CRANSTON: I detect a certain weirdness about the annual “gay pride” parades in our city. TURNER: These celebrations seem appropriate to me, at this turning point, after centuries of branding homosexuality as abnormal. CRANSTON: If we extend the concept of “normality” too far, the meaning becomes hopelessly diluted. The result is that hardly anything is … Read more
The standard Catholic critique of gay sexuality has failed to persuade. This is due to an insistence on the part of many ecclesiastical authorities to focus narrowly on homosexuality alone rather than present the comprehensive understanding of human sexuality found in official Church teaching. We see the failed results of their approach in Catholics who … Read more
As June approaches, get ready for the official celebration of “Gay Pride Month” by US embassies abroad. If sodomy and same-sex marriage are constitutional rights, what is their relationship to American foreign policy? Despite the tremendous controversy regarding these issues within the United States, the Obama administration has gone ahead and placed them at the … Read more
I have often heard it said that our Lord did not care overmuch about sins of the flesh; for He was relentless in his attacks upon hypocrisy, pride, and avarice, but was so mild towards adulterers and fornicators that we might, extrapolating from that mildness, so far dispense Christians from the strictures of the sixth … Read more
As someone who tries to live a healthy, organic lifestyle, I have noticed more and more that in our culture today one is allowed to say things about people’s eating and fitness habits that you would never get away with saying when it comes to their sexual habits. Take diabetes, for example. Diabetes is a … Read more
There’s deception going on in the front office of the Boy Scouts. It includes deliberate misrepresentation of polling data, and threats to pack an upcoming meeting with anonymous and unqualified voters so that the Boy Scout policy on homosexuality gets forced on the majority of Scouts and parents who don’t want it. The Boy Scouts … Read more
The world was transfixed in early 2013 as three meteors broke through the deceptive calm of outer space. Thanks to the media, for a few weeks, people were confronted with the remote, but unsettling, possibility that the ultimate horror might come true—a killing fire, raining down from the sky. Actually, humanity has been confronted by … Read more
In a frank interview with the Wall Street Journal last year, Cardinal Timothy Dolan conceded that the post-Vatican II Church in America has “gotten gun-shy” on hot-button moral issues. The Church’s encyclical on artificial birth control, Humanae Vitae, “brought such a tsunami of dissent, departure, disapproval of the Church, that I think most of us—and … Read more
One of the pressing issues of Chesterton’s time was “birth control.” He not only objected to the idea, he objected to the very term because it meant the opposite of what it said. It meant no birth and no control. I can only imagine he would have the same objections about “gay marriage.” The idea … Read more
I’d been tied up with students all morning. No sooner did student number ten leave than student number eleven appeared. It was Theresa. “Hi, Professor Theophilus. This isn’t about your course. Have you got a few minutes anyway?” “Fewer and fewer, it seems. Are there still a lot of students out there waiting?” “The hallway’s … Read more
When the battle over marriage began, a decision was made not to talk about the problems associated with homosexuality, but focus on marriage between one man and one woman as they way things have always been and on benefits for society of traditional marriage. This strategy was initially very successful. The defenders of marriage won … Read more
Just as Galileo was forced to recant when faced with massive pressure, Dr. Robert Spitzer has walked back from his study of the possibility of change for those with same-sex attraction, saying he misinterpreted his findings.[1] He is elderly and ill and probably never expected the kind of vilification he received for simply noting that … Read more
The outrage over Dan’s Savage’s profanity laced lecture at a conference for high school journalism students has focused on his frontal attack on the Bible. This has diverted attention from Savage’s objective: promoting his “It gets better,” campaign, the purpose of which is to encourage confused and troubled teenagers to ‘come out’ and experiment with … Read more
A learned friend of mine recently wrote an op-ed piece for a newspaper in which she argued that the drive for same-sex marriage is not simply about same-sex marriage; it is also about winning moral approval for homosexuality. If society, acting through the state, tells us that homosexuals can marry one another, then it is … Read more
Pope Benedict XVI and others have recently drawn attention to the fact that simply putting forward the Church’s unchanging teachings on marriage and sexual morality puts a person in the position of being accused of “hate.” In particular, GLBT (gay lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered) activists are demanding that Catholics and those of other religions change … Read more
Earlier this month, the left-leaning California State Legislature overwhelmingly passed The FAIR Education Act (SB 48) and has sent the bill on Governor Jerry Brown for what will surely be a celebratory signing. The FAIR Education Act is the seventh sexual indoctrination law to teach the state’s children to regard homosexuality, transsexuality (sex-changes operations) and bisexuality … Read more
Unless you’re willing to assert that homosexual behavior is immoral or unnatural (or both), you’ll have a hard time making an effective case against same-sex marriage (SSM). It won’t be impossible, just exceedingly difficult. Perhaps you’ll be able to reinforce the convictions of those who, like yourself, are already opposed to SSM. But you won’t … Read more
A reader wrote in to ask what I think about this story, where a young boy underwent monstrous “reparative therapy” because he exhibited feminine behavior, only to end up killing himself at 38. As you may have gathered, I think it monstrous. This will no doubt confuse people who have noted that I think homosexual … Read more
The German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) began his education as a Lutheran seminarian during the cultural ferment that we now refer to as the French Enlightenment. Later, as a philosophy professor at Jena, in a chapter in his 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit on “the struggle of the Enlightenment with Superstition,” he offered a … Read more
Not satisfied with a general failure to teach students basic arithmetic, the structure of the English language, the history of our nation, the rudiments of the physical sciences, and enough geographical knowledge to distinguish Sweden from Switzerland, the legislators of the state of California have determined to require that the public schools teach “Gay Studies.” … Read more