Accompaniment with a Compass

Author’s Note: Our words must line up with how things are, especially in regard to sexual identity. Language empowers or devalues truth. I wrote this small guide for Christians on how to define sexual reality based on Scripture and Church teaching.

We start with the Imago Dei (Image of God: Gen. 1:26-27). That means one human nature, created by God to reflect Him in two parts, man and woman, resulting in two sexual identities: male and female. Our growth over a lifespan is always binary, that tension of self-acceptance and self-giving—man to woman, woman to man (1 Cor. 11:11, CCC 2333).

Imago Dei isn’t only the domain of marrieds. God calls all to become mature expressions of our sexual ‘gift’, a trajectory that St. John Paul II describes as ‘the deep orientation to personally dignify what is intrinsic to his masculinity and her femininity’ (TOB 131:4).

One human nature in two parts, male and female sexual identities. One sexual orientation: to dignify the other.

Maturing in that orientation requires growth in chastity. Chastity means freedom from lust, freedom for loving others based on what dignifies him or her (CCC 2337). That means growing in prudent self-giving, while reserving genital expression for the lifetime commitment of marriage (Matt. 19:4-6, 1 Thess. 4:3-8, CCC 2339).

Chastity applies to celibacy, those who refuse marriage for unencumbered Christian service (Matt. 19:12). Celibacy is never a concession to disorder, e.g. same-sex desire or frustration in opposite-sex relating, but a sacrifice of normal goals for an inspired, discernible vocation that can be lived through chastity at its most robust (TOB 77:2-3).

We must declutter the lifetime goal of becoming chaste from unnecessary language. We happily forego all popular parlance referring to any sexual identity other than male or female. That includes ‘gay’ or ‘straight’, ‘gay marriage’ (no such thing: a civil union at best), ‘heterosexual’ or ‘homosexual’, ‘bi’, ‘trans’, ‘queer’, ‘cis-gender’, ‘mixed-orientation marriage’, ‘questioning’, ‘they’ or ‘them’, or any acronym on the ever expanding LGBTQ+ spectrum.

We are unwise to identify with disordered desires, as these do not proceed from the sexual complementarity that defines us as male or female (CCC 2357). Desires like same-sex attraction indicate deeper issues, neither an identity nor a self.

‘Gender’ was once a legitimate synonym for male or female sexuality. Its root—to generate—legitimizes its usage. Sadly, the post-modern world has subverted ‘gender’ to refer to one’s ‘felt’ sense of his or her sexuality, e.g., my ‘gender identity’ is different from my male or female sex. As we uphold only two sexual identities, male and female, we are wise to replace ‘gender identity’ with ‘sexual identity’, given the now distorted meaning of ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity.’

People misuse these words constantly; we can listen with Jesus’ ears while keeping reality clear in our minds, hearts and words (2 Cor. 5:14-17).

Upholding either a male or female identity frees us for nuance. We can grapple with many factors—biological, psychological, cultural, and moral—that influence human sexuality. On the unchanging base of his male or her female identity, a person can navigate a range of desires and self-perceptions that result from such factors.

Binary sexual clarity applies as well to the diverse ways men and women image God in their sexual selves. We reduce no one to rigid sexual stereotypes but celebrate how he or she represents God in his or her unique expression of body and soul: wholly man, wholly woman.

Our Creator and Redeemer helps us to become mature expressions of our sexual gift; we unite in Christ to progress toward chastity. Jesus endows us with Holy Spirit strength and radiance. He reveals to us the Father who confirms our sexual selves by tending to us as His sons and daughters (Gal. 4:3-7). Father, Son and Holy Spirit champion us in love as we seek to live the ‘Imago Dei’ by loving each other well.