DSM on Sexual Disorders

Patrick -- since the DSM does not categorize homosexuality as a sexual disorder, does that mean the magisterium cannot be excused for continuing to treat it as one?

This actually leads into a response to Fr. Araujo's response to the Commonweal editorial (this is an heroic segue).  He says:

But in the meantime, I will offer a thought on the allegation about “human experience.” “Human experience” and powerful political lobbying may lead to the decriminalization of certain actions in specified contexts. For example, abortion and adultery and other extra-marital sexual activity were once crimes; but now, in some instances at least, they are not. That does not mean that they are no longer sins. That is a matter for God, not “science” and not “human experience”, to decide.

Surely for a Church that professes to find its sexual morality in the tenets of "natural law," and not merely in the dictates of revelation, the truths revealed by "science" and "human experience" are at least relevant in discussions of what is the truly and authentically human mode(s) of sexual expression. 

After all, it's the increased knowledge of embryology, due to science, that allow us to understand that the destruction of an embryo, even before "quickening" or the emergence of a human bodily form, constitutes the destruction of a developing human being and not just another form of contraception.  The magisterium's teachings on homosexuality often purport to be rooted in empiricism (see, e.g., the CDF's statements about the harmful impacts of homosexual adoption on children raised by same-sex couples), although the hierarchy has not (to my knowledge) cited any actual studies in support of those claims.

If these ethical discussions are really just about what (the magisterium thinks) God commands, then what the Church has to say about sexual morality (or social justice, or anything else for that matter) become simple matters of the religious commitments of our particular church and would seem to have no place in legal discussions within our pluralist democratic society -- except, I suppose, insofar as they motivate Catholic voters.  If that were the case, though, I'm not sure what the role would be for a web site like this one, or for something called "Catholic Legal Theory."