejudice. It was believed by most people that “the growing trust in medicine, held by a wide range of people, was tied to the belief that its practitioners were rational, truthful, and objective, while also caring and compassionate” (Terry 42). Biomedicine were aware of this “trust,” but was it enough to make a difference?
Jannice Irvine’s article “Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desires and Sex Addiction” from Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture shares a similar approach to the idea of sexual desires and addiction by connecting to science once more. She links desire and addiction to the endocrinology of the brain and the body which could be medically justified as a disease as opposed to choice. She says that “professionals have assiduously tracked the etiology of sexual conditions within a biomedical tradition that quantifies desire and locates this search for primeval urge in the subject itself” (Irvine 320). What Jannice Irvine and Jennifer Terry have shown is that there tends to be a need for a scientific evidence for there to be a social acceptance about a subjective topic. The basis of scientific and medical evidence is often interpreted as the most definitive, but what is one of the most common grounds of confliction with science? Religion. For so long, science and religion have clashed and clashed, and although some individuals believe both in simultaneity (with Pascal’s theorem being a force in the existing religious beliefs), religious institutions and foundations tend not to budge or give way to science as a means of reason and understanding. For instance, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and idea of evolution was thought to be dumbfounded by religions that are solely revolved around creationism by God. Magnus Hirschfield was brought into Terry’s article, saying he “was compelled by Darwin’s idea of indispensability of natural variation in evolutionary processes” and that “[homosexuality] represents a piece of that natural order, a sexual variation like numerous, analogous sexual modifications in the animal and plant kingdoms,” yet this given information could be played off so fast by religious institutions (Terry 54).
By understanding the notions towards science by conservative religious groups, we can understand where these clashes between ideas occur and why. First off, I want to state that the quotes that I’m citing directly off Catholic.com are in no way an accurate representation of the beliefs of every individual who is part of the Catholic religion. On the website, under “Homosexuality,” I came across the following:
“Every human being is called to receive a gift of divine sonship, to become a child of God by grace. However, to receive this gift, we must reject sin, including homosexual behavior—that is, acts intended to arouse or stimulate a sexual response regarding a person of the same sex. The Catholic Church teaches that such acts are always violations of divine and natural law” (Catholic Answers).
What we see here is a quote that undermines, in a sense, the homosexual’s existence. It is given through that particular statement, that homosexual behavior is an “act,” and can’t be seen as a way of life despite the natural outcome of the individual’s sexuality from the very moment of birth. Scientific specialists have been aiming for an “emancipatory” approach to homosexuality, including Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, who presented that “homosexuals were psychical hermaphrodites, having bodies that seemed to be normal but psyches that were inverted” (Terry 44). The website forms a counterargument against this by stating:
“Even if there is a genetic predisposition toward homosexuality (and studies on this point are inconclusive), the behavior remains unnatural because homosexuality is still not part of the natural design of humanity. It does not make homosexual behavior acceptable; other behaviors are not rendered acceptable simply because there may be a genetic predisposition toward them” (Catholic Answers).
A few questions a person can ask the writer for this website are: what if the individual was naturally designed to be homosexual? What is humanity designed for, even if it was meant to be heterosexual? Does the disregard towards the genetic predisposition of homosexuality downplay the medicalization of homosexuality, which in turn questions the structure and objectivity of biomedicine in general?
Irvine produces the idea that sexual desire is a result of a “biological drive or surging energy that is either flooding uncontrollably or woefully diminished” (Irvine 320). This is to say that we aren’t always in control of what our body wants. There is a chemical foundation that leads to the desire, and at times we don’t have the ability to refrain. The website tackles this by stating:
“Homosexual desires, however, are not in themselves sinful. People are subject to a wide variety of sinful desires over which they have little direct control, but these do not become sinful until a person acts upon them, either by acting out the desire or by encouraging the desire and deliberately engaging in fantasies about acting it out. People tempted by homosexual desires, like people tempted by improper heterosexual desires, are not sinning until they act upon those desires in some manner” (Catholic Answers).
In the end, it’s all about culture. Scientifically, there is no pathogenesis in regards to sexual desire, but culturally it could be seen as a disease. This is supported by Irvine’s claim that “there must be cultural recognition that desire problems are diseases, with a subsequent adoption of the language and concepts of dysfunction" (Irvine 327). How does homosexuality produce dysfunction, though? Biologically, it may not provide offspring for males, but socially they are just as contributive as any other group of human being.
"Homosexuality." Catholic Answers: Catholic Apologetics, Catholic Evangelization, Catholic Teachings, Catholic Radio, Catholic Publishing, Catholic Truth. Web. 11 Feb. 2011.
Jennifer Terry. 1999. “Medicalizing Homosexuality.” IN An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp 40-73.
Jannice M. Irvine. 1995. “Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sexual Addiction.” In Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture.” Edited by Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla. Bloomington and Indianoplis: Indiana University Press.
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