Guest Opinion: The Phenomenon of Homosexuality in Today's Society

Neither Church nor state invented marriage, and neither can change its nature

The sexual union of a man and woman is called the marital act because the two become physically one in a way that is impossible between two men or two women. Whatever a homosexual union might be or represent, it is not physically marital. Gender is inextricably bound up with physical sexual identity; and "gender-free marriage" is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle. To redefine marriage to include same-sex couples is to strip marriage of an essential component, namely the ability and obligation to procreate. This would render marriage meaningless and open it up to endless revision and redefinition.

P>HAMILTON, ONTARIO, CANADA (Catholic Online) - As yet another  testament to the West's rapid slide into decadence, the House of Commons recently voted to approve a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Britain. Prime Minister David Cameron described homosexual marriage as "an important step forward" and is hoping to have the bill enacted this summer.

Homosexuality is a troubling moral and social phenomenon. Due to benign interpretations of the homosexual condition itself, it is increasingly being viewed as something neutral or even good. In the words of Cardinal George of Chicago, the gay liberation movement has begun to "morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan". They have thus far succeeded in inverting the West's rule of law into the law of the jungle.

Men and women with homosexual tendencies must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Nonetheless homosexual acts must be considered wrong and intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances should they be approved.

In the West the legalization of homosexuality has already lead to the destruction of the family unit. Children who have no knowledge of sex are being brainwashed in schools to accept the perversion of homosexual acts as being normal and praiseworthy. At special risk now is religious freedom. In Canada, Christians are being harassed, threatened, and hauled into court for their biblical and scientifically supported conviction that homosexuality is not normal and that marriage is between one man and one woman.

To choose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent.

There is a lot of misinformation and a distortion of facts disseminated by the press today about homosexuality. The Western media often portrays the homosexual lifestyle and relationships as happy, healthy, and stable. On the contrary there are very high rates of sexual promiscuity among the homosexual population with short duration of even "committed" relationships. Homosexuals also have very high rates of sexually transmitted infections such as HIV.

Further, many studies show much higher rates of psychiatric illness, such as depression, suicide attempts and drug abuse among homosexuals than among the general population. And statistics - which compare homosexuals with ethnic minorities exposed to racism - indicate this is not due to homophobia. The homosexual lifestyle is also associated with a shortened life expectancy of up to 20 years.

Homosexual behavior is abnormal, immoral and anti-life. It closes the act of sex to the gift of life and is not innate as some believe. The so-called "gay gene" has never been found. The Bible clearly and unequivocally also condemns homosexual acts (Gen 1:27-28; Gen 2:24; Matt 19: 4-6; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10 etc.).

Dr. Francis Collins, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work sequencing the human genetic code, has in fact proven that homosexuality is not genetically "hardwired." If genetics were determinative," he said, "then identical twins should virtually always show the same pattern of same-sex attraction. However, a study of the Australian Twin Registry showed that only 11% of identical twins with same-sex attraction had a twin brother who also experienced it.

In 1973 Homosexual activists succeeded in pressuring the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from their official list of mental disorders. This about face, according to a 2005 scientific study by Dr. Jeffery B. Satinover, Director of the Durckheim-Gladstone International Center for Quantitative Analysis in Washington, was due to certain bias, false claims, lack of scientific expertise, lack of clinical experience and fabrication of evidence.

Essentially, the APA's decision was influenced by the arguments of Evelyn Hooker and Alfred Kinsey whose data was fraudulently skewered by blatant population sampling bias and the badgering, and even bribing, of its imprisoned and largely otherwise institutionalized subjects. Hooker's study, which contained no details of the scientific procedure involved, failed the most basic tenets of the scientific method. The inadequacy of her research was even acknowledged by the journal that published it.

Authentic scientific studies show that homosexuality is linked to pedophilia. For example, a 1992 study in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy found that homosexual men are three times more likely than straight men to engage in pedophilia. A 1988 study of 229 convicted child molesters published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that 86% of pedophiles described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.

A 2000 article in the same journal concluded that among pedophiles the rate of homosexual attraction is six to 20 times higher than among the male population generally. Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, a U.S. psychiatrist with vast experience in treating priests with pedophilia, has stated: "Every priest whom I treated who was involved with children sexually had previously been involved in adult homosexual relationships."

Equally compelling is the evidence of gay activists themselves who clearly state that there is a link between the gay lifestyle and pedophilia. For instance, Alfred Kinsey, the sex researcher, found in 1948 that 37% of all gay men admitted to having sex with children less than 17 years of age. Gay activists Jay and Young also reported in 1979 that 23% of gay men preyed on adolescent or younger boys.

Dr. Michelle Cretella, a board member of the American College of Pediatricians has also concluded from multiple studies that children reared by gay couples have gender confusion and are put at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases. Cretella noted that homosexually behaving teens and young adults suffer increased rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, addictions and suicidal thoughts. In addition, boys who adopt a homosexual lifestyle because of the influence of their same-sex parents face a 30% chance of being dead or HIV-positive by the age of 30.

The Laumann Report, published in 1994, is today universally recognized as definitive. In summary, its major findings are that homosexuality is not a stable trait and that it tends spontaneously to convert into heterosexuality as an individual gets older; that sexual identity is not fixed at adolescence but continues to change over the course of life and that there is no evidence for homosexuality being innate. We may now say that young persons who develop a homosexual identity, retain it due to the social milieu. This social milieu is the family setting and culture created by, inter alia, the decisions enforced by the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States acting in coordination with the misrepresentation of the scientific evidence provided to it by the APA, and the National Association of Social workers.

Homosexuals tend to recklessly and unjustly label all those who oppose homosexual activity as "homophobic" - the term "homophobia" itself intended to denote a disorder. In this way they seek to impose their own disordered behavior and lifestyle on society under the guise of tolerance. Gay activists have gone to great lengths to overturn or distort the evidence, but it remains too strong to be discarded. At the core we are dealing here, not with "human rights" but with homosexuality and the destruction of the family unit - the fundamental cell of society.

Marriage is an institution that predates civilization, ordained by God, and exclusive to one man and one woman who are given the responsibility to procreate the human race, and to nurture, educate, and pass on shared values and mores to their offspring. Neither Church nor state invented marriage, and neither can change its nature.

The sexual union of a man and woman is called the marital act because the two become physically one in a way that is impossible between two men or two women. Whatever a homosexual union might be or represent, it is not physically marital. Gender is inextricably bound up with physical sexual identity; and "gender-free marriage" is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle.

This new "gender ideology" which is increasingly being imposed on society by Western governments, undermines the fundamental understanding of what it means to be a human. In seeking to make every individual completely autonomous, it destroys the understanding of the family as a community designed for the rearing of children. In this radical new understanding of sexuality, children lose their own rights and become mere objects of adult possession.

To redefine marriage to include same-sex couples is to strip marriage of an essential component, namely the ability and obligation to procreate. This would render marriage meaningless and open it up to endless revision and redefinition.

Not surprisingly, every credible study supports the fact that children do better in school, live healthier lives, and become better contributors to society when raised by both a mother and a father in the same household. Society is now seeing the results of "causal divorce" from the 70's and the "out of wedlock children" of the 80's, as the children of this generation now have all these psychological problems.

In June 2012, the American scientific magazine "Social Science Research", the most prestigious peer reviewed publication of its kind, published two new innovative and definitive studies on children raised by same-sex couples. From the studies it emerged that 12% of children brought up by same-sex couples contemplate suicide (against 5% of children with heterosexual parents), they are more inclined to be unfaithful (40% against 13%), they are unemployed more often (28% against 8%) and they are more likely to visit a psychotherapist (19% against 8%). They are also more often under social service surveillance compared to peers who are raised by heterosexual couples. In 40% of cases they will catch a sexually transmitted disease at some point (against 8% of peers raised by heterosexual couples) and they are generally less healthy, poorer and more likely to smoke and commit criminal offences.

The few studies published so far that support the theory that there is no difference between children brought up in heterosexual and homosexual families are - unlike the new studies - based on non-random, non-representative data often employing small samples that do not allow for generalization to the larger population of gay and lesbian families

Once legal, the state's coercive power will punish those who refuse to embrace gay marriages. This is already happening in Canada in places like Saskatchewan. Under a legal regime that permits homosexual marriage, public officials are obliged to officiate at same-sex "weddings". Public schools are also required to teach children that homosexual acts are good and healthy regardless of their parents wishes. In the U.S. Catholic adoption agencies are being forced to close due to their unwillingness to allow homosexual couples to adopt. 

Gay marriage is an oxymoron. The family is the fundamental cell of society. The family - and through it, all human society - have their source and origin in marriage. Marriage is ordered to the procreation and education of offspring.

As the basic expression of man's social nature, marriage exists solely between a man and a woman who through their personal gift of self to each other, perfect one another into a communion of persons. This human development of the spouses and the proper nurturing of children who are the fruit of such unions makes an immense contribution to the common good of society. One does not need to have any particular religion or belong to a particular political party to recognize this, or that the family based on marriage is the best way to bring up happy, productive children.

Caesar Augustus, a pagan, sought to strengthen Roman society by outlawing adultery and sodomy and by encouraging traditional marriage and procreation He understood that there is such a thing as public morality. Emperor Augustus saw this, but it was too late to overcome the sexual license of the late Roman Republic. This was the real reason why it collapsed. Let us hope that the same does not happen to us.

Given the overwhelming evidence about homosexuality and its penchant for undermining the foundation of the family, same-sex couples should be given no special legal rights. On the contrary it should be vigorously opposed. St. Paul tells us that the "aberration" of homosexuality is both the proof and the result of the exclusion of God from collective attention and social life.

The Christian approach to modern-day homosexuality must distinguish between the respect due to persons and the necessary repudiation of any exalted ideology of homosexuality. In defending traditional marriage and family and renouncing homosexual acts one does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood.

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Mr. Paul Kokoski is a freelance writer who holds a BA in philosophy from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His articles have been published in several journals including, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, New Oxford Review and Catholic Insight.

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