Question:
Answer:
The Catholic Church teaches that every married couple must remain open to the possibility of life. It does not teach that every couple must be fertile in order to have a valid marriage. “Openness to life” means that the conception of children through conjugal relations must be, at the very least, theoretically possible. Heterosexual couples, even those who have medical conditions that inhibit fertility, have the potential for conceiving children through their conjugal relations. Same-sex couples do not have that same potential, despite the efforts to which some have gone to create children through artificial insemination or surrogacy, which separate conception from conjugal relations.
We also need to remember that the procreation of children is not the only “end” of Christian matrimony. The sacrament of matrimony also is for the sanctification of the spouses. Regarding homosexual activity, the Church teaches:
Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved (CCC 2357).