When it comes to gender dysphoria and the alphabet soup that describes various degrees and types of same-sex attraction, there is an ever-increasing complexity or dare I say fragmentation. The current nomenclature is summarized with this designation: LGBTQIA+. Please do not ask me to decipher it! Instead of challenging those with mental illness and disorientation, we are authorizing and enabling them to identify themselves by the fiction they have embraced. Every effort to check this movement has either failed or given them fodder to ridicule their critics as mean and prejudiced. It has been joked that if we cannot beat them, then maybe we should join them? I have always wanted to be a green Martian and have decided to claim such and treat as bigots any who would deny me my non-terrestrial self-designation. I reject your reality and have decided to impose my own. I breathe carbon dioxide and eat glass. Who are you to object and tell me what I can do with my body? My intent is not to ridicule but to expose absurdity. I suspect that many who are fearfully silent concur that this whole business is rather silly.
Many have swallowed the notion that human respect demands total and complete acceptance even if such would contradict our most fundamental values and basic reasoning. Gone is any wiggle space that would permit debate or even silent toleration. As politicians, progressive advocates, the media and educators seek to transform the consensus of the public forum, those with traditional views on morality and relationships are coming under the brunt of “payback” discrimination. Christians who focus on the Bible as the Word of God are finding themselves marginalized and the proclamation of the Gospel is condemned by extremists as hate-speech. Contemporary secular values are supplanting those of traditional faith and the Decalogue.
The gender designations leave us scratching our heads: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual and intersexual. Really, what does this all mean?
- Indoctrination without debate or questioning is demanded.
- Blatant advocates are deemed as level headed and right thinking.
- Sitting on the fence is interpreted as either cowardice or latent bigotry.
- A failure to render support or promotion for the cause is judged as injustice.
There is a not so subtle threat connected to all of this— accept a plurality of subjective genders and an ever expensive field of sexual expression— or else! Give in or you will be sued. You will be stripped of your livelihood. A baker lost his home and business because he refused to bake a cake to celebrate a same-sex union. Win or lose, the court costs are astronomical. The ridiculous has become serious and real. Indeed, even liberals and feminists who fail to toe the line are being vilified. The author of the popular Harry Potter books, J. K. Rowling, has been mocked and black-listed because she wants to make a case for the rights of women who were “born with vaginas.”
What becomes of the voice of the Church for justice and peace when she is increasing regarded (albeit falsely) as an organization that promotes injustice and discrimination? Many would undermine the efforts of Christians for ethnic and civil rights because they are unwilling to include sexual orientation along with demands for racial equality. We have already seen the women’s rights movement hijacked by greedy abortion providers and now by LGBTQIA+ proponents. They argue that you cannot have one without the other. What is the real status of feminism and women’s rights when men as transgendered females can compete with ordinary women in swimming, track-and-field and kick boxing? Women’s records are falling right and left, and biological women are being shut out. Notice that there is no “S” in the alphabet soup for straight men and women. That which was once regarded as normal merits no celebration but is reckoned as the enemy or as a prospect for conversion.
The targeting of children is real in this confrontation over gender. The idiocy would have teachers planting the seeds for confusion in curriculums that target youth as young as five years of age. If the proponents cannot effect change with their parents then they will focus on the upcoming generations. There is no more celebration of Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day because it is hurtful to those with a missing parent or same-sex parents. Valentine cards are forbidden because no one can be excluded. Condoms are given away by school nurses because it is expected that teens cannot control themselves and even many of the teachers have failed to wait until marriage. We have eroticized childhood. Notice the direction taken with children’s television programming. Kids are breaking into romantic couples even prior to puberty. Further, today there is always the gay or lesbian in the mix, too.
Those who oppose the stance of orthodox churchmen on the sexuality and gender questions are quick to charge them with unwarranted bias, ignorance and insensitivity. However, the last thing that any good shepherd wants to do is to inflict pain upon others. They desperately want reconciliation and communion with all of God’s people. But tough love mandates that there are some concessions that can never be made. A number of gay advocates, but not all, contend that monogamy and fidelity should count for something, even if bonds are judged as disordered. However, just as with heterosexual sin and cohabitation, evils are not necessarily all violent or rude— there can be tremendous tenderness and intimate sharing in fornication and/or even adultery. Same-sex unions may include real affection and love— but such elements cannot justify what is wrong. Indeed, such adds an insidious catalyst to the misbehavior, excusing harm caused to the beloved under a deceptive veil of caring and romantic love. While sexual expression, both natural and unnatural, outside the covenant of heterosexual marriage may be consensual, it damages the soul and psyche as abusive behavior.
We hear from gays, lesbians and others that the stance of the Church makes them feel unwanted and unloved. Indeed, some turn this anger against God for making them disordered or broken. This I can well understand as I often had tense prayers as a youth before God because of a struggle with asthma and breathing. I was always sick and often could not run and play with other children. Like Pinocchio, I prayed that I might be a real boy. Returning to the crisis at hand, those suffering gender dysphoria and disordered attraction would sometimes turn matters around and assert that their sexuality was okay and a gift to be celebrated, not scorned. The Church would affirm persons but that is all. The Church could not pretend that a sexual disorder was normative. Certainly the shepherds of faith would never bless sinful acts as this would constitute blasphemy.
A refusal to acknowledge the many subjective designations of gender and deviant sexual acts signifies no disrespect to personhood and our common humanity. The Holy Father would have us accompany these souls in their faith journey. We can lament and cry with them. We can hear them out as our brothers and sisters. But any dialogue will always find itself directed and restrained by the values and truths extracted from the sources of Christian doctrine. Jesus associated with tax collectors and sinners and yet he also called them to repentance and conversion. We must do the same.
While many churchmen have placed an emphasis upon fixing homosexuals, I suspect the better approach is in finding lawful and valid ways for them to move forward as they are. Further, if the rest of the Church is to learn anything from this, it may be not to soft-pedal heterosexual sin by comparison. Regardless of orientation, we should all focus on virtue and avoiding serious sin. Anyone who would “love” another into mortal sin is practicing a false or self-seeking love. We should pursue grace and holiness for the beloved. Here are a few propositions that might lead us out of the moral quandary where we find ourselves:
- Affirmation of chaste loving familial relationships or special friendships;
- Dedication to celibate “brotherly” and “sisterly” bonds;
- Encouraging a vigorous spirituality of prayer and the sacramental life;
- Dedication to the faith in ongoing study, catechesis and evangelization; &
- Focusing on an apostolate of charity and service.
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