Not Lust, But Love

Rethinking Chastity, Desire, and Same-Sex Intimacy

For most of my life, I was taught that any sexual desire I felt for another man was, by definition, lust. Not just temptation. Not a natural longing for communion, which might be integrated into a healthy and holy relationship. No, same-sex attraction was lust: disordered, selfish, sinful, and incapable of leading me toward anything good.

In the traditional framework of Catholic moral theology, there is no real possibility of discerning love within same-sex attraction. That conceptual category doesn’t really exist. From the start, every erotic impulse toward members of the same sex is presumed to be a movement toward sin. At best, the Church might encourage LGBTQ+ Catholics to reorient or “purify” our desires into a kind of chaste friendship, purging from them anything sexual, because same-sex desire as such is treated as intrinsically disordered.¹

Although I accepted this framework for many years, the asymmetry between my experience and that of my straight peers in the seminary and priesthood is striking in retrospect. For heterosexual seminarians and priests, sexual desire is generally seen as something to be frankly acknowledged, integrated, and gradually sanctified. My straight brothers’ sexual attractions, even when misdirected or expressed inappropriately, were still seen as fundamentally human, fundamentally good. They were encouraged to speak openly about their struggles, and when they did, they were typically met with sympathy, compassion, and grace.

For those of us who are gay, the unspoken rules were different. Because our very orientation was considered “objectively disordered,” any expression of it—emotional, romantic, or physical—was ipso facto an expression of lust. And because our desires were not seen as fundamentally good, or even morally neutral, but rather as fundamentally broken and in need of healing or renunciation, anything we shared about our struggles with chastity would be under a cloud of suspicion and anxiety. We weren’t free to speak openly about these things in the seminary refectory or on the sidelines at the soccer game; we could only bring them up in counseling or spiritual direction, in the hushed tones of a shameful secret. As Matt pointed out in a recent comment, “Even if you successfully avoid the illicit behaviors, a certain paranoia develops, especially in your same-sex interactions, to avoid even tempting yourself.” The best we could hope for was repression. The only viable option was silence.

But what if that whole framework was based on a false assumption?

What if, for those of us who are “same-sex attracted,” our capacity to long for, desire, and even physically unite with someone of the same sex is not inherently a movement toward sin, but a movement toward love? What if our desire—like everyone else’s—needs discernment and development, rather than dismissal and denial? What if our desire is not lust, but an essential part of how God made us to learn to give and receive love?

This post seeks to explore those questions. In it, I will not argue for a blanket affirmation of all same-sex sexual acts, nor deny the Church’s legitimate concern about the proper ordering of love and desire toward genuine communion. I’m interested in a more modest question: Is it possible that some expressions of same-sex intimacy are not reducible to lust, but are, in fact, expressions of love? And if so, what kind of theological framework would be capable of recognizing that distinction?

The Traditional Moral Framework: Lust by Default

Regular readers of this blog need no introduction to the Church’s official moral teaching on homosexuality. “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture … tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’”² Because they “close the sexual act to the gift of life” and “do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity,” they are considered acts of grave depravity, never morally permissible under any circumstances.³

This alleged lack of complementarity is intelligible only within the classical natural law tradition, which evaluates the moral goodness of any sexual act primarily by its conformity or lack of conformity to the “natural ends” of human sexuality—namely, the procreative and unitive ends of marriage.⁴ Since same-sex acts are, by definition, non-procreative, and since same-sex couples seem to lack the anatomical complementarity of opposite-sex couples, homosexual acts are considered contrary to nature and, therefore, morally impermissible.

Within such a framework, the question of lust versus love never even arises. Even if a same-sex couple is committed, faithful, and loving—even if their relationship mirrors, in every respect, the qualities that make a heterosexual marriage virtuous and holy—any acts of sexual intimacy within that relationship would still be classified by the Church as sins of lust, categorically incapable of being ordered toward the good. The possibility that such intimacy might express a genuine, mutual self-gift is dismissed a priori.

The problem with this natural law-based framework is that it collapses moral meaning into the level of biological functionalism, where the moral value of a sexual act depends entirely on whether it is structurally ordered toward procreation. This model leaves little room for the emotional, relational, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of human sexuality, let alone the intention of the acting person or the moral meaning of the relationship in which the act occurs. There is no space for discernment, only biological determination. And most crucially for our purposes, there is no space to ask what acts of same-sex intimacy might mean when they arise, not from selfishness or objectification, but from genuine love.

The inadequacy of the natural law framework alone for the evaluation of sexual acts becomes even clearer when we compare this approach to other areas of moral theology. In most aspects of human life, we do not treat the “natural end” of a human faculty as the only morally permissible use of that faculty. Melinda Selmys puts it memorably: “We acknowledge one baptism, but that doesn’t mean we condemn bubble baths. We find the full meaning of food and nourishment in the Eucharist—but we don’t therefore conclude that it’s an affront to God if you scarf a bag of Doritos while watching the game.”⁵ In other words, we do not expect every other use of a human faculty to conform to its natural end. We don’t accuse someone of gluttony for chewing gum, even though it stimulates the taste buds without nourishing the body. Nor do we accuse someone of being “intellectually disordered” for using the mind to solve logic puzzles or enjoy pulp sci-fi, even though reason is “naturally ordered” toward wisdom and truth. We recognize that human beings are embodied creatures with emotional, playful, and relational needs, and that not every act needs to fulfill the full teleological end of a faculty in order to be morally good.

When it comes to sex, however, a completely different standard is applied. The traditional natural law framework insists that because the natural end of sex is procreation, any use of the sexual faculty outside a procreative, heterosexual marriage is inherently disordered. I believe this represents not only a theological inconsistency but an impoverished anthropology. By treating the body and sex as morally meaningful only in terms of our biological capacities, we risk missing the fuller truth: that moral meaning emerges not only from the physical structure of our bodily faculties, but from the interior life of the person, the depth of relationship, and the presence—or absence—of love.

The Line Through the Heart: A Theology of Chastity

In his Theology of the Body catecheses, St. John Paul II offers a refreshingly different vision of sexual ethics. Without denying in any way the Church’s traditional natural law framework, the personalist Pope nonetheless decisively shifts the focus from external behavior to the inner disposition of the heart. Expounding on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:27–28), John Paul insists that the true battleground of chastity is found, not in external behavior, but in

the very depth of the human person. The new dimension of ethos is always linked with the revelation of the depth that is called ‘heart’ and with the liberation of the heart from ‘concupiscence’ so that man can shine more fully in this heart … in the freedom of the gift, which is the condition of all life together in the truth, and, more particularly, in the freedom of reciprocal self-gift.⁶

Jesus does not condemn the body or sexual desire as such; he condemns the objectification of the other, the interior act of reducing another person to a means of sexual gratification. Lust, therefore, is not primarily about sexual attraction or even sexual activity. It is about depersonalization, a “change in the intentionality of existence, by which a certain woman begins to exist for a certain man, not as a subject of the call and of personal attraction or as a subject ‘of communion,’ but exclusively as an object for the possible satisfaction of sexual urge.”⁷ Lust has everything to do with this narrowing of the horizons of possibility from interpersonal communion to mere physical pleasure, the reduction of the other from a person to an object of satisfaction, and the decoupling of sexual desire from love. Rather than acting from a genuine love of the other, “one human being ‘makes use’ of another human being, ‘using her’ only to satisfy his own ‘urges.’”⁸

Consequently, John Paul II argues that lust can exist even within marriage—a claim that provoked “an uproar” in the international press, as Michael Waldstein drily notes, but which follows necessarily from his personalist perspective.⁹ The sacrament of matrimony does not automatically safeguard the integrity of desire. “Adultery ‘in the heart’ is not committed only because the man ‘looks’ in this way [with concupiscent desire] at a woman who is not his wife, but precisely because he looks in this way at a woman. Even if he were to look in this way at the woman who is his wife, he would commit the same adultery ‘in the heart.’”¹⁰

This teaching caused such a stir because the Church, in practice, treats marriage as a kind of moral boundary marker. So long as a sexual act takes place within a valid heterosexual marriage, and retains at least the theoretical possibility of procreation, it is presumed to be morally permissible. This presumption effectively “sanates” or sanctifies a wide range of heterosexual acts, not because they are always expressions of love, but because they fit the external criteria of being (apparently) unitive and (potentially) procreative. Marriage offers a kind of moral shortcut: if the biological form is correct, then the act is presumed good—even if the interior reality is marked by selfishness, coercion, or emotional absence.

But the logic of John Paul II’s teaching complicates the moral terrain significantly. The line between lust and love no longer neatly divide procreative sexual acts in a valid heterosexual marriage (loving) from everything else (lustful). Instead, the line runs through the human heart. And the heart, as John Paul II emphasizes again and again, is not condemned by Christ, but called: called to integration, called to communion, called to the fullness of love. “The Christian ethos is characterized by a transformation of the human person’s consciousness and attitudes … such as to express and realize the value of the body and of sex … at the service of the ‘communion of persons.’”¹¹ “The call to master concupiscence of the flesh springs precisely from an affirmation of the personal dignity of the body and sex and only serves such dignity.”¹²

It seems to me that this personalist shift in sexual ethics proposed by St. John Paul II opens a crucial question. If there can be adultery within marriage, is it possible that there might also be chaste intimacy outside of it? Not licentiousness, nor casual gratification, but sexual expression that reflects genuine self-gift, fidelity, and integration? To be sure, the first claim does not logically imply the inverse, but the thrust of John Paul’s teaching on lust suggests that this is at least a live theological question.

A Broader Lens: Salzman and Lawler on Chastity and Same-Sex Love

If the logic of St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body leads us to question the adequacy of labeling all same-sex acts as “intrinsically disordered” on a purely biological-functional basis, and even suggests the possibility of chaste intimacy outside of marriage, then it is the task of moral theologians to build a more adequate theological framework, one capable of a more nuanced, person-centered moral evaluation of same-sex love. This is precisely what Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler have attempted to construct. Their work in The Sexual Person (2008) and subsequent article on theological method (2013) represents one of the most sustained efforts to rethink Catholic sexual ethics in light of John Paul II’s Thomistic personalism, virtue theory, and contemporary theological anthropology.

At the heart of their proposal is a kind of ressourcement of chastity. Rather than treating it primarily as a negative virtue, a long list of “no’s” to forbidden sexual acts, Salzman and Lawler retrieve the classical understanding of chastity as a virtue of integration: the habit of ordering one’s sexuality toward authentic love, fidelity, and human flourishing.¹³ In their view, chastity is not guaranteed by marriage, nor is it reducible to celibacy. Rather, it is the lifelong moral task of embodying one’s sexuality in ways that are loving, just, and truly human.¹⁴

Based on this definition, they argue that same-sex couples can live chastely, not in spite of their sexuality, nor through repression and self-denial, but through the genuine expression of their sexual desire, so long as their relationships meet the same moral standards applied to heterosexual couples: monogamy, justice, fidelity, and mutual self-gift.¹⁵ “In fact,” they write, “responsible discernment in the area of sexual activity, and not the naked fact of ‘nature,’’ is what makes possible the mature integration of a person’s sexuality, heterosexual or homosexual, and the living out of that sexuality in a manner that facilitates a truly human flourishing in relationship with those we love, including the God who created all people as sexual in the first place.”¹⁶

This approach is not a rejection of Catholic moral theology but a faithful development of it. Salzman and Lawler remain committed to the Church’s tradition of virtue ethics, the primacy of conscience, and the dignity of the human person. What they reject is the collapsing of moral reasoning into biological functionalism. On this basis, they argue that “some homosexual and some heterosexual acts, those that meet the requirements of complementary, just, and loving sexual relations, are truly human and moral; and some homosexual and some heterosexual acts, those that do not meet [those requirements], are immoral.”¹⁷

This framework leaves space for what the Church’s traditional natural law framework cannot: the possibility of genuine, complementary, just, and chaste same-sex love. Indeed, Salzman and Lawler conclude their reflections with a kind of rubric, proposed by Margaret Farley, for the moral evaluation of same-sex relations based on these qualities:

“Sex between two persons of the same sex (just as two persons of the opposite sex) should not be used in a way that exploits, objectifies, or dominates; homosexual (like heterosexual) rape, violence, or any harmful use of power against unwilling victims (or those incapacitated by reason of age, etc.) is never justified; freedom, integrity, privacy are values to be affirmed in every homosexual (as heterosexual) relationship; all in all, individuals are not to be harmed, and the common good is to be promoted.’’¹⁸

These criteria seem to me far more adequate for the discernment of chaste, just, and loving relations between same-sex couples than the naked biological functionalism of the classical natural law tradition.

Lust or Love? A New Examination of Conscience

If, following Salzman and Lawler, we allow that same-sex acts may be capable of expressing real love, then gay Catholics must begin to ask a different kind of moral question. The flow chart for distinguishing lust from love becomes more complex. It’s no longer a straight line from “Is this person the same sex as me?” to the box labeled lust. Instead, we are called to ask deeper questions: “Is this relationship just? Is it ordered toward the good of the other? Is this act truly human? Is it truly loving?”

In short, gay Catholics need to practice a new kind of moral discernment—one that integrates the Church’s own best insights into what makes sexual love holy or harmful. I’m not suggesting that we give ourselves free rein, nor deny the moral weight of sexual acts as such. What I’m asking for is consistency: that the Church apply to us the same moral seriousness, the same standard of integration and self-gift, that she already applies to heterosexual Catholics. Rather than clinging to the impossible standard, rooted in an outdated anthropology, that equates chastity for gay Catholics with perfect and perpetual continence, I would like to propose that chastity for us can look much the same as it does for our straight peers: a lifelong process of integration and the education of desire, ordered toward mutual self-gift and the communion of persons.

To be sure, this is new territory for the Church. James Alison has argued that the Church effectively has no teaching at all on homosexuality—only a negation, a vacuum. We are living in what he calls a theological “age of discovery” on matters gay.¹⁹ If that is true, then it is our moral responsibility as queer Catholics to reflect on our experiences truthfully and generously, in the light of the Church’s tradition, and allow new insights to emerge in due time within the light of faith.

Allow me, then, to propose a few questions that queer Catholics might find helpful in discerning whether a particular act of same-sex intimacy is morally meaningful and good. You might think of them as an examination of conscience for same-sex relationships:

• Does this act reflect love, or merely desire?

• Does it honor the dignity and freedom of the other person?

• Does it arise from mutual self-gift, or from a desire to consume?

• Is it integrated into a broader relationship marked by fidelity, justice, and care?

• Does it express reverence for the whole person—body, soul, and story?

• Does it help us grow in love of God, one another, and ourselves?

• On the other hand, does it leave us fragmented, hidden, or diminished?

• Does it reflect who we are becoming in Christ—or distract us from that journey?

These are the kinds of questions I wish I had been taught to ask. For many years, the only category I was given to understand my same-sex desire was lust. I thank God that I’ve begun to learn another one. I see it reflected in the face of the man I love. And I pray that the Spirit, who leads us into all truth, will guide the Church into a deeper awareness and fuller acceptance of the latent potential for love in her queer sons and daughters. May we all be drawn, in our desiring and our discerning, toward the One who is love itself.

1. While the Church officially distinguishes between the homosexual orientation (which is not itself sinful) and homosexual acts (which are described as “intrinsically disordered”), this distinction collapses in practice. As I have argued elsewhere, when every potential expression of one’s orientation is presumed to be a form of lust, then the orientation itself cannot be understood as anything but morally defective.

2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §2357.

3. Ibid.

4. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II, q. 94, a. 2; cf. Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 122–123.

5. Melinda Selmys, “To Wank or Not to Wank,” Catholic Authenticity (blog), August 6, 2019.

6. John Paul II, Theology of the Body, Audience of October 8, 1980, in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, 43:6, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 300-301.

7. John Paul II, Audience of September 24, 1980, in Man and Woman, 41:2, 290-291.

8. John Paul II, Audience of September 24, 1980, in Man and Woman, 41:5, 292.

9. See Man and Woman, 299, translator’s note.

10. John Paul II, Audience of October 8, 1980, in Man and Woman, 43:2, 298.

11. John Paul II, Audience of October 22, 1980, in Man and Woman, 45:3, 307.

12. John Paul II, Audience of October 22, 1980, in Man and Woman, 45:5, 309.

13. Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 138.

14. Salzman and Lawler, The Sexual Person, 124-161.

15. Ibid.

16. Salzman and Lawler, The Sexual Person, 161.

17. Salzman and Lawler, The Sexual Person, 235.

18. Margaret A. Farley, “An Ethic for Same-Sex Relations,” in A Challenge to Love: Gay and Lesbian Catholics in the Church, ed. Robert Nugent (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 105.

19. See James Alison, “The Fulcrum of Discovery or: how the ‘gay thing’ is good news for the Catholic Church” (Fairfield, CT: September 22, 2009). Of course, the Church has plenty of teaching on same-sex acts, as we have seen, but this teaching is based on an anthropological error about homosexual persons.