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June is “LGBT Pride Month” and so Trent joins John DeRosa of the Classical Theism podcast to share some tips for how we can defend the Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality as well as answer common objections like “the Church hates gay people.”
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
John:
Let’s get into the main topic for today though, because this is going to be sort of a timely show. We’re recording here in the middle of May, but this will probably come out on my podcast just before June, which is so called quote unquote Pride Month. And it’s where a lot of hot button cultural issues tend to surface. So today I brought you on to kind of help us prepare to discuss these topics of transgenderism, homosexuality, same sex marriage, and a whole host of issues that go with it. I’m going to be raising a few of the most common objections and ideas that are thrown out there during Pride Month. And before we even get started and go into the specifics, I wanted to ask you for some general tips.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
John:
What should Catholics think about, how should they prepare to engage in these conversations? You know they’re going to come up, How should we prepare to discuss these sensitive issues? What are some general tips you have?
Trent Horn:
Well, I think what is important here is to be in a state of grace, to pray, to draw near to the Lord. In his earthly ministry, he was quite adept at reaching out to those who were furthest away from God. The scripture says that he dined with sinners, he said, “A physician does not come to heal the well, but to heal the sick.” He dined with tax collectors, with adulterers, but he made it a point to reach out to those who were far from the kingdom of God.
Trent Horn:
So Jesus’ attitude, even to those who were in very grave sexual sin, was to compassionately reach out to them, but to also call them to conversion. So sometimes we have two different errors when it comes to this, we have people who want compassion and empathy towards those who are in sexual sin, but don’t see the need for a call to conversion, and others who only promote a call to conversion, but aren’t willing to spend even an ounce of compassion or empathy towards those who are in these situations, who are struggling against these sins.
Trent Horn:
So it really requires both, is what we need when we are engaging others. That’s why Paul says in Ephesians 4:15 to speak the truth in love. So I think that’s what’s important. Other general tips, and this is going to come up a lot in our conversation, but ask questions, get the other person to explain what they mean by their sexual ethics, because usually their sexual ethics are confused and not well thought out, and be very careful about using our culture’s language. We must be very precise in the language that we use so we don’t unintentionally compromise the truth that we’re presenting to others. And that’ll come up as we discuss each of these issues.
John:
Okay. Yeah. No, I think those are two general good, well actually maybe even three general good ideas to get on the table. One, pray and plan to reach out to those who might even be far from the kingdom of God, we got to pray and get ready for that. But then also to show both compassion and empathy along with getting the truth out there. And then, yes, being precise with our language, that’s really what we’re going to get into in a lot of these topics. And I find that sometimes when we don’t feel like we have a good answer as Catholics, when we’re a little bit stumped in conversation, that’s when we can get emotional and heated. Things can get flying off the handle. So it’s better to study the issue ahead of time, have a game plan, ask questions, listen, and then I think you’ll be able to keep the temperature at a good level when you’re discussing it. So why don’t we get into this? Oh, there’s one good example of this. Did you ever watch the show Hey Arnold, Trent, from Nickelodeon?
Trent Horn:
Hey Arnold! Of course I did, old football head.
John:
Okay. I wasn’t sure. Because I know you’re a Doug Funnie guy, but Hey Arnold was a little bit later on Nickelodeon, and there’s one episode where he learns karate and kung frustrating, and he just starts going around. And I feel like when we learn these apologetic ideas and the intellectual precision that we’re going to be walking through, it could be tempting to just kind of go around and leap into these conversations and use it on everybody.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:04:11].
John:
Start fighting them.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. He learns karate and he becomes a monster.
John:
He becomes a monster, and there’s a poor guy, he dishevels him when all he is doing is asking, “I just wanted to find where the bus stop was,” and it’s a really classic scene. We can avoid those ideas as well when we plan ahead and have some good questions to ask. So let’s hit the first big topic, which is gender ideology, modern gender ideology. Pope Francis has spoken against this, also sometimes goes under the level of transgenderism, and terminology is very important. So you brought this up earlier. I wanted to ask you, how should we distinguish these terms of sex and gender, especially when it comes to modern gender ideology?
Trent Horn:
Right. Well, sex is a biological reality and gender is something that’s more of a social construct or idea. So one way to distinguish them is we could say that every animal, and it even goes beyond animals, but every organism that reproduces sexually has sex, in the noun sense of the word. And also that’s how they’re able to engage in sex in the verb sense of the word. So you have animals that we can clearly distinguish what is the male member of the species and what is the female member of that species through their sexual identity. These are our objective, biological truths.
Trent Horn:
Gender is something that only humans have or think of. So that’s another way to distinguish them. Sex is something ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, and even beyond the animal kingdom. Gender is something apes don’t have gender, dogs don’t have gender, snakes don’t have gender, but humans do. Traditionally gender was primarily ascribed to grammar, such as understanding masculine and feminine nouns. We don’t have that in English. You have that more in Spanish and in other languages. Though later on, it came to identify a sense of one’s own sexual identity, either what it means to express oneself as male or female or what male and female means to a particular individual.
Trent Horn:
And so here we could even find common ground to say, “I agree with you that there is our biological reality and then there’s different social customs for how we see men and women that are interacting with each other.” And that might vary in minor details between cultures, what men do in some cultures, what women do in other cultures. So we can find common ground. Where we should push back is this idea that what makes us a man or a woman has nothing to do with biology or biological sex. What our culture gender ideology proposes that what makes someone a man or a woman is merely their self-identification as a man or a woman. That gender is the controlling concept here, and sex itself… It’s funny. I mean, some advocates will acknowledge the reality of biological sex, others will say that that’s a social construct, which even you have atheistic biologists like Jerry Coin saying, “Enough is enough. No, sex is not a social construct,” and things like that.
Trent Horn:
So I think keeping that in mind and helping people to see, we can agree on some minor points here, but the reality of who we are as men or women, that is a biological reality and is an objective one. Any other definition just becomes incoherent.
John:
Okay, I want to get into those definitions. But I like that tip too, of being able to find some common ground distinguishing the biological reality versus the social roles and customs that are built up. And another piece of common ground that I’ve been gathering from speaking to people with this is that we can even grant right away that sometimes people are overly rigid about some of these gender stereotypes.
Trent Horn:
Yes.
John:
And ways of being. So I thought that might be a piece of common ground as well.
Trent Horn:
And here’s what is very interesting about that. And this may come up later, but I think what is important from a pastoral perspective on transgender identity is some people will say, “People say that I was born a man, AKA assigned male at birth, but I don’t fit in with other men. I don’t enjoy traditionally masculine things.” And I think in some cases I could say, “Well, it may not be that you’re a woman. You just may be a man that does not have traditionally masculine interests.” And in some cases, like you’re alluding to here about being overly rigid, the community that you belong to might have an overly rigid sense of what it means to be masculine.
Trent Horn:
For example, I don’t particularly enjoy sitting around smoking cigars or drinking alcohol. And some people might say that counts against my masculinity for some reason. Okay. Well, I don’t think it does. Now I think I enjoy many things that other people traditionally think of as somewhat masculine, like I practice martial arts, like Muay Thai Kickboxing and things like that. And I try to be a good father and husband. That’s where I root my masculine identity in. But I’ve talked to some people to say, and sometimes I’ll ask this question, well, what is the difference between a transgender woman, that would be a biological man who identifies as a woman, and a gender nonconforming man? So when you look out and people identify as LGBT, there are people who are gender nonconforming. We used to call them cross dressers, right? So people say, “Oh, I’m a man. I just like dressing like a woman. I like acting like a woman, but I’m a man.” Gender nonconforming. But what is the difference between a gender nonconforming man and a transgender woman? There’s not really one. There’s just some kind of weird semantic definition.
Trent Horn:
But in the end you can say, “Maybe what you’re hung up on is this overly rigid designation. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.” Now, when it comes to overly rigid, I believe those who defend transgender ideology, many of them ironically enough promote these rigid definitions of being a man or a woman. Like John, if I told you, if you asked me, “What is a woman?” And I said, “Well, a woman is somebody who’s got long, pretty hair and wears dresses and high heels and lipstick and lots of makeup, makes herself look real nice to go out.” You would say, “Wow, Trent, you’re kind of sexist.” I mean, clearly there are women who enjoy wearing jeans and a t-shirt and have short hair and don’t wear high heels and just enjoy Converse. They’re not less of a woman. And so it’s strange that you’ll have someone who is a biological male say, “Well, I’m a transgender woman now.” And then when they identify as a woman, they suddenly feel the need to put on all of these stereotypical female things.
Trent Horn:
I mean, look at Caitlin Jenner on Vanity Fair several years ago. That’s a very stereotypical view of being a woman. If you identify as a woman, why not just stay the way that you are? Why do you need anything else? The other side, I would say, actually proposes these more rigid views of what it means to be a man or a woman than those that they would disagree with.
John:
I want to ask you a little bit more about that definition and what it truly is to be a man or a woman. It’s a question that gets asked a lot. You did an episode about this, it came up in Matt Walsh’s discussion, but what is a man and what is a woman? A lot of people just want to say, “Well, it’s XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes, and the quick response is, “Yeah, but what about intersex cases?” So why don’t you give us your own definition? How do you think about what a man and a woman is, and can a person be trapped in the wrong body? How do you think about this biologically and philosophically?
Trent Horn:
Well, my preferred definition, and it’s always hard to come up with a definition for terms that encompass a wide variety of individuals, but I would say that among human beings a man is a member of the human species ordered towards impregnation. So ordered towards the active impregnating someone else, and a woman is a member of the human species that is ordered towards gestation, ordered towards the act of becoming pregnant and bearing children.
Trent Horn:
Now, notice I’ve used the phrase ordered towards. That’s very important. Because it’s not like I’m saying, “Well, a woman is anybody who can get pregnant.” Well, there are many women who are infertile or who are postmenopausal or have had hysterectomies who cannot become pregnant, but they are still women. And there is a difference between a woman who has a hysterectomy and me, both of us cannot get pregnant. She cannot get pregnant because of a deprivation. I cannot get pregnant because of an absence. So there’s a difference between an absence and a deprivation. A deprivation means something is missing that ought to be there in a accord with one’s nature. But an absence just means it’s not there.
Trent Horn:
For example, both myself and an injured, imagine an eagle that has a broken wing. I and the sick eagle both cannot fly, but my ability to fly is absent. The eagle’s ability to fly is deprived. I don’t mourn like, oh, I can’t fly. This is terrible. Well, no, I’m not ordered towards flight. I’m not sad about it because I wouldn’t naturally fly. It’s nothing for me to mourn not having, it’s not a part of my nature.
Trent Horn:
Much the same, I don’t mourn the fact I cannot become pregnant, because I am a man, I’m not ordered towards that. But it makes perfect sense for a woman to mourn the fact that she may not be able to become pregnant because she is ordered towards that end, unless something genetically or environmentally or physiologically has blocked her ability to become pregnant for some reason, like some kind of disease or a condition or an accident or things like that. So that’s why it’s important in the definition. I talk about being ordered towards. People can snip and snipe, what does it mean to be ordered towards? It’s teleological, end oriented, but I think it makes the most sense. And it avoids the pitfall you mentioned earlier, where if you just pick only one thing like chromosomes, you do get hard cases. So for example, you get cases like Klinefelter syndrome, where you have XXY. That’s a biological male, but they have two X chromosomes.
Trent Horn:
I’ve heard some people try to say, “Well, fine. A Y chromosome, Y makes you male, not having Y makes you female.” That does cover nearly all the cases, I will admit, but there’s a few boundary cases. There are cases of people with chromosomal mosaicism. I’ve read in the medical literature about someone with a Y chromosome who was able to gestate, who carried an infant a term. Now they had chromosomal mosaicism, so their genes are all over the place on their sex chromosomes. So that’s an unusual case, but also when this comes up, we should make it very clear, just because there are boundary cases where we’re not sure if someone’s a man or a woman, it does not follow we have no idea if someone’s a man or a woman. It would be like saying there are cases of brain dead individuals where if you take them off life support, they can actually still survive for an indefinite period of time. So we’re not sure if they’re dead or alive. Does that mean we have no idea who’s dead and who’s alive? No, of course not.
Trent Horn:
So it’s important [inaudible 00:15:23] the boundary cases, but I do think it’s important for the definition, I talk about being ordered towards gestation and impregnation. I think that applies in 99.99% of cases. And it makes for a good definition because it’s not circular. The problem with most definitions of man or woman is that they include the very term they’re trying to define in the definition. So it’s a useless definition. Or a synonym of the term. So the classic the other side would say, “Well, a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman.” Well, that doesn’t help tell me what a woman is. That doesn’t help me understand that at all. Even when Matt Walsh was on the Dr. Phil show, his reply was just a woman is a biological human female, to which then that leads to ask the natural follow up question, what is a female? How do you know an individual is female versus male? It kind of pushes the question back one step. So I like my definition because it’s not circular in that way.
John:
No, I think that hits the nail on the head. You’re really capturing that being male and being female, being man and being woman is about having a body with a certain teleology that’s ordered towards the production of particular kinds of gametes, or in the case that you phrased it towards impregnation or towards being pregnant.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. And that’s another [inaudible 00:16:45]. You could also describe it as having a body ordered towards producing [inaudible 00:16:49], eggs or sperm. And you could fine tune the definition in that way. And I would also add that this definition, it does not mean that this is all there is to being a man or a woman. We have a very rich anthropology, especially as Christians, about God making us male and female. This is just the important things that distinguish us. It’s not all that it is to be man or woman.
John:
Okay. No. Yeah. That’s huge. That’s huge. I want to get to this next idea though of possibly being a person trapped in the wrong body. You might even hear people, what should a Catholic parent say if a young girl or a young boy comes to them and says, “Mom and dad, I’m a boy.” And they’re actually a girl. Or they say, “I’m a girl,” but they’re actually a boy. Do you think it’s possible for someone to be trapped in the wrong body? What kind of error is going on here? And how can we handle this situation?
Trent Horn:
Well, those who say you could be trapped in the wrong body have Patrick Swayze syndrome, Patrick Swayze from Ghost in particular. Do you ever see ghost?
John:
I have not.
Trent Horn:
Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg. Oh, it’s classic. Got to see it. See, I love how you and I both have seen Hey Arnold, Nickelodeon cartoons, but my span of the references will peer back to the eighties and beyond. In that movie Patrick Swayze gets killed, he’s murdered, and his ghost remains. And it’s the classic view of what our soul is. Our soul is just this translucent image of us that wears our clothes and talks, and that’s the real us and the body is a shell. And so that’s a modern view even among non-religious people that who you are, the mind or the soul, that’s the real you and the body is a shell.
Trent Horn:
But the classical Christian view is that actually you are a composite. That you form a unity of body and soul. You’re incomplete without either of them. So you could not be trapped in the wrong body. The problem is we think of movies like Freaky Friday, where one person’s soul or mind switches with another person. It might make for a fun movie, but that’s not really possible. That’s no different than two people just pretending to be the other person. You can’t really be in the wrong body because your soul and body are created for one another. Now you may mistakenly think there is something wrong about your body. You may have some kind of dysmorphia. You have a condition where you think you are in the wrong body and that does happen. But it doesn’t mean that you actually are in the wrong body.
Trent Horn:
So if someone says, your child comes and says, “I’m a boy.” “I’m a girl.” Even though they’re not, I would recommend a good book, there’s a lot of books on this, but a start would be a book I wrote with Leila Miller called Made This Way. We talk about transgender and all these other cultural issues and how to talk to kids about them. There you go, you got it right there. I would recommend that for sure as a good resource on this. The number one rule Leila and I talk about with kids is don’t freak out. Whatever you do, just don’t freak out on them. You want your children to know that you’re a safe place to go when they have concerns about things. And you could even say, well, just ask a question if you need to buy time, “Why do you think that?” And that formulates your thought in your head. And remember just don’t freak out. Even if you need a break and you’re like, “I need to think about this more,” take time with your kids that they always know you’re a safe place to go to. Not just, “What are you talking about? What’s the matter with you?”
Trent Horn:
They need you to be the rock for them. Even if you don’t feel like the rock, you got to really just fake it until you can figure it out. So I might ask my child if they said, “I’m a girl.” I might say, “Well, how do you know you’re a girl? What is a girl? How do you know you’re a girl?” Say, “Well, when I went over to our friend’s house, the girls were all playing dolls and I liked playing dolls with them.” And I might say, “Well, how do you know you’re not a boy who likes playing with dolls? When I was a boy, I liked playing with action figures. They’re like dolls. How different is that? Maybe you’re a boy who likes dolls. That can be fun.”
Trent Horn:
And so notice once again actually, I think in a lot of cases, transgender ideology is forced on kids because transgender advocates have antiquated, neolithic views of men and women. That if a boy paints his costume pink, oh, he’s a girl. He’s a girl. You saw what he’s making for himself. He makes a dress and he’s a girl. Maybe he likes a pastel cloak. I mean, well was it 50 or 80 years ago, blue was a traditionally feminine color and pastel was a traditionally masculine color. Those things changed. So that’s why I think when this comes up, we should ask questions and still really call people on this and say, “Well, I’m a girl.” “How do you know that?” What’s the difference between you being a girl and you just liking things that girls like or vice versa? What does it feel like to be a girl? How do you know, what’s that feeling?
Trent Horn:
And then I think other points to bring up is to say when we’re talking about this, can people be wrong about what their physical body is? So that’s a question we should ask. Can someone be wrong about the identity of their physical body? And the answer is clearly yes. And two examples will suffice. One is a common one, anorexia nervosa. This thought that you’re morbidly obese, even though you’re underweight, you’re wrong, you’re just wrong about your physical identity if you have anorexia nervosa. The other one is body identity integrity disorder. And this is BIID, body identity integrity disorder is the belief that you are in the wrong body. You are supposed to be in a body that is paralyzed or you feel like you have a phantom limb. This arm is a weird appendage that’s not a part of your body. It’s not supposed to go with your body, and asking a doctor to cut it off.
Trent Horn:
Well, you’re wrong. That is a part of your body. You have a an identity disorder, you have a body dysmorphia. And there’s really no difference in saying that this part of my arm is not supposed to be a part of my body and then having it cut off versus reproductive organs, saying they’re not a part of my body, except that our culture endorses the latter and still is opposed to the former. So that’s another route I might take.
John:
Okay. That is a lot of good stuff and I like how you’re giving us some good questions to ask. I wanted to ask you just two more things on the gender topic, and then we’ll go, maybe a little bit less time, but we will talk a little bit about homosexuality and same sex marriage. But because the gender stuff is so at the forefront right now. The two questions are, we’ll do one first, some people are saying you have these good cases about what a man and what a woman is, you’re able to ask some good questions. I understand your anthropology. But there’s people suffering out there who have this gender dysphoria. Why shouldn’t we just alleviate their suffering? Maybe they identify a different way and we could alleviate their suffering by just giving them surgery so they have a body that closer matches their inner feelings. Why don’t Christians just promote that and helping people? How would you respond to that sort of a objection?
Trent Horn:
Well, I would say what do you think would be the compassionate thing to do for someone who has cotard’s delusion or cotard syndrome, C-O-T-A-R-D, cotard delusion is the belief that you are dead. And no matter what people do, people say, “No, I’m dead. I’m not really alive. I guess dead people believe, but I’m not supposed to be alive.” Should we kill people with cotard delusion because they sincerely believe that they’re dead?
Trent Horn:
Now, I know that is more of an extreme case, but it opens it up to all of these other situations of people who have an identity disorder. And what we do, go back to body identity integrity disorder. Most people would say that, no matter what, we’re not going to sever somebody’s spinal cord because they think that they’re supposed to be in a wheelchair. This or anorexia, that ultimately using lies to try to treat someone is not the sound medicine. And that certainly should not be the basis of the treatment. I mean, maybe we’ll use mental reservations with someone who has Alzheimer’s or something like that to help them if they’re confused. But if you destroy a healthy organ just because a person has an unhealthy sense of self, that’s not therapy, that’s mutilation. So I think that is an important way to look at when people say, “Oh, maybe we’re just helping.”
Trent Horn:
Another point I would bring up is, is it working? I mean, if you look even in countries that identify as LGBT friendly, the rates of mental illness among those who identify as LGBT is shockingly high, much higher than the ordinary population. I think that provides significant weight that this type of lifestyle, this type of sense of identity just ultimately leads to despair. I was looking at a study recently talking about teenagers’ sense of happiness. I also think social media plays into this when you have teens with transgender identity, that there was a study published in Plus One, it was removed and then put back because people didn’t like it, showing that teens whose friends identify as transgender, or social media personalities who identify as transgender are more likely to identify this way. That it’s a kind of contagious identification. I think somewhere like 40% of generation Z identifies as LGBT when statistically throughout history, or at least when we’ve been measuring it on surveys, that’s only about one to 2%. So you have people that they see this as the hip thing and jump into it, but it’s not good.
Trent Horn:
So the study I was looking at showed that with social media, one, this contagious identity aspect on social media, but two, social media is just bad for us. Makes us depressed. You look at teens following this, it’s something like from 2015 to now, in the past seven years, rates of being unhappy, it’s 30% of boys, 50% of girls. It was 55% of LGBT youth in 2015 and that’s gone up to 75% of LGBT youth are now unhappy, in the past seven years. Now, what explains that? In the past seven years, did our culture become more threatening towards people identified as LGBT? No. If anything, it’s become far more accepting in our culture to do that. There’s a lot that can be factored in there, but I am skeptical of this view that even doing this overall is helpful for people. Finding their true self created in God and their purpose in God is ultimately where we should lead people.
John:
I think those are some very helpful points. I want to just close with this on the gender topic, because there’s a lot of talk about pronouns and preferred pronouns and you’re seeing more and more people using preferred pronouns, but at the same time some people pushing back against them. And I know some of this might depend on a certain time and place and whether you should have a real strong position. I just wanted to ask you how we should navigate this use of pronouns. And are there maybe perhaps some moderate positions that we could take if we’re not really in the spot to go die on this hill of using a pronoun or not. Is there something else we could do so that we don’t have to be dishonest and lie, but at the same time we’re not really in a position to be combative. But at the same time too, is it something truly important that we don’t want to compromise on? I know that’s kind of a little bit of a meandering question, but help us navigate this issue of pronouns.
Trent Horn:
Well, yeah, the church doesn’t have a specific teaching on this question, but I will say I do believe that it is an important issue, that once you start compromising language, and this will come up… this is also the same with so-called same sex marriage. When we started using the term same sex marriage over and over and over again, it compromised our language because marriage just is the union of a man and a woman. Same sex marriage is like square circle. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Trent Horn:
So when using the term same sex marriage, makes people think it is possible marriage could be two men or two women, because same sex is modifying a word that just describes a relationship between adults that is genderless. So when using that term, same sex marriage, killed us basically, because it reinforced in people, even if we didn’t mean for it to, this idea that marriage is just an adult relationship that can be modified in various ways. It could be traditional or it could be same sex. No, there’s just marriage. There’s maybe some ways you can modify it, like child marriage, which is where the man and woman involved one of them is a child, which ought not happen. But when we use these terms, or even polygamous marriage, saying, “Oh, it’s a man and a woman,” and maybe there’s more than two people. There’s a man and two women, for example, that would be polygamy. One man, multiple wives. Like the same way with pronouns, I believe if we refer to people using these, we are legitimizing this false view and we ought not do that.
Trent Horn:
Now you have to be prudent of course. You could be in a situation in a private business or other places where if you use the correct biological pronoun for a transgender person, you could be disciplined, you could be fired. And so you have to judge whether it’s worth it for you. Some people may feel like the cost is too high and they need to just put up with this for now. But as I said, the church doesn’t have a teaching on this. You’re not sinning by doing that. I personally believe that we should stand firm against this. I’m willing to take a moderate position like you alluded to before. For example, I am willing to dialogue with someone and to engage them, and I’m not going to lie, I’m not going to refer to a biological woman as he, for example. But I might use the singular they, which there’s debate and grammar about how traditional that is, but using they, similar to how we use they for someone with an unknown gender, saying something, “Oh, there’s a wallet, that customer, they forgot their wallet.” We don’t know if it’s a man or a woman. They forgot their sunglasses. We don’t know if it’s a man or a woman. We use they, the singular they. I think that can be fine. People have to use their own discretion. In general though, I believe we should not legitimize incorrect pronouns, and at the very least just refuse to participate in it even if our speech becomes awkward as a result.
John:
Do you think it’s okay to use a name? Someone offers up their name.
Trent Horn:
Oh yeah. Names I’m not as married to, so to speak. Let’s say somebody changes their name from Bob to Lucinda. I won’t use incorrect pronouns because I believe that constitutes lying about another person. But a name is something, you can have all kinds of names. There are religious brothers who take on Marion names as their religious name, for example. There are names that are somewhat androgynous. There are names that are just strange. There are just strange, bizarre names. You want to have your name? That’s fine. Some of you might disagree, but my view is your name is just how you refer to yourself. And a name is not as essentially tied to a sex as a pronoun is. So that’s where I stand on it.
John:
No, I think that’s a correct analysis. And with our remaining time, I want to shift to the second big topic and we’ll spend a little bit less time on this, but-
Trent Horn:
I could go a little more on this. We can spend some time here.
John:
Fantastic. So homosexuality, same sex marriage. It’s been in the news as far as the church news recently because some people are kind of hopeful that the church is eventually going to change her teaching on homosexuality or the nature of marriage. There’s been certain bishops who have been saying some strange things and that have been a little bit confusing to Catholics. And I think it’s always good to kind of start with the fundamentals you pointed out before when the church didn’t have a teaching on something, but this is a case where the church does have a teaching. So what does the church teach on these issues and could the teaching change?
Trent Horn:
Yeah, what I would say here is it is not possible for the church to change the fundamental understanding of man, woman, sexuality and marriage that God has divinely revealed. Now, these things haven’t been formally dogmatized by the church, but I would say there’s a high degree of probability they belong to the ordinary and universal magisterium. Something that has always been taught, consistently reaffirmed. The catechism of the Catholic church, for example, in paragraph 2357 says basing itself on sacred scripture, it gives an argument against, it talks about the wrongness of homosexual acts. It talks about from reason we can know they’re wrong, but also says basing itself on sacred scripture, which would imply the catechism is saying that this is something we know also through divine revelation that God has revealed about where sex is appropriate between men and women in the marital act and where it’s not appropriate, should be outside of it, either through fornication or prostitution or in homosexual acts.
Trent Horn:
So those who would say that it would change, this is the same drum that has been, the same song has been sung since really the 1960s and 70s. You had revisionist theologians like Boswell. Who’s the other? There was that one Catholic priest and his name’s McNeil wrote several books on this. You have a lot of Protestants arguing for this view. Helminiak is a Catholic priest who argued for this, and their arguments are all very similar. It’s one that I’m hoping to cover in a future book. And they just try to say, “Oh, but we know new things now, we know sexual orientation, that it’s innate and intrinsic. You can’t change it. And the Bible authors had no idea about sexual orientation.”
Trent Horn:
I would say, I don’t believe that. Paul lived in the Greco Roman world. He knew Greco Roman poets. He could cite them from memory. I’m sure he was familiar with Plato’s Symposium, which talks about people who primarily or exclusively have same sex attractions. That they’ll say, “Oh, in the ancient world, homosexuality, if you got too sexually aroused, you could have sex with anybody. And you lost control of the passions.” And they’ll say that Paul and the others had this mistaken view of homosexuality, that they had no idea you could have this orientation your whole life and that you could be in a monogamous relationship with someone like that. And I would say, no, that was something that was known in the ancient Greco Roman world. And also the biblical authors do not root the opposition to sexuality like this in just merely in lust. They do say lust plays a component, but they root it in the disordering of creation itself.
Trent Horn:
So yeah, when I hear these kinds of arguments, they’ve been answered time and time again, there’s always people who have a vested interest to try to bring them up again, but we should point out and ask these people, “Okay, where does the Bible say homosexual activity is ever positive?” It never does that. What does it say sexuality is for, what is it always rooted in? It’s always rooted in uniting men and women in the marital act and being ordered towards procreation. Yeah. But there’s a lot of other books that have addressed this and I hope to address it in the future as well.
John:
Yeah, no, no. Those are a lot of good points. And I’ll just say you address a lot of those in Made This Way. And I’m going to just promote for a second your school of apologetics course on Catholic moral teaching where you kind of go into this. Because I’m going to ask you kind of a different question in a second, but there are I think definitely at least three sources of warrant for why sexual acts outside of marriage or same sex sexual acts are immoral. And those could be through natural reason, things of the sort in a traditional old school, natural law approach of the perverted faculty argument. You go into that in the course, but you could also have through natural reason and a perhaps updated or new approach of the new natural orders like Robbie George and the basic goods approach, John [inaudible 00:37:12].
John:
So you can have some arguments from natural reason about sexuality. So those are kind of like two sources in the natural realm, but then you also have the teaching of scripture like you alluded to, especially I think Romans 1 is important because you get that language of creation and natural function that gets distorted. And then also we have the magisterial teaching on top of that. So for people who want to dive into that further, you do that a lot in your course and in your books. But the question I’m going to ask you next is what really comes up time and time again in youth group meetings, on college campuses, this is the way a lot of young people are approaching this, and they just kind of perceive the church’s teaching as cruel.
John:
I’ve heard people say stuff like this, “The church hates gay people, they deny their existence by saying that being gay is a choice. And even if they don’t express verbal hate, they clearly want to relegate gays and lesbians to a life of misery by never allowing them to marry or find a life partner.” End quote. And I know we’re not super into this language of pigeonholing people as gay and lesbian [inaudible 00:38:21]. But that’s what we hear. So that’s what people are going to say. So how would you address this issue with high school and college age students?
Trent Horn:
Yeah. So once again this comes back fundamentally to language. And I would say if I was having a discussion with someone, I would tell them, “Well, I don’t describe people as gay or straight. I don’t believe there are gay Catholics or straight Catholics. There are men and women who have different sexual desires. That can also change.” It’s interesting that the question earlier you asked, I forgot to bring up this point, Paul and the others, they didn’t know your sexual orientation is intrinsic, it’s innate and you can’t change it. But actually more research that is coming out from sociologists who are very pro LGBT shows people identifying as lesbian later in life when they identified as heterosexual earlier. You have people who are saying now they’re gender fluid.
Trent Horn:
So the problem here is this other side will try to have their cake and eat it too. They’ll say, “Oh, it’s your orientation and identity. They’re intrinsic. They can’t change.” But what about people who identify as gender fluid? Who believe they can change and that it’s non-binary, it’s gender fluid, whether it’s your orientation or your sense of identity? Going back to the language here, I would say to someone, “Well, what do you mean? Why do you think the church hates people who identify as gay or lesbian?” Because it says that sex is misused when it’s not part of the marital act. And here I would just once again, I don’t believe in snappy comebacks, I believe in genuine dialogue with people. And so I’d ask a lot of questions. One question is what is sex for? I could ask someone, can sex be misused? Can it be disordered in any way?
Trent Horn:
And then there’s even more fundamental question, but I’ll stick with that. It’s sad, some people think that sex is only misused if it’s not consensual rape. That’s the only example of when it’s misused. I might say, “Well, let’s say someone is sexually attracted to an object or an animal.” Paraphilias, zoophilias. And this is always hard by the way when you go down this road, “Are you saying people identify as gay or lesbian are like this?” No, I’m just asking a question. So this gets us away from the natural law language arguments that can be hard to wrap your head around. It’s just a question. What is sex for? I understand what eating is for. Eating is for getting nutrients in my body. Sometimes it tastes good and that’s nice too, but eating is disordered if I wolf down food for the taste and I vomit it all back up again, why is that disordered? Because that’s not what eating is for. Taste is a part of it, but that’s not its primary purpose. It’s disordered if I avoid the primary purpose.
Trent Horn:
So we can argue something similar when it comes to sex, to say, well, what is it for? Tell me the question. What is it for? And really we have the other person, when people say the church hates gay people to say, are you saying that if the church says certain sexual acts are wrong, they hate people who desire those acts? Well, that would mean the church hates everybody, because everybody has desires, except for maybe asexual people perhaps, but nearly everybody has sexual desires, some of which are not appropriate or immoral. Doesn’t mean the church hates, the church loves that person and calls them away from those desires, away from acting on those things that ultimately won’t be fulfilling for them.
Trent Horn:
So that’s where I would ask the question, what is sex for? And I want you to answer it, and I’ll answer it. My answer, and then I’ll get to their bad answers, because you have to be careful. You can’t say, “Well, sex is for babies.” That’s a part of it, but that’s not the whole thing. Because what about a married couple who are both in their eighties. They’re not supposed to have sex anymore because they can’t have babies? No. Well, what is it for? I would say sex is for the expression of marital love. It is the means by which married individuals express love to their spouse. Sex is for marital love. Oh, don’t they express love in other ways? Oh, of course you should express love to your spouse in a wide variety of ways. But as an individual, let’s say you’re a married person, you love many different kinds of people, but you only show marital love to one person. And what is unique about that love? You have sex with them.
Trent Horn:
And now obviously there’s going to be cases where let’s say accident or injury, you’re unable to engage in the act. There’s those minority of cases, but there once again, not absence, that’s deprivation. And that’s you wish you could fully express yourself in that way, or at the very least maybe if you are impotent or let’s say your spouse is impotent and you are not, you express marital love by not doing that with other people because you’re monogamous. So if it’s the expression of this complete one flesh union, full gift of self to another person, that is what sex is for. And it has to be forming this one flesh union, [inaudible 00:43:28] bodily union, and true union can only take place when you’re ordered towards something beyond each other, not just one body part inside another body part.
Trent Horn:
When the dentist puts his finger in my mouth, we don’t become one flesh. The surgeon puts his hand in my abdomen, we don’t become one flesh, but the husband and wife really do unite their bodies towards something beyond themselves, their reproductive organs coming together. So that’s I would say the best answer, to say, why do I think this? And talk about how sex can be misused. We want to misuse it. Because if someone says, well, sex is just for pleasure, okay? If that’s your view, it doesn’t explain a wide variety of things we consider to be wrong. Rampant promiscuity, or one in our culture now, infidelity.
Trent Horn:
Most people see that it’s not even appropriate to ask your partner, romantic partner, “Can I sleep with this other acquaintance of mine? I’ve been really good this week.” You don’t even ask these kinds of things because that’s awful. But if sex is just for pleasure, spouses go out with friends to the movies or bowling, why not sex one of those activities? Well, because sex is not just for pleasure. Well, it’s for expressing love. But what kind of love? Not for your family members, not for your friends. I think what’s important here is we can engage people in these conversations, say, “Look, I’m trying to figure out, when is sex used properly and when is it used improperly?” We can use reason, but we can also ask God, because he gave that to us, and he kind of tells us what to do.
Trent Horn:
And so it’s not hateful to say… Now what people will say sometimes, John, is, “Well, look, it’s not fair. You pick out let’s say a married man, he can’t sleep around with other women, but he can still have relations with his wife. You are telling me that people identify as a man or as gay or lesbian, for example, if that is their attraction, then you are mandating celibacy for them, and that’s not fair.”
Trent Horn:
Well, we’re always going to mandate something where people will have lifelong attractions. You might say, and I think married men can relate to this, even if you can have relations with your wife, some men may have an extremely strong desire to have relations with other people. One partner isn’t enough for them, but the church mandates fidelity for them because that would involve a misuse of sexuality. So I think here it’s important. I know it’s a long drawn out answer, but it’s an important question. This is what the church says for gay or lesbians, or straights. Rather it’s people with different sexual attractions, the church calls us to chastity and to holiness regardless of what our attractions may be. There are people who have attractions that they can never act upon. There are some people, for example, who are unable to find a spouse through different circumstances that they just have not been able to find someone to marry them, but it does not follow therefore that they can engage in prostitution or masturbation because they have not been able to find a spouse. And the church doesn’t hate them for calling them away from these destructive sexual behaviors. So it’s all about reframing the language, asking people what is sex for, when is it ordered or disordered? How does God help us to have holy and healthy sexuality? And shouldn’t the church call all of us to that?
Trent Horn:
That is I think the appropriate framework here. And also, John, to say that we have to be careful. We don’t want to treat this sin like it’s the unique, bad sin. Go to 1 Corinthians 6:9 through 10. Paul says, “Do you not know?” He gives a vice list. He talks about people who will not inherit the kingdom of God. He talks about [Greek 00:47:10] who are in Greek the active and passive man in a sexual act to males. The RSV translates that homosexuals. I think that’s the best translation. But he also says the immoral, [Greek 00:47:23], which would be men and women in sexually immoral acts, drunkards, revilers, greedy, robbers. He says they will not inherit the kingdom of God. In verse 11 though, he says, “As such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified in Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 6:11. So in showing, no, this is a call to holiness for all of us, one sin among many others. We talk about it a lot because this is one sin that our culture celebrates and demands we celebrate, and we simply can’t do that.
John:
Oh, okay. That was a lot of good stuff. The example of the tragedy of people not being able to find spouses is especially pointed that you pointed out towards the end. Because I heard in your conversation with Stephanie Grays Connors, she actually has that in her book about the situation in China due to the prevalent abortion policy that there’s now a great number of men and not enough females and they’re not able to find spouses. So that’s a reality. But like you said, the church doesn’t hate them. I’d also push back on this word hate, like you said. I always love to point this out because we grew up around the same time, Trent, and in 1992 there weren’t a whole lot of people saying that people who have same sex attraction should be treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. And that’s the language we get in the catechism of ’92 and the update.
John:
I mean, Pope John Paul II, he really had it right in the way that he talked about these kind of issues and that catechism that he issued. But that’s the church’s official stance, is that people have this issue, it’s not just a uniquely bad issue like you mentioned, but we got to treat these things with respect, compassion and sensitivity, not hate. While at the same time holding the truth down. Now, I know you said, that was great, a question that we can ask in conversation is what is sex for? What’s the purpose of sex? And then I think you started to say that there’s also another fundamental question that we can ask or a more fundamental question.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, philosophically I’d ask the question what is sex? What is it? That gets a little graphic. But if you think about it, actually what is it? Because traditionally it is intercourse between a man and a woman where pregnancy is possible from that. But people will say oral sex, anal sex, they’ll modify it. You could stretch the definition more. I could say, well, are two people who give each other a high five, is that sex? No, of course not. Someone might say, “Well, if it sexually stimulates them, yeah.” I’d say, “Well look, deep down it seems like you know that sex has something to do with genitals. It has something to do with these particular reproductive organs. So I would say that if it has something to do with that, then it has something to do with the unique bodily union that only men and women can achieve with one another.”
Trent Horn:
Because I personally, when I use the word sex, I’m talking about the sexual act, I do not believe there can be any kind of sex except for intercourse between men and women where pregnancy is possible. Every other activity is not sex, it’s sexual behavior or it’s genital behavior, but it’s not sex. Because sex just is the sexual act. The marital act. That is what it is. Everything else is imitating it or is some kind of derivative genital behavior.
John:
Okay. I want to transition a little bit to the legal realm and ask you one more question about this topic because this was big before the 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell decision where we were debating about so-called same sex marriage in the courts. And I’m curious, would you still support laws that would prohibit so-called same sex marriage? And if so, how would you go about defending and explaining that position?
Trent Horn:
Yeah. And I would just keep my same arguments. I would support a law that defines… Here’s what I would do. I would support the state having marriage, recognizing that marriage is the unique relationship that exists between men and women, and it binds men and women together, it unites men and women to each other and to any children that may proceed from their union. That is what marriage is. It’s very important. And if you don’t have that, you lose these important foundations for the nature of the family. And we’ve seen this in surrogacy controversies and things involving same sex couples. So I would definitely be in favor of it. Do I think there’s political capital to do it? Not as much, but I would definitely be in favor. I would be in favor of that. And I would say, look, I’m even in favor of recognizing legal partnerships, if you want to create a legal household, fine. Though I’m not okay with civil unions, that ape marriage where it’s two men or two women, and we call it civil union. And people who identify as LGBT don’t want that either. It’s kind of a separate but unequal type thing for them.
Trent Horn:
Though I’m fine if you want to create a legal household, whatever your relationship is, maybe you’re siblings, maybe you’re roommates, whatever it is, and you want to share property and designate each other’s healthcare proxies or whatever it may be, fine, as long as it’s not trying to be a proxy marriage. I think Robert George actually argued for this, he presented this to the New Jersey state house. I’m pretty sure George did this. Saying, “Well, just have legal households if you want legal benefits,” but it’s never just about legal benefits.
Trent Horn:
Those who identify as LGBT wanted marriage changed because they wanted respect. They wanted to say, “We are on a moral par with you,” and it’s using the law to try to legislate morality ironically enough. So I don’t want civil unions, but I’d be okay with legal households, any number of people, any kind of relationship, fine. But marriage is for men and women. But do we have the political capital for it? Probably not. I would be in favor of running this route. I might say, “All right, fine. We need to fix marriage. Let’s get rid of no fault divorce.” And I would ask people who identify, who are in so-called same sex marriages, “If you believe in marriage, would you help me to make marriage stronger by getting rid of no fault divorce?” And I bet you 95% of them would say no, because it’s not really about marriage either.
Trent Horn:
Once again, it’s not, oh, well, our relationship is just like yours. It comes from a very different worldview and it comes from a disordered sense of identity. And this is people who try to think church teaching can change. Where a marriage between a man and a woman, you could have the exact same relationship with two men or two women. Except Mark [inaudible 00:54:14], a sociologist I think down in Austin, he has shown that people who identify as gay Christians are far more likely, like 10 times more likely, to say pornography is moral, abortion is moral, adultery can be moral, sex doesn’t have to be exclusive. It’s not on a par because it comes from a disordered sense of identity and self, and that leads to a disordered sense of God and what he gave us in the sacrament of marriage.
Trent Horn:
So would I be in favor of restoring marriage to what it’s supposed to be? Absolutely. But right now I’d like to restore legal protection to the unborn. We’re in like the 99 yard line for that. We’re on the one yard line when it comes to getting marriage back. So I’d rather get an easy touchdown before I go to the hard touchdown.
John:
No, that’s a good point there at the end. And I heard your discussion of the leaked Supreme Court opinion. And ironically enough, my own inkling, I’m just going to put this out there, is that I think Chief Justice John Roberts is going to go with the majority because I went back and read his dissent in the Obergefell case and it’s a pretty good argument. And I think convincingly shows that wherever you stand on the moral question, the federal government was never given the right to define marriage for the states. So at the very least we could make some argument like that, but like you said, political capital is a question that needs to be considered. Trent Horn, you’ve given us a ton to think about and work with in our preparation for these kind of conversations we’re going to have. But let’s just close with this. A little brief summary. What are some core things Catholics need to remember when having these sensitive conversations during quote unquote Pride Month?
Trent Horn:
Core thing is to listen. Don’t be flustered. You don’t need to have all the right answers. You just need to have the right questions. To ask someone, “What do you mean by this? What do you mean by the church hates people? What do you mean by gay? What do you mean by sex? What is sex for? How do we know what it’s for? How do we determine what’s right or wrong here? Should we listen to God on this? What does reason tell us?” Ask questions, listen, pray. If you don’t know the answer, say, “That’s a good question. I’m going to look into it. Let me get back to you.” Remember it’s not a race, it’s a journey. And so you want to be present to walk along with people, but stand firm in your convictions. And remember what Jesus said, that if they hate you, they hated him… Jesus said, “If they hate you, they hated me first.” And our goal in our conversations is always that people are mad not because we are being jerks or are being rude, they are mad not at us, but at the truth we’re graciously presenting. That should always be our goal in the conversation that we have with people.
John:
Well, thanks again, Trent, for joining us today on the Classical Theism Podcast. Just remind listeners where they can go to find more of your work, and then we’ll say goodbye.
Trent Horn:
I would recommend they go to Counsel of Trent, you can check that out obviously at iTunes, Google Play, YouTube. You can support it at trenthornpodcast.com. And many of my resources are at catholicanswers@catholic.com.
John:
Perfect. I will make sure to link to that in the show notes page, along with the books and the courses that we were plugging along the way, but thanks again for joining us. It’s been a blast.
Trent Horn:
Absolutely.
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