Sexual complementarity by Jacqueline Calleja (Times of Malta, July 31, 2007)

In the recent spate of letters about homosexuality there are some aspects that call for clarification.

It has been the constant teaching of the Catholic Church that "Sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2360) and "The sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside marriage it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion" (2390). This is a very important statement that excludes any form of sexual intimacy unless it is within the bond of marriage between a man and a woman.

Moreover: "The spouses' union achieves the two-fold aim of marriage - the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life" (2363) and "Physical, moral and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented towards the good of marriage and the flourishing of family life" (2333).

In homosexual behaviour, sexual complementarity is outrightly excluded. The physical anatomy of two men does not complement each other and neither does that of two women. It is like having two electrical sockets on a wall which, no matter how close they are to each other, are unable to generate light.

Thus, any attempt to equate heterosexual and homosexual acts can only be termed fallacious.
Furthermore, homosexual behaviour fails to achieve, in each and every circumstance, that other aim of matrimony, which also constitutes its social aspect - the continuation of the human race. No homosexual couple can ever generate a child.

There are certainly heterosexual couples who are, unfortunately, infertile but this is not the norm. So much so that a village hypothetically inhabited solely by homosexual couples will eventually disappear while one peopled by heterosexual couples will not.

Jesus' view about matrimony is crystal clear when, in answering the Pharisees who asked Him whether it was against the law for a man to divorce his wife, He said: "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female? For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one. So they are no longer two but one" (Matthew 19:4).

Finally, having been made in His own image, God cannot help loving us all indiscriminately. It is only we, and that includes each and every one of us, who, for one reason or another, choose to exclude ourselves from His all encompassing love and compassion, thus forever forfeiting sharing heaven with Him for all eternity.