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Knowing from Zen that it’s the custom of great spiritual masters to encode or booby-trap their answers with all sorts of verbal mischief and paradox, I considered the Pope’s recent denunciation of “same-sex marriage” with a sense of investigation. What did the Pope really mean?
First, I noted that he was not addressing the issue of “same-gender” marriage – i.e., man/man or woman/woman unions. It is the acts and modes of sex itself he seems to be talking about.
My next thought, based on my previous knowledge of fundamentalist teachings, was that the Pope might be saying that married people must not enjoy the same kind of sex together. In other words, mutual missionary-positionists draw themselves deeper and deeper into sin with every perpendicular poke, but if one of them would much prefer it up against the wall or spread-eagled in jelly, that is good.
Dissatisfaction is the way. Carnality should be at cross-purposes. “Do unto others – but not the way they want you to.” The problem is, this could be extended to the idea of sexual orientation, too. Heterosexual-to-heterosexual marriages, then, would be “same-sex” unions and therefore not sanctifiable. Gays could only marry straights, straights could only marry gays.
That’s where I abandoned this line of thought. Surely, the Pope would not espouse people marrying against their own deep-seated, innate sexual predilections. No, he must intend something else by his cryptic epistle.
Suddenly, I had a vision of the Kama Sutra and a feeling of epiphany. Variety! The Pope was espousing and championing an end to sameness, a rigorous new sense of variety in the married sex life. Having the same sex night after night in the same bed the same way is not holy. It’s tedium that’s the sin.
Yes, the Pope is urging us to throw off our lifeless sexual habituations and try new positions, different rhythms. Change the angles of entry. Vary the impetus of intake. Shift the energy of orgasm.
The ideal is this: each sexual encounter should be a unique event in the history of love – unrepeatable. And the Pope is right. No one who has ever experienced this kind of sex has ever thought of it as anything but sacred, whether man to man, man to woman, woman to woman or many to many. Amen and blessed be.
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