Part V: Gay "Marriage" to destroy Marriage

(Editor's Note, Bill and I have been discussing homosexuality and the problem of faith for the last few posts. So I encourage you to read Welcome Bill I LGBT Agenda II and Welcome Bill II The Problem of Faith, Welcome Bill III: Same Sex Attraction is not a Sin  and Welcome Bill IV: No Man is an Island . Susan Fox)

"So unfortunately there are no private and personal matters that do not spill out into society and harm it." (Susan Fox)

Bill's Response: Even if that were really true, which it is not, there is nothing that you can do about it other than complain. You have no right to interfere with private and personal matters that are legal. And there are private and personal actions that the government has no right to make illegal.

You can't legislate morality. Even if we have more crime and social ills due to people abusing their freedom, the solution is not to eliminate that freedom for everyone. It is to eliminate the freedom for the offender. Denying all gays the right to marry because of the socially harmful acts of some gays is not what this country is all about. This country prides itself in its freedom and does not restrict that freedom to only those activities not deemed by the Catholic Church to be "sins". 

Dear Bill,

We are getting close to an agreement! It's true I personally can do NOTHING to stop people from abusing their freedom. My only goal is to help form people in the image and likeness of Christ by sharing His viewpoint. It's their choice what they do with it!

You are Hungry for Goodness, Fair Play and Truth

Well Bill, 
Through your comments you have told me an awful lot about yourself. What a good man you are called to be! You have a great hunger for goodness and fair play. When you lectured me on courtesy, you showed that you value the virtue of gentleness and kindness, and you showed this virtue in many of your remarks. 

When you said, "let me try to comment without being deleted," you showed you were a lover of truth because you anxiously wanted the truth to come out.  

You obviously admire the virtue of faith because you mentioned you admired mine. Again, you showed regard for truth when you questioned whether the Bible is true.  

Then you demonstrated your  humanity by asking us reading this to acknowledge and accept same sex attracted people. I do accept such people. They are  human beings deeply loved by our Father in heaven. They are His children, and in fact if someone has any flaws at all, they have more right to God's mercy than Miss Goody Two Shoes! (Do we know anyone like that?) 

You exhibited an anxiety and concern for others in your question about personal acts being harmful or not harmful.

Now you ask me about the wedding between two men or two women. And this shows you are called to deep personal intimacy with God and with others. This is obviously something you desire, and don't we all? 

Sometimes When We Reach for Something . . .

It's unfortunately part of the human condition that sometimes as we reach for something we want, we destroy it in the very act of reaching. 

When I was a little girl,  a friend of my mother's gave me a beautiful blond doll. She had made the clothes and created a closet for them to rest in. I was a very spoiled little girl, and so when I saw the doll, I said, "I don't want a blond doll. I want a red head!" That poor elderly woman confronted by my selfish outburst and ingratitude, very humbly withdrew the gift and promised to change the hair color of the doll to red. She did so, but all the joy she might have gathered from my enthusiastic response drained away.

I recognized this. I was only four or five years old. And when she returned the same doll with red hair, I was horrified. What had been a very pretty doll was now ugly! I honestly never once in my life played with that doll. 

So it is that as the active homosexual person seeks recognition and acceptance by the add-on of "marriage," he or she destroys the very thing they desire, that is the institution of marriage. 

Priests' Celibacy Models Whole-Hearted Love of God

In the Catholic Church we have priests, who model the life of Christ by celibacy. They refrain from sexual activity their whole life long. Conformed to Christ, married to the Church, they become like a beacon to the rest of us, expressing  wholehearted love of God, something we all want.  But if the priest is unfaithful to this vocation, then all we see is a muddied brook.

When my sister-in-law was preparing to become a Dominican nun, my husband and I took her on a trip to Williamsburg, VA. She was very annoying. She was totally in love with Jesus, so she wasn't much company. She reminded me of what Lawrence and I had been like when we were courting! Nobody could get in, we were just wrapped up in one another. My sister was being courted by Our Lord, and she was preparing to become His Bride!  

I did door-to-door work with a short little nun in Washington State and at every door I introduced her as Jesus' bride. She was happy to be introduced in that manner, and even non-Catholic people were delighted to have Jesus' bride on their doorstep.

But should a Catholic nun, called to be a bride of Christ,  turn her heart against the true teachings of her Divine Spouse given to  the Catholic Church, she has destroyed her domestic bliss. She is like the shrewish wife rebelling against her husband's love. And that is a broken  unhappy household.

Now married couples dedicated to life-long chastity -- sexual activity to be shared wholly in the context of married love -- model that intimacy that every soul is called to share with God. And their union is usually fruitful in a very physical way -- they have children. It's a little microcosm of the Holy Trinity: The Holy Spirit is the Love between the Father and Son.

And the Holy Spirit does not bear another Divine Person, but He makes Jesus Christ incarnate in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, confects Him in the Eucharist at the words of the priest in the Mass. Then with Mary's human help, He recreates the image of Christ in

the human heart.  

The homosexual man or woman, longing for this Community of Persons to be active in his  own  life, naturally finds himself attracted to marriage. It's a beautiful estate. It models intimacy with God.  But say the government says, "Okay, you can legally marry."  Does anything change in his relationship with his gay partner? Not really. Everything is just the same. They may or may not be faithful to one another.  Both partners' sexuality is identical. The driving reason for the marriage is to gain acceptance for their lifestyle. They may even adopt children with this goal in mind.  

Now in a Catholic marriage a man and woman become one. That is their goal. In the Middle Ages, a married couple  was allegorically displayed as a ball with four legs and four arms.  They physically complement one another. Over time, two people find themselves serving the family and the world with one focus in mind -- to be the arms and legs of Jesus Christ. It is the only sacrament where two people bestow it on each other. With the Church's blessing on the union, there is grace to overcome selfishness, there is the openness to new life, and the excitement of anticipation that soon little persons with different personalities will be joining the family.    

Marriage: a Household of Inconstant Roommates

But what about when the state says gays can marry. What happens to the marriage of the man and woman? Suddenly, in society's eyes, their marriage doesn't exist anymore -- in a legal sense -- because it doesn't mean anything. 

A father can marry his own son to guarantee inheritance. A woman can marry her dog. A man may marry five women at one time or a woman marry a woman and a man.  And they can all get a quick divorce if their partner proves to be inconvenient. What happens to children in this case? They are cast aside with the spouse or spouses. They have no security. 

Marriage has gone from the symbol of lifelong fidelity and fruitfulness to just another household of inconstant roommates. In fact, it is no longer marriage.

Lesbian Activist Agrees With Me

Lesbian Activist Masha Gessen confirmed this is the plan in a  surprisingly honest 2012

speech. She said,

• “I agree It’s a no-brainer that we (gays) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that's it's a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.” 
• “Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we’re going to do with marriage when we get there. Because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change and it should change, and I don't think it should exist. I don't like taking part in creating fictions about my life. I have 3 kids who have 5 parents, and I don't see why they shouldn't have five parents legally. ” Then she goes through the elaborate way these five parents came together to make two different families with three children. And concludes, "I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality. And I don't think that's compatible with the institution of marriage."

So what happens to the more traditional lesbian or gay couple when they marry to gain acceptance, and then find that marriage is nothing more than a sham, nothing but a legal arrangement with numerous possible variables? Will they be disappointed?

You are right Bill. I do oppose gay "marriage." But not because some gays do bad things. I object to it because it will lead to the destruction of the family, the destruction of society, and the loss of freedom and economic prosperity in this country. But it already exists in 13 states and  Washington, D.C. 

Bill, every law legislates morality. A law that says you can't steal legislates morality. A law that says it's okay to kill your baby legislates morality. A law that says you can't shoot someone on the street legislates morality. 

Now if you saw someone about to shoot a child on the street, and I started to intervene, would you shout at me, "Stop, Susan, you can't legislate morality!"

Bill, given the virtues you've shown that attract you, I don't think you'd say that!

God bless you. Susan Fox

Part IV: Homosexual Acts Do Hurt Others

(Editor's Note, Bill and I have been discussing homosexuality and the problem of faith for the last few posts. So I encourage you to read Welcome Bill I LBGT Agenda II  and Welcome Bill II The Problem of Faith And Welcome Bill III: Same Sex Attraction is not a Sin . Susan Fox)

"However, we do not accept the ACT of homosexuality any more than we accept married contraceptive sex or masturbation." (Susan Fox)

Bill's response: It all comes down to what you believe. You believe these acts are against the will of God and sinful. I believe that, if they don't hurt or negatively impact anyone else, then they are a private and personal matter with which neither I nor anyone else should have a problem. 

Bill and I are continuing our conversation.

Dear Bill,

I have known and befriended several young men who are dead now from AIDS. These were beautiful young men, made in the image and likeness of God, but weak in one serious area of their lives -- their sexuality. One was studying to be a doctor in Virginia. One worked at the San Francisco Examiner. Their lives were destroyed by a disease spread by their so-called "loving" partner in acts of homosexuality. I don't even know if they realized that their "so-called" loving partners weren't loving at all. They were simply using them for their own pleasure.

Homosexual Acts Do Hurt Others

Homosexual acts do indeed hurt and negatively impact others, starting with the person engaging in the act, the person sharing the act, and the rest of society  -- innocent wives, whose husbands engage in homosexual acts, and then cause their wives to die of some disease, innocent girls who have to share the ladies room with a man in California who thinks he's a woman (it's the law now), the wife who dies of cervical cancer, a cancer that you can only get if you or your spouse is promiscuous. 

Here is just one web site giving you the medical facts related to various homosexual acts. Homosexual acts are probably the most dangerous acts any human being can engage in if they wish to live long  healthy lives. Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do

Time and again, the diseases spread by this activity advance into the non-gay community as well. So there is no possibility that these acts are not hurting other people even from a medical viewpoint.

I remember watching some horrible British drama some years ago about an 18th century couple. He had fooled around before marriage and gotten syphilis. But the wife didn't know it. They were so in love, but the love they shared resulted in repeated miscarriages, and finally the woman got sick as well and as she lay dying she understood that great love she had for her husband was killing her, and had killed all of their children.  It was a very depressing show, just like watching my friends die in their 20s from AIDs.

Sin Spreads

"Sin creates a proclivity to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the concrete judgement of good and evil. Thus sin tends to reproduce itself and reinforce itself, but it cannot destroy the moral sense at its root." (Catechism of the Catholic Church  #1865)

Translation: Sin leads to more evil and also blinds the person committing the sin to the reality of evil.

How does a person become gay? Someone introduces him to the activity. How does a person learn to masturbate? He looks at pornography, reads a book or someone shares it with him. How does a person begin to gossip? He finds someone who likes to gossip and they begin the habit together. Evil is not committed in a vacuum. It spreads. How many men began homosexual acts with men and then moved to sharing it with innocent children? The children grow up and then victimize other children in the same manner. 

One's parents could be responsible for some evil one regularly commits. Child sacrifice was part of family life in many ancient cultures. I remember when they found a beautiful young girl  frozen in the mountains in South America. Hundreds of years old, she was dressed beautifully and she had some flowers in her stomach that would dull her senses so she would not fight her own death. She had been placed there on the mountain by her own family as a sacrifice to their gods. She was probably told she was special, but still that doesn't mean much when you freeze to death at the age of nine, does it? But she didn't die in a vacuum. Other little girls in her family and culture were killed in the same manner for generations until Christianity changed the family's practice.

Virtue Inspires Hope and Self-Sacrifice

Alternatively, a parent committing an act of virtue can inspire hope and self-sacrifice in the child. My father died when I was four years old. My parents had friends -- another married couple with a little girl my age. I remember right after my father died we went to visit this family and they really harassed my mother for not smoking. Both husband and wife smoked. I remember watching anxiously because I loved my mother. But she refused to take a single puff. When I was growing up I wasn't even tempted to start smoking. That steadfastness she showed really impressed me.

When I married at age 30, I was a virgin bride thanks to my mother. She lived a virtuous single life for 14 years while I was growing up, age 4 to 18 (then she remarried). She never had men over for sleepovers, never went to men's houses for the same. As a result, I had a safe and secure childhood. Contrast that with when I roomed with two other girls in a house, and I never knew when I would find a drunk man sleeping in our bathroom in the morning. I couldn't lock my door so I put a chair under the doorknob at night. I had a cat box in my closet so I would not have to leave my room during the night to let my cat out! It was a frightening experience for a young woman caused by acts that my roommates probably thought would not harm anyone else. Eventually, after a one night stand, one roommate got pregnant, and guess who else suffered? Her baby. She was killed by her mother.  I moved out when I could.

Yet when my mother vacuumed she often became frustrated and said, "Darn!"  Later in life, I picked up the habit of swearing also -- even took the Lord's name in vain.  One time I went to see Pope John Paul II in Los Angeles. I was pregnant with my son. I dropped my glasses on the ground, and they broke and I said, "F__k!"  Now when I first dropped my glasses, the large crowd around me was very sympathetic. They had begun to gather around me, and try to help me pick up my glasses. But as soon as I swore, they all withdrew from me. I had a private habit of evil speech that spilled out into the public, and you could see the effect immediately. Thank God I have largely overcome that habit, but in my mind occasionally I still say, "Darn."  And I realized the reason why I don't even think it's a sin -- even now -- is because my mother, who was wholly good, used the expression when I was a child. 

Contraception Is Not A Private Act 

People who are married and using contraception probably think it is a private act that affects no one but themselves. Yet contraception causes breast cancer, it turns the wife into an instant commodity without responsibility, and it even pollutes our streams and causes sexual deformities in the fish! I remember visiting one  woman, who was living with a man, but wanted to return to the Catholic Church. She explained to me why she couldn't. When she was validly married to her husband, a Catholic priest told them they could use contraception (Rebellion, pride = sin). So they used contraception. (Easy Way, Disobedience = sin) The husband gradually began to treat the wife like a commodity instead of a person (Loss of Charity = sin), and they divorced. She could not support herself so she was forced to live with another man. She was a very unhappy person. 

When I worked for the San Francisco Examiner, they did a very honest expose on homosexuality.  One gay man interviewed said that he fell in love in high school with a man, and it was quite romantic. But now he realized the lifestyle was just abuse -- group sex, violence, no romance. He said with great regret that he could have been a husband and a father, but his sexuality had been diverted -- wasted in this manner with other men. He was not a happy man.

The Catholic Catechism lists "sins that cry to heaven." These include "The blood of Abel (spilling of innocent blood), the sin of Sodomites (homosexuality), the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt, the cry of the foreigner, the widow and the orphan, injustice to the wage earner."  

Personal Sin Leads to Social Sin

Further the Church states: "Sin is a personal act." But we are responsible for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them, including by participating directly in them, by ordering, praising or approving them, by not disclosing or hindering them when we are obliged to do so and by protecting evil-doers. (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1868) 

"Thus sin makes men accomplices of one another and causes concupiscence, violence, and injustice to reign among them. Sins give rise to social situations and institutions that are contrary to the divine goodness. 'Structures of sin' are the expression and effect of personal sins. They lead their victims to do evil in their turn (gays turn other men and youth into gays). In an analogous sense, they constitute a 'social sin.'" (CCC #457)

So you have the Man Boy Love Association. This is social sin. It is not private. It is evil and it spreads. Do you think all those people caught in the Church's sex abuse scandal were happy? They must have suffered immense personal anguish in the midst of their crimes.

Show Forth The Image of God!

All this sin is very depressing. What is the opposite?
"The vocation of humanity is to show forth the image of God and be transformed into the image of the Father's only Son." (CCC #1877) Wow, I get to look like Jesus on the inside.  I get to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. That is a great calling.

And the Catechism further states that this vocation is communal in nature. "The human person needs to live in society." And by living our calling to show forth the image of God, we serve the common good. We help transform society.

Christ Changed Civilizations

I mentioned the child sacrifice in ancient cultures. But did you know that my ancestors were just thieves and marauders? Yes, I am descended from Vikings. And then Christianity was spread to the Scandinavian countries and all my ancestors and their descendants behaved differently. We stopped stealing (a social sin). I was married on the feast of St. Bridget. She was a married woman who slept on the floor with her husband as a means of fasting, and they both spent their lives helping the poor.  Actually, the practice of generosity and charity is very deeply ingrained in my Norwegian family going back to at least my great, great grandparents, and including the current generation of Americans and Norwegians. This is all thanks to the introduction of Catholicism into Scandinavia.

The first bishop of Seattle, Bishop A.M. Blanchet, witnessed the Indians whopping and hollering, and committing brutal murders with great gaiety of heart. It was the mid-1800s in Eastern Washington (big diocese geographically). But he never lost faith in the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest "because it cannot be doubted that when the Indians will understand the seriousness of the crime of homicide, they will avoid committing it," he wrote in his journals. 

He merely felt he had a job to do as a missionary: "As they learn to know God -- that will inspire their horror of these

terrible crimes that they now commit so easily." It worked.
Many Northwest Indians became Catholic, and changed their behavior drastically. They were once committing one of the "sins that cry to heaven:" "The blood of Abel." Now they make the sign of the cross. 

A liberal television station recently filmed an Indian ceremony on the beach. They expected lots of pagan practices, but when it came time to eat the meal, the leader began,"In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Television reporters were not prepared for that. Yep, those heathens were Catholic, all right. They shut down the camera recording right after, "In the Name of the Father..."

So unfortunately there are no private and personal matters that do not spill out into society and harm it. It is not a matter of my belief. It is a matter of observation. Open your eyes. There are consequences to every sin. 

I really encourage you to read Lawrence's response to this same question, The LGBT AGENDA: Why We Care When Others are Doing "I have no idea what":  Please forgive him if he sounds a little sarcastic. He's really a great big teddy bear. He is NOT speaking about any gay person individually but the movement that results from the "sin that cries to heaven." 
God bless you. Susan Fox

Part III: Same Sex Attraction is not a sin!

(Editor's Note, Bill and I have been discussing homosexuality and the problem of faith for the last few posts. So I encourage you to read Welcome Bill I LGBT Agenda II  and Welcome Bill II The Problem of Faith . Susan Fox)

Susan,

Your faith is impressive and your arguments are convincing. It does me no good to try to talk you down. You would not believe just how much of the Bible I consider to be non-factual. In fact, the parts of the Bible that I do consider to be factual convey historical information, only, such as the names of persons and places that did truly exist.

I do believe that Jesus did truly exist and did start a new religion. By the time the gospels were written, the stories about him had been told and retold many times and who knows how

Another Great Comment from Bill

they may have changed before they were written?

I don't want to change the way that you look at life except for your attitude toward homosexuality. Christians in general and Catholics in particular have got to stop referring to a few passages in the Bible that seem to condemn it. They have to just acknowledge that same sex attracted people exist, regardless of the reason, and accept them for who and what they are. 
Bill S.



Dear Bill,

You are the kindest person I have ever argued with. Thank you for your gentleness.

Same sex attraction is not a sin. We do accept same sex attracted people for who and what they are. We have no problem with same sex attracted people and in fact, if you know one who is living a chaste life, we would consider him or her to be a saint. I had a girl friend in high school who suffered from SSA, and she was welcomed and loved in my circle of female friends, although none of us had the same orientation. That was over 40 years ago.

However, we do not accept the ACT of homosexuality any more than we accept married contraceptive sex or masturbation. And we do not accept these acts because we love gay people, we love married couples who are contracepting, and we love people who masturbate, and we want them to live in freedom in Christ --- in happiness. 

Take up Your Cross?

We don't base our opinion on a handful of Scripture, but on Christ's promises that He will be with the Church until the end of time, and the Church -- which loves us dearly -- says homosexuality is a disordered love, and homosexual acts are not good. The Church says the same thing about masturbation and married contraceptive relations. This is the Voice of Jesus Christ in the world today. But the Church also says that the temptation to masturbate, the temptation to do same sex acts and the temptation to use contraception in your marriage is not a sin, but -- in fact -- a path to holiness. All temptation is a path to holiness. The question only is, "Are you willing to take up your cross and follow Jesus?"

Even if we weren't Christians, one only has to look at the human body to see that men and women are complementary. Men and men are not. I've been married for 30 years. My sexuality is drastically different than my husband's. Men are required to give of themselves in order to adapt to the female sexuality. And women vice versa. This self-giving love nurtures the family and permits a woman to become a wife and mother, a man to become a husband and father.  Men with men get instant gratification because both partners desire sex in that same manner. Why is the Red Sea red, and the Dead Sea dead? There is water flowing in and out of the Red Sea, and it is alive, but water only goes one way with the Dead Sea, and it is dying. 

Women  need wooing, gentleness, and time.  Men married to such women have to put aside their selfish desire for instant gratification and grow. Women married to men with the opposite but complementary sexuality have to grow also.  From a Christian perspective, this is part of God's plan to make us holy in marriage. But from Nature's point of view, this is simply the way that men and women are made. It is the natural law. Also only women and men can produce children, become fruitful. This is obvious. So one doesn't need Scripture nor the Church to say homosexual acts are unnatural. Nature tells us so. 

Same Sex Attraction and Opposite Sex Attraction are not Moral Sins

Unfortunately, the sexual revolution tried to recreate women as men -- you can have it all, M'am -- hook-ups, job, abortion -- all false freedom. This has basically destroyed the family and harmed men and women. We are not people of quick hook-ups. We are children of God, made in the image and likeness of God and we deserve to be loved as such.   Heterorsexual men, who have chosen to hook-up with women, to be irresponsible with their sexuality, and not accept responsibility for the children they father, they are in no better position than the actively homosexual men. Now notice I am talking about ACTS, not attraction. Same sex attraction and opposite sex attraction are not moral sins.  We do accept men and women with Same Sex Attraction or Opposite Sex Attraction! They are both human beings! Does that end our discussion?

Begin with an Encounter With Christ

I said earlier that the the Church is the voice of Christ in the world today. I think we all need to be challenged to an encounter with the living Christ. The woman at the well in the Gospel of John was living with a man who was not her husband -- she was caught in the same disorder as an actively gay person or a heterosexual who is sleeping around. Jesus told her her sins.   She was so happy she turned around and converted her whole village. And she was an historical person with a history after Scripture that is documented. That thought of yours -- "By the time the gospels were written, the stories about him had been told and retold many times and who knows how they may have changed before they were written?" -- why don't you confront Jesus Christ with that. Make Him show you the Truth. Only He can answer your questions, and Bill, you have them. Or we wouldn't be on this page.  

Read the early Church Fathers. St. Peter and St. Paul were put to death under the Roman emperor Nero before 64 AD. That means that the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were written before 64 AD because Luke himself tells us that he wrote the Gospel first and he ends the Book of Acts before Paul is put to death. Now that is 30 years from the Ascension of Jesus! Furthermore, Luke is borrowing from the Greek translation of Matthew, who recorded all the sayings of Jesus. Matthew was a tax collector. A tax collector had to keep good records or else the Romans would have put him to death. Long before 50 AD, Matthew's Aramaic sayings of Jesus are published! And Biblical scholars agree that Mark's Gospel, which is the shortest, is the first official translation of Matthew into Greek. And Luke only had that Greek translation from Mark when he wrote his Gospel -- before 64 AD. 

In addition, the number of sources to the whole New Testament is more extensive than any other writing of that era. These sources are written in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic and some Aramaic, and yet they all agree.  Each source also has its own history of  veracity. Even if we had none of the New Testament, we could recreate it from the writings of the early Church Fathers -- beginning with the contemporaries of the Apostles, such as Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, and Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch. 

Surely, finding out whether the Gospels are true or not, and whether our lifestyles conform with the Mind of God would be a good investment of everyone's prayer and study time. 

Route 666 or Route 333?

Eternity is a long time. Where we are living now is a just a cheap one night stand on the great highway of life. 

There are two routes, one --- Route 666 -- is broad and wide, easily traveled and takes us to

a shore where time drags and the clock ticks, "Forever, forever, forever..."

The other route is very narrow, Route 333. It is more difficult, requires a lot of suffering,  but it takes us to a shore where the Children of God come dancing home in joy and hug Our Father. He puts a ring on our fingers, kills the fatted calf and holds a big party. 

Route 333 begins with a encounter with Jesus Christ.
God bless you, Bill.   Susan Fox