I think there is another argument against homosexualiy (including bisexuality) that is generally missed, and this is the result of St. Augustine’s Manichaean baggage influencing the Church both east to some extent (backed up by extremist tendencies like Tertullian’s) and west, and by an often unacknowledged cross fertilization, on Orthodoxy by Roman Catholicism.

Yes sex is a means of procreation. No, that is not the only purpose of “marriage” or heterosexual pair (or in many species and some humans) multipartner bonding. Genesis says not one word about procreation being the purpose of marriage. The OT is almost silent except for Malachi saying God created marriage in order to get a godly seed, context, that seed needs a good relationship as a context to grow up in and not pagan women (or one could argue, abusive incestuous and whatever parents). NT says not one word on the subject. OT addresses “repro sex” (reproduction only motivated sex) denunciatory by implication, in showing this as the motive behind the actual incest (and date rape by drugging) of their father by Lot’s daughters, and the constructive incest (and rape by deception) by Tamar of her father in law Judah, all this in context of the levirate marriage brought into Judah’s family by his Canaanite wife and Canaanite daughter in law.

In The Torah we see a form of it condemned, and later another form tolerated, on two conditions. the targeted man had the right to refuse, and had to be someone who was living with the couple at the husband’s death. (this was of course stretched to include total strangers more distantly related than brother, half brother, step brother or first cousin all of which could be “brother” hence the problem Boaz had to solve to be with Ruth.) This (ignored later) proviso limited the marriage to a couple who might have some friendship existing already.

now, what’s the point of all this?

The sexual attraction to be functioning correctly cannot include same sex or inappropriate age. That animals might do this is irrelevant, they also can be abnormal like a mother eating her cubs or something like that.

Animals don’t know sex causes babies, they have sex because they feel like it and most species feel like it when the reproductive cycle starts up the right hormones. Humans and some animals breed year round. No one is born knowing sex causes babies. We learn that because someone figured it out eons ago. In the 1800s and early 1900s there were still a few primitive people who didn’t know it, and ascribed pregnancy to swimming in some pool in moonlight or something.

Genesis focuses on the relationship the companionship angle. The rest grows out of that.

As someone who inadvertently let my credential for research management expire – a requirement for FDA site management- and forced to re-take some of the essential core courses again (despite desperate pleas for wavers), I could tell you tales of the pettiness of some of our system, thought it continues to remain the safest in the world. All this aside, you have made my original point completely tangential: the fastest way to extend your pharmaceutical patent in the US is to petition the FDA for a new indication for an already approved medication (and many argue that the FDA is significantly less stringent for “secondary” indications). In this case, Gilead Sciences, the manufacturer of Truvada – already certified to treat HIV disease – was able to demonstrate to the FDA that it had some prophylactic properties for certain individuals who met specific criteria, was and approved for “pre-exposure prophylaxis” (PrEP) as I noted above.

Now, just in case you are missing my “complaint: Mr. Bradshaw continuously presents the “general,” non-radicalized, gay community as a moral parallel to the “straight” community, akin to Lake Wobegon, MN. Whereas my point is that the CDC indicates that the current increase in HIV infections appears to be attributable to facts such as “hook-up” phone apps like “Grindr” – where gay men connect simply for sexual liaisons with otherwise anonymous partners without worrying” – and the impetus for the demand for insurance formularies to provide Truvada, and at a reasonable deductibles. While the medical community fears that the ignorance of the instability of retroviruses and their tendency to alter genetically a step ahead of prophylaxis (and the reason we have no preventative vaccine) will result in the loss of the safe-sex practices in the gay community. And I very distinctly recall what I believe was the beginning of the rationalizations I saw in NYC in the late 1980’s in a pamphlet that read: “It’s not YOU, it’s not because you’re GAY, it’s a VIRUS!” And in this case, it is a billion dollar gain for Gilead Sciences, and we are paying for people who 1) are apparently willing to be exposed the known & unknown gross side-effects of anti-retroviral medications; 2) for the luxury of having unsafe/unprotected sex with whomever they wish; and 3) never have to wear condoms. It is a nice gig, I guess.

On the other side of the coin, those “development costs” are almost entirely an artifact of our governments insane regulation.

“Almost entirely”? I’ll have to see the numbers. But even if true, it doesn’t change the fact that foreign governments keep drug prices low at home by trusting the U.S. to make sure drugs are safe before they are brought to market.

On the other side of the coin, those “development costs” are almost entirely an artifact of our governments insane regulation. The number of new drugs actually “in development” is approaching zero now – it’s all research into how to “re-package” (not sure of the technical medical/chemistry terms are here) old drugs so that the drug companies can renew patents.

I don’t like to admit it, but Americans are getting the drugs and quality of medicine they deserve – for they are voting for these guys. Thank God, He usually sees to it that we don’t “get what we deserve”, but in this case, he is providentially allowing us to take our own medicine…

For the record. American made drugs are price controlled in almost every country except the USA. This means all development and liability costs are shifted back to the American consumer. The lower prices in other markets don’t reflect the real costs.

Fr. Hans,

The ground of the religion of the radical SELF, which of of course the current homosexualist philosophy (both introverted and of course the political activism) goes deep, and is part of the whole modern project IMO. Labeling modernism “gnostic” is helpful, if not entirely accurate (though you are covering that with the more updated “New” or “Neo-Gnosticism. IMO, “neo-epicurean” is probably more accurate than “neo-gnostic” as a descriptive term for the religion of modernity…

Actually, apart from “Haven in a Heartless World,” I’ve read all the books, many of them several decades ago.

The critique I have made of Fr. Schmemann is not personal so to say he was myopic misstates it. I don’t think he saw how unstable the foundations had become (most people didn’t, except perhaps Lasch). His writing is still valuable but more from a historian’s perspective. It does not possess enough explanatory power to help us comprehend our present predicament in the ways that we need to.

Bloom had it right and as cultural history it is arguably one of the best written. But the American mind has closed. People born in the 1980s and later would not have a clue about what he was talking about if they read it today.

If there is a better assessment of our current American Orthodox dilemma than what is found in Alexander Schmemann’s The Problems of Orthodoxy in America: The Canonical, The Liturgical, and The Spiritual, including the solution; as well as his recommended social commentary that I believe is prophetic, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (on the NY Times Bestseller list in 1978) by Dr. Christopher Lasch [and I will add its corollary, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged] and The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, than you have absolutely no clue as to the mind of Alexander Schmemann. None. And let me clarify to you: I speak of Alexander Schmemann as I do not because he was a great man – I have said on many occasions, I found him to be a very abrasive, distant, and a frequently insensitive man that I found very difficult to personally like. But he was one of the most stunning and brilliant human beings to whom I have ever been exposed. To imagine Alexander Schmemann would be so shortsighted as to view theology, culture, and history simply in the myopic context of his own era (for heaven’s sake, he assigned two volumes of the noted Romanian theologian & anthropoligist/sociologist Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion and The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History for every class he taught – though I doubt many read them) is foolish indeed. You need to seriously study and rethink this response. And I have not even mentioned John Meyendorff…

I find Fr. Arida’s essay too vague to be of any practical benefit apart from the concrete reference to sexuality. It’s not so much ‘jumping on sexuality’ as you put it. Rather, it’s the only place he lays anchor.

You reference Fr. Florovsky as an authority, but Fr. Florovsky was writing to specific historical and cultural questions (the place of Orthodoxy in a non-Orthodox culture for example), relevant in his day but not so much anymore. Fr. Arida borrows some ideas and language from Fr. Florovsky, but the historical/cultural context cannot be carried forward. The questions and challenges today are vastly different and some strike at the heart of Christian self-understanding (same-sex marriage and anthropology for example).

I think the same is true of Fr. Schememann’s work. I remember as a young man how influential his work was on me. One reason was that they they gave authority to my own philosophical misgivings that I only intuited at the time but ones for which he offered a vocabulary to grapple with and resolve. But those questions recall a different era. The thought world of younger people is vastly different than it was when I was their age and the answers Fr. Schmemann gave me don’t work for them.

All this is to say that recourse to Fr. Florovsky, Schmemann and the other great luminaries of the Paris exile also demands of your listener that he enters the spirit of the culture as it existed when they wrote. But that culture doesn’t exist anymore. Anyone who was born after the 1980s has no idea of what life in 1950s New York was like. They have no reference point. It’s like us looking at scenes of Bangkok.

I know you have deep ties to these men because they formed you. I am not disparaging that in the least. However, as engaging as their conversation was with their cultural peers, it is not weathering well long term. I don’t think it can.

That’s the milieu in which Fr. Arida still lives I think and one that you defend. Again, no disparagement, contempt, criticism – whatever, intended or implied. But it is also one that renders so many of those formed in the school of the Parisian exiles blind to how radically culture has changed in the last three decades and the threat to Christianity those changes portend. Culture cannot be engaged in the same ways Fr. Florovsky, Schmemman and the others did during their era. Responding using their models can actually weaken the Church.

Nominal Christianity allowed them to speak without penalty, which made their engagements with the broader culture reasonable. The culture that is coming (and I argue already here) will be aggressively hostile to Christianity. Our discernment has to sharpen. The prophetic dimension of the Gospel needs to be recovered.

Who to read today? Well, here’s one I just started a few days ago. Fr. Florensky is looking beyond the collapse I see coming.

Mr Stankovich, while I have no interest in trying to justify the actions of others, I must wonder how the cost of medicine is determined, particularly HIV medication. Some are what .. $100+ a pill? This same medication is provided to other people outside the US at much lower cost, I believe.

But yes, we all pay for the weaknesses of others. Diabetes and heart problems are aggravated by the obesity epidemic, and these costs are passed on to those of us who strive to keep in shape.

Fair? Not really. Some companies are offering incentives to avoid risky behavior. I’m not sure how they’d approach this without offering contraceptive devices, and we know some don’t want to do that either.

Mr. Bradshaw,

While I commend you for “taking a number of more radical gay activists to task,” I must (since you are available) note my objection to your less-radical compatriots (who are legion) for raising my insurance rates and boring the living hell out me with the “drug rep lunches” (i.e. a pharmaceutical company rep provides lunch to my clinic in order to encourage director to force staff to listen to a medication presentation) regarding Truvada (Emtricitabine, Tenofovir, and Disoproxil), which is an FDA approved “pre-exposure prophylaxis” (PrEP) combination antiretroviral medication specifically for “men who have sex with men (MSM) at high risk for HIV-1 infection and in heterosexual serodiscordant couples.” It is also used to treat HIV disease.

The issue? We have known since the mid-1980’s that a condom effectively prevents the transmission HIV at a negligible cost (if you’re nice, you probably can find some agency who’ll give you a handful for free). Truvada, like all antiretrovirals, has a side-effects list as long as your arm, making the “drop-out” rate for the “PrEP” users as high as 50%, and it is grossly expensive. Insurance companies, quite obviously, do not want to pay for another expensive antiretroviral, so potential PrEP consumers are lobbying hard – with all the “entitled” rhetroic – for inclusion in insurance formularies and reasonable co-payments. While the prescribing literature cautiously describes the “intended” patient, it is basically being prescribed to mid and upper-income white males with excellent insurance. And why, Mr. Bradshaw (as if I have to tell you)? So they don’t have to put on a $.25 condom! Don’t be disingenuous and preach “gay sensibility.”

I believe you can read his “thesis” as well as I can: the church, in the context of the “public square,” must address the issues “related to human sexuality, the configuration of the family, the beginning and ending of human life, the economy and the care and utilization of the environment including the care, dignity and quality of all human life.” It seems fairly obvious to me that by not doing so, by not providing a voice of moral authority, we are complicit with the indifference that has allowed the courts of this country to determine these issues for us. Now, had I written these same words, I do not believe you would have any comment whatsoever. But Fr. Arida had 1) previously written a short commentary regarding homosexuality and the passage of same-sex marriage legislation in his home state, and 2) Fr. Arida is not Fr. Georges Florovsky. It is only when people like you pounced on the two words that distinguish the two author’s (and I might add Met. Kallistos (Ware), as well) thoughts on “Living Tradition” – human sexuality – then in my mind, his essay becomes “vague.” And I am very disappointed & angry that he has not addressed and clarified the issue directly (and addressed Fr. Alexander Webster, whom I have commended for taking the high road in attempting to contact him directly). I believe no one in a position of educating the faithful has the right to cloud the “public square” with vague “theolegumena.”

You could also be arguing I guess that because some heterosexual couples suffer from infertility or even sterility, that the universal sterility of all same-sex couplings should be ignored, ie: natural sterility should be factored out of the discussion.

Here you are absolutely correct. It will become “merely polemic” the moment you demonstrate for me an authority from the Holy Fathers or our Holy Tradition factoring them in to the discussion.

Many, many words but let me focus on this:

Personally, I am angry and disappointed that he has written in vague terms and refuses to respond or expand to his critics, but you have developed an impression and the accompanying jingoism of which those on the Right are so fond on the flimsiest of actual statements.

So what do you think Fr. Arida is saying? What is his thesis? And why did he write in such “vague terms?”

As to your question, of course I would marry the couple. The physical afflictions don’t cross the sexual divide. The relationship still comports to nature. (That’s why the example makes sense, actually. You assume it implicitly.)

You could also be arguing I guess that because some heterosexual couples suffer from infertility or even sterility, that the universal sterility of all same-sex couplings should be ignored, ie: natural sterility should be factored out of the discussion. But if you did that, your question would be meaningless or at best merely polemical.

While I hope a cure is found, the disease could quickly be eradicated with a little sense of restraint. So no argument here on that.

Beyond that, there are two problems with this essay:
1. The State frequently enables and validates legal arrangements that have no real “natural” component. We have powers-of-attorney, wills and the like. Single persons can legally acquire or adopt children that are not their own and raise them. The State has no ideological interest in these arrangements other than ensuring that those involved are doing so willingly.

2. The essay seems to imply that who one marries is incidental to why one is marrying (or why they’re even involved with another person). While I’m sure there may be some people who are completely disinterested in human relationships and marry purely out of a sense of obligation to faith or clan, I think this is the exception, not the rule. One’s sense of values and beliefs will shape how that relationship plays out, of course, but I don’t see an intention behind the existence of the relationship beyond the basic need for companionship that most of us have. With a few exceptions, human bonds aren’t a “statement” of anything, I don’t think.

I have known Fr. Robert Arida for more than forty years – he was one of my first roommates at seminary – and I can assure you that, while his is a brilliant mind, his is not the calculating mind of which you accuse. Personally, I am angry and disappointed that he has written in vague terms and refuses to respond or expand to his critics, but you have developed an impression and the accompanying jingoism of which those on the Right are so fond on the flimsiest of actual statements. I would note that you have previously mocked those who “quote the bigshots” like Fr. Georges Florovsky, but I have not seen you critique Fr. Florovsky’s statements in regard to “Living Tradition,” which he so beautifully delineates and crafts in at least five separate articles in English of which I am aware. And only one of these articles was ever criticized, I believe (my computer is being repaired and I can’t plug the thunderbolt cable into my older laptop to check) by ArchBp. Averky of Jordanville, originally titled “Thoughts About the Limits of the Church,” which Fr. Georges amended before publishing. The point being that Fr. Florovsky took the concept of “Living Tradition” much further than Robert Arida, yet you do not group him among the “Gnostics.” The reason? You are fixated on a “theology contra-homosexuality.” That was my argument with you on Monomakhos, that you would turn the mystery of Christian Marriage into the “antidote” for homosexuality. The only difference between the arguments of Fr. George Florovsky and Fr. Robert Arida are exactly two words: “human sexuality.” The remainder of your argument is complete conjecture. If you are comfortable and confident referring to Robert Arida as a “Gnostic” based only on what he has actually written, than you have no choice but to also refer as well to Georges Florovsky.

So, I must ask you, would you marry a man to a woman who has been found to have the genetic mutation of the CFTR gene that both results in Cystic Fibrosis and congenital bilateral absence of the vas deferens which carries sperm from the testes, rendering him incapable of reproduction? Or a woman to a man who, as a child had been treated for cancer with an alkylating agent such as procarbazine – which breaks DNA strands – rendering her sterile? Am I to presume that not possessing the “fulfillment of the unitive and procreative ends of marriage,” by uniting these two couples in Christian Marriage, “acting against the ends of marriage will tend to destroy it?” My thought to you – as I have said so many times – is this: if you would devote a quarter of the time you devote to the heterodox & the heretics to the Holy Fathers and the fathers of our generation, you would be relevant.