The Rainbow Illusion

It is almost summer. June is underway. When I was a child, that meant the sweetness of the first days of vacation, hours of leisure exploring the backyard, messing with anthills, and riding my bike. June heralded July 4th celebrations, fireworks, and warm evening family gatherings. I loved June.

We all know that something bizarre has happened to June. It has been dubbed “Pride Month.” Instead of the smells of cut grass and grilling meat, it seems to be flooded with rainbow flags. Well, if society insists on focusing on the rainbow, let us consider it.

A rainbow is an optical illusion. The latter term means: an image seen by the eye that differs from what is actually there. The rainbow occurs when sunlight hits water droplets, be they raindrops, mist from a waterfall, or fog. In order to be visible, the rainbow must be directly in front of the viewer, and the sun must be behind him. In fact, the term antisolar point refers to the imaginary point exactly opposite the sun, according to the observer’s position. Even though it seems to be an arc, a rainbow is actually a circle. An observer only sees the half above the horizon. Since the rainbow is an optical illusion, every viewer sees a different one. Vantage points and horizons differ.  

Rainbows occur when sunlight reflects and refracts against water. Refraction is the bending of light. Reflection happens when light bounces back from something. When sunlight penetrates a droplet of water, it is refracted. Then the light is reflected off the back of the drop. As light exits the droplet, it refracts again—at numerous angles. The rainbow appears as a spectrum of colors because each refracted angle reflects a different wavelength of light. If you will, each wavelength is light of a different color. In ordinary circumstances, light waves blend and appear as white light. That is what sunlight is: all the colors in a harmony that illuminates the world around us, allowing us to see reality.

Let us now consider this so-called “Pride Month.” The characteristics of the rainbow described above present us with some ideas worth pondering. 

We have said that the rainbow is an optical illusion, an image seen by the human eye that differs from what is really there. It is much the same as the LGBTQ+ “community.” The world’s gospel message is that it is a legitimate society of people who tend toward natural same-sex attractions or who have discovered that their bodies do not correspond with their “gender identity.” If they would be allowed to carry on, all would be right with the world. 

But things are not always as they seem to be, just as the rainbow is not what it appears to be. Consider the movement’s terminology. “Gay,” “lesbian,” and “transgender” do not actually define any person’s sexuality. Words matter. The term “gay” means “happy” or “merry.” A Lesbian is an inhabitant of Lesbos (or Lesvos)—a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. If you consider the etymology of the word “transgender,” you get the prefix trans—which means “across” or “beyond”—and the root word gender—which refers to a grammatical subclass of nouns and pronouns such as he, him, she, her, etc. 

If a little bit of light is shed on the LGBTQ+ movement, what one really sees is a multitude of human beings, individuals, who are suffering from unnatural same-sex attractions and their many resulting confusions. Many of them are people whose terrible sufferings have led them to believe—in some cases pretend to believe—that they are men in women’s bodies or women in men’s bodies. The truth about the LGBTQ+ “community” is tragic. These are children of God who are being seduced by the evil one, while the world encourages them to cast themselves into Hell.  The truth about the LGBTQ+ “community” is tragic. These are children of God who are being seduced by the evil one, while the world encourages them to cast themselves into Hell. Tweet This

Today, the influence of LGBTQ+ ideology is so deeply embedded in the public consciousness that one is made to think that one’s natural rejection of the idea that homosexual behavior is normal or good is mean, cruel, or “closed-minded”—what the latter term is supposed to mean is beyond me. One hesitates to use adjectives such as perverse to describe it. But the meaning of the term is quite relevant to the matter. The word “perverse” comes from the prefix per—which means “away”—and the Latin root vertere—which means to turn or turn back. A perversion is a turning away from that which is true. It can also be understood as a turning back to one’s self. 

When God created Adam and Eve, He made them for love. To love is to turn all of one’s life toward the other, not to the self. By its very nature, the relationship between a man and a woman is directed toward the other. In a marriage, a husband and a wife give one another life, and they produce life through the children who come as a fruit of their union. 

On the other hand, the adjective “perverse” is actually quite accurate in describing what happens to a person who has fallen into homosexuality. One can even dispense with the morality of it for a moment and find that the description rings true. For a person who has become a slave to homosexual behavior, everything is about them, what they want, who they are. Homosexual behavior cannot be anything other than a contrived self-identifier. It is curious, therefore, that the phenomenon of the rainbow requires the bending of light. It is light deviated from its usual path. The rainbow is certainly beautiful, but it does not illuminate anything. It does not give anything. All it does is point to itself for all to see.  

One of the great social sicknesses of our time—one that Pope Benedict XVI referred to often—is the relativism of truth. This notion stems from the philosophical idea that knowledge is contingent on the limits of the mind with its varied “epistemological” conditions. If knowledge depends so much on the mind, if its possibility does not require that reality be its object, then truth has no solid ground on which to stand. Every notion becomes legitimate on the sole grounds of having been produced by an individual’s mind. 

Similarly, two people observing a rainbow experience two different optical effects. Which one is the real rainbow? How does one define sexuality? What is a man? What is a woman? These questions lose meaning when every answer becomes the right one. Reality becomes a confusion of “refracted” statements of personal truth. That is chaos. 

In the past, churches were built facing east: the direction from which the sun rises in the morning. Some are still oriented toward the rising sun today. The symbolism here is important. Jesus Christ is the light. Sunrise reminds us that He will come again to end this world and start everything anew. It recalls His Resurrection and mastery over sin and death. By nature, man was made to desire the light, to turn toward it and thrive in its life-giving warmth. 

The darkness, on the other hand, is a symbol of fear. Evil things happen in the dark. One cannot see his own reality in the darkness. How significant, then, that in order to see a rainbow, a man must turn his back on the light. His position in space creates an antisolar point, a vantage point directly opposite the light of the sun that presents nothing more than a trick of the eyes.

June has been hijacked by the rainbow flag—a symbol of delusion, a bending of nature, relativism of truth, and an embracing of darkness. Yet, we cannot despair if we know that Christ is risen! Christ is still the light, and He has already conquered the darkness. In His light, all reality, all truth is illuminated. The Christian does not allow the light to be refracted into a confusion of colors. He faces east and lets the rising Son illuminate everything. As the apostle John so aptly wrote: The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.