"Our considerations here may shed further light on the question of whether one can validly speak about a same-sex 'marriage'. Our endeavor is to offer an anthropological analysis of the conjugal act by means of which spouses uniquely express their mutual self-giving. We are dealing with one of the most profound realities of human life. Our arguments have been human, not theological, because we consider that clear human thinking, if it probes sincerely and deeply enough, can of itself (without any recourse to theology) show how contraceptive sexual intercourse is not marital intercourse at all, has no power to signify spousal union, but rather contradicts it. Contraceptive intercourse in heterosexual marriage 'denies the truth' of conjugal love through a radical falsification of the very act which should give the fullest bodily expression to that love. The reasoning we have followed underlines the human hollowness of the idea of a "homosexual marriage". Homosexual acts can appease physical desire; but they can never - even remotely - signify the self-giving of two persons. Nor can they effect their union; the two are simply not made "one flesh". Homosexual acts are an exercise in emptiness, satisfying individual passion but leaving the persons as separate as before; nothing in the act unites them. Only a dualistic culture that chooses to see no natural and intrinsic connection between body and soul could wish to dub a homosexual relationship as a marriage."