Parents Shouldn’t Love Their Same-Sex Afflicted Kids More Than God

homosexuality, excluded

How would you react if your 17-year-old son or grandson announced that he was homosexual?  How would you respond if your 17-year-old daughter or granddaughter announced that she was a lesbian?

These questions are a bit disconcerting.  Given today’s terribly confused society, however, they are not unwarranted. It’s probably not a bad idea to give some thought to them.

Good Catholic parents and grandparents would continue to love the individual who is experiencing same-sex attraction.  They would also recognize, however, that the inclination to same-sex attraction is a disordered behavior. Sexual acts between two men or two women are sins of lust that are contrary to natural law.

But God still loves the sinful person as much as He loves the saintly person.  As Catholics we can do no less.  We are called to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

Casting out, ostracizing, or shunning a same-sex attracted family member would be an act devoid of all charity.  It would be a loveless act.  But condoning or enabling such behavior would also be an uncharitable act.

Caving In

Sadly, some parents do accept, condone, and even enable this disordered behavior.  Secular society has convinced them that homosexuality is perfectly fine.

Organizations like Dignity USA, Fortunate Families, Caring Catholic Families, and PFLAG are comprised of families that have put their same-sex attracted loved ones ahead of God.

As I wrote in an article for Crisis Magazine six years ago,

“Spending some time perusing the websites of these groups should be enough to convince anyone that their agenda goes beyond educating, ministering to, giving voice to, and supporting LGBT Catholics. The goal of these organizations, whether stated or not, is nothing less than to change Catholic doctrine on homosexuality.”

Courage and Encourage

As the USCCB document “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care” states:

“The discovery that a family member has homosexual tendencies can pose a serious concern for parents, siblings, and spouses. The Church reaches out to them, seeking to help ensure that the bonds of love among the family members remain intact. A helpful way of addressing this issue is through the formation of support groups for individuals and families, where they can also learn the full truth of the Church’s teaching regarding the human dignity of persons with a homosexual inclination and the moral principles regarding chastity that lead to the fullness of authentic human living.”

Two organizations that provide authentic Catholic support are Courage International and its companion organization (for the families of persons with same-sex attraction), Encourage.

Dr. Philip M. Sutton writes in an article available on the Courage website that we should “show compassion to our loved one” and “Care wisely for our loved one . . . including staying Connected to our loved one.”

At the same time, he says, we should not “condone, excuse or enable behavior that is harmful to our loved one, ourselves, or others. “Misguided mercy” is not loving!”

It Can Get Difficult

Loving a same-sex attracted son or daughter can make for a delicate balancing act.  It can become especially difficult when the son or daughter announces his or her intention to enter into a same-sex ‘marriage.’

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the Catholic Church does not forbid Catholics from attending non-Catholic marriages.  This includes same-sex unions.  One reason why, as Catholic Answers (CA) Apologist Michelle Arnold has stated, may be that,

“[This] forces Catholics to take responsibility for their faith. They must evaluate a given situation and make the best decision they can in charity and using prudential judgment. They must be the ones to say, “I love you, and I wish I could witness your marriage, but my conscience will not allow it.”

Fr. Brian W. Harrison, O.S., however, says Catholics should not attend same-sex ‘weddings.”  In a recent article at LifeSiteNews he wrote:

“While we should never reject or vilify a family member who enters such a union, we must always respectfully and lovingly decline the invitation to take part in their public and formal entry into a relationship that is gravely immoral.”

Children Make it More Difficult

When a baby or child comes into the picture, it can get even more difficult.  However, the USCCB document “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination” mentioned previously does provide a little guidance (under Sacraments and Worship):

“[T]he Church does not support the adoption of children by same-sex couples since homosexual unions are contrary to the divine plan.

“Baptism of children in the care of same-sex couples presents a serious pastoral concern. Nevertheless, the Church does not refuse the Sacrament of Baptism to these children, but there must be a well founded hope that the children will be brought up in the Catholic religion. In those cases where Baptism is permitted, pastoral ministers should exercise prudential judgment when preparing baptismal ceremonies. Also, in preparing the baptismal record, a distinction should be made between natural parents and adoptive parents.”

So the Church does not refuse the Sacrament of Baptism to the children of same-sex couples.  However, if a same-sex couple was ‘married’ in another ecclesial community, they probably would not seek a Catholic Baptism for an adopted child.  More than likely the couple would have the child Baptized in the church in which they were ‘married.’

The Catholic Church recognizes the validity of Protestant Baptisms.  So the question then sometimes arises, “Should a Catholic attend the Baptism of an adopted child of a same-sex couple in a Protestant Church?”

According to the Church’s Directory on Ecumenism (98a), this is permissible.  However, a Catholic cannot stand as a godparent “for a person being baptized in another ecclesial Community” just as a person from another ecclesial Community is not permitted to stand as a godparent at a Catholic Baptism.

Misguided Mercy

Unfortunately some parents, like those in the four organizations mentioned previously, do give in to “misguided mercy.”  They condone and even affirm their loved ones’ same-sex relationships and unions as being good, normal, and natural.  Some might even say these unions are loving, Christian relationships.  They are not.

Misguided mercy is an appropriate phrase in such instances.  It is misguided because parents who condone and affirm their children’s same-sex unions are denying God’s truth.  They are saying, in effect, ‘God says what you are doing is wrong. But I love you and I want you to be happy.  Since you are happy I’m okay with it.’

These parents are misguided because they are loving their same-sex attracted son or daughter more than they love God.

Science

LGBTQ activists are counting on science to prove that same-sex attraction is genetic.  But a number of studies of identical twins have proven just the opposite.

What’s more Dr. Neil E. Whitehead, a research scientist from New Zealand (PhD in biochemistry), reviewed these studies along with all the available scientific research on the subject, in his book My Genes Made Me Do it! Homosexuality and the Scientific Evidence (the title is intentionally facetious).

Whitehead’s book is an exhaustive review of thousands of scientific papers and publications. (He has also updated the book three times since its original publication.)  According to the Whitehead, “the more recent the research the more it strengthened the book’s original conclusions” that homosexuality is not genetic.

God did not create homosexuals.  He also did not create kleptomaniacs or people who are greedy, slothful, or filled with hate. Homosexuality, like greed and so on, are all learned behaviors and choices.

Pushing the Agenda

The LGBTQ activists are not about to give up, however.  As Robert R. Reilly wrote in his book Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything

“Homosexual author Urvashi Vaid declared, “We have an agenda to create a society in which homosexuality is regarded as healthy, natural, and normal.  To me that is the most important agenda item” (Pg. 7).

According to Pew, in 2017 a whopping 67% of Catholics approved of same-sex ‘marriage.’  So the LGBTQ activists have been successful in pushing their agenda.  “Open-mindedness taken to the extreme becomes moral blindness,” is a truism that very much applies today.

Parenting has never been a cake walk.  Every generation of parents has had myriad problems – outside influences – to contend with when it came to raising their children.  But the many immoral outside influences our post-modern society is inflicting on children and young adults today are confusing even mature adults.  Homosexuality is a major concern.

The latest attack on morality comes courtesy of FX Networks.  A six part documentary called PRIDE premiered on Friday May 14.  It’s billed as “A six-part documentary series chronicling the struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights in America from the 1950s through the 2000s.”  It supposedly features “heroic and heartbreaking stories that define us as a nation.”

Don’t Trip

Parents who allow their love for their same-sex afflicted son or daughter to come before their love of God are breaking the First Commandment.  They may think of themselves as enlightened, but the source of their enlightenment is the devil.  He’s a master of deceit and at sowing the seeds of confusion.

Fr. Jeffrey T. Kirby notes this problem in his book Real Religion.

“At times, sentiment assaults our hearts, and we are tempted to compromise with evil, to betray goodness or to redefine it. Though good and oriented toward goodness, the human heart is also fallen. It can betray itself and its own mission in our interior lives. The prophet Jeremiah rightly warns us:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? (Jer. 17:9).”

In short, don’t let your heart trip you up.  Homosexuality is a disordered behavior.

For an additional short read on our culture and Church Teaching on same-sex attraction check out the article by Msgr. Charles Pope entitled “Do Not Be Deceived: Christ Forbids Homosexual Acts, and the Church Cannot Teach Otherwise.”

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23 thoughts on “Parents Shouldn’t Love Their Same-Sex Afflicted Kids More Than God”

  1. Pingback: When a Catholic High School Doesn’t Walk the Talk - Catholic Stand

  2. I am in despair here.

    Diane… ‘God before children’? The eternal construct of ‘Suffer the Child’?

    Homosexuality is ‘bad’ but children appear to have lesser status, so the former is OK based on the latter. Why have so many clergy been implicated and convicted in child abuse, the majority of heinous offences against young boys by (by definition, males) priests, far more than the societal average?

    What is going on? The very establishment that preaches no homosexuality is producing people who exhibit homosexual activities (this does not mean they are inherently homosexual, just their activities are) against the most vulnerable members of society.

    Then the ‘establishment’ hides those crimes; they move the perpetrators around and suppress coverage. Catholic priests who have abused Catholic children of Catholic families. Hidden by the Catholic Church, who gave the edict in the first place for Catholic priests to ‘behave’ and not engage in natural relationships, based on a flawed interpretation of a book.

    Tell me how that works?

    If your Priest abused your child, facilitated by your (and your child’s) engagement with a Church society setting, what would you say?

    1. Why do you hide your identity behind a Bible verse? Regardless, the questions you are asking have been asked and answered many times over the past few years. Here are just three out of a multitude of references you might want to check out:
      1) The book “Nothing To Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church,” by Russell Shaw
      2) An article at Catholic World Report: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/08/03/the-theological-roots-of-the-present-crisis/
      3) An article I wrote here at CS in 2018: http://www.catholicstand.com/clericalism-or-immoral-homosexual-activity-drilling-down/

  3. Pray daily for full fellowship with Jesus Christ for your child. Give your child things to think on.

    I would tell my child, who is believing the lie that he or she is … meaning created … LGBTQ or?, that he or she is mistaken, and that God only created heterosexuality for human beings … biologically male or biologically female.

    Most likely the argument will turn on … “But I am so attracted to the same sex only” … at which point the truth is spoken again of God’s creation of us, and then the truth of the facts of lies and the believing of and acceptance of lies takes place.

    There is one who works all of the time to counterfeit God’s creation, especially of human beings, as God loves us so much. The devil does all he can to confuse, contort, lie, sound reasonable, and more, from a person’s young age through old age.

    The person seeking gender change, succumbing to lies, might also be attracted to the same sex, but knowingly or unknowlingly, desires the change so as to appear to be following the rules.

    If one’s child as adult, enters into relationship with another, within the above circumstances, by all means keep communication open as your child is willing, invite one’s child over, but this does not include inviting the one’s child and partner over.

    If they adopt a child or use means to “have” a child, the same holds as far as having the partner over. Pray for your child, the partner, and the child to live in Jesus Christ. Pray for God our Father to protect the child from all untruths, to fill the child’s mind and heart with His Son Jesus by the workings of the Holy Spirit.

    It s very sad that Pope Francis has not taught conclusively, that God creates no one LGBTQ or … rather he appears in his actions and speech, to believe otherwise, else he would have the Bishops and priests proclaiming the truth and freeing people so caught up in lies.

    God bless, C-Marie

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  7. an ordinary papist

    If, as the author purports, this is a ‘learned’ behavior’, it begs the question as to who was the
    first persons to initiate it (and why) and where did they learn it from ?

    1. an ordinary papist

      Venus spins on its axis from east to west, while Uranus is tilted so far over, it’s virtually spinning on its side. Every other planet, including our own, spins from west to east, and scientists haven’t figured out why. So much for disordered planets, but as Einstein pointed
      out – everything is relative.

    2. Just goes to show you that even geniuses can be wrong. God’s Truths are not relative. They will never change.

    3. an ordinary papist

      Well, it was a rhetorical quip to your straw answer to me, asking you to speculate on cause and origins. I was asking you to think.

    4. an ordinary papist

      It’s not a game. All rabbit holes have exits; my point being, all sexual relations have consequences. Jesus used an overt threat for anyone who would steal a child’s innocence but declined to implicate the disorder of those who practiced it. Jesus chided a women who had many sexual partners as a disrespect to herself and them, but spoke way much harsher for married persons, who even thought about adultery. I’ve no doubt that almost all married men in their lifetime have broken that 9th command, even if for a fraction of a second. Most in celibate life are tormented by the (somewhat disordered) absence of all intimacy, lending itself to different kinds of perversion. Anyway, always good to fence with you, Gene.

  8. This article is so ridden with misstatements, inaccuracies and outright misinformation it’s hard to know where to begin. For starters, what makes being Lesbian or gay an “affliction?” It is neither a disease, affliction, nor disorder from a medical, psychological or scientific standpoint. Secondly, who exactly is pining for a “gay gene” (or “straight gene,” for that matter) to materialize? We know 10% of the population is naturally inclined to be left handed. Yet no “left handed gene” has ever been detected, nor do we say that left handed people simply “choose” to be left handed until such a gene is proven to exist. To boot, two right handed parents can give birth to a left handed child. Obviously, God made left handed people and right handed people, just like God made heterosexual people and gay people. Finally, to be consistent, I take it that the author would also suggest parents are morally obligated to avoid their children’s marriages outside the church, whether because they are same gender marriages, second marriages after divorce or marriages between opposite gender couples where a non-Catholic spouse wishes to marry in his or her own church. I’m not sure what God has to gain by parents turning their backs on their children and separating themselves from their lives. I somehow don’t see Jesus recommending they do. Nor does the church, as the author himself acknowledges. Yes, 2/3 of Catholics now support equal marriage rights for Lesbian and gay couples. Does that alone make it right? No. Does it mean more changes are coming? Absolutely.

    1. Saint Peter Damian (1007-1072)
      Doctor of the Church, cardinal and a great reformer of the clergy, Saint Peter Damian wrote his famous Book of Gomorrah against the inroads made by homosexuality among the clergy. He describes not only the iniquity of homosexuality, but also its psychological and moral consequences:
      “Truly, this vice is never to be compared with any other vice because it surpasses the enormity of all vices.… It defiles everything, stains everything, pollutes everything. And as for itself, it permits nothing pure, nothing clean, nothing other than filth.…
      “The miserable flesh burns with the heat of lust; the cold mind trembles with the rancor of suspicion; and in the heart of the miserable man chaos boils like Tartarus [Hell]…. In fact, after this most poisonous serpent once sinks its fangs into the unhappy soul, sense is snatched away, memory is borne off, the sharpness of the mind is obscured. It becomes unmindful of God and even forgetful of itself. This plague undermines the foundation of faith, weakens the strength of hope, destroys the bond of charity; it takes away justice, subverts fortitude, banishes temperance, blunts the keenness of prudence.
      “And what more should I say since it expels the whole host of the virtues from the chamber of the human heart and introduces every barbarous vice as if the bolts of the doors were pulled out.”

    2. John,
      SSA was universally considered to be a disorder by the APA until pressure from LGBTQ activists got the APA to un-classify it as such. Gender Identity Disorder is still classified as a disorder and SSA falls under this heading as it is a sexual dysfunction. As a pamphlet put out by the Catholic Medical Association states: “Same-sex attractions and behaviors appear to be the consequence of a convergence of developmental, emotional, psychological, and social factors.” (https://www.cathmed.org/assets/files/HH%202010%20Pages%20for%20Website.pdf)

      Nice try on the left/right handed straw man argument. Some people are also ambidextrous and some people who start out left handed become right handed if they injure their left hand. Go figure. Studies are inconsistent in their findings of whether structural make-up in the brain contributes to handedness or whether handedness is genetic or environmental. However, “Handedness” is not an affliction or a disorder as is SSA.

      Catholic Teaching on marriage as being between one man and one woman is a divinely revealed truth. It is infallible teaching by virtue of the ordinary and universal Magisterium. It cannot and will not change.

  9. Excellent on the religious aspects, the physical, as acknowledged, still needs more work by objective science. Being gay is obviously not genetic in the sense that the breast cancer gene is genetic. On the other hand, it is not completely a matter of choice either as many with the proclivity have said that it would not have been their choice given an option.

    1. Donald, many years ago in high school in Biology 100, the instructor told us all behavior is either intrinsic (ingrained in our genetic make-up) or learned. If homosexuality was genetic, homosexuality would not exist since two men or two women cannot reproduce. Also, many with homosexual inclinations revert to opposite-sex attraction. This is even more very strong evidence that homosexuality is a learned behavior.

      Shanna Swan in her book “Count Down” is now trying to say Phthalates and PFAS in packaging are disrupting the natural production of hormones and thus interfering in an infant’s sexual development and adult behaviors. IF THIS IS SO (Swan’s PhD is in statistics, not genetics), it is mankind’s misuse of chemistry that may be causing problems. God did not make people with same-sex attraction.

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  11. Whether or not God still loves the sinful person as much as He loves the saintly person, “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble” (1Peter 5:5).
    He doesn’t treat everyone the same.

    1. Yet in Luke 15:4-7 we learn that the Good Shepard never gives up on anyone. Sinners cut themselves from God’s graces, but God will forgive them. Luke 15:7 – “I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.” As Pope Francis said, we cannot judge what is in another’s heart. That’s up to God.

  12. Excellent clear article. Thank you. Some parents will always put their children before God but the consequences are terrible, especially the eternal ones.

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