My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.
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As states impose sexual education on every child in the land, are they truly doing what is best for these children, or have they allowed themselves to become the unwitting tools of an ideology? We who are parents - fathers and mothers - relatives, teachers, pastors, mentors, and other interested parties, are we to stand idly by and allow our children and future generations to be violated and have their innocence shattered? Many German people later regretted having been intimidated by the Nazis and having remained silent out of fear. What is silencing us?
A distinct society
This is Québec, Canada, one of ten provinces known for its "distinct society" since the 1760 British conquest and the 1763 Act of British Parliament which unusually opted to allow French society and culture to continue unchanged alongside the British, which would now be dominant. The British Parliament provided for British Common Law to govern new arrivals (especially British ones) and to allow French civil law to simultaneously continue to govern French-speaking inhabitants.
During the so-called "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960's the Québec provincial government nationalized or privatized many health and social services, which were originally created by the Roman Catholic Church during the first generations of the colony, or which were developed later.
During all the time that elapsed since the foundation of the colonies in Canada between 1534 and 1608 until the mid-1900's, the French population and its clergy - despite differences of opinion and conviction - acted with one will and common purpose when they needed to collaborate to live out together and to preserve their French language, their faith, their values, culture, and society. Primary among their values were marriage, family life, social order, cooperation, and the value of human life as the bases of a harmonious and healthy community and society. This harmonious collaboration in the service of shared values has now eroded and changed.
Sexual education should be dispensed by parents not by strangers in schools
This September of 2017 - next month - the Québec Ministry of Education is poised to impose on the entire school population, from grades one to eleven, the most aggressive sexual education program this land has ever witnessed. This government is in effect aligning itself with those interests which for years now have been intensively lobbying from the United Nations to persuade or compel nations to abandon traditional values regarding human sexuality and any links of meaning or significance with Christian or other religious and moral principles.
The ideology which is driving "Comprehensive Sexuality Education" is in fact conductin a war on children all over the world and clearly trying to eclipse the Judeo-Christian understanding of human life and human sexuality as only one dimension of this life, albeit an important one. The Québec government and its Ministry of Education are aligning themselves with the proponents of the "sexual revolution" initiated by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940's and 1050's with his fraudulent science, and so they are choosing to ignore everything that our society has come to understand about human development and the maturation of the human person, as well as the social and religious values held and defended by this society until recently.
Kinsey and all those who adopted his erroneous data have done great harm to women and children in particular, as well as to men. However, a good number of people have been laboring to expose the fraudulent science with which Kinsey ignited the "sexual revolution" by enthralling educated as well as relatively undeducated people as he demolished social taboos against speaking about sex at all.
I invite you, reader, to reflect on this further with me, that we may see why sexual eduction should be dispensed by parents and not by strangers in schools.
Sexual education touches children to the very depths of their identity and their purpose and meaning in life; so it should happen in the loving and trusting context of the love and care of parents for their children. Parents know their own children most personally and completely, and in their parental love they are the most qualified and competent to dispense their children's complete human formation.
It seems apparent and undisputable, then, that when the state takes over this crucial parental role of introducing children to such an intimate dimension of their human life and identity - which for those who believe in God as He has revealed himself to Jews and Christians is inseparable from our life of faith in a personal and communal relationship with God - then what the state is doing is declaring that its citizens who are parents are incompetent to educate and form their children adequately.
So then, how is the qualification "adequate" being interpreted here? Those interests - that are so bent on having "Comprehensive Sexuality Education" adopted worldwide - want every child on the planet to explore and play with their genitals and those of other children years in advance of their puberty. It is no longer enough for these homosexuals to be accepted by society; now they want all of society to be as they are, and to this end they are attempting to intimidate the whole world into adopting this very aggressive sex education program. In their eyes, only CSE will be adequate to their ends.
Let's be perfectly clear about it - this CSE sex ed program is indoctrination - which is dangerous for children unless their parents ground them in a wholesome understanding of their human sexuality and dignity in accord with their family values. The web and social media already expose most children from a young age to sexual imagery - inappropriate for the most part from many points of view - which is another reason why parents should initiate sex talk with their children from a young age. Some parents may find this easier to do than others, but even when they find it awkward or difficult, it is still well worth doing, and children will be better off for experiencing their parents' support.
For parents and for all those who authentically care for children, the best way to serve what is good for children and most effectively serve their well being, the context and setting of parental love and trust is to be prioritized and favored as the most adequate to educate and form children to discover and understand most fully and deeply their human sexuality and dignity. Even parents who embrace the secular values that accept the omnipresence of sexual expression advocate for parents to educate their children to understand their sexuality.
Parents naturally would appreciate true collaboration and support from their children's schools, the ministry of education, and their church. Christian parents can choose from a variety of approaches from a Christian Bible Study to a Catholic online Family Life Education Program. A Roman Catholic woman - wife and mother - in France has developed an incredibly sensitive, insightful, and creative way to speak to her children about their human dignity and sexuality in a way that reveals the full beauty of God's plan for our happiness and "waxes" children to protect them and help them withstand the onslaught of our hyper-sexualized world.
Children and youth are in flux as they grow and develop
Psychological anthropology had firmly established by the 1980's that the human person has not yet experienced the full cycle of its human development until the mid twenties, when a person's identity tends to arrive at sufficient clarity to enable more mature, balanced, and responsible decisions. This means that children and youth are likely to experience a very wide range of emotions and feelings, but that throughout this period they live in a state of relative flux and development.
Care must be taken not to encourage children or youth to "lock themselves in" on a particular state of being or of experience by applying any social or psychological labels to themselves. Whatever it is that they are going through, they are quite likely to change over time. All the more reason then must care be taken to protect children from indoctrination and manipulative exposure to exceptional or risky lifestyles even though these may be portrayed as normal and safe when they actually represent conditions that present greater risk against health and life.
The period between the age of nightmares (from age 3 to 6) and puberty has come to be understood as the latency stage, when pre-pubescent children are not interested in sex and should be respected and allowed to thrive in their innocence. Naturally curious, they may act out their curiosity and play doctor or nurse to "examine" one another. Moreover, if exposed to sexual situations or images they will show interest, but if left on their own and not forcibly exposed to sexual situations, young children are not spontaneously interested. During this stage they may make derogatory remarks or exchange jokes with their peers to mask their interest, especially if their environment is particularly obsessed with sex and won't allow them not to be interested, but we should not conclude that they are. This has been the considered view of those in the medical and psychological professions, parents, teachers, and pastors until the sexual revolution of the mid-1900's.
Political activist interference in medicine, psychiatry, and science by lobby group interests
It is important to realize that some well established medical knowledge, based upon long experience and scientific study, suddenly changed in the final decades of the 20th century, but not for scientific reasons. The latency period was dropped as were all the psychiatric diagnoses that long considered homosexuality and other peripheral sexual practices as deviant or even diseased.
The APA - The American Psychiatric Association - dropped homosexuality from its DSM II, its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in 1973. This came shortly after gay lobby activists disrupted the APA annual convention in San Francisco in 1970, quite intimidating the speakers and convention participants. It was not strict science and medical or psychiatric practice that brought these changes in due course. The fraudulent science and ideological claims of Alfred Kinsey in the 1940's and 1950's exerted undue influence as well. The situation was governed more by politics than science.
The latency period in children is real and it protects them
The latency period, though held as a theory, is based upon observation and makes sense. Much of our medical and psychiatric knowledge is constructed on theories that show themselves to be reliable even though it may not be possible to define them as scientific laws. Not all that happens in nature is as clear cut as gravity. Our developmental stages came to be well established and generally accepted until the gay lobby exerted undue political pressure on medical and psychiatric bodies.
The latency period is good for children and it can be shown that they are worse for it when their latency is disturbed. So much is already changing within children that in order to develop a healthy persona they need during these intense few years to "enjoy a break" from the greater complexity and intensity of emotion which will most certainly be generated by puberty and the great upheaval of sexual awareness. They don't need to be forced to give more attention to sexual things sooner than their human nature requires of them, particularly during this period from 6 to 12 when they are far more preoccupied with learning and with competitiveness in a host of domains and activities.
Unless forcibly exposed to sexual things, during the latency stage the normal child is generally not interested in the other gender or in anything sexual, putting behind them their initial curiosity as little children quite intent on playing "doctor" and "nurse". Older children actually find the other gender or any overtly romantic behaviours as "disgusting" and may take great pleasure in declaring this to the world. While there may be subconscious interest or fascination with sexuality in general and with those who are different in particular, children normally like to show their disgust for such things and to remain free to give their attention to the other concerns and activities which they and their peers prioritize, such as comradeship, games, competition, learning, discovery, and adventure.
We must be alert to sexual abuse and vigorously protect children and all minors
There is a legitimate concern that some children are forcibly exposed to sexual matters, or worse, are actually abused sexually through exposure or by being touched and manipulated by others who are more sexually aware or even predatory. Sexual abuse of minors is a very grave wrong and we must do all we can to prevent it and to care for those who have suffered in such ways. However, protecting the innocence of every single child in a society can never justify broad exposure of all children to controversial sexual lifestyles as a strategy to protect them in advance from abuse by alerting them to every possible danger in exhaustive detail.
What is a woman? What is a man?
Our best understanding of human life is that we require some 25 years to emerge from basic human development with sufficient balance and depth to make responsible decisions for ourselves and for others. Our discussions about human sexuality likewise are more likely to serve the common good on the basis of altruism, that is, selfless love of others, as the primary principle that organizes human existence. This does not for all that exclude the legitimate love of self.
The woman who is aware of her own impulse to seek pleasure and avoid pain but who restrains her impulses when motivated by consideration for and love of others is, in this view, more feminine than should she favor herself over others. She is not forever depriving herself but deliberately choosing to withdraw her attention from self satisfaction for the time it takes for her to care for others, and the more she is willing to endure discomfort - even pain - out of love for others, the more womanly she is. Moreover, there is a higher or deeper or more perfect sense of joy or pleasure or satisfaction available to her for doing so, for serving others in this way. Putting up with labor pains for the sake of giving birth to her child(ren) is the classic example of female altruism.
A man is most manly when he puts up with discomfort and delays or puts aside his own pleasure to attend to and serve the needs and pleasure of others. The more patient, selfless, and courageous he is, the more manly he is deemed to be and appreciated and loved. A classic example of male altruism or selfless love is for a father to put the good of his wife and his children ahead of his own benefit or comfort, even to the point of laying down his life for them.
Similarly, this husband will withdraw his attention from his own pleasure as he approaches his wife in intimacy in order to attend to her; in order for the groom of the bride - the bridegroom - to "groom" his bride or care for her in the ways in which she most needs to be cared for. In the act of sexual intercourse, the male is notoriously "faster" than the female, and this tends to result in dissatisfaction or even pain for the woman when the man is preoccupied with his own pleasure and attending to himself rather than to his wife.
Chaste lovers versus sexual addicts
This is the whole point of chastity in the Judeo-Christian world view and anthropology: a chaste man approaches his wife not seeking his own pleasure but motivated and focusing his attention and energy on expressing love to his wife by attending to her appreciation and pleasure. In response, a chaste woman gladly receives pleasure from her husband and dwells not on her own pleasure only but rather with the beloved who is pleasuring her and responds to him with love, gratitude, and tenderness.
Chastity is primarily and constantly loving the other, not the pleasure I am getting in their company. Chaste love chooses to love the giver of the gift rather than merely on the gift or the pleasure it gives. Chaste marital embrace brings husband and wife face to face, revealing themselves to one another as they do their best to do all day long every day of their lives. How deeply they may contemplate and look into each other's soul through the windows of their eyes as they tenderly hold one another in loving embrace....
This is one reason why the many forms of sexual pleasuring rampant today that tend to join face to genitals rather than face to face may cause feelings of discomfort or embarrassment or shame in one or the other. We can be suspicious that what motivates one to want such things has more to do with desires that evoke addictive impulses than with authentic love of the other. A second reason to doubt the life-giving character of such practices comes from what motivated the Creator to assign pleasure to that specific function that is capable of giving life, of conceiving new life. We can legitimately doubt the validity of any other use we may want to make of sexual pleasure. The chaste conservation of genital sexuality for marriage and family is primarily a manifestation of respect for the procreative act, for the incalculable value of human life, and for the intention of the Creator.
Chastity outside of the relationship of husband and wife opens itself to a love that is wider and deeper than mere sexual passion and pleasure. Outside of marriage, people who love chastely put aside all that seeks sexual gratification in order to attend fully to the people they love and serve, as well as to attend with their full attention to the many complex facets of human life alone and together. Chastity opens one fully to experience and appreciate the simple pleasure of being alive and participating fully in one's life in every wholesome and moral way other than sexual genital expression.
Chastity reveals to human beings that genital sexual expression is not a basic human need akin to our need for food, drink, shelter, heat, clothing, work, society, play, truth, goodness, and beauty. All of these are necessary for human life; whereas genital sexual expression is not. People have clearly demonstrated in every culture and time that human beings can life a fully meaningful and happy life without sex, but there are many today who want to suppress this knowledge and history.
The ephemeral in love is a doorway to the infinite, to the divine
Sexual pleasure is notoriously brief and ephemeral, which is one reason why there is so much hype about it in human society these days. It is an attempt to strech out that sexual pleasure by capitalizing on the pleasure of anticipation. There is no doubting that anticipation is truly a precious aspect of our human existence. Even more precious is the contemplation of which we the human species are all uniquely capable. Married couples - husbands and wives - have witnessed that there is no greater pleasure than laying side by side after having given and received from one another in sexual union.
The inseparable bonds between sexual union, marriage, new life, and family are strong evidence for their design by a benevolent, loving Creator. Taken by itself, or for its own sake, sexual pleasure in "deflating" emotional energy leads to depression, disappointment, and intensifies loneliness; rather than intensifying communion and selfless love, for which it was designed. Employed as a natural means for developing couple unity and communion in marriage, sexual union unceasingly builds on the past and looks to the future while it attends so generously to the other in the present.
Moreover, for those who believe in God, God's love is enough to more than satisfy the human heart. In fact, only the love of God can truly and lastingly satisfy and fulfill the human heart, even that of spouses, and the love of God relieves spouses of the impossible burden of "making their spouse happy", which is humanly impossible. No human can "make another happy", but God can, because only God can perfectly bestow his life, his own self, upon us. In his Gospel John the Apostle and Evangelist reports Jesus declaring that we can only have life fully by welcoming his gift of himself into us, into our lives.
From the moment they met and fell in love they have grown in their personal capacity to attend to the other and effectively express to the other their love and appreciation, their mutual help and service, and to discover ever more creative ways to spend time together, alone and including their children in time, as well as their families of origin, other relatives, friends, associates, those with whom they share their faith, neighbours, and even strangers. All week long they share their common life and the elements of their lives that are particular and unique to each of them. They journey together even as they are engaged in separate labors, duties, and activities.
Day by day they grow in admiration for one another's qualities and giving of themselves to others, and in compassion and understanding for one another's weaknesses and shortcomings. They offer each other mutual help, encouragement, support, forgiveness, rescue when needed, care, sollicitude, and love. All their intensity of living as individuals and of sharing their lives together and building up this new entity that is their "couple" relationship is what builds their family and creates their home, and it is into this "nest" that they welcome their children when these arrive; whether it is through their own mutual giving in conception and birth or by adoption.
It is all this living and giving and loving that is the true "foreplay" of love between husbands and their wives, which is going on all the time, and the more conscious they are of this truth; then the more beautiful and satisfying - even thrilling - are the moments they experience and efforts they deploy in anticipation of coming together in love and affectionate embrace. By the time they come to their moments of sexual union, their minds, hearts, and souls - for having lived their love for one another so truthfully and completely all week long - are vibrating more deeply and intensively than their bodies. Once their moment of sexual union is over - as it so quickly tends to be - they relax in the utter satisfaction of mutual love and contemplation as they lay side by side, glowing with the love they have for the other and the love they feel and receive from the other in the blessed relationship and union which they are uniquely privileged to enjoy together.
It is in this contemplative dimension of their marriage relationship that Christian husbands and wives discover the loving presence of God as the very source and fountain of the love pouring into them, through them, and out from them to one another and to their children. In contemplating one another in love, wives and husbands discover God revealing Himself in his perfect divine love to them in the person of their spouse. It is precisely for this revelation and life infilling of love that God the Creator designed human beings in his own image, male and female in complementary difference; so that in their willingness to forget about oneself they might in ever greater depths discover themselves and receive more abundant life in the very act of loving the other by giving themselves away.
Forgiveness pushes the boundaries and expands the limits of human love
For people who embrace the Creator's design for our life and loving, they discover how to live in two dimensions simultaneously: the human and the divine. In the human dimension they learn how to live through both pleasure and pain / discomfort without allowing these experiences to overly impress or disturb them; while in the divine dimension they discover ever more deeply how to love the other by pouring themselves out and spending themselves completely in a self-giving that ironically renews the self through the very act of pouring the self out, of spending the self to the very last drop for the sake of the other and the other's highest good. This is what could be called an integrated human sexuality because the sexual dimension is fully integrated into the full meaning and purpose of human existence with all the complexity and depth of what it means to be human.
You may have heard or read the expression or proverb: "to err is human, to forgive, divine." "All people commit sins and make mistakes. God forgives them, and people are acting in a godlike, divine way, when they forgive." This saying is from "An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope. Christian spouses or spouses inspired by Christ who practice mutual forgiveness consistently plumb ever more profound depths of authentic love as they become ever more intimately familiar with one another's faults and are hurt by one another's sins and yet faithfully forgive the other with a pure heart sincerely desiring the other's good, conversion, and perfection. This dimension of forgiveness exponentially increases the mutual love of spouses and enhances their sexual embracing and expressions of love.
This is so because there can be no more perfect or authentic expression of love than forgiveness; since to forgive is to give with no assurance of ever receiving an equal return. Every time they are hurt and forgive, every time they have offended and been forgiven, every time they embrace and show love to the other, every time they pour themselves out in selfless effort and the giving over of their self, every time they love with divine love; every time, they add layers of beauty, truth, and goodness to their spousal love and mutual relationship. Every time they lay side by side after their embraces in the nuptial bed, they continue to weave the tapestry that is their married and family life and make room in its warmth for their children and all those they welcome into their "home".
Matrimony qualifies parents to educate and initiate their children to the beauty of living to love
All of this endeavour transforms marriage from a human contract into a divine covenant, from sexual union into matrimony, which is from the latin mater for mother and monium for state or condition. Matrimony is this enterprise of love initiated by the man / groom / husband and reciprocated by the woman / bride / wife, which creates the optimum conditions for the woman to transform into mother and fully activating her awesome powers for giving and nurturing life, not only for her children but also for her husband and for all those that are privileged to be welcomed into the family circle.
When married couples, husband and wife, embrace this awesome design in their mutual love, they experience the very love of God in each other and in their pouring out selflessly of themselves for the other. It is this very presence of the divine life-giving Spirit within their love and their couple that gives ever more life to husband and wife and the children they welcome into their family. They have every reason to be peaceful and to experience with great joy their great freedom and dignity in God, and have no true reason to be ashamed of their sexuality. They can enjoy and exercise their authority fully as parents to form their children in this wondrous understanding of the meaning and significance of human sexuality and its role in giving both life and love.
The complementarity of marriage and celibacy in the kingdom of God
It can truly be said then that woman needs man in order to fully develop her potential as woman; just as man needs woman in order to fully develop his potential as man. The man needs to love his wife - this other who will always be different from him - accepting in this way without limit to endure pain and deprivation and forgetfulness of his own impulses, needs, and wants, even to the point of laying down his life; in order to become truly manly. The woman needs to be cherished and loved to this extent by her husband in order to fully appreciate her own riches and generosity and so bloom and discover within her depths her almost limitless capacity to give of her riches, pouring out her very life in order to give and nurture life to others without destroying herself.
In the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, what is true of marriage and matrimony is equally true of celibate vocations whereby men and women separately pour themselves out in love and service to their fellow human beings in a great variety of life settings: for medical and social services; for education and human formation; for art, music, and literature; for the cultivation of the Earth and its resources; for the solitary and communal contemplation of the mystery of God; and for providing the opportunity and means for their fellow human beings to come to know, love, serve, and worship the Almighty. This too expands the horizons of all that can be integrated into our human experience.
Integrated human sexuality versus sexology
It would be foolish not to acknowledge that for other human beings, the acceptance or quest for pleasure and the avoidance of pain and discomfort is the primary organizing principle of human life. It is logical then for such people to view sexual pleasure as everywhere and always desirable, in or out of marriage. It their view, given that sexual pleasure is ever available and seems to cost nothing, it makes perfect sense to prioritize it.
From among the adherents of this view of human life and sex we hear that some see themselves as champions of the rights of children and youth to suffer no restrictions in the enjoyment of sex, not even from their parents. What they are doing is substituting themselves as the primary care givers of children, by the same token declaring those parents incompetent and holding them in contempt as likely antagonists working against children's sexual emancipation.
As this trend grows, tolerating no religious or moral principles that would limit in any way their quest for unrestricted sexual pleasure; the appearance of a new layer of society more intensively interested in sex has coincided with the development of "sexology" as a new profession with a claim to seek to help people with sexual dysfunctions or difficulties. Those who embrace this new trend may tend to reject the notion of a period of latency in children to favor the view that human beings are interested in sex in differing degrees from birth throughout their lives. These folks would be among the most energetic proponents of a school based Sex Education program to "trump" the parents.
Comprehensive Sexuality Education - a euphemism for sex without moral restraints
What we are currently witnessing throughout the world could be characterized as a hostile takeover by an aggressive sexual ideology - euphemistically called "Comprehensive Sexuality Education" - which is currently pushing on the world stage to displace what has been the normal constellation of human values since time immemorial. Credible witnesses report weekly the relentless attacks at the United Nations that aggressively seek to impose on all member nations their sexual ideology, which seeks to promote particular lobby interests rather than the actual good and rights of children.
The manifest intention of these lobbyists is to displace those values contained in the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and adopted by the United Nations in 1948 and replace them with the complex ideology which underpins what is being called "The Global Sexual Revolution." It is no coincidence that Dr Alfred Kinsey published his first book to disintegrate western society's social and moral values with his first book also in 1948, ostensibly launching the "sexual revolution".
During the French Revolution the Marquis de Sade may have been the first to portray as pleasurable and desirable with the written word forms of sexuality that society found to be perverse. Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) and the Eugenics Movement has been less known but most people living today have at least heard of the Nazi's "pure race" National Socialist ideology which they carried out in Germany by exterminating all those deemed "impure". Here is a quote from Sanger indicating her thought about "engineering" the kind of society we want tomorrow through abortion.
“How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds.” (1924)Eugenics was "in the air" at the beginning of the 20th century and popularly held in intelligentsia circles, at least some of them, primarily out of a concern for "overpopulation". Margaret is recognized as the foundress of "Planned Parenthood" which movement is far less about parenthood and planning for children and far more about planning for a reduction of babies, particularly among segments of society considered to be less worthy of passing on their genes. This movement is also promoting sex without consequences or risks, which is an illusion and a lie generating deadly effects throughout society. It generates a culture that holds in contempt the very idea of sexual abstinence.
De Sade and Sanger are among the pillars upon which today's sexual activists have their footing. In most societies it is the husband and wife couple that are the heart of the family, and any other models of sexual expression have been marginalized by the majority of their populations. This consigning to the margins may have been simply through benign neglect or withdrawal of attention or through active and even severe persecution and repression. One clear feature of the 20th century has been the various movements of emancipation and liberation, most notably of black slaves in the Americas.
Emancipation has been co-opted as an ideology by homosexuals in what was initially deployed as the social engineering agenda of the "gay lobby" in the middle of the 20th century. Documents internal to this movement have since come to light delineating a clear and deliberate strategy to approach the general population by winning sympathy to their espoused cause of liberation from persecution. Once sympathy was won, the next step was to progressively erode the general population's aversion to homosexuality until this different perspective was accepted as an alternative to the traditional model of marriage and family.
We need to distinguish the political movement from the lives of real people and families
What appeared to be the destination or final goal of the gay lobby was the advent of "gay marriage" or the social acceptance of marriage between two people of the same sex. In fact and practice, "same sex marriage" has stretched the traditional definition of marriage to the point that the word no longer means what it used to mean. Furthermore, the understanding of parenting has also been stretched to make the exceptional situation of single parenting a basis for extending this exceptional reality and practice as a normative alternative for parenting by two mothers or fathers.
We need to carefully make the distinction here between political movements and lobbying and the real lives of people and families. I would dare venture that most if not all of us know someone, maybe even someone whom we love dearly, who have entered into a "same sex civil marriage" and / or are raising children with two mothers or two fathers. As Pope Francis said so well, "Who am I to judge?" We can only have admiration and respect for anyone who brings children into the world or adopts them and the commits decades of their lives to raising them to live a meaningful life.
What we are discussing here is the political movements that are trying to replace traditional values with peripheral ones, that is, trying to indoctrinate children into thinking that a homesexual lifestyle is equal in value to the marriage of one man and one woman for the raising of children, and going so far as to encourage all children to experiment with homosexual sexual expression from a young age in order to engineer a society in which the homosexual agenda may become the dominant one. In the long experience of humanity, it can be fairly and justly said that children have a right to a mother and a father, to have both parents. The gay lobby will have none of that.
In the last few years it has become shockingly apparent that the impression that same sex marriage and parenting would be the final destination of the gay lobby was just that, a false impression, and nothing more. "Gay rights" has since progressively developed towards a full blown ideology which step by step was publicized as "lesbian and gay" rights, then "lesbian, gay, and bisexual" rights, then "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transexual" rights, then "LGBTQ" rights (adding Q for queer, or for some, questioning, and swapping transexual for transgendered), and most recently with the full deployment of "gender theory" initially in Europe, "LGBTQIA" rights, where T is for transgendered, I is for Intersex, and A is for Asexual.
It is finally clear now for all to see and understand that this entire social movement values, promotes, and champions nothing less than unlimited and unrestricted sex devoid of any traditional morality. This is not to say that those who bear in their spirits these convictions and aspirations are incapable of selfless love and dedication. On the contrary. Every human being is capable of altruism and at some point feels drawn to give selflessly, even courageously and generously. What we are considering here is the degree to which any individual or group wants human life and society to be sexualized. Once again, we are discussing here political manipulation of society and not the value of real lives.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is no longer quite as universal as it was
Before all these social revolutions, church, government, and most if not all public institutions served the public purpose of defending and promoting the values of the general population and the common good, which since the time of the colony consisted primarily but not exclusively of Judeo-Christian faith and values. While it is true that these values and the lives upon which they are based have gone through varying degrees of erosion; the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights has continued to most accurately represent this society's foundational values, particularly with regard to marriage and family life, and public institutions reflected this fact.
In the public square the primary motor driving change appears to have been what has rapidly evolved from the "gay lobby" into the "LGBTQIA" ideology. At the outset the gay lobby simply called for the general society to recognize as equal citizens those with a different sexual orientation and to help stop persecution and unjust treatment towards such persons. A major shift is now occurring as you read this from Europe to the Americas to Oceania and soon to Asia and Africa: those pushing this complex of ideologies is now demanding that their ideology and interpretation of human anthropology replace all that has gone before. For a growing number of individuals and practitioners of various social, medical, and psychological services, "wall to wall" sex is already the "new normal". Ultimately now, there are those who want children to be so indoctrinated that any other view of what is a human being, what is human life, and what is human sexuality will be stamped out.
The new sex education program will be encouraging children from grade one if not from kindergarten to "explore their sexuality" in every way imaginable, and presenting this as the new normal. Anything else will be increasingly seen as deviant, and perhaps soon, criminal. If you don't believe these words, then check it out for yourself.
December 8th, 1995, the Roman Catholic Church published "The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality" which expresses clearly and intelligibly the place and role of our sexuality in our human life and both private and social beings. Sections V to VIII are specifically addressed to parents as the first educators of their children and declares that states should never displace or attempt to substitute for the parents, and that formation of children in their affective lives and in their human sexuality should take place within the context of their loving and trusting relationship with their parents and with reference to the constellation of our moral values and faith if at all possible.
More life and more love, not less
The good news brought to the Earth and humanity by the Son of God who became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, was born in Bethlehem, and came to be known as Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary and of Joseph the carpenter - this good news that He brought by his very life and example and then more explicitly in his preaching, miracles, passion, death, and resurrection - this good news is for all of humanity to experience more life and more love, not less.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believe in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God." John 3:16-21Jesus revealed even more clearly than the Word of God in the Jewish Scriptures that God loves every human being and wants to pour into each person his own divine life. All He asks is that we come to know his ways and then to abide in them. The "manufacturer" has the right to issue instructions or a "user's manual", which is what God has done. It is up to each of us to take greater interest in what He has to say to us about Himself - about God - as well as about us, about our human life. After all, our life here is only a beginning, and when we die, we bring with us all that we have become as a person, both the good and the bad. We hope to lay aside all the bad and retain only the good by the end.
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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.
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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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