Top Level Design

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orientation as a mental disorder was dropped from the association’s diagnostic and statistical manual. (p. 574).

In the Western world, sexual practices that were once considered abnormal or sinful such as oral sex, homosexuality and masturbation are today practiced so widely that fewer people are ready to label them as abnormal. Hoose (2000) in corroborating this assertion states:

This change in the climate of thought about sex has multiple roots. Since Freud, much public emphasis has been placed on the importance of sexuality as an element of human personality. Sex is no longer seen simply as a way of propagating the species, nor as occasional and potentially enjoyable necessity, but as an essential and defining aspect of each person’s character, having an all-pervasive influence on human behavior and attitudes. (p. 224).

This new flow of thought coupled with the ever increasing emphasis on individual liberty in Western societies and increasingly widespread education have encouraged people to think for themselves and define their own values in sexual as well as other areas of ethics. These factors led to the rise of the feminist and gay movements, the progress of which has largely undermined traditional values.

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within marriage, which has very significant implications for life, as the proper setting for procreation. (p. 20).

Christian bioethics is the imprint of Christian morality and ethics on the issues about human life and relationships, which present very serious controversies due to a variety of opinions and choices which contradict traditional religious morality.

Engelhardt (2016) is of the opinion that the decline of Christian bioethics is often attributed primarily to the secularization of the public fora and public spaces of the West. In line with this he asserts:

Christian ethics lost its prominence in the 1970s and early 1980s in great measure due to the form of self-demolition tied to a failure to be authentically Christian. A discount of the doctrinal differences separating Christianity from secular, thought was encouraged by the ethos of dialogue and ecumenism. It became socially acceptable to underscore the gulf separating Christian morality and bioethics from that of secular culture. It became politically incorrect to forthrightly recognize the obvious differences separating the Christianities by what in a different age would have been termed matters of heresy.

The new postmodern attitude to Christian bioethics also obviously disregards the core Christian teaching on the unacceptability of homosexuality. It also seeks to remove the moral inhibitions on practices such as sex-change surgery (transsexualism), abortion, the use of donor gametes in reproduction, etc.

Ashley and Rourke (1992) commenting on the hedonistic attitude of modern day society point out that human pursuit of freedom has the goal of creating many

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alternative means to a goal, some of which are clearly inappropriate and disadvantageous. This makes it impossible for people to reconsider their goals and to redefine or even alter them in view of some higher goal. (p. 58).

Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Exhortation on the Family (cited by Ashley and Rourke, 1982) speaks in favour of a "personalized sexuality" in which the begetting of children in a heterosexual marriage is a true and responsible usage of sex for interpersonal purposes. The papal exhortation questions homosexual unions because the love so expressed lacks the complimentarity of male and female related to the fruitfulness of marriage. In homosexuality, the full meaning of sexuality is essentially frustrated and its integrated values separated. (p. 213-214).

Another Papal Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (cited by May, 2000) takes in details the threats menacing human life today, at the root cause of which is the emergence of a perverse idea of human freedom, understood as the autonomous freedom of individuals to be the arbiters of good and evil, right and wrong. (p. 20). Christian ethics stipulate that the only sexual relationship that is acceptable is the integration of sexual pleasure with love and family life in a heterosexual marriage. On this premise, the hedonistic ethics inherent in homosexual practices is unrealistic and unwarranted in Christian ethics.

In terms of the continuity of the human race, homosexuality is always a threat to species survival. Rohy (2012) asserts that one of the facets of homosexuality - gay marriage should be prohibited because same-sex unions do not like heterosexual marriage enable the "survival of the species". In endorsing biblical teaching on

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heterosexual marriage, Carson (cited by Rohy, 2012) identifies science as the pretext for heteronormative bias. She postulates:

New research guided by evolutionary theory does agree with Genesis that humans, from our very origin as unique creatures on earth, have been defined by heterosexual monogamy, in view of which homosexuality emerges as an obvious biological and cultural dead end. (p. 101).

Even going by the theory of evolution which is concerned with the propagation of species, Holowell (cited by Rohy, 2012) states that to recognize homosexuality and same-sex marriage would "bring reproduction to a screeching halt, leading to the eventual extinction of the human race", and that heterosexuality is synonymous with procreation which ensures futurity for collective survival, making the confrontation with the homosexual culture a matter of life and death. (p. 105).

In essence, Christian ethics on human life and man's continued existence is basically negated by the very practice of homosexuality which for the vast majority of Christians worldwide is an aberration of heretical dimensions. This is more so because apart from the ethical and moral undermining of both divine and natural law which homosexuality represents, if it is accepted as one of the sexual orientations which people can freely choose, and if it happens that every human being opts for it, that would invariably lead to the extinction of the human race on our planet.

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