I READ with interest and some puzzlement your Centrepoint article “Homosexuality: Rethinking the equation” (CL 20/2/05).
I want to say that I have no personal investment in this matter. However, as an avid lover of film, I have seen the movie Kinsey and found this movie as a viewing product both technically astute and emotionally satisfying. Along with our local film reviewers I would give it 4 out of 5. I would commend this film to any adult of reasonable character and education.
It is not for me to respond to Sarah Champness’s assertions, many as they are. Suffice it to say that the full-page article by her offers one, and only one, opinion on the much vexed question of human sexual orientation and gender identity, that is so fundamental to all human kind.
Naturally enough, if sexual orientation is exactly that, as Champness repeatedly says, it is not open to change. Only a “preference” can be changed, not an innate “orientation”.
Of course what one person does (or does not do) about this orientation is quite another matter.
It would be a moral matter, open, as all such moral matters are, to forgiveness, understanding, charity, mercy and the gradual development under God’s grace, of a stronger spiritual life. This principle applies equally to persons of heterosexual orientation as it does to homosexual, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered persons.
The film Kinsey, if watched intelligently, will make this very point clear to the viewer.
I have not had the privilege of meeting Bishop Anthony Fisher. But from what I read he is a fine man of the Church. His final words, in Champness’s article, are wise and I will, with respect, quote them for my conclusion.
“I gather that the scientific jury is still out on the cause of sexual orientation and of sexual behaviour, or the precise complex of causes, and which factors make the greatest contribution (and this may vary from person to person)”, Bishop Fisher said.
And so say I. Of course, the above applies to persons of either gender or any particular innate God-given sexual orientation. The “jury is still out”, and so must our judgementalism be.
I write this letter as a private individual and not in my capacity as a priest, let alone in the name of any parish.
FR MARK PERCIVAL
Cannon Hill, Qld
