There was a time when I thought about being part of an orgy. It wasn’t a serious consideration – just one of those fantasies you have when you’re young, before the thrill of anonymous sex fades into bedroom boredom and awkward mornings-after.
We’ve all enjoyed one fantasy or another, and whether we share them or not, they point to one very clear, inarguable truth about us: sex is forever on our minds.
On a couple of occasions, I chose to share my orgy fantasy with friends. They weren’t particularly scandalized, but thought the idea was out-of-sorts for a member of the Christian church. I remember one friend asking me, as diplomatically as he could, “Isn’t that against what you believe?”
That put me a bit on the defensive. “Is what against what I believe?” I asked, incensed. “Sex? Orgies? Fantasies? I’m human aren’t I? I have needs, don’t I?” It was a question asked out of innocence, and my friend meant no harm, but I automatically inferred judgment. It was as though his simple question translated to something far more aggressive in my mind: “Aren’t you Christians against all that?”
Bluntly: no. As far as I’m concerned – along with a great many Christians, to boot – it’s not about being for or against sex. Through a Christian lens, sex is seen a great many ways, but it is more often than not considered a blessing. It’s only the type of sex that muddies the theological waters.
Still, what was once complicated by too much theorizing and thinking has been simplified a bit, I believe. Yes, the Catholic Church still harps on the “natural order” – that theory of Aquinas’ which tells us there is a static good and a constant evil which we discern in the great schema of the world. This, coupled with a collection of scriptural passages, ripped from context, makes homosexual sex something of a deviance in the Catholic tradition.
Other Christian traditions draw on the same logic, the same arguments and the same passages – claiming that sex between two men or two women is devoid of the gift of procreative life, and therefore, a sin.
Bullshit. Sometime in the 16th century, the rabble-rouser Martin Luther decided there were a great many things wrong with the Catholic Church, and its teachings should be revisited. What was held as truth, largely because of tradition, began to fall to the scrutiny of honest faith. Luther asked a basic question: “What is Christianity – what is Christ, more specifically – all about?”
His answer: “Love.”
I don’t mean to regurgitate what I’ve already made clear, but we lose sight of it so frequently that we have to return to the basics: Christ was about love. Which means that manifestations of love are, indeed, what Christ is all about.
When Catholics trip on the notion of protected sex and medical arguments that support birth control, they do so because the script has read the same for too many years – these are the traditions often held in an antiquated view of life. And, as many of us have seen, it takes the Mother Church a great many years to break the walls of tradition long enough to consider an alternative way of thinking. They did only just apologize for calling Galileo a heretic, after all.
My point is only that the fundaments of truth in Christianity come across a bit muddled at times. Too often, we would rather cling to holy texts hundreds of years old, interpreting their messages literally for today’s world. It’s easier than discerning how Christ is alive in the world today.
There’s no script for that. It’s just a matter of living.
And loving. One glorious form of that is sex – homosexual sex, for example. The genuine expression of intimacy between two individuals committed to each other is indeed a beautiful thing, and by no means a heterosexual privilege.
As far as that orgy goes, I don’t think I’d ever take up the challenge. Not only does it not quite fit me, but the spark has been extinguished. It seems to me that the gift of sex – homosexual or heterosexual – is an opportunity to build bonds, strengthen loving relationships, and, as we Christians are wont to say, be Christ for the world.
There’s a lot more to Christ than Bible verses and rote tradition, after all.
