Beginning in childhood, people manifest a wide range of individual variations of sexual interests and attractions. A characteristic aspect of individual sexuality is the inclination each person has to be drawn toward the opposite, sex, or the same sex, or to experience ambiguity. Sexual interests and attractions may be healthy or unhealthy, acceptable or distressing. They are morally neutral, in themselves, until an individual makes actual choices and actions. As each individual develops through childhood and adolescence there is a necessary emergence and increasing intensity of sexual identities and interests.
Moral choices become possible, and eventually unavoidable.
The Church recognizes that Judeo-Christian Society has always been concerned with the morality of sexual choices and behaviors. Through the centuries those concerns have been guided and informed by Scripture, and by authoritative decisions made by the communities of faith. For many centuries, the moral attitudes and actions of people in Western civilization have been strongly influenced by Christianity. The Church continues to recommend that adolescents and young adults should actively experience social and personal relationships while doing their best to defer genital sexuality, maintaining continence until they are ready to make mature choices and decisions about committed lifelong relationships, and to take on adult responsibilities. The Church continues to regard promiscuous sexual activity as inherently degrading, demeaning, potentially abusive, productive of unwanted pregnancies, and dangerous to public health.