The following, written by Robert Oscar Lopez, appeared August 6 on the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse website. Lopez is assistant professor of English at California State University at Northridge.
The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them—I know, because I have been there. The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange.
Between 1973 and 1990, when my beloved mother passed away, she and her female romantic partner raised me. They had separate houses but spent nearly all their weekends together, with me, in a trailer tucked discreetly in an RV park 50 minutes away from the town where we lived. As the youngest of my mother’s biological children, I was the only child who experienced childhood without my father being around
After my mother’s partner’s children had left for college, she moved into our house in town. I lived with both of them for the brief time before my mother died at the age of 53. I was 19. In other words, I was the only child who experienced life under “gay parenting” as that term is understood today.
Quite simply, growing up with gay parents was very difficult, and not because of prejudice from neighbors. People in our community didn’t really know what was going on in the house. To most outside observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school with straight A’s.
Inside, however, I was confused. When your home life is so drastically different from everyone around you, in a fundamental way striking at basic physical relations, you grow up weird. I have no mental health disorders or biological conditions. I just grew up in a house so unusual that I was destined to exist as a social outcast.
My peers learned all the unwritten rules of decorum and body language in their homes; they understood what was appropriate to say in certain settings and what wasn’t; they learned both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine social mechanisms.
Even if my peers’ parents were divorced, and many of them were, they still grew up seeing male and female social models. They learned, typically, how to be bold and unflinching from male figures and how to write thank-you cards and be sensitive from female figures. These are stereotypes, of course, but stereotypes come in handy when you inevitably leave the safety of your lesbian mom’s trailer and have to work and survive in a world where everybody thinks in stereotypical terms, even gays.
I had no male figure at all to follow, and my mother and her partner were both unlike traditional fathers or traditional mothers. As a result, I had very few recognizable social cues to offer potential male or female friends, since I was neither confident nor sensitive to others. Thus I befriended people rarely and alienated others easily. Gay people who grew up in straight parents’ households may have struggled with their sexual orientation; but when it came to the vast social universe of adaptations not dealing with sexuality—how to act, how to speak, how to behave—they had the advantage of learning at home. Many gays don’t realize what a blessing it was to be reared in a traditional home.
My home life was not traditional nor conventional. I suffered because of it, in ways that are difficult for sociologists to index. Both nervous and yet blunt, I would later seem strange even in the eyes of gay and bisexual adults who had little patience for someone like me. I was just as odd to them as I was to straight people.
Life is hard when you are strange. Even now, I have very few friends and often feel as though I do not understand people because of the unspoken gender cues that everyone around me, even gays raised in traditional homes, takes for granted. Though I am hard-working and a quick learner, I have trouble in professional settings because co-workers find me bizarre.
In terms of sexuality, gays who grew up in traditional households benefited from at least seeing some kind of functional courtship rituals around them. I had no clue how to make myself attractive to girls. When I stepped outside of my mothers’ trailer, I was immediately tagged as an outcast because of my girlish mannerisms, funny clothes, lisp, and outlandishness. Not surprisingly, I left high school as a virgin, never having had a girlfriend, instead having gone to four proms as a wisecracking sidekick to girls who just wanted someone to chip in for a limousine.
When I got to college, I set off everyone’s “gaydar” and the campus LGBT group quickly descended upon me to tell me it was 100-percent certain I must be a homosexual. When I came out as bisexual, they told everyone I was lying and just wasn’t ready to come out of the closet as gay yet. Frightened and traumatized by my mother’s death, I dropped out of college in 1990 and fell in with what can only be called the gay underworld. Terrible things happened to me there.
It was not until I was twenty-eight that I suddenly found myself in a relationship with a woman, through coincidences that shocked everyone who knew me and surprised even myself. I call myself bisexual because it would take several novels to explain how I ended up “straight” after almost thirty years as a gay man. I don’t feel like dealing with gay activists skewering me the way they go on search-and-destroy missions against ex-gays, “closet cases,” or “homocons.”
Though I have a biography particularly relevant to gay issues, the first person who contacted me to thank me for sharing my perspective on LGBT issues was Mark Regnerus, in an email dated July 17, 2012. I was not part of his massive survey, but he noticed a comment I’d left on a website about it and took the initiative to begin an email correspondence.
Forty-one years I’d lived, and nobody—least of all gay activists—had wanted me to speak honestly about the complicated gay threads of my life. If for no other reason than this, Mark Regnerus deserves tremendous credit—and the gay community ought to be crediting him rather than trying to silence him.
Regnerus’s study identified 248 adult children of parents who had same-sex romantic relationships. Offered a chance to provide frank responses with the hindsight of adulthood, they gave reports unfavorable to the gay marriage equality agenda. Yet the results are backed up by an important thing in life called common sense: Growing up different from other people is difficult and the difficulties raise the risk that children will develop maladjustments or self-medicate with alcohol and other dangerous behaviors. Each of those 248 is a human story, no doubt with many complexities.
Like my story, these 248 people’s stories deserve to be told. The gay movement is doing everything it can to make sure that nobody hears them. But I care more about the stories than the numbers (especially as an English professor), and Regnerus stumbled unwittingly on a narrative treasure chest.
So why the code of silence from LGBT leaders? I can only speculate from where I’m sitting. I cherish my mother’s memory, but I don’t mince words when talking about how hard it was to grow up in a gay household. Earlier studies examined children still living with their gay parents, so the kids were not at liberty to speak, governed as all children are by filial piety, guilt, and fear of losing their allowances. For trying to speak honestly, I’ve been squelched, literally, for decades.
The latest attempt at trying to silence stories (and data) such as mine comes from Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, who gave an interview to Tom Bartlett of the Chronicle of Higher Education, in which he said—and I quote—that Mark Regnerus’s study was “bullshit.” Bartlett’s article continues:
Among the problems Sherkat identified is the paper’s definition of “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers”—an aspect that has been the focus of much of the public criticism. A woman could be identified as a “lesbian mother” in the study if she had had a relationship with another woman at any point after having a child, regardless of the brevity of that relationship and whether or not the two women raised the child as a couple.
Sherkat said that fact alone in the paper should have “disqualified it immediately” from being considered for publication.
The problem with Sherkat’s disqualification of Regnerus’s work is a manifold chicken-and-egg conundrum. Though Sherkat uses the term “LGBT” in the same interview with Bartlett, he privileges that L and G and discriminates severely against the B, bisexuals.
Where do children of LGBT parents come from? If the parents are 100-percent gay or lesbian, then the chances are that the children were conceived through surrogacy or insemination, or else adopted. Those cases are such a tiny percentage of LGBT parents, however, that it would be virtually impossible to find more than a half-dozen in a random sampling of tens of thousands of adults.
Most LGBT parents are, like me, and technically like my mother, “bisexual”—the forgotten B. We conceived our children because we engaged in heterosexual intercourse. Social complications naturally arise if you conceive a child with the opposite sex but still have attractions to the same sex. Sherkat calls these complications disqualifiable, as they are corrupting the purity of a homosexual model of parenting.
I would posit that children raised by same-sex couples are naturally going to be more curious about and experimental with homosexuality without necessarily being pure of any attraction to the opposite sex. Hence they will more likely fall into the bisexual category, as did I—meaning that the children of LGBT parents, once they are young adults, are likely to be the first ones disqualified by the social scientists who now claim to advocate for their parents.
Those who are 100-percent gay may view bisexuals with a mix of disgust and envy. Bisexual parents threaten the core of the LGBT parenting narrative—we do have a choice to live as gay or straight, and we do have to decide the gender configuration of the household in which our children will grow up. While some gays see bisexuality as an easier position, the fact is that bisexual parents bear a more painful weight on their shoulders. Unlike homosexuals, we cannot write off our decisions as things forced on us by nature. We have no choice but to take responsibility for what we do as parents, and live with the guilt, regret, and self-criticism forever.
Our children do not arrive with clean legal immunity. As a man, though I am bisexual, I do not get to throw away the mother of my child as if she is a used incubator. I had to help my wife through the difficulties of pregnancy and postpartum depression. When she is struggling with discrimination against mothers or women at a sexist workplace, I have to be patient and listen. I must attend to her sexual needs. Once I was a father, I put aside my own homosexual past and vowed never to divorce my wife or take up with another person, male or female, before I died. I chose that commitment in order to protect my children from dealing with harmful drama, even as they grow up to be adults. When you are a parent, ethical questions revolve around your children and you put away your self-interest . . . forever.
Sherkat’s assessment of Regnerus’s work shows a total disregard for the emotional and sexual labor that bisexual parents contribute to their children. Bisexual parents must wrestle with their duties as parents while still contending with the temptations to enter into same-sex relationships. The turbulence documented in Mark Regnerus’s study is a testament to how hard that is. Rather than threatening, it is a reminder of the burden I carry and a goad to concern myself first and foremost with my children’s needs, not my sexual desires.
The other chicken-and-egg problem of Sherkat’s dismissal deals with conservative ideology. Many have dismissed my story with four simple words: “But you are conservative.” Yes, I am. How did I get that way? I moved to the right wing because I lived in precisely the kind of anti-normative, marginalized, and oppressed identity environment that the left celebrates: I am a bisexual Latino intellectual, raised by a lesbian, who experienced poverty in the Bronx as a young adult. I’m perceptive enough to notice that liberal social policies don’t actually help people in those conditions.
Especially damning is the liberal attitude that we shouldn’t be judgmental about sex. In the Bronx gay world, I cleaned out enough apartments of men who’d died of AIDS to understand that resistance to sexual temptation is central to any kind of humane society. Sex can be hurtful not only because of infectious diseases but also because it leaves us vulnerable and more likely to cling to people who don’t love us, mourn those who leave us, and not know how to escape those who need us but whom we don’t love. The left understands none of that. That’s why I am conservative.
So yes, I am conservative and support Regnerus’s findings. Or is it that Regnerus’s findings revisit the things that made me conservative in the first place? Sherkat must figure that one out.
Having lived for forty-one years as a strange man, I see it as tragically fitting that the first instinct of experts and gay activists is to exclude my life profile as unfit for any “data sample,” or as Dr. Sherkat calls it, “bullshit.” So the game has gone for at least twenty-five years. For all the talk about LGBT alliances, bisexuality falls by the wayside, thanks to scholars such as Sherkat. For all the chatter about a “queer” movement, queer activists are just as likely to restrict their social circles to professionalized, normal people who know how to throw charming parties, make small talk, and blend in with the Art Deco furniture.
I thank Mark Regnerus. Far from being “bullshit,” his work is affirming to me, because it acknowledges what the gay activist movement has sought laboriously to erase, or at least ignore. Whether homosexuality is chosen or inbred, whether gay marriage gets legalized or not, being strange is hard; it takes a mental toll, makes it harder to find friends, interferes with professional growth, and sometimes leads one down a sodden path to self-medication in the form of alcoholism, drugs, gambling, antisocial behavior, and irresponsible sex. The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them—I know, because I have been there. The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange. We owe them, at the least, a dose of honesty. Thank you, Mark Regnerus, for taking the time to listen.
To read original story, click here.
This is a brave man who has labored to seek the truth and chose the high road in respect for the needs of his children. I hope my Catholic friends who post on this site will see that as a child, to his detriment his father was absent and his mother immersed him in her own lesbian lifestyle, yet he has chosen to forego acting on any homosexual urges – for the rest of his life! – out of loving concern for the well-being of his children and, though he didn’t say so, I hope also for his wife. I see love and honor in this pathway, which is in line with teachings of the Vatican that homosexual urges are not sinful but rather that homosexual activity is. The author does not mention whether or not he is Catholic, but he dares to report that which would shame most of us and share controversial opinions that expose him to criticism from many quarters. This man has decided to do right by his children, his wife, and himself, which is something to be lauded and respected in any man. His struggle to find himself must have felt overwhelming, confusing and rudderless, and yet he seems a thinking man who has chosen a pathway to healthier, saner living. I take my hat off to Robert Oscar Lopez and invite my fellow CCD readers to join me in prayer for him and his family.
I agree Maryanne. His has been a “selfless choice” for the greater good–his children. I pray more parents would do the same.
And let us not forget that most of our most courageous acts required the support and assistance of others, in this case, Mark Regnerus. He was not alone,and that is really great news.
Mr. Lopez did not live in a ‘gay’ (what a disgusting way to misuse this word) home, nor could he or his mother by any means be called such, as it is a lie and we should get back to using words as they were meant to be used. +JMJ+
this article reminds me much of a KQED interview with our new archbishop salvatore cordinleone on a local s.f. radio station in which he madethe same points about kids needing their dad and their mom.
in this day and age when families are so bizarrely split up, i found his words very sensible…
Kids need loving and supportive parents and need to grow up in a community that nurtures and stimulates them positively. More than ever, in this day in age when families are so bizarrely split up, as you say, I’ll take all the parents I can get who have committed to love and support each other and their kids, regardless of their gender or what they do in the bedroom.
This is a sad and touching article. This poor man has SSA not because it is part of his genetic makeup, but because he was not well formed as a kid and says so in this article. There has been a lot of data going around showing how badly same sex couples will damage a child both spiritually and mentally and how it is absolutely unnatural for same sex relations. I am going to pray for this man that he receives the healing of the Lord in his life. God Love You.
MD exactly. This article is well written and I have been praying for more men and woman like his story to come forward and share because this is one of many examples of what I saw when I use to reach out to those with SSA’s or even with young men who were in dysfunctional home life, lacking good father role model or even relationships. Even in good Catholic families but there was always a good reason, an uncle molestation, drugs, bad influences etc.
This article reminds me of two at risk people I still think of with great concern.
I worked for 8 years as a bereavement volunteer for a local hospice provider and dealt with adult children grieving the loss of a parent. The two I remember who were identified as children of homosexual unions (a variety of circumstances can be called such) were both struggling with thoughts of suicide. One young woman in particular was particularly vocal about such tendencies. Neither stayed very long with the group but both were among the neediest people I encountered. Since the group was drop-in, we did not do follow-ups with any regularity, I felt terribly helpless with these two people and could only wrap them in prayer. I guess that was what I was meant to do. God save us from the current leftist trend of “normalizing” what is harmful to human beings.
God bless Robert Oscar Lopez and Mark Regnerus. Mr Lopez has said what “conservatives” instinctively know, but we do not always know how to deal with it. We, too, became “conservatives” from our own experiences in life. There is a saying, either of Richard Chamberlain or Winston Churchill. It is this: “If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart, but if you are not a conservative when you are old, you have no head.” In many ways it is true. We only have about a quarter of a brain when we are young — literally. Thank you for having the courage, Robert, to tell it as it is. May those of us who have not had the same experience as you not put all those who have had homosexual or Lesbian experiences in the same pot. My prayers are with you and those like you.and for our understanding, too.
@Anne T – Richard Chamberlain is an out gay actor. I don’t think that is his quote, unless it was part of the script on the Dr. Kildare TV show from the early 60’s.
I meant Neville Chamberlain, but I just read that the quote has always been attributed to Winston Churchill who denied everr saying it, so I will not repeat it again. It would be hyperbole anyway as some people are just fine being conservative from the beginning and still have a “heart”, but many or most are more liberal when young.
Thank you Robert Oscar Lopez for having the tremendous courage to speak up. Thank you Mark Regnerus for having the compassion to contact Robert. We have also seen on this website, the marginalization and the disdain aimed at homosexuals who choose to leave the terribly dark and dead end lifestyle that you chose to experience while living in the Bronx. Let us hope that this article saves many children from being harmed.
That sad decision that has affected your entire life, was hoisted upon you as a young man and now you have been given the grace to not do the same to your own children.
You have done a great kindness in trying to protect the rights of innocent children. May God Bless you for this.
Yes I agree with Catherine Mr. Lopez, God bless you. I appreciate your well written article. It really touched my heart and I pray for you. I knew of a few good men who left the homosexual lifestyle, some were threatened to death for leaving, there was a lot of threats and even some damage caused. A few were gay activist but left that activism. Young men who were even tricked, drugged, sodomized into accepting that homosexual lifestyle. I recall even getting in a debate with another gay activist, he refused to hear the truth about the conversion of those with SSA, he refused to hear and he was a married man with children, he was a heterosexual. So I have a hard time even with the activist who help the gay movement to continue to spread their lies and indoctrination of deception!
for gays its all about them, anyone else who suffers from their choices can die for all they care
What a horrible thing to say. It would be just as uninformed and cruel to say the same thing about Catholics.
Anne T: the quote is actually from a French writer and runs: “Any man under thirty who has never been a socialist has no heart. Any man over thirty who is still a socialist has no brains.” The point is the same, of course.
Thank you for the correction, Tom.
“Shirey has found links to several other versions of this maxim.
“Between his list and Keyes’, you’ll find variations on the theme attributed to Disraeli, Shaw, Otto Von Bismarck, Woodrow Wilson, Wendell L. Willkie, Bertrand Russell, and even former CIA Director, William Casey.”
Maybe you’re thinking of the name Neville Chamerlain, Anne? That quote is always attributed to Churhill, but like Tom says, it was some French guy who shall remain nameless. We know it can’t have been marcelle Marceau or Sartre! Ha. Anyway, this was a really interesting article and unfortunately the same sex couples won’t be reading this. It’s wonderful how God can restore a man to be a good husband and father after such a traumatic childhood.
Yes, praise God for Robert Lopez. Maybe not all homosexuals can change their orientation, but they certainly can change their behavior. And the proverb was attributed to Churchill who did not say it and Neville Chamberlain was the one I meant, although he did not say it either. Things sure do get changed when going “through the grapevine” I corrected it, too, in the above reply to Stephen M. It reminds of some of the situations on the old Andy Griffith Show when the townspeople got on the telephone.. One person would have indigestion and the “grapevine” would have him dead from a heart attack.
The most likely reason is that Bennet Cerf once reported Clemenceau’s response to a visitor’s alarm about his son being a communist: “If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.”
George Seldes later quoted Lloyd George as having said: “A young man who isn’t a socialist hasn’t got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn’t got a head.”
The earliest known version of this observation is attributed to mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman François Guizot (1787-1874): “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.”
“Rather than threatening, it is a reminder of the burden I carry and a goad to concern myself first and foremost with my children’s needs, not my sexual desires.” and “When you are a parent, ethical questions revolve around your children and you put away your self-interest . . . forever.” those are the words of a MAN who has learned the true meaning of love. I salute you sir, if were still of College age, I would be pleased to take courses from you.
You are certainly in my prayers. God has given you a heavy cross because he knows you have the shoulders to bear it.
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Professor Lopez,
You are not strange. You are a man who has been given a heavy cross, and you have fallen a few times (Our Lord Himself fell three times), and you have, also like Our Lord, gotten back up.
The Great Saint Padre Pio said “if you fall, get back up again” and you have done just that. Hold your head up high.
Vaya con Dios y Maria Siempre amigo a mi.
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Where is MarkfromPA’s comment?
RR do you recall when PA would label us a haters towards those of SSA? Look at most of the comments here, we are edifying this man and his well written article. PA thinks we hate homosexuals, he is wrong, we hate the actions people take to promote, edify and mislead others into embracing gay lifestyles as normal, especially when they lie with saying they are born that way.
Yes, I do recall and I agree, TOTALLY! My heart hurts for this man and nobody should have to live a hurtful life like this. I get so tired of the “hater and bigot” thing that the ACTIVE homosexuals accuse people of that HATE their sexual perversions, NOT the homosexual. I pray for the souls of ACTIVE homosexuals that they soften their hearts and realize their sins before it is too late to repent. The devil has a tight grip on ACTIVE homosexuals and they need God’s grace to see their sexual sins. Gays are NOT born that way. It is a result from the fall of Adam and Eve and people need to realize this and that homosexuality is NOT God given.
AMEN! RR in today’s times, I think that men or woman who leave those hurtful lifestyles, are considered miracles because those lifestyles are very hard to leave especially in today’s times. There are far less resources to help rehabilitate them. There is only encouragement to perversely continue.
RR most homosexuals are active, as you would call it, I usually don’t use those terms, when a man or woman chooses to walk with Christ, they understand they have a disorder but would never offend the Lord by calling themselves a homosexual or gay, they would comprehend that their disorder is an attraction to the same sex. If they are not living a gay lifestyle as defined today in that agenda of activism, action or in thoughts as well, then they usually remain chaste about it not only in their lifestyle but also in their words or ideologies.
This is such a sad story, and he articulated his confusion so well. I wish everyone could read this article.
RR, I read this article, as I read most articles on CCD. I don’t comment on most articles. Of course, it is better if a boy is raised in a home with a father. One of the major problems in our country, in my opinion, is the increasing number of single mom families. A higher and higher percentage of children are born out of wedlock. More and more children grow up without a dad. This is especially hard for young boys. Neither political party in our country has adequately addressed this problem. A big problem is the falling family incomes (adjusted for inflation) for the 60% of people in the middle in income in the US. Particularly hard hit are men who don’t have college educations. Income for men with only a high school diploma have gone down in real terms. Many of these men do not earn enough money to support a family. This has led to a sharp drop in marriages in our country and increases in children born out of wedlock.
PA: You read most of the articles, but the only ones you comment on are the ones in support of homosexual acceptance. This is what I have noticed. Whenever there is an article about how the gay lifestyle hurts people, you act as though you never read it and that it is not true or something. So, I’m asking you; What is your oppinion of this article and how growing up with a lesbian mother has hurt this man? Also, the reason why there are a lot of children born out of wedlock is because of the moral decay of values in our society and that includes the acceptance of ACTIVE homosexuality. Society is becoming a cesspool and is supporting everything that is against Christ’s Church. It is quickly becoming a MORE Godless society where anything goes and any sort of filth, like ACTIVE homosexuality, is supported. ACTIVE homosexuality is harmful to lives and to society and one of these days God will come in His glory and do away with it again.
The only problem here is that Mr. Lopez didn’t turn out the way he did because he had lesbian parents. He turned out the way he did from bad parenting. His mother and her lover didn’t seem too concerned for Robert, not because they were gay, but because he was the last child at home. It’s rare, but it does happen. Mr. Lopez puts all the blame on his mother sexuality, when it isn’t. Many things should be factored in and Mr. Lopez blatantly leaves this out. What happened to his father? What was the relationship he had with his father and mother before the father died? What was his relationship with his mother like? Where were his siblings? How is it his friends who’s parents were divorced turned out “normal” without a father and still had access to male role models and he didn’t? He also probably didn’t know it but, it is common for the youngest sibling in a family to be more feminine.
I find it comical that this story comes from The Witherspoon Institute. An institute that is a conservative think tank, which is chalk full of bias and unsupported studies. You also have to consider that this story is but one side. In order to make an informed desicion we really need to hear his siblings side of the story, his mothers and her lovers side of the story. I would never take someones word that their history is true if they wrote their own history. If he had some sources we could speak to, or something to reference It would help.
RR, how is it harmful to society? This world if full of beautiful religions that people believe in, some don’t believe in any. This Dora not effecr society negatively, all it effects is church numbers. Plus, it is not for us to judge. There is only one judge we Will all stand before when we die. Until then, we are commanded to love each other. Jesus didn’t preach hate, he preached love, forgiveness, and respect. You know what he didn’t preach about? Homosexuality.
Mr. Lopez writes, “I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school with straight A’s.” “I left high school as a virgin.” So it seems that Mr. Lopez was an exemplary teen. He felt strange and different but many of his differences were positive. Frightened and traumatized by his mother’s death, he dropped out of college. This was a traumatic loss for him and sadly led to him falling in with a wild crowd. Mr. Lopez is a very intelligent and eloquent man and he tells a moving story but his upbringing is probably better than most guys raised by single mom’s, who end up dropping out of school and getting involved with gangs and/or drugs. He feels like a strange man but maybe he is not so strange after all as most people are different from the “average” person in some way. He has had his burdens in life but also his gifts. Hopefully being an involved dad and loving his children can bring healing to him.
so now PA thinks he knows the answer…
Any disregard to this man’s story clearly shows that people do not want to consider the truth about “gay” agenda and lifestyles. We cannot ignore the truth and facts from those hurt of such unnatural lifestyles. As a whole, we will pay for the children who are scandalized. Jesus warned us against the scandalizing of children.
“The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange.”: This is nothing but a control tool that perverts are attempting to shove into society through their many anti-God laws. The sodomites are attempting to chain God, just as they tried to gang rape the two Angels of God who protected Abram and Lot and their families, not to mention the entire salvation line planned by God.
RR, what you write makes me wonder what you would have done if I was your son. How would you have treated me?
PA not that again……always fondling with what if’s? Gee golly not again……
Mark from PA: I have told you before how I would treat my son if he was gay. I will again tell you how I would treat you if you were my son: Mark, if you were my son, I would love you from the bottom of my heart like any loving mother would do. I would love you so much that I care about your eternal soul also. I might be your earthly mother, but you are ultimately God’s child. God entrusted me, as a mother, to get you to Heaven. Accepting ACTIVE homosexuality is not love nor will it get you to heaven. That is my number one job and responsiblility as your earthly mother. As a mother, I would love and support you if you were homosexually inclined and help you live a chaste, holy life if chastity is what you chose. I would love you and help you carry your cross. The only other option I would support you in is heterosexual marriage. I would NEVER support you in a decision to become a sexually ACTIVE homosexual. I would still love you from the depth of my being, but I would NEVER support you in anything that is against God’s laws and Church teaching. Being an ACTIVE homosexual IS mortally sinful, against God’s laws and Church, and is worthy of hell.
Well, RR, I am glad that you would love and support your son if he was homosexual. I am glad that you would help your son to carry his crosses.
Mark from PA: Much of what I posted to you was edited. Why, I have no idea. But I think enough was there that should tell you that I do NOT hate gay people, especially my child. I do, however, HATE the mortal sin of ACTIVE homosexuality.
The Editor replies: We are doing our best to enforce our 1500-character comment limit. Many posts get edited for this reason. We would prefer that you keep your posts under 1500 characters or, if that is not possible, that you submit multiple comments of fewer than 1500 characters each. This is a lot of work for a very small staff, and sometimes over the limit comments are deleted entirely because their is no time for editing.
Editor, Can you tell us how we are able to know that we have typed 1500 characters or more? I find your new format to not be as user friendly as the last.
Ed.: According to our technical help, 25 lines equals 1500 characters approximately.
Don’t feel bad , RR, most of my reply to you was edited too.
Tracy you are right, Blair Underwood is on billboards arnuod town regarding testing for HIV. We all know about Magic Johnson but there are a lot more celebrities who should get on board with the HIV prevention campaign. Thanks for your comment.
RR, As a catholic I know that we can’t take the whole bible literally. If we did we wouldn’t be able to grow gardens, (Don’t have a variety of crops on the same field. -Leviticus 19:19), we couldn’t wear most of the clothes that we do. – (Don’t wear clothes made of more than one fabric -Leviticus 19:19), We would have to kill several children daily (Any person who curseth his mother or father, must be killed. -Leviticus 20:9) we would have to kill most healthcare practitioners as medicine was wizardry. (Psychics, wizards, and so on are to be stoned to death. -Leviticus 20:27), Consider how many people wouldn’t be allowed to praise in church if we followed this one (People who have flat noses, or is blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God -Leviticus 21:17-18), How about this one (Kill anyone with a different religion. -Deuteronomy 17:2-7). If we followed the following two women could teach school at all or go to school (A woman should learn in quietness and full submission -1 Timothy 2:11), (I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. (1 Timothy 2:12)
This is not a world I would want to live in. I think most people realize that the bible was written for a much earlier and primitive time. This is why many Catholics and Christians don’t follow the laws listed above. Sadly, if we choose not to follow those laws, how can we expect others to follow the other laws that we do follow? It’s quite hypocritical.
Jason, you read the Old Testament without knowing any of its history nor considering the times and these times. The laws against certain types of foods, crop planting and the nonuse of mixed fibers in clothing were given for health reasons at that time, and to separate the Children of israel from the surrounding immoral nations and immoral gods and goddesses. Look up the Kosher laws in an orthodox Jewish website or in an online Jewish Encyclopedia and you will finally know why most of them were in effect, and why orthodox Jews still keep most of them — as a sign of their call to be a holy people, separated unto the Lord God. People were stoned to death for certain crimes, including adultery, as there were no prisons in the desert and whole tribes could be wiped out by sexual immorality from the diseases. They had to use strong meansures. Listen more to the Biblical scholars on the Eternal Word Televion Station or the Immaculate Heart Radio station, and you will know why those laws were very important to the survival of the tribe back then and even some of them now. Fr. Mitch Pacwas is a great Old Testament scholar, and so are many others on EWTN and Immaculate Heart. Christians are not regured to keep the ceremonial laws as Christ fullfilled them on the cross and in the Church, but we ARE requred to keep the moral laws, including the laws against fornication, adultery, sodomy, incest and beastiiaty. Breakage of those laws cause diseases and the break up of society still. Sodomy, anal sex, still tears the rectum, making it disease prone; contributes to anal cancer, which is rare among heterosexuals, and some of their other practices leads to mouth cancers, thrush, HVP viruses and many other diseases. I do not think I need to say any more. By the way, women know that even today when making a garment one needs to use similar materials or the garment is easily torn.
Farmers also got the idea of “resting the land” from the Old Testament. It means that the land retains it fertility if crops or the same crops are not planted on the same piece of land every year. It gives the soil time to replenish itself, and farmers often till ferilizer in the unused land, so the next or year after when they plant the crop, it produces more instead of going infertile. We still use some of those other Old Testament laws even today, including quarantine those with communicable diseases when necessary.
By the way, Jason, women should not be preaching in the pulpit of any church either, reading or giving a request for an organization but not preachng. Christ did not allow it nor did any of the Apostles, Both Judiasm and Christianity, including the orthodox, only allows the rabbi and the priest or deacon to preach sermons, and that is never going to change, and many or most of us women like it that way. We are soooo tired of having to be both women and men because the feminist keep crying about everthing, including the use of the word “men”. Some of these “women” even spell the word “women” “womyn”. it is just getting ridulous. Men and women are equal but not the same. You can never give birth to a baby no matter how hard you try and I can never beget one, and I will never be a six-foot tall man no matter how hard I try.
ANNE T., plerase don’t try to be a six-foot tall man. i am, and it’s no fun when flying economy class.
yes, you make a sensible point about women and men being different. and the whole spelling thing about “womyn” is pretty ridiculous!
other countries are going through similar stuff with words like “mademoiselle” and “fraeulein” and such, where angry people want these words banned.
Anne T, are you saying that women can read in Church? You weren’t clear there. I think in some Jewish congregation that women can preach. I am not sure. When my son was in Catholic school the girls and boys did the readings and offered prayer intentions. The principal was a religious sister and she was also a Eucharistic minister and distributed communion during school Masses.
Anne T, the nun that taught me 6th Grade was almost 6 feet tall. She packed a powerful punch. None of the kids crossed her. I could never be as tough as she was, that is for sure.
I meant the garment would not wear as well if the fabrics have too much difference.
Wow! I sure made a lot of typos in writing so much, but this small-boned, almost five foot-three woman got a lot said. And Max, I fly economy quite easily, except I have only flown once or twice since 9/11, so I do not envy being a six footer. My oldest grandsons are well over six feet. I was the short one in my family.
Jason you really don’t know the bible, the lessons it gives and the history before Jesus came, the preparing for his coming and so on and so on. Not how you just interpreted it. There is so much more….
Mark from PA, women can lector (do the readings in some Catholic churches if the pastor gives his permission), or they can give a speech from the pulpit about donations or other concerns for a Catholic organization, but they cannot rightfully give a sermon at a Catholic Mass. Only a priest or deacon can do that. If a Catholic church allows it, it is a very bad liturgical abuse. I would never go to such a Catholic church for any reason. Also, the more Orthodox and Conservative synogogues do not allow women rabbis. They might allow them to teach a class, but never give a service as rabbis are the offical male teachers of the synogogue. Many or most of the so-called women rabbis, with a few exceptions, of course, are nothing more than New Age priestesses, and are only ethnically Jewish but not relgiously I have found. Many of them are into the occult, goddess worship and have an “anything goes” philosophy. In other words,they are not authentic Jews religiously, even though they are ethnically, but are more pagan. Just as there are atheistic Jews, there are pagan Jews who do not adher to the moral teachings of the Torah and Prophets (Old Testament). I am going to get a lot of flack for saying that, but authentic Christians and Jews know that because the true Jewish and Christian religions are patriarchal, always have been and always will be. There are some Jewish Christian women, such as one of the Sisters on EWTN who do teach about the Old Testament expertly, but she would never want to be a priest. She knows that Christ chose a patriarchal system as he was a Jew. Her name has slipped my mind.
Her name is Sister Rosalind Moss or Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God. I believe she founded a new order if I remember correctly. Anyway she is on line.