An intrinsic part

I am a gay, cradle Catholic who has tried to reconcile the church's teachings on homosexuality with the way God made me. My homosexuality is intrinsic to me; it is there whether it is expressed sexually or not.

As both the Johnson and the Tushnet articles show, responding to homosexuality in ourselves and others is a spiritual process. My spiritual journey has been powered by a life-long attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. The church's labeling of me as host to an "intrinsic moral disorder," as someone who must live by the rule "thou shalt not have sex," is inadequate guidance in discerning what love of God and love of others demand of me under the circumstances. The church's teachings and scriptural exegesis on this topic seem to me to be singularly deficient in love. They may be spun with the "tongues of men and angels" but they strike my ear as "resounding gongs and clanking cymbals."

LORY MANNING

Arlington, Va.

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