Christian relationships
Submitted by F.O.D. on February 15 1999 at 15:29:47
In reply to need your input: letter from a christian Submitted by Chuck on February 14 1999 at 20:04:33
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Hello Chuck, that was quite a positive response he gave you, really. He was ready to acknowledge the value of boyloving relationships, while thinking that sex should be kept out of it. What pics was he referring to? The sigpics on BoyChat? That would be ironic if he thought those were our loved boys. How do you want to answer him? Actually, Chuck, in broad strokes I tend to agree with him. How can you have sexual relationship with someone who still plays with Star-Wars figures? So I thought it might be more helpful for you if I summarise what the Christian view of a healthy sexual relationship is, as I understand it, and how boylove fits into that. I'm sure you know these things, but since you've brought the question up, I'll address them anyway. The basic plan comes from Genesis 2, where God says it's not good for a man to be alone. That we have a need to "belong" to someone else, someone to bond with, to love to death. This is the basic human need, and God deals with it by creating a wife for the man (if we have to keep it non-gender specific, God create someone-else for the first person to love). The bond with this someone else is one that is to be made unbreakable, a love for life, and sex is the means of expressing the deep love these two people have for each other. So it's the lifelongness of sexual love that is at the core of Christian moral thought. How does it apply to intergenerational (IG) love (skirting the other question of Christian thought on homosexuality)? In the sense that any sexual act would be wrong if it is not the expression of this life-long love, then the question of the morality of boylove, that is, IG love, becomes one of when that child has become adult enough to accept the responsibility to make a decision that decides who he will love for the rest of his life. ie we more or less come back to the AOC debate, though it's not "AOC" but rather "AOM" (age of marriage). In this context I find myself basically agreeing with your correspondant. I would not expect a Star-Wars-figure boy (ie a prepubescent, maybe a young pubescent also) to be ready to take on that kind of responsibility, to be able to say "I am yours, and you are mine." In terms of defending boylove and the boylover, I would say that a man who has fallen in love with a boy should see as his first responsibility the task of training in bringing up his boy, till his boy has become mature enough to make these adult decisions for himself. He should be able to provide the young child with the security and protection from the dark that your correspondent refers to, without demanding that the child make a decision about life-long sexual love. I think a child who wants sex should be taught the meaning of sexual love so he can understand the need for maturity and doesn't just see it as a mere case of "rub and tickle" or as an affection susbstitute. In my opinion, a sexual relationship that is formed with the expectation that it will cease a few years later, which is the expectation of most boylovers who are sexually involved with their loved boys, I believe that is wrong because it is thwarting the long-life nature of sexual love. I'm not sure if what I said is helpful or not. I'm glad the correspondant was able to look beyond the hysteria ("what!? You're in love with a child!? You monster!!") so that he is able to think rather on the implications of responsible loving. Yours, F.O.D. |