Monthly Archives: April 2022

With What Right Do I Accuse The LGBQT+ Agenda of Promoting Sexual Immorality?

Book promotion, Sexual morality

During the eight years since I published a book on sexual morality, I have been reflecting on how to strengthen my case for a fundamental principle of male sexuality. I called it the Paternal Principle.

A free copy of my book Confronting Sexual Nihilism is available by emailing me at kielkopf.1@osu.edu

The Paternal Principle states:
A male may intentionally attain a sexual climax only in coitus, performed in private, with a consenting woman to whom he is bound by a life-long, monogamous, socially recognized union for procreation, In addition he should:(1) intend to cooperate with his spouse to protect and promote the lifelong natural development of any conception resulting from this intercourse and (2) strive to appreciate with his spouse the natural value of their sexual satisfactions and cooperate with her to enhance those satisfactions.

Of course, someone who accepts this principle, such as I, condemn the LGBQT+ agenda as promoting sexual immorality. Why do I seek to improve a case for this principle since I already accept it? It is always well to seek further support for our beliefs. But my primary motive for seeking a strong persuasive case for this principle is to justify my actions of condemning the dominant current sexual morality of the cultures in which I live. Analogous to religious apologetics, my work is sexual morality apologetics. I aim to provide considerations for public discourse because a decent respect for the opinion of humankind requires explaining rejection the dominant opinion.

The explanation for upholding what can be called traditional sexual morality is long. I have been working it out in my book and in numerous blog posts ever since. For the most part I use only assumptions everyone can understand. The assumptions about God and the supernatural are only introduced to strengthen my case for the religiously inclined. Now, as my dismissal of formal arguments as satisfactory arguments indicate, my explanation needs to be given in a book or series of essays. I have these available. Readers can click back through my posts. I will continue providing the bits and pieces of my rationale for condemning the LGBQT+ agenda in subsequently blog posts.

There is, though, a verbally short consideration which may take a long time to follow. The verbally short consideration is for men to just think honestly about their sexuality. This honest thinking may take some time. In my eighty-seven years, feedback from my body has convinced me that the principle is correct.

Divine Commands and Theology of the Body I

Critique of Birth Control, Moral philosophy, Sexual morality

This is not an interpretation of St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. This post dismisses what is most likely a misinterpretation.

I have read all of John Paul II’s Angelus Addresses collectively titled “Theology of the Body.” I have read much, if not all, of Christopher West’s Theology of the Body Explained: A Commentary of John Paul II’s “Gospel of the Body”, Boston, 2003. In 2005, I bought West’s book at St. Therese’s Retreat House in Columbus, Ohio where I was making a weekend retreat with talks by Fr. Joseph Murphy from Josephinum Seminary on the theology of the body. Five years ago, I completed a six week On-line STEP course offered by the McGraft Institute at the University of Notre Dame titled “Theology of the Body.”

So far, however, I have not appreciated of the theology of the body. I keep trying to use its major themes to formulate compelling premises in arguments about sexuality. Because of my focus on finding compelling premises I did not use any theology of the body themes in my book making a case for traditional Catholic male sexual morality. A free copy of my book: Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism Tulsa 2014 is available by emailing kielkopf.1@osu.edu

I can outline formal arguments with premises and conclusion which are most likely caricatures of the moral reasoning implicit in the theology of the body. My understanding does not enable me to do more. Below is an example of such a caricature condemning artificial birth control addressed to married couples in general who engage in coitus with chemical or mechanical means in place to stop conception.

An argument against contraception by technical means is appropriate for illustrating use of themes from theology of the body. For, it seems to me, that most people who take an interest in theology of the body are concerned with how well, or poorly, it supports Paul V’s 1968 condemnation of birth control in his encyclical Humanae Vitae .

The theology of the body theme I use is that actions of our bodies make statements. These bodily statements can be attributed to both us and God. They can be attributed to us because we perform the actions. They can also be attributed to God because in creation of nature God created our bodies to make these statements with bodily actions. Characterization of bodily actions as statements of God makes this theology of the body.

It is not bizarre to interpret bodily actions as giving information. A zoologist from another planet studying the human species could properly interpret the actions of a couple courting and then copulating as giving the information that they are engaging in reproduction of the species. And it is not too far fetched to regard the information given as a statement having been made.

1. If you engage in coitus, what God by nature has your bodies say is ”We are promoting conception.”
2. If you intend to prevent conception in coitus, you have your bodies say “We are not promoting conception. “ (Bodily actions of putting birth control devices in place make statements in body language.)
So, (3) if you engage in coitus and intend to prevent conception, you have your bodies contradict what God says your bodies are doing.
4. You ought not contradict what God says by nature, your bodies are doing
So, (5) you ought not have your bodies say, “We are not promoting conception.”
Hence, finally,(6) you ought not engage in coitus and intend to prevent conception.

I dismiss this type of reasoning because premise (4) is too vague to be accepted as correct. I accept that God has, by the nature He has created, given human bodies the capacity to give messages. Indeed, my project is to make sense of God giving us moral commands by what happens in our bodies. Here, I want only to offer a reminder that frequently what we ought to do is have our bodies conflict with what our bodies say by nature.

For instance, suppose I am very tired and have a severe headache. When sitting by myself, my bodily action is looking miserable and holding my head. I hear someone coming to whom I should appear welcoming. I perk up to look normal. I have my body contradict what my body is now saying silently.

I could go on to remind us how much of the development of virtue requires making our bodies act in a way conflicting with what our bodies naturally say.

Also, there are many cases in which a physical description of what we do can be described as injuring a person. However, if this injuring, eg. surgery, can be described as not injuring the person.

I stop this critique of this caricature argument because it drifts into a critique of those caricatures of natural law moral reasoning. The caricatures of natural law moral reasoning are criticized by attributing to them a premise to the effect that we ought never inhibit natural processes.

There are two flaws in my caricature of theology of the body reasoning.

The first law is to interpret what the body says by nature, and hence by God, are only indicative claims about what is being done. I need to work on making sense of holding that what the body says by nature, and hence by God, are also imperatives; hence, divine commands.

The second and more serious flaw in the caricature argument is my presupposition that constructing formal premise and conclusion arguments is of fundamental importance in moral reasoning. This is the erroneous presupposition that the argument gives the imperative. Or more accurately: There is a presupposition that intelligent readers or hearers of the argument receive an imperative when they reach the conclusion. Presumably, God, reason, morality or whatever the moral authority might be uses arguments as the transmitters of moral commands.

I shall go on to outline a theology of the body for sexual morality. But John Paul II et al. cannot be blamed for it. Moral arguments will have the exhortative function of directing us to pay attention to features of our bodies to receive moral imperatives from these bodily features. The theological presupposition is that God’s commands are these bodily imperatives.

How God’s Commands are in Human Nature

Authoritarian Morality, Divine Command Morality, Moral philosophy

Here “human nature” does not stand for a type which can be defined. As a type or form human nature is a timeless abstraction which is in no place. What is in the type is there by definition. For this post, human nature is that in reality which are the humans – the human part of nature. Perhaps, “humanity would be a better term. If we think of the type or form of human nature, no definition of this type would imply that humans fight endless wars. Humans are not necessarily by definition warlike. So, being warlike is not in the type human nature. But in actuality humans are warlike. So, even if it is a contingent fact that we fight endless wars, we can say that being warlike is natural for humans.

Humanity does not have a fixed spatial location. Humans might leave planet earth. Humanity has a temporal location. Humanity began when God gave a species of hominids moral souls. In this connection see: Supernatural Origin of the Human Soul. Human nature as humanity will cease to be if the human beings become extinct.

Human nature is a complex reality which includes radically different levels of reality. There is, of course, the physical reality of individual living human beings. The bodies of humans have definite spatial locations at any time. Individual humans have thoughts and feelings which can be dated but which have only an imprecise spatial location as in the vicinity of the thinking and feeling body. There are the vast intermingled collective thoughts and, I say, feelings of human beings. Some of these collections can be given imprecise spatial and temporal locations. For instance, the religious beliefs of an isolated tribe may imprecisely be located where the tribe lives. But they cannot be located as in the vicinity of individuals as can the religious thoughts of those individuals.

But there are other thoughts and sentiments or the capacity for them which are common to all individuals and cultures. Here I would emphasize that the universal thoughts and sentiments as residing primarily in the cultures because they do not come into existence and pass away as does the thinking of feeling of individuals. The universal thoughts and feelings could be called reason. However, labelling them as reason is not to classify all of them as correct.

God’s placed His commands in the reason of this complex reality of humanity. How? God gave human beings the capacity to think and feel morally. The capacity to think morally is primarily the capacity to think that what is good is to be promoted and never directly inhibited. The capacity to feel morally is primarily the capacity to desire ends God has intended for humans. The divinely intended ends are the goods which ought to be promoted and never inhibited. Human beings use reason to articulate basic universal moral imperatives to the effect that the basic goods God intends are to be promoted and never inhibited. Moral thinking and feeling is the crucial part of humanity for uncovering and articulating these divine commands.

The articulation, which includes justifying the articulation, is a human achievement. However, man is not the measure of all things because God’s commanding is the intending of the ends for humans. Our uncovering and articulating is a response to what God intends.

Can we be absolutely certain that what has been articulated as God’s commands are indeed what God commands? When we actually provided a defense for an articulation of a moral command we can be very confident that we have “got it right.” However, when we raise this question about absolute certainty, in abstraction from considering any argument, we can only reply as in the case of getting it right about facts. We cannot know that we know.

But the whole moral order is not given by God. The whole moral order consists of basic moral laws which, as I just wrote, can be understood as response to what God intends. But rules on how to implement basic moral laws in particular circumstances can be understood as human constructions which very from place to place.

But there are other moral laws which are human constructions and are also universal. These are the moral laws requiring correction for violation of moral laws. They can be called laws of justice. In general they prescribe that some harm ought to be done. I once called these rules of justice ad hoc moral laws. See Making ad hoc moral laws. I need to elaborate much more on what I have just called the moral order. But the purpose of this post is only to specify the foundational part of this order as given by God.