I am speaking at University of Dallas tonight on “Friendship and Homosexuality,” sponsored by the Office of Campus Ministry. Given time limits, a talk like this can only briefly touch on topics which I have written about in much more depth here on Spiritual Friendship. This post provides a handy reference for people who heard my talk to read more about what I said. (And for those who weren’t able to make it to the talk, it still provides a handy reference to several important posts I’ve written over the years.)

First, I shared a bit about my own story. This post tells a bit about how I started to realize I wasn’t attracted to women. You might say that I “backed” my way into the Catholic Church, first by recognizing the link between accepting contraception and accepting same-sex marriage, and only later recognizing the flaws of the “slow motion sexual revolutionaries” I grew up with in the Southern Baptist Church. This post, perhaps the most important for setting the stage for my later thinking about chastity, relates more about my experience of falling in love with a friend in college. An important theme in all of this is the difference between talking with and talking about.

Aelred of Rievaulx is one of the most important influences on my vision for the Spiritual Friendship blog. I’ve written about his typology of friendship, as well as the distinction between true and false friendship. With respect to Catholic teaching on friendship and homosexuality I’ve written about various Catholic documents that commend friendship for men and women with homosexual inclinations, as well as what the Catechism means by “disinterested friendship.” Another important influence on my thinking is Blessed John Henry Newman’s sermon on the “Love of Relations and Friends.”

I closed by reflecting on two experiences I had in France: seeing a painting by Gabriel Girodon depicting the martyrdom of the brothers Crepin and Crepinien at Soissons, and a pilgrimage to Lourdes I took 15 years ago with an older friend of mine who was dying of pancreatic cancer.