In Making Gay Okay, Robert Reilly says the ascendancy of men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) started with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s victory over Aristotle and that once philosophy fell the triumphant march through the institutions was quick and maybe even inevitable. Reilly explains that the debate centers on the question of what is natural and not, and how to distinguish … Read more
“People say, ‘The price of genetic diseases is high. If these individuals could be eliminated early on, the savings would be enormous.’ It cannot be denied that the price of these diseases is high…, [b]ut we can assign a value to that price: It is precisely what society must pay to be fully human.” — … Read more
Secularists are known for dismissing religion as merely espousing a set of blind faith beliefs without any evidence to support them. The crudest among them will often do it in a snide and sneering way, holding that religious belief is imagination and fantasy—like a childhood fairy tale—in contrast to the “scientific” view that they espouse. … Read more
Are there some same-sex sexual attractions that are not disordered inclinations? Melinda Selmys, among those dubbed the “new homophiles” by Austin Ruse, seems to think so. At the “Spiritual Friendship” blog, Selmys presents this thesis under the title “Still Looking to Desire.” Now, I consider Melinda and everyone at the “Spiritual Friendship” blog to be … Read more
In my last post I made the case that sexual “orientation” as defined by secular culture today is conceptually far removed from the dignity of the human person and is an abstract and generic form of data collection that does not even accurately describe one’s total experience of sexual attraction once we have found “the … Read more
In the grave new world of “male,” “female,” and fifty other Facebook “gender-identity” categories purportedly describing everything in between, maybe it’s time to ask once more, for context: Just what is sexual orientation? For example, here I am, a man married for a quarter-century (yes, to a woman, just to be clear); we have eleven … Read more
Choosing how to respond to the recent articles by Austin Ruse on what he calls the “New Homophiles,” and about the reader responses, feels like weaving the rope I am to be hanged with: however far I get, I always wish I could make it a little longer. However, since there is only so much … Read more
Religious Liberty has been on our minds a lot lately. The HHS mandate, same-sex marriage initiatives, and recently, the Duck Dynasty controversy with television network A&E, have put the issue squarely before us. In late December, CNA published an article about Camille Paglia, a 1960’s generation “feminist lesbian professor” who is reported to have “harshly … Read more
Ron Belgau delivers lectures, publishes essays and letters and generally enters into very public debates supporting the Biblical injunction against homosexual acts. In fact, he studied ancient Greek for two years in college to better understand his faith but also so he could better understand a single Greek word, arsenokoitai. There are two lists in … Read more
They are the New Homophiles and they accept the Church’s teaching that sexual activity can only occur between married men and women. They oppose a redefinition of marriage… They are fine … with living celibate lives. They do not want to stop being gay; they don’t believe they can or even should. They believe God … Read more
Never before has a devout, vocal, and coherent group of educated, thoughtful, and orthodox gay† Christians sought to articulate what the Church’s teaching might mean for someone who is not attracted to the opposite sex. Chris Damian wrote that in the blog—Ideas of a University—he ran at Notre Dame University where he took an undergraduate … Read more
Diversity is a modern shibboleth. It has long become the secular creed of the United States, and in no area is it celebrated as religiously as in academia, mostly as a substitute for true religion. It has now finally invaded universities that by name are still Catholic. Under the pretext of diversity, proponents engage in … Read more
Not caring about what happens to gay men is like not caring about prison rape. Prisoners are our brothers, too, and so are gay men. We must care deeply about the abuse of our brothers in prison and we must care deeply about the lives led by our gay brothers. Prison rape seems a world … Read more
My favorite novel of mistaken identity has always been C. S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy. It’s the perfect fairy tale, beginning with a miserable young boy, Shasta, growing up in Calormen, treated like a slave by Arsheesh, the man who he assumes is his father. When one of the lords of Calormen, a … Read more
Pope Benedict XVI, according to the New York Times, wanted a smaller, purer Catholic Church. Pope Francis, if the Times is to be believed, is well on the way to making the first part of his predecessor’s putative vision a reality, by driving all of those who remain faithful to Christian moral teaching out of … Read more
If we are going to save our culture, it is important that Christians change their approach toward homosexuality. Fighting the GLBTQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) agenda in the legislatures and courts will not succeed as long as the GLBTQ activists define the debate. We must treat same-sex attraction and sexual identity disorders (the so-called … Read more
Very few popes give off-the-cuff interviews to reporters to begin with, and even less joke and have fun with the reporters. So, when Pope Francis did just that as he returned from World Youth Day, it was a stunner. It wasn’t so much that he said he “does not judge gays”—after all, the meaning itself … Read more
I’ve always hesitated to comment on the state of our military culture. I’ve never served and, for a variety of reasons, seriously doubt I ever will be (or ever would have been) called upon to enter combat. But over the years I’ve come to know a number of military families reasonably well, and to respect … Read more
The media-manufactured brouhaha over Pope Francis’s impromptu remarks on homosexuality has finally begun to die down, and there must be few, if any, Catholics who still think that the Holy Father’s words represented a departure from 2,000 years of Christian teaching on the immorality of homosexual activity (not counting those, of course, who have let … Read more
There’s a guy you’ve never heard of who runs an organization you’ve never heard of but it is likely because of him that the Catholic Church has not taken a stand against the radicalization of the Girl Scouts and now the Boy Scouts. Robert McCarty is the Executive Director of the National Federation of Catholic … Read more