We can’t control our passions (our desires), but we do control our actions. Today we think of sexual desires as mandating behavior; we assume these desires must be obeyed. But for most of history people have thought that this desire should be directed and controlled. It’s not the case that heterosexuals can have unlimited sex, but gays aren’t allowed. Not every straight person gets married. Not everyone’s marriage works out. Some spouses become sick in mind or body, and sex is no longer a possibility. The celibate path, down through history, is much more crowded with straights than gays, simply because of their numbers in the general population. Advertising pushes sex at us so relentlessly that it’s hard to believe, but you actually can live without it.
Bob Dylan, of all people, put it forcefully in his March 2015 interview in AARP Magazine. He was talking about his new album of classic American love songs, and the interviewer asked if young listeners would find them “corny.” He said, “These songs are songs of great virtue. That’s what they are. People’s lives today are filled with vice and the trappings of it. … We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamor of it.” We see the beautiful and enviable young people partying; we don’t see the 50 or 60 or 70-year-old whom no one wants anymore.
By the same token, the disintegration of community is hard on people who want to live by the old morality. These days, living without a romantic partner appears to be the same thing as living without love. But life without sex didn’t always mean life without love, for love used to come from many other sources. Families were less nuclear; leftover cousins and widows still had a place. Even if you didn’t have a romantic partner, you still had friends and family who felt you had a real claim on their help and love. Communities were closer. Neighbors kept an eye on each other. (That last was an early casualty of the sexual revolution, for we started to think neighbors should keep their eyes to themselves.)
Same-sex, non-sexual love is unlike romantic love in that it, obviously, doesn’t include a sexual component, but it can be every bit as strong. It is to our loss that the concept of nonsexual friendship love has largely vanished. Those bonds between men and men, and between women and women, run strong and deep, and are foundational to society. Under the traditional morality, it was never expected that people would live without love, or live all alone. Today, loneliness is epidemic.
-- Frederica Mathewes-Green
A lot to consider; I would recommend reading the full post here...especially in light today's Supreme Court case(s).
