Romania Eyes Legalizing Consensual Incest, Wouldn’t Be First Country in Europe  

Saturday, March 21, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510016,00.htmlBUCHAREST, Romania – Surprising as it may seem, incest is not always a crime in Europe.
Three European Union nations – France, Spain and Portugal – do not prosecute consenting adults for incest, and Romania is considering following suit.The shocking case of Austrian Josef Fritzl, found guilty this week of holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering her seven children, has focused new attention on incest – which is a crime in itself in Austria even if the acts are consensual. But in the Fritzl case it was in connection with rape, homicide and other charges that led to a sentence of life in a secure psychiatric ward.

Laws exempting parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters from prosecution for incestuous acts if they are not forced upon adult family members are decades old in France, Spain and Portugal.

In Romania, decriminalizing incest among consenting adults is being considered as part of a wide range of reforms to the country’s criminal code. No date has been set yet for a parliament vote on the bill, and opposition to the proposal is fervent even among some lawmakers in the ruling coalition.

Currently all forms of incest in Romania are punishable by up to seven years in prison. But Romania’s Justice Ministry suggests the new legislation would move the country – which joined the European Union two years ago – closer legally to some other EU members.

“Not everything that is immoral has to be illegal,” said Justice Ministry legal expert Valerian Cioclei. “We cannot help these people by turning them into criminals and punishing them.”

Incest is defined as sexual intercourse between people too closely related to marry legally. In the United States, all 50 states and the District of Columbia prohibit even consensual incest, although a few states impose no criminal penalties for it, according to the Harvard Law Review.

Newspaper articles in Romania have criticized the planned legal change over consensual incest. The ministry, however, countered with a statement claiming that incest cannot be stopped with “criminal sanctions, but with medical and social measures, because incest is based on pathological factors.”

Not all Romanians accept the Justice’s Ministry’s argument.

Anuta Popa, a 22-year-old woman in the western city of Cluj, said she doubted that incest ever happened by consent in her country, saying it was more likely that the man was drunk and violently attacked his sister or mother.

“Incest should not be legalized. If they want to have sex, better to say a prayer and remember that God sees them,” she declared. “I would castrate them.”

Iosif Damian, a 56-year-old cleaner, said he was unsure if consulting adults should be jailed for incest but added “I think it is shameful all the same.”
“Or (if) they are ill and prison is not a solution, they need medical help,” he said.

But one 27-year old chauffeur did not see any problem with the legal change.   “If brothers and sisters want to have fun, why should they be imprisoned? It is nobody’s business what I do in my bedroom,” Ionut Breazu of Cluj told the Associated Press.

Challenges in countries where incest is a crime surface occasionally.

In Germany, the country’s highest court last year rejected an appeal by a man who was sent to prison after fathering four children with his sister in a consensual relationship.

Opponents say that children born out of incest face an increased risk of genetic problems, especially inherited disorders of “recessive” conditions, or those caused by a double dose of a gene that carries a mutation – one from each parent. There are about 3,500 recessive conditions, most of them very rare.

“Everyone carries several of these recessive gene mutations, but since most of them are extremely rare, the chance of two unrelated people carrying a mutation in the same gene is low,” said Jess Buxton, spokesman for the British Society of Human Genetics.

But he said sexual relationships between relatives more closely related than cousins carry increased risks to offspring because the adults share a greater proportion of their genetic material. Full siblings share 50 percent of their genetic material, as do parents and their children.

“The closer the biological relationship between two people, the higher the risk of passing on a recessive condition to their children,” Buxton said.

And then there are the moral dilemmas over incest.

“It generates a confusion of roles,” says Romanian psychologist Aurora Liceanu. “Imagine how can one explain to a child that his father is also his grandfather?”

Opposition also comes from the Romanian Orthodox Church, which counts some 85 percent of population among its worshippers and says incest “affects the moral and psychological health of human beings … the sacred family institution, and public morality.”

A Vatican spokesman declined to directly comment on the issue but pointed to Catholic Church doctrine, which bans incest among immediate relatives and says it “corrupts family relationships.”

And sentiment appears strong against any form of incest even in the countries where it is legal among consenting adults. An IPSOS poll in France taken in January showed that 59 percent of the 931 respondents thought all forms of incest should be considered a criminal offense. No margin of error was published.

Yet around Europe, there is some acceptance of consensual incest among adults.

Irish homemaker Margaret Henry, 42, said society shouldn’t be so concerned about it.

“(Why are they) arresting people for what they do in their own homes, as long as they’re adults and they’re not hurting each other?” she asked.

That sentiment was shared by Hermann Koening, a 23-year-old graphic designer from Duesseldorf, Germany.

“Incest is a sin,” Koening said while waiting at a Dublin bus stop. “But maybe it’s wrong to make it a crime.”

Remember same-sex “marriage”?  Incest next. Then the horse next door. You watch.  It’s all about “rights” for everyone – man and beast.

HARTFORD, Connecticut, March 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Connecticut Judiciary committee Thursday proposed a bill stripping Roman Catholic bishops of their authority to govern fiscal and administrative diocesan affairs – an unprecedented attempt to regulate the Catholic Church, that critics are calling “payback” for the Church’s efforts to prevent the legalization of same-sex “marriage” in the state.The explicit intent of S.B. 1098 is, “To revise the corporate governance provisions applicable to the Roman Catholic Church and provide for the investigation of the misappropriation of funds by religious corporations.”

Referring specifically to structures of the Roman Catholic Church, the bill states: “The corporation shall have a board of directors consisting of not less than seven nor more than thirteen lay members.  The archbishop or bishop of the diocese or his designee shall serve as an ex-officio member of the board of directors without the right to vote.” 

According to the bill, members of the board are to be elected from among the congregation, and the authority of the bishop and pastor limited to “matters pertaining exclusively to religious tenets and practices.”

(To view the legislation, go to: http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/TOB/S/2009SB-01098-R00-SB.htm)

Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor, co-chairs of the Judiciary committee, say the bill was proposed as a response to an incident in which a priest was convicted of stealing 1.4 million dollars from a parish in Darien.

A public hearing on the fast-tracked legislation is scheduled for Wednesday, March 11. 

Lawlor, in an email posted by American Papist blogger Thomas Peters, justified the bill by claiming it changed “current state statutes governing Roman Catholic corporations” as “suggested by parishioners who were the victims of theft of their funds in several parishes, who felt existing laws ‘prevented them from dealing with the misuse and theft of funds.’”

“I agree with you that the whole notion of having a statute governing the church seems like an intrusion on the separation of church and state, but the current law does that already,” Lawlor wrote, who emphasized that corporate law “probably should make sure there cannot be deception of parishioners.”

Many have raised concerns of the bill’s constitutionality.  Attorney Philip Lacovara, a Bridgeport Catholic, told the committee: “In more than forty years as a constitutional law teacher and practitioner, I cannot recall a single piece of proposed legislation at any level of government that more patently runs afoul of [the First Amendment]” than the bill in question.  U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops general counsel Anthony Picarello also expressed shock at legislation “so blatantly unconstitutional,” according to the National Catholic Register.

The Knights of Columbus, the Family Institute of Connecticut, and Connecticut Catholic Conference as well as individual bishops are calling on Catholics and non-Catholics alike to intercept the bill, which is being denounced as a dire and unprecedented threat to religious groups’ right to self-government. 

Peter Wolfgang of the Family Institute of Connecticut explained the need for an interfaith presence at the Wednesday hearing. “As Ben Franklin told the Founders while they were signing the Declaration of Independence, ‘either we hang together or we will all hang separately,’” said Wolfgang.  “Legislators need to understand that this bill is an attack on everyone’s religious liberty.”

Hartford Archbishop Henry Mansill exhorted Catholics from each parish to oppose the bill’s “radical reorganization of the legal, financial, and administrative structure of our parishes.”  Bishop Michael R. Cote of the Norwich Diocese also issued a clarion call to parishioners, saying the bill would “do irreparable harm to the Church.”

“Our church in the state of Connecticut is facing an unprecedented intrusion by the state legislature into its own internal affairs,” Bridgeport’s Bishop William Lori told parishioners Friday.  “If this bill were to be enacted, your bishop would have virtually no real relationship with the 87 parishes.

“You have to understand how radically this departs from the teaching of the Church and the discipline of the Church, and how gravely unconstitutional it is for a state to move in and try to reorganize the internal structure of the Church.  It is a violation, a grave violation of religious liberty.” 

Lori scoffed at the notion that the state, which now has a billion-dollar deficit, proposed the bill out of a need for greater regulation of Church finances.

“This bill was dropped into the hopper the day before the same-sex ‘marriage’ bill was to be heard,” said Lori.  “This is a thinly-veiled attempt to silence the Church on important issues of the day – but especially with regard to marriage.”

Both committee co-chairs McDonald and Lawler are outspoken same-sex “marriage” advocates, and have been critical of the Catholic Church’s opposition to laws dismantling the legal definition of marriage.

“The real purpose of this bill is payback to the bishops and pastors of the Roman Catholic Church in Connecticut for opposing gay marriage,” State Sen. Michael McLachlan of Danbury wrote in his blog. 

“Unfortunately, I think some well-intentioned, unhappy Catholics from Darien are being used as pawns by Senator McDonald and Representative Lawlor in a thinly-veiled attack on the Church.”  McLachlan referred to Voice of the People, a radical anti-patriarchal Catholic group some suspect to be behind the bill.

The hearing is scheduled to begin at noon Wednesday in Room 2C in the Legislative Office Building.

In other news, the sun rose today.

Seriously, is this much of a surprise? This is God’s rebuke and punishment on the Church for failing to live up to the Gospel all these years. 

Sorry, bishop, the hierarchy has to take its responsibility of not embracing Humanae Vitae right from the beginning. Even now, 40 years later, it’s only been partially accepted.

If the Church is not serious in teaching the Gospel of Life, if it remains simply “on the books” but not on the street and in the pulpit, then we are simply playing God for a fool. And that’s not really a smart thing to do.

If it is spoken about in hushed, snickering tones and not yelled from the rooftops, then don’t be surprised when these sort of persecutions happen. In fact, you can count on it.

And here’s another prediction:  we’ve got a lot more of this coming too.  Why? Because we are stone deaf to what God is saying to us. That’s why.  Persecution is one of the last things God has to try to wake us up and shake us from our lethargy. 

I only need point you too the see no evil, hear no evil practice going on at St. Joseph’s hospital in London these past 35 years.   And it’s still going on…pending an investigation…of course.

Welcome to the beginnings of the underground church.

Sick.

LOS ANGELES — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom filed a lawsuit against officials of the Los Angeles Community College District on Wednesday, Feb. 11, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The lawsuit comes after a professor censored and threatened to expel a student following a speech about marriage and his Christian faith during an open-ended assignment in a public speaking class.“Christian students shouldn’t be penalized or discriminated against for speaking about their beliefs,” said ADF senior counsel David French. “Public institutions of higher learning cannot selectively censor Christian speech. This student was speaking well within the confines of his professor’s assignment when he was censored and ultimately threatened with expulsion.”On Nov. 24, 2008, Los Angeles City College speech professor John Matteson interrupted and ended Jonathan Lopez’s presentation mid-speech, calling him a “fascist bastard” in front of the class for speaking about his faith, which included reading the dictionary definition of marriage and reciting two Bible verses. Instead of allowing Lopez to finish, Matteson told the other students they could leave if they were offended. When no one left, Matteson dismissed the class. Refusing to grade the assigned speech, Matteson wrote on Lopez’s evaluation, “Ask God what your grade is.”

One week later, after seeing Lopez talking to the college’s dean of academic affairs, Matteson told Lopez that he would make sure he’d be expelled from school. Matteson’s treatment of Lopez during his speech follows an earlier incident in which Matteson told his entire class after the November election, “If you voted yes on Proposition 8, you are a fascist bastard.”

“Professor Matteson clearly violated Mr. Lopez’s free speech rights by engaging in viewpoint discrimination and retaliation because he disagreed with the student’s religious beliefs,” said French. “When students are given open-ended assignments in a public speaking class, the First Amendment protects their ability to express their views. Moreover, the district has a speech code that has created a culture of censorship on campus. America’s public universities and colleges are supposed to be a ‘marketplace of ideas,’ not a hotbed of intolerance.”

ADF-allied attorney Sam Kim and attorney Michael Parker of the Buena Park firm Sam Kim and Associates APC, are serving as local counsel in the case. (Source)

Why are we pretending that we can live with the Left? I’m afraid that dark and violent times are ahead.

Two young children are to be adopted by a gay couple, despite the protests of their grandparents. The devastated grandparents were told they would never see the youngsters again unless they dropped their opposition.  The couple, who cannot be named, wanted to give the five-year-old boy and his four-year-old sister a loving home themselves. But they were ruled to be too old – at 46 and 59. For two years they fought for their rights to care for the children, whose 26-year- old mother is a recovering heroin addict.

… 

When the grandparents eventually conceded defeat, they were assured by social workers that they would still have regular contact with them. The fostering arrangement worked well, but the council decided that the children should be adopted, to give them a permanent home. The grandparents agreed – as long as they could be assured that the adoptive parents would be a loving mother and father. The couple were then told an adoption had been arranged – but the grandfather ‘hit the roof’ when he discovered that the adoptive parents were two gay men.

… 

When they made their opposition clear, however, the couple were told that social workers would ‘certainly look’ at allowing them access to the children ‘when you are able to come back with an open mind on the issues’.  (Source)

I see the Gay Jackboot has turned it up a notch.  I wonder just how long people will continue to accept it.  Judging by how society is going, it looks like it will continue for a long time until society collapses under its inequity.

Hold on to your kids, friends, and file this one under the “Duh…how does same-sex “marriage” affect me?” file. 

7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involv ing a grave lack of respect for human dignity,(15) does nothing to alter this inadequacy.

Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.

As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case. (Source)

The Roman Catholic Church is pulling out of three of its top adoption agencies because it cannot comply with Labour’s new gay equality laws. The Mail on Sunday has learned the Church will this week cut its ties with the Surrey-based Catholic Children’s Society, one of the biggest in the country covering much of the South-East. The dioceses of Nottingham and Northampton have also decided to pull out of their agencies.  The development will anger Catholic MPs, who warned last year that the contentious legislation would have a dramatic impact on the charities. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said: ‘This is a tragedy. We are taking the ethos out of these adoption agencies and leaving them with a crisis, all because the Government wouldn’t listen.’ It will also dismay hundreds of thousands of parishioners who have raised millions of pounds over the years to support the much-loved organisations.  Senior bishops put the blame squarely at the door of Government Ministers. The Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, the Rt Rev Kieran Conry, said: ‘The Government has lost out. The Catholic agencies do and did very good work. ‘For the sake of a principle and certain political correctness we are losing some very good facilities.’… (Source)

I remember a few years ago, some friends told us they went to see if they could adopt a child at the local government adoption agency. (Their doctor had told them the chances of them conceiving were slim to none. ) They told the agency that they would accept any child, regardless of disability.  When they objected to teaching the moral neutrality of masturbation, however, the government sex functionary told that them that it would be a negative factor in their chances at being successful in adopting.

Within a year, God blessed them with a child.  And they now have another one on the way.

It’s good to see God works outside the parameters set for us by the sex police.

The recent testimony by the CBC concerning their fraudulent and dishonest use of March for Life rallies has caused me to reflect on how they’ve treated the whole freedom of speech issue facing Canada right now.

The truth is that the only liberties the Main Stream Media believes in is taking them when it concerns the truth…

Children brought up by an active father figure are less likely to develop psychological and behavioural problems, according to a new investigation. Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden have carried out a review of studies published in the US and UK between 1987 and 2007 and found that regular positive contact between a child and a father figure decreased the likelihood of children taking up smoking or being arrested.Published in the February issue of the Acta Paediatrica journal, the study also revealed that children who lived with both a mother and father figure had less behavioural problems than those brought up solely by their mother….(Source)

I wonder how long these sorts of studies will be permitted to be published?  After all, isn’t it against someone’s human rights to be so mean? Won’t this hurt someone’s feelings?  What about those poor families that choose not to have a father? There ought to be a law against publishing this kind of thing.  Call in the HRC militia right away!  

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law. Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record…. (Source)

Back in 2003 when the marriage debate was heating up, I was asked by a young reporter how same-sex “marriage” could possibly affect me.  Of course, this wasn’t his argument per se, but the argument of the culture at large which sees sexual morality is something strictly a private matter.  This is a lie. It has always been a lie even before Pierre Trudeau preached the “sexual debauched gospel”. 

All morality has social consequences far beyond the immediate parties involved.  As he stood there smiling, I quipped:  “I don’t particularly want the State to teach MY children about sodomy in the classroom.”  His smile quickly faded as he understood immediately that once a behaviour is given legal protection by the State, the State will recognize that behaviour in every common area shared by all citizens.

When you talk to people who support same-sex “marriage”, you will find a 50/50 split on whether polygamy should be permitted.  Obviously, if the basis of marriage is merely consent by adults, then there can be no basis for “discriminating” against a “menage a trois, quatre, cinq, ou six”. 

The thing that really amuses me is that laws forbidding polygamy were a protection FOR women against exploitation BY men.  The Christian tradition holds that polygamy is an abuse of women, and a demotion of their inherent dignity as persons created in God’s image.  What polygamy is saying is that  “one woman is not enough for one man” – that the needs of one woman cannot meet the needs of one man. And that, of course, tells our daughters that their dignity is less than our sons.  

And the Left just keeps barrelling down the road to Sharia and dhimmitude, proving once again that sin does make you very, very stupid.

Seeking liberation and license, they will find enslavement and demotion.

See this picture in any mainstream media? Me neither. Over 1 Million people in Spain think the family is rather important for…um…survival of the human race.

 What does the government of Spain think?  It thinks the Catholic Church should apologize to them.

Instead of apologizing, the Church should give the government the old Italian salut.

Genoa, Jan. 3, 2008 (CWNews.com) – Italian police continue to provide 24-hour protection for the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa.

The special police escort for the Italian prelate was inaugurated last April when then-Archbishop Bagnasco first received death threats after speaking out against the legalization of homosexual civil unions. The cardinal’s police protection includes an escort to accompany him when he celebrates Mass in public.

Say…somebody should file a human rights complaint….oh never mind…

Two years ago today, on April 9, 2005, 15,000 Canadians descended on Parliament Hill to show their support for marriage. In one of the largest non-political rallies in recent memory, it showed that many Canadians were still very socially conservative and were willing to show up in mass numbers to let their voices be heard.

While we eventually lost the political and legal battle for marriage, the fight will go on as Canada continues its free-fall into moral and social anarchy. We lost the battle but we will eventually win the war. We will win this war because nature is on our side and what man proposes in defiance of nature, nature disposes in its own good time. In other words, the consequences of adopting legislation which is in direct opposition to the natural world and natural order can only lead to defeat. The question, therefore, is not if same-sex “marriage” is overturned but rather when.

I have never written much about my planning for this March. I just didn’t have the time to do it after the March since too many things came up. And when I did finally have a bit of time, the newsworthiness of the story had passed somewhat so I just let it slide. It was truly, however, a remarkable experience, and one in which I will likely never have the privilege of doing again on such a large scale. Two personal observations, however, that I would like to offer.

The first is this. To pull this kind of demonstration off, much prayer and sacrifice is needed, not to mention learning to eat humble pie and to keep your tongue in check when dealing with the nay sayer allies. Without accepting the cross on a daily basis, failure would have been a certainty. Only by putting my full trust in Jesus was the March a success. And, yes, the March did succeed although its fruits will only be appreciated in the distant future. The pagans and sexoholics do not understand that our battle is ultimately a spiritual one so when they do not see any immediate results to our efforts, they immediately consign them to failure. That, however, is a very big mistake. It is a mistake of pride.

The second observation is a personal one for me. A few minutes before the speeches were about to begin, the stage was packed with people and pandemonium was breaking out. I had marching bands, flag bearers, speakers, singers, security guards, and other choreography that I had to set into place. It was a zoo. As I scrambled to find my first few speakers and place them near the podium, along with co-ordinating the marching band and singer for O Canada, I sensed something very strange: an overwhelming sense of calmness and peace. Everything around me was pandemonium and normally I would be an easy victim of this pandemonium as I am naturally a nervous person. But there was something around me that day that removed any kind of anxiety or worry. It was as if a veil was over me, one that I can honestly say was Our Blessed Mother’s mantle, calming my nerves and protecting me from harm. I’ll never forget it.

One more thing. I instinctively knew that we were going to lose the first vote, but the message that I kept getting was that the March was necessary for the eventual victory. That is why in my speech, I reminded those assembled that we might lose the vote but the fight must go on. How fitting that two years after the March, we are one day after the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection.

Despite my efforts, I was unable to locate a video recording of the speeches, except this one of myself which is rather poor. In the coming weeks, I’ll keep trying to secure video copies of more of the speeches. Please pray that I succeed because some of the speeches were rather remarkable and need to be heard and seen again.

One of the questions that people sometimes ask about the issue of same-sex “marriage” is how such an issue affects them if they are not gay. This is a fair and straight forward question which deserves a response. Here are some of John’s responses…

1) Not Merely A Private Affair: Marriage is not a private affair even though SSM propagandists want to couch the debate in this realm. In point of fact, marriage is a public institution that has very public consequences to all of society. It is a social institution which, among other important things, demands that all of society recognize the legitimacy of such a union. The question of legitimacy then translates and impacts all of society’s laws in virtually all spheres of influence. This means that those who oppose such unions are immediately forced to confront the law in the sphere where same-sex “marriage” has been imposed on them. This can be within education, business, politics, and a host of other areas. To understand this reality in very concrete terms, we need only refer to the instances of civil and religious persecution which citizens of Canada are currently undergoing at the hands of a misguided and sometime pernicious ideology which seeks to muzzle and punish dissent on this issue. Scott Brockie, an evangelical Christian businessman, for example, can tell us all about being a prime target of this veiled totalitarianism which the Canadian media, being controlled by the same left-leaning crowd, have long and shamelessly suppressed.

2) Civil Disintegration: The strength and health of any legal system is contingent on the moral unity and outlook of its people. Since our society exists within such a framework of legal coexistence, the common morality of a nation must be firmly set in one direction. If there are competing groups with diametrical moral views, each group will invariably seek to use the law to “impose” itself on the other group. In the case of homosexual “marriage”, the homosexual lobby will seek to impose acceptance of its sexual license on the rest of the population. No benefit that a “straight marriage” enjoys is out of bounds for a gay couple. If a citizen refuses to accept a gay “marriage” in his capacity as a businessman, employer, minister of God, or other agent in society, the gay couple will seek remedy from the legal system to impose the “rights” that they have earned. Conversely, the religious freedom of the business owner is compromised because of a court order forcing him to act against his conscience. The resulting fallout of this battle, regardless of the position taken, is that society descends into a kind of tyranny where one group seeks to impose its will on to the other. This may lead to civil disintegration if the competing moralities are contained in regions of the country, and if one side begins to pursue a very aggressive agenda, the other side will retaliate. Human nature, being what it is, will not perpetually endure these unjust attacks. The recent conduct against a Knight of Columbus attacking his livelihood because of his views on same-sex “marriage” are a prime example of this.

3) Loss of Freedom of Speech: Until recently, Canadian citizens were free to profess their creed without fear of intimidation or legal threats. This freedom can no longer be taken for granted. There is a sentiment in the air which, while pretending to offer tolerance for all, is in fact against authentic tolerance. It seeks not to protect freedom of expression, but rather to alienate it, muffle it, and, if at all possible, silence it altogether. Marriage is the hairpin issue which will decide the fate of freedom of speech in Canada. The new political agenda is pushing a veiled fascism that is threatening religious expression and freedom of speech in this country. And there are already many recorded instances of authentic persecution of Christians in Canada as noted above. As David Warren has recently remarked:

“.. a person openly espousing Christian teachings up here — for instance, on sodomy — can be hauled before the kangaroo court of a “Human Rights Commission”. He can be humiliated, assessed fines, lose his livelihood, be muzzled or ordered to act against his conscience, all without due process. That “midnight knock on the door” can happen, as Fred Henry discovered, even if you are the Bishop of Calgary, addressing your own flock..” … (davidwarrenonline)

3) Attack on Parents: As the parents of the BC Surrey School Board District have found out, the legitimization of same-sex unions has some very serious repercussions for what their children are taught in the schools. Uffe Elbaek, a gay politician from Denmark, was interviewed in the Canadian gay paper Capital Xtra. Here is an excerpt of the article:

“Respect, he says, is demanded in education. In Danish schools – even religious schools – objections to gay rights are dealt with decisively, unlike drawn out Canadian battles over the banning of gay-positive books in Surrey, BC or an Ontario Catholic school board’s refusal to allow Marc Hall to take his boyfriend to his prom.

Elbaek cites a problem with a private Christian school that refused to include gay studies. “City council had to step in and lay down the law. Even if you are a private school, you must promote tolerance.” Denmark has many private religious schools for Christian and Muslim students, Elbaek says, but requirements are clear. “All local schools report to the local city council. Private schools are 75 percent publicly funded. The public can go in and say, ‘Yes, it’s a religious school, but gay curriculum must be present.’”

“Everybody says, for sure I should be able to have sex in a public space.But hey, can’t you at least clean up your condoms so the kids, when they are coming to the playground the day after, don’t have to play in used condoms?” He admonishes, “Sometimes the gay community has to shape up.”

While this may come as a surprise to most of us because of the false claims of free-speech accommodation from gay rights activists, it is not surprising to see this happen. Why? Because once you accept that homosexuality and same-sex “marriage” is a “human right”, then those who oppose it are legitimate targets of the State.

The question of educating our children then becomes an area of public debate as the gay lobby (through the auspices of the State) demand universal and uninhibited access to educate our children. For any sensible person, however, this is unacceptable since parents are ultimately responsible for the education of their children. Should parents choose to delegate that job to the State, that is their business, but ultimately they have the authority and responsibility of educating their children according to their values. The State and the gay lobby need to butt out.

4) Children’s Rights: Children have an inherent and moral right to know and be raised with their mother and father. The support for this comes from the natural law itself where the love between a mother and father beget another person. This is a reflection of the triune nature of God and represents a “circle of love”, where each person of this “trinity” has unique and distinct qualities that the other person does not possess. The child’s human nature is derived partly from his mother and party from his father. Therefore, to separate or manufacture a same-sex union and put the child in the midst of this union is to deprive the child of a fundamental aspect that only a mother or only a father can give. Only a father can “speak” to that aspect of human nature that comes from his masculinity; likewise for the mother and the qualities that come from her femininity.

It is precisely this distinct language which is proper to each sex that nourishes and develops the child’s personality and soul. Of course, there are many good parents who head single-parent households and do an exemplary job to cope as best they can. But most of them will freely admit that a complimentary role in their household is the ideal. And it is this ideal that the State should be promoting, while providing assistance to those whose life circumstances have placed them outside of the ideal.

5) Loss of Human Dignity: Natural marriage represents an ontological reality that men and women, while sharing the same human nature, are distinct persons. This means that they each possess qualities and attributes in their own right which cannot be replaced by someone of the opposite sex. In other words, a man cannot replace the unique and irreplaceable contribution that a woman makes to society, not because of what she does, but what she possesses which is manifested within her femininity. Her femininity is distinct from a man’s masculinity. One is not better than the other, but only different and complimentary to the other. Both men and women together reflect the image of God, although they do so with a different perspective and focus so that in seeing both the masculine and feminine, God’s image is made complete.

Most people, of course, recognize that the sexes are different, and that they each, in their own right, while equal, possess something unique and distinct that the other sex does not possess. Marriage is the instrument which recognizes in a tangible, visible, and sacramental form this mutual distinct and complimentary nature of men and women. Marriage says “yes, there is a difference between men and women and this difference is good.” Same-sex “marriage”, on the other hand, blurs this distinction as it no longer requires the two persons to be distinct from one another. In consenting to the normalization of same-sex unions, the State is implicitly recognizing that, for instance, in the case of male same-sex unions, femininity is not necessary for a marriage. That it is, therefore, only optional. But in declaring femininity optional in marriage, the State is stripping away the singular and irrevocable place that femininity (or masculinity as the case may be) should have in our culture. By this declaration, the State is unconsciously degrading and diminishing the beautiful, unique, and exclusive role that femininity plays in marriage and the culture at large. This naturally results in the general lowering of respect and dignity due to women, and makes them second class citizens. By making marriage a same-sex affair, the State is attacking the dignity of the human person by not recognizing the irrevocable and irreplaceable roles of masculinity and femininity in marriage. In doing so, all of masculinity and all of femininity is attacked. If it’s merely optional in marriage, it cannot be that important anywhere else.

5) Incrementalism: Because it has no objective basis for sanction other than mere consent, same-sex “marriage” opens the door to every other relationship which can and will appeal to this same foundation. The recent Supreme Court ruling on group sex clubs or “swinging clubs” is one example of the consequences that the acceptance same-sex marriage will have on 14-year olds. Others which will follow: legalized prostitution, polygamy, and perhaps, as is being pushed in Massachussetts, other forms of sexual experimentation.

6) Birth Rate: Along with all first world nations and most Western countries, the birth rates are suicidally low. A nation requires 2.2 children per couple to sustain a population. Canada’s rate stands at 1.5. Immigration cannot be relied as a permanent solution as even third world countries’ populations have also begun to plummet. By further eroding the marriage and traditional family, this will have dire consequences to our social programs like pension and health care programs. Without a skilled and educated workforce due to a labour shortage caused by the attack on the Canadian family, Canada’s standard of living will start to slowly decline and then fall exponentially.

7) Serious Health Consequences: Because homosexual acts are against the natural law, they carry serious health consequences. It is incumbent on us as a compassionate and responsible society to convince people who engage in homosexual behaviour (and indeed even heterosexual who also engage in risky sex behaviour) that they should seek professional medical help to address their condition. Many Canadians have friends and family who have homosexual tendencies. It is important to treat persons with homosexual tendencies with the respect that they deserve, but sometimes showing respect includes disagreeing with them and pointing them to the risks that they face.

• Two extensive studies in the Jan. 2001 issue of the American Medical Association’s Archives of General Psychiatry : confirm a STRONG link between homosexual sex and suicide, and emotional and mental problems (Theo Sandfort, Ron de Graaf, et al., “Same-sex Sexual Behaviour and Psychiatric Disorders, ” Archives of General Psychiatry, 58(1): 85-91, p. 89 and Table 2 (January 2001))
• An extensive study in the Netherlands undermines the assumption that homophobia is the cause of increased psychiatric illness among gays and lesbians. The DUTCH have been MORE ACCEPTING of same-sex relationships than any other Western country and same-sex marriage is legal. The HIGH rate of psychiatric disorders associated with homosexual behaviour in the Netherlands CANNOT be attributed to social rejection and homophobia (Theo Sandfort, Ron de Graaf, et al., “Same-sex Sexual Behaviour and Psychiatric Disorders, ” Archives of General Psychiatry, 58(1): 85-91, p. 89 and Table 2 (January 2001))
• Compared to controls who had no homosexual experience in the 12 months prior to the study, males who had ANY homosexual contact within that time period were more likely to experience major depression, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia and obsessive compulsive disorder. (Theo Sandfort, Ron de Graaf, et al., “Same-sex Sexual Behaviour and Psychiatric Disorders, ” Archives of General Psychiatry, 58(1): 85-91, p. 89 and Table 2 (January 2001))
• Medical and social evidence indicates that men having sex with men leads to GREATER health risks than men having sex with women not only because of promiscuity but also because of the nature of sex among men. Anal sex, as a sexual behaviour, is associated with significant and life-threatening health problems. The fragility of the anus and rectum make anal sex a most efficient manner of transmitting HIV and other infections. The list of diseases found with extraordinary frequency among homosexuals as a result of anal sex is alarming (Anal cancer, Chlamydia trachomatis, Cryptosporidium, Herpes simplez virus, HIV, Human papilloma virus, Gonorrhea, viral hepatitus types B & C, Syphilis) (Anne Rompalo, “Sexually Transmitted Causes of Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Homosexual Men,” Medical Clinics of North America, 74 (6) Nov. 1990)

While the authors of the two articles cited below would be considered to hold “conservative” views on this issue, their citations come from authentic and objective sources like The American Journal of Public Health, The American Journal of Epidemiology, United States Center for Disease Control, National Center for Infectious Diseases, The British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, and other reputable sources.

The Negative Effects of Homosexuality
Citizens for Parents’ Rights

As tribute to his legislation which decriminalized homosexuality, the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s portrait hangs reverently in many gay establishments across Canada. Somehow, I doubt that he will ever have to share that spotlight with his current successor, the Right Honourable Paul Martin, even if same-sex marriage is codified under Martin’s watch.

Gay bashing, most often perpetrated by inebriated and fractious young males, is always inexcusable. Blaming it on religious conservatives, however, is thoroughly disingenuous. When scholarly debate and rational opposition are stifled, the argument is forced underground and frequently re-emerges in fanatical and perilous form. With respect to same-sex marriage, opponents are summarily mocked and marginalized, and proper research is given perfunctory consideration.

Since gay men are always the first to be purged in any sort of social upheaval, I have no time for the preciously pious types who are offended by my observations or who resort to infantile ad hominems. I’m passionate and undeterred in my efforts to save the spirit of gay culture and to preserve the freedoms we have gained over the past thirty years. Same-sex marriage threatens the liberty of gays and lesbians like nothing before in the modern era.

When media and politicians relentlessly spin same-sex marriage as a human rights issue, rather than a social value, or as a matter of equality, instead of parity, they insult the intelligence of Canadians. And when the gay lobby falsely claims that without access to marriage we are denied the benefits available to our straight counterparts, their lies impose serious danger upon all gays and lesbians. Indeed, every misrepresentation moves the hands of the backlash clock, which are already approaching midnight, several seconds closer.

Since the AIDS crisis of the 1980′s, gay activists have always been hostile toward mainstream religion. That’s one of the reasons there has never been a gay leader remotely close to the stature of Martin Luther King or Ghandi, both of whom were deeply spiritual. That’s also why, notwithstanding the lame protection clause given to churches in the same-sex marriage legislation, the gay lobby is eagerly ready to plant its stiletto heel firmly on the throats of the obstructive religious institutions. One of their specious justifications would be that since gender and racial equality exists in or out of church, therefore sexual orientation must receive the same consideration.

Truly, the most scandalous aspect of the current efforts to deconsruct marriage is that the petitioners for same-sex marriage and the judges who habitually rule in their favour are philisophically and socially incestuous. If one reads the depositions presented to the courts by the advocates, it becomes glaringly evident that the judges are making their decisions based on a sanitized, selective and tendentious view of gay life. It’s largely sentiment and camaraderie. Canada is about to uproot one of civilisations most time-honoured foundations and engage in radical social engineering, simply so that some peoples’ feelings won’t be hurt. When the judges hand down their rulings, they should include a paper advising how we gays and lesbians can best shield ourselves from the jeopardy to which they so unthinkingly expose us.

Since most peoples’ sense of history begins the day after they’re born, it’s hardly surprizing that scarcely anyone recognizes the social and cultural ramifications of ignoring the lessons of the past. Homosexuality has always existed and always repeats its cycle which ranges from repression to decadence. It flourishes openly and with decreasing moral opprobrium during peaceful, affluent and cosmopolitan times. Feeling ebullient and invincible, we soar to new heights of arrogant pride, embracing nihilism and casuistry as supreme virtues of enlightenment. Then we wonder what hit us as we crash and burn into a dark abyss of suppression and fear.

Is it futile for me to dream about participating in the first civilisation in history that finally breaks this ominous cycle, which sweeps gays and lesbians through such political and psychological extremes? To accomplish such, we first must ditch our maudlin victim and oppression mentality. Then we need to re-establish our leadership in the creative arts which, to our eternal shame, has taken a back seat to the bourgeois entitlement concerns of a microscopic minority. Also, we must be honest and apolitical about our unique health issues, which have not only decimated our own, but have burdened society as a whole.

Members of Parliament: consider this my impassioned – almost desperate – eleventh hour appeal to put an end to this April Fool’s joke called same-sex marriage, which falsely claims dignity and legitimacy by attaching itself to the worthy principles of compassion, equality and justice. Stop the backlash against gays and lesbians before it really takes hold. Politicians are well insulated, as they should be, from the anger of a frustrated and misled public. But who protects me as I stroll through the gay village?

Centuries ago, Plato cautioned that democracy would crumble and pave the way to dictatorship, because a foolish majority would turn liberty into license. Today, the backlash clock is ticking…and ticking…and ticking.

John McKellar
National Director, HOPE
HOMOSEXUALS OPPOSED to PRIDE EXTREMISM (HOPE)

April 20, 2005

hopenow@hotmail.com
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John McKellar’s articles have appeared in The National Post and other publications.

The popular opinion of people who favour the promotion of abortion and same-sex “marriage” rights is founded on the idea that such practices involve fundamental human rights. The United Nations and their organs, for example, have tried for decades to push the absurdity that abortion is a human right. Now, with the recent gay revolution, they have jumped on the Gay-Pride flotilla and are advancing the same case in regards to same-sex “marriage”.  Closer to home in North America, the current debates raging around sexuality are predicated on the so-called “right to privacy” which was further advanced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.  The “right to privacy” certainly had an unassuming and harmless ring to it outside of the abortion controversy, but as we are now discovering, it is becoming quite universally ferocious and lethal.  Indeed, the “right to privacy” has become a toxic euphemism for an imposed sexual anarchy – an anarchy which is leading to the demand for recognition of debased sexual behaviour. While the clamor for human rights and imposition of the gay and pro-abort lifestyle will no doubt continue, it is important to understand that the real power and establishment of our cultural denouement does not rest with a fervent yet misled philosophy.  The battle in the culture of death is not really about human rights or morality or even religion.

It is about money and profit.

It is about the corporate pimps who profit from the promotion of the gay lifestyle at the expense of not only society at large but the gay community in particular.  The great irony in this façade is that while the gay agenda tries to push the human rights card to gain legitimacy, straight sex hustlers are making a mint in their target marketing as they watch AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases decimate a whole segment of society. They are unconcerned about gays and human rights or even human beings. They want Gay money, and they’re willing to sacrifice their patrons in order to get to it.  Here is a testimony of a formerly active gay man who confirms this indictment:

“Let me begin with a few thoughts on the Gay world, one of the progressive leftwing’s hobbyhorses, and something I know a great deal about.  The Gay world is something I once energetically and enthusiastically supported and even helped to build. Nowadays, though, the gay world can kiss my gay ass. A movement that once served to emancipate people has now turned on its own, and through a combination of bald-faced hypocrisy and utter denial is literally killing hundreds of thousands. The AIDS crisis, just in North America alone, has now killed over a half-million gays. That’s more than the total number of American G.I.s killed in all of WWII., all theaters combined. In fact, the crisis is one of almost genocidal proportions.

Of the 20 or so people who once formed my entourage back in the early 80′s, fifteen have died. And the statistics bear this out: gays have shorter life spans than their straight counterparts. They have higher rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide and venereal disease. That’s the real, honest story of the Gay world, a story few care to recount. Now what is the reaction of gay advocacy groups, some of whom I used to work for, when faced with these facts? Their reaction is one of intense hostility and an even more intense denial. Let me explain why this is so.

The Gay community is a very wealthy constituency. We’ve got money to burn and whole industries have grown up around us because there are just gazillions of dollars up for grabs. But how does one market to gays? The answer is easy: one attaches ‘sex’ to every product and service aimed at the community. Trust me on this one; the gay world is absolutely inundated with sex. Bars, restaurants, nightclubs, saunas, pubs, taverns – all are marketed through sex. Now if this gigantic economic machinery is to continue turning, sex has to be promoted and even exalted. It’s crucial, if profits are to be maximized, to never allow people to question or to even debate the role of sex in the Gay community.”

It is not difficult to connect the dots mapped out by this testimony, and see that it does indeed draw a fairly accurate picture of the gay sexual revolution.  Disney, for instance, has been at the forefront in cashing in on “Gay rights” with their infamous “Gay Days”.  Does anyone really believe that Disney is concerned with the “human rights” of Gays?  Disney is a multi-billion dollar business which caters to constituencies that have large disposable income.  One of those constituencies is Gay couples who typically are well educated, well paid, and have no children.  In fact, almost every industry whose products rely on targeting persons with high disposal income would be remiss, from a financial point of view, to ignore the Gay community. That is why over the past decade, beer companies, the entertainment world, clothing companies, and other industries have developed whole divisions with the express purpose of soaking in Gay money.

Even real estate is not immune. “When real estate companies realized that the gay consumer had disposable income, that was when things started to change,” said Adam Thompson, managing broker at Rainbow Realty Corp. in Elmhurst, Ill., which specializes in working with gay clients. In fact, the Gay community has substantial power in terms of disposable income when compared to other minority groups. “The projected spending power of the gay and lesbian segment of the population, about 15 million people, for 2003 is $485 billion,” said Stephanie Blackwood, a New York marketing executive. “That’s compared to the Hispanic segment, which is $653 billion, but gays and lesbians are nearly a third the size of the Hispanic segment.” (Source: Chicago Tribune, Mary Umberger, Oct. 10, 2003) [http://www.freep.com/money/business/gays10_20031010.htm])

As one reporter keenly remarked about the gay rights clamor in the industry, “in real estate, though, the issue of gay rights is more akin to an age-old business practice: follow the money.” That same corporate philosophy is found in the abortion and contraception industries.  Pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars on contraceptive pills and devices at the expense of broken marriages, broken lives, and, with the advent of abortifacient pills, the broken bodies of dead women.

Just recently a former Republican counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Manuel Miranda, related how the recent filibustering by Democratic Senators to disrupt Presidential judicial nominations was not about a euphemistic “woman’s right to choose” at all. It was all about money and abortion profits. Lifesite.net reported some interesting comments which Miranda offered to CNSNews.com:

“It isn’t just about ‘abortion rights,’ the battle is about abortion profits,” Miranda explained. “The axis of profits that undergirds the fight in the Judiciary Committee is the axis between trial lawyers – who want particular types of judges who rule in particular ways on their cases – and, not the ‘abortion rights’ lobby, but the abortion clinics lobby.”

“The ‘abortion rights’ lobby is just a front for something much worse,” he continued, “which is the abortion clinics’ lobby, represented by the National Abortion Federation.”

Abortion clinics make $1,000 profit for every abortion they perform, Miranda said. “That’s where the money is,” he said.

The commonly believed idea that there is no “big money” behind the Democrat motivation is a misconception, Miranda claims. “The abortion clinics’ lobby is an industry as large as any industry that lobbies in Washington…the enormity of the money that is behind the Democratic push is astounding and shocking,” he said.

An evil culture cannot grow unless there are major players making a profit from it.  Money and power fuel a wicked culture. Many corporations who enter into the arena of “progressive human rights” do so because it serves their bottom line. And this is aptly demonstrated on the issues of gay and abortion “rights”. Successful businesses use popular “human rights” campaigns to serve their corporate interest. It’s good for business even if its clients’ lives are being destroyed by it. But then again, the right to life is not a particular human right in vogue right now. Bottom line? It doesn’t pay.

“The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life, and which of its own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children, has, between the baptised, been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.” (Canon 1055 §1) Since Adam and Eve first walked the earth, man has always understood marriage as the union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all other relationships. “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27) Fundamental to the Natural Law is that marriage is contracted between a man and a woman. Unfortunately, we are now seeing this foundational pillar to marriage undermined in Western society.

In recent months, political forces within the Canadian judiciary, as well as theological movements within the Anglican communion and various other main-line Protestant denominations, have sought to redefine marriage as an exclusive relationship “between two persons.” Quite often this is presented as a matter of justice and inclusivity towards those of an alternate sexual orientation. As faithful Catholics, we cannot remain ambivalent to this challenge. For the Church holds, as Pope John Paul II so clearly states in Familiaris Consortio, that the “conjugal communion sinks its roots in the natural complementarity that exists between man and woman, and is nurtured through the personal willingness of the spouses to share their entire life-project…”

In other words, God designed marriage around the natural complementarity between the male and the female. First and foremost, we see this complementarity in the procreation of the human race – the most fundamental and necessary component of society’s existence. This is the rationale behind the Church’s teaching that marriage is ordered toward the good of children. For as we read in Familiaris Consortio, “the fundamental task of the family is to serve life, to actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator-that of transmitting by procreation the divine image from person to person.”

Yet the good of children does not end with procreation; children must also be educated. As numerous sociological and psychological studies confirm, the traditional family provides the most stable and nurturing environment for the social, psychological, spiritual, and emotional needs of children. There is no authentic substitute for a stable two-parent family of complimentary gender. By means of the Natural Law, God engraves this truth in every human heart. He does not do so for His sake, but for the good of the individual, the good of the family and for the good of society as a whole.

In Familiaris Consortio, the Holy Father draws this connection between the conjugal communion of a man and woman and the stability of the family. “Conjugal communion constitutes the foundation on which is built the broader communion of the family, of parents and children, of brothers and sisters with each other, of relatives and other members of the household,” he states. “This communion is rooted in the natural bonds of flesh and blood, and grows to its specifically human perfection with the establishment and maturing of the still deeper and richer bonds of the spirit: the love that animates the interpersonal relationships of the different members of the family constitutes the interior strength that shapes and animates the family communion and community.” Thus marriage exists to serve God through service to the traditional family structure. This is the reason why marriage has survived throughout the centuries, while others have not; this exclusive union between a man and a woman reflects the natural order which God has created.

When man tries to socially engineer a union – such as the Canadian judiciary’s recent attempt with same-sex marriage, and make a pretense that it is just as valid or sublime as an authentic marriage – it is doomed to failure. Such a union does not fail because of its introduction into an intolerant or repressive society. Rather, as we learn from ancient history, homosexually permissive societies simply die out. Unable either to sustain or to propagate themselves, they bring down a whole culture with them. The failure of homosexually permissive societies, therefore, is neither political, social, nor ideological.

Rather, the failure of homosexual civilizations lay in their refusal to accept that the homosexual act is against human nature itself. It is against the most fundamental and intrinsic part of our being which, when expressed sexually, is to create. A man engaging in sexual intercourse with another man cannot create new life. Neither can a woman with another woman. In terms of simple biology, the homosexual act is intrinsically closed to creation. “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’” (CCC 2357)

A nation that legalizes homosexual marriage at the expense of the traditional family will soon find its culture intrinsically disordered as well. “No one can serve two masters,” Our Lord shares in the Gospels. “Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matt 6:24) Similarly, no nation can serve two contradictory definitions of marriage, for the culture of hedonistic eroticism diametrically opposes the culture of self-sacrifice for the family.

And thus, in the battle over marriage between the Culture of Life and the culture of death, Christ calls upon us as His faithful to stand firm as signs of contradiction. “In the context of a culture which seriously distorts or entirely misinterprets the true meaning of human sexuality, because it separates from its essential reference to the person,” we read in Familiaris Consortio, “the Church more urgently feels how irreplaceable is her mission of presenting sexuality as a value and task of the whole person, created male and female in the image of God.”

Homosexual activity is fundamentally closed to human life since, by its very nature, their act is closed to conception. Thus the attempt to reconstruct marriage in a manner inclusive of two individuals of the same gender is a denial of the most essential and fundamental truth of human physiology. It rejects the simplicity with which the male and the female compliment one another. Just as a bolt and a nut go together to accomplish a purpose in basic mechanics; two bolts do not and can never do so.

As Pope Paul VI teaches in Humanae Vitae, the conjugal act fulfills two purposes: to procreate and to unite. “[...] each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life,” His Holiness states. “This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.’”

From these two inherent significances flows a wonderful consequence of the conjugal union. Its climax physically reflects the spiritual joy over the creative act in which a man and a woman participate. Neither of these can be separated from the other. One cannot legitimately separate the procreative from the unitive and hope to avoid dire consequences.

In keeping with the Natural Law, conjugal relations are not intended simply for the pleasure they bring to the senses. Thus marriage cannot simply be reduced to a mere sexual act in which both parties derive physical gratification. Rather, the conjugal act is a sacred and noble thing.

Inherent within its nobility is the couple’s sublime participation in the creation and the propagation of the human race for the greater glory of God. As such, the conjugal act cannot be morally manipulated or interrupted in any way. Its attributes cannot be pulled apart and arbitrarily heightened at the expense of the very purpose for which God designed the act itself. The suppression of any element of the act results in a distortion of its role in building up the family and of society. It is a vicious reconstruction of the creative act with which mankind has been entrusted, and it is a direct assault on the image of God Himself.

As we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God. ‘Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility.’”(CCC 2367)

In further seeking to understand the traditional family, and the importance of defending the complimentary role of each gender within marriage, Christians should keep in mind that not only are individual persons created in the image of God, but so is the family itself. In fact, the human family is the closest analogy that mankind will ever come to concretely understanding the Blessed Trinity.

The historic Christian creeds teach that while there is one God, He exists in three distinct persons. Additionally, Holy Scripture reveals that man is made in the “image of God”. From these two truths, therefore, we acknowledge that the complete image of God is found in the Triune understanding of Him. This understanding of His Triune nature is reflected by the human family whose personal relationships approach the likeness of the Trinity. Consider the unity of the Trinity which is reflected in the unity of the family. Or the “family of persons” which is found in both. The persons of the Trinity share the “same substance” while a human family becomes one flesh: wife with husband and parents with children.

There is also another element in the Trinity that lends itself to human likeness. The Nicene Creed professes this about the Trinity: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” In Catholic theology, the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the will of both the Father and the Son, or in other words, through the activity which they engage in, otherwise known as “love”. The Holy Spirit is poured forth through the exchange of love between the Father and the Son. This is why perhaps Jesus says to the Apostles: ” Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” (John 16:7)

In the eternal economy of the Trinity, therefore, a person “proceeds” from the love between two other persons. And so, the Holy Spirit is love “proceeding” or “coming from” the first two persons of the Blessed Trinity. The human family has a rather striking parallel to this dynamic. The ultimate act of intimacy in a marriage mirrors the eternal exchange of love between the first two persons of the Trinity. And like the eternal or continual procession of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, the act of love between a man and a woman causes opens itself up to the “procession” of another human person through the birth of a child. Because the homosexual act is not ordered to the procession of another person, a same-sex marriage can never be a Trinitarian reflection of the divine essence.

Indeed, marriage can only take place between a man and a woman. For fundamental to marriage is its openness to human life and to the communion between a man and a woman. These are the co-ends of marriage as noted by the Second Vatican Council. Subsequently, the conjugal act either affirms God’s image or it distorts it. This is why contraceptive sex, including the homosexual act, are seriously disordered: they subvert man’s dignity as co-creators with God and seek to create God in another image.

Pete Vere & John Pacheco

February 25, 2004

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Pete Vere is a writer and canon lawyer from Sudbury Ontario. John Pacheco is a social conservative activist and writer. He is the director of Social Conservatives United, a network of social conservative groups seeking cultural and political change in Canada.

As Canadian university students during the early 90′s, the current authors survived the failure of the Meech Lake accord. In the aftermath of this failed referendum, we witnessed a divided country, the near-extinction of Canada’s oldest political party, and the re-birth of a nearly successful Quebec separatist movement. Never could we imaging that we would live through another event that so affected the psyche of our nation.

And yet, for the American reader, this blow to the psyche of Canadian social conservatives is precisely what happened recently. As reported in the July 10th edition of LifeSiteNews.com, “The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled this morning that homosexual ‘marriage’ is now a right guaranteed by the Charter of Rights, and thus re-wrote Canadian law on the matter. The court rendered invalid the existing definition of marriage to the extent that it refers to ‘one man and one woman’ and reformulated the definition of marriage as ‘the voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others’. The justices ordered their redefinition of marriage to have ‘immediate effect’.”

Not surprisingly, within days Canada’s Prime Minister provided the following sterile reaction to the Ontario Court ruling. “We will not be appealing the recent decision on the definition on marriage, rather we will be proposing legislation,” Jean Chretien states, “we will ensure that our legislation includes and legally recognize the union of same-sex couples. As soon as the legislation is drafted it will be referred to the Supreme Court.”

Thus the Ontario Court of Appeals, through judicial fiat, legalized so-called same-sex marriage. And as the shock sets in, Canada once again finds itself transformed from a generally relaxed and polite people into an angry and divided nation. America may share in many of our social ills – rampant divorce and abortion come to mind – but at least she still fights the culture war. Canadians, on the hand, have all but surrendered to the pan-sexualist social agenda of our judicial activists. Unfortunately, most elected Canadian politicians are content to allow the judiciary to usurp parliament’s legislative power. For if a controversial ruling come from the courts, then the average Canadian is less likely to take out his frustration at the ballot box. This allows Canada’s politicians to have their cake and eat it too.

Yet despite the fact our beloved Maple Leaf now symbolizes Canada’s role as the red light district of the global village, the problem does not cease at the Canadian border. Ontario lacks any residency requirement for issuing marriage licenses, therefore this same judiciary will marry homosexual couples from other countries as well. Less than a month after the Ontario Court ruling, over 300 same-sex couples have already entered into civil marriages in Canada. Mainstream Canadian news agencies report anywhere between ten to twenty percent of these couples are Americans who crossed the border to take advantage of the Canadian situation.

This is rather shameful considering that just a few months previous to the Ontario Court ruling, the Canadian government had voiced strong opposition to American and British unilateralism in the Iraqi War. Regardless of one’s feelings toward the war, however, such unilateralism cannot even begin to compare with Canada’s present unilateralism in attempting to redefine an institution that almost every nation throughout time has accepted as an exclusive relationship between a man and a woman. In fact, the present authors consider the unilateral arrogance of our Canadian judiciary second only to the unilateral cowardice of our elected officials in refusing to defend their legislative role within the Canadian government. Yet returning to our original point, Canada now finds itself exporting its new definition of marriage without first having consulted the international community.

While these same-sex marriages currently have no standing in the United States, Americans should anticipate a number of court-challenges in coming months as the homosexual lobby seeks to advance its agenda south of the border. Despite the fact that marriage predates both Church and State, and despite the fact that just a few years ago the Canadian House of Commons – reflecting the will of the vast majority of Canadians – opposed extending the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, in the battle between the Culture of Life and the culture of death, the homosexual lobby has discovered their greatest ally among an activist judiciary.

Fr. Alphonse de Valk is the founder and publisher of Catholic Insight. Not to be confused with the schismatic traditionalist sympathetic website with the same name, this monthly magazine chronicles the culture war in Canada from the Catholic moral perspective. Archived at www.CatholicInsight.com one finds numerous responses to recent court cases where, in the name of sexual pluralism, judicial activism among the Canadian courts has seriously undermined the democratic process, religious freedom, and the Culture of Life. For example, Marc Hall attended a Catholic high-school in Oshawa, Ontario. Marc invited his boyfriend to the prom. In keeping with the traditional principles of Catholic moral theology, the Catholic school board prohibited Hall from bringing the boyfriend to the graduation dance. Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion came to naught as the civil courts ruled that the Catholic school had discriminated against the rights of Marc Hall.

On June 15th, 2001, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Board of Inquiry fined Hugh Owens, an evangelical Protestant, and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix $1500 for violating the equality rights of three gay men. Mr. Owen’s crime? He expressed his opinion on gay and lesbians sex through an advertisement in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. This advertisement consisted of a pictograph of two men holding hands superimposed with a circle and slash- the symbol of something forbidden-and a list of Bible verses condemning the practice of homosexuality. While Mr. Owens is currently appealing this ruling, if he loses and still refuses to comply with the Board of Inquiry, he will potentially find himself charged with contempt of court. If convicted, he will likely find himself consigned to jail as the first prisoner of conscience in the war between sexual plurism and religious plurism.

Yet such cases are not confined to the Province of Saskatchewan, which is currently governed by the New Democrat Party (NDP) – Canada’s main socialist party. Over in Ontario, where the Progressive Conservative Party is in power, Scott Brockie is the conscientious born-again Christian owner of a Toronto print shop. After refusing a request from gay rights activist Ray Brilliger to print material for the Canadian Lesbians and Gay Archives, Mr. Brockie found himself hauled before the Ontario Human Rights Board of Inquiry – the Ontario counterpart to the Saskatchewan board that had fined Hugh Owens $1500.

One would think that a quasi-judicial apparatus operating under the aegis of a conservative government would be more sensitive to judicial encroachment on religious freedom than its counterpart operating under a socialist government. But such is not the case in Canada. Thus the Ontario Human Rights Board of Inquiry ordered Mr. Brockie to pay $5.000 in damages to Ray Brilliger. While Heather McNaughton, the adjudicator assigned to this case, acknowledged the sincerity of Mr. Brockie’s religious convictions in her ruling dated February 24th, 2000, she nevertheless stated: “In fact nothing in my order will prevent Brockie from continuing to hold and practice his religious beliefs. Brockie remains free to hold his religious beliefs and to practice them in his Christian community.” While Mr. Brockie is also appealing this ruling, it is not inconceivable that he too may find himself joining Mr. Owens as a prisoner of conscience in Canada’s culture war.

As Canada moves to legalize same-sex marriage across the nation, these aforementioned examples of the Canadian judiciary suppressing the right to act upon one’s religious conviction now loom in the mind of every Canadian religious and social conservative. Again, Catholic Insight finds itself raising a number of troubling questions at the forefront of the debate. When asked about his stance on same-sex marriage, the Canadian Prime Minister reportedly replied: “It is religion that is the problem.” And while the Prime Minister has subsequently reassured religious entities in Canada that they will be exempt under proposed federal legislation recognizing same-sex marriage, the question remains “for how long?”

As the aforementioned cases show, Canada’s current judicial culture basically upholds a doctrine of religious freedom in which an individual possesses the right to believe what he wants, so long as this belief is never communicated in public or put into practice. Additionally, when for all practical purposes the law is legislated by activist courts rather than elected members of parliament, how much confidence can religious and social conservatives place in the word of our highest elected official? Especially when Canadians are notoriously complacent when it comes to politics. Can religious and social conservatives seriously trust a Prime Minister whose entire political legacy intertwined with his failure to hold judges to their traditional role as arbiters of law rather than as makers of law?

And what about similar guarantees with regards to Bill C-250? For our American audience, Bill C-250 is a private member’s bill introduced before Canada’s House of Commons by Svend Robinson. Besides being an elected representative of Canada’s socialist NDP, Mr. Robinson has the dubious distinction among social and religious conservatives of being Canada’s first openly homosexual Member of Parliament. According to an official press release on Mr. Robinson’s government website, the purpose of Bill C-250 is, “to include ‘sexual orientation’ in the hate propaganda sections of the Criminal Code of Canada.”

While most private member’s bills in Canada ultimately die, having already passed two readings, Bill C-250 looks to be the exception. Nevertheless, Mr. Robinson is not taking any chances. In an urgent call-to-action to his constituency – the text of which is also available on his website – Mr. Robinson warns: “WE ARE IN DANGER OF LOSING THIS BILL because of the flood of e-mails and letters coming in to MPs from those who oppose the bill, mainly from the religious right. As well, Canadian Alliance MPs (who have voted against every bill that has ever come before the House to extend equality to gays and lesbians) are fanning the flames with outrageous attacks on the bill. They claim that the bill would make religious texts like the Bible illegal. This is absolutely false: both the Charter of Rights and the Criminal Code already protect freedom of religious expression.” As both Mr. Owens and Mr. Brockie discovered, the Canadian Charter of Rights and the Criminal Code of Canada certainly did not protect their freedom of religious expression.

Yet beyond the political consequences of an activist judiciary usurping the legislative role of parliament, lay some troubling moral questions raised by social and religious conservatives in Canada. Returning to the subject of same-sex marriage, despite our efforts, it does not matter whether we seek to change man’s image. The image of man has already been set. We cannot change it. If our Canadian judiciary attempts to do so, we cannot but anticipate the disintegration and degeneration of Canada – both as a culture and as a nation. And this is a sober reminder to our social engineers who spare not a moment in cheaply wrapping themselves in the Maple Leaf.

Marriage and its natural extension, the traditional family, provide the very reason why the government exists. As this foundation comes under attack and begins to disintegrate, the social consequences will play out within our political institutions. In terms of the Canadian experience, if marriage is just another relationship between two individuals that can be contracted and broken at will, then what makes us foolishly think that our country will stay together when our marriages cannot? And if we tell ourselves, contrary to the Natural Law Tradition of our Judeo-Christians roots, that abortion is a “noble choice”, then how can we continue to naively believe that our whole federation cannot be dismembered alongside our children in the womb?

And if we can tell ourselves that a man can marry a man, why could he not marry two men or three? Or why could he not marry his son or nephew when the latter comes of age? Or will age continue to matter? In a culture where virginity is ridiculed and pregnancy is so easily disposed of, it is simply a matter of time before so-called “inter-generational sex” – that which polite cultures and moral societies use to condemn as incest – is pronounced a right between a parent and their consenting child.

As shocking as it sounds to us today, such a putative right would be consistent with a Canada that currently affords little legal protection to children in the womb. It is consistent with a judiciary that undermines and legally manipulates marriage. We Canadians have turned our backs on the Judeo-Christian heritage that built this great nation, and if history is consistent, God will punish our society by granting us our request. In short, Canada will become the sexually hedonistic nation to which she aspires, and it will mark the death and annihilation of Canadian democracy as the judiciary asserts its new role as the arbiters of the pan-sexualist agenda – over and above the democratic will of the people along with other individual civil liberties. For our current Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, seems intent upon finishing the sexual-political revolution begun by his predecessor Pierre Trudeau.

Pete Vere & John Pacheco

January 5, 2004

They came by the thousands. On buses, on foot, in their cars and in their vans. They came from Montreal and Toronto, mostly. Driving to the Supreme Court where participants for National Marriage Day gathered, we saw them in their buses and on the street corners with their signs and banners boldly affirming traditional marriage. As my family and friends approached the grounds, you could not miss the seas of red in front of the Supreme Court. Organized. Efficient. Disciplined. Numerous.

And Chinese.

Some were Baptist. Some were Pentecostal. Some were non-denominational. It didn’t matter here, though. They arrived to fight a war together as Christians, and they came prepared. All attired in bold red T-shirts with the image of a man and woman emblazoned on them, they were sending a message to Canada and its politicians: don’t mess with marriage.

They organized themselves into what could only be described as military columns. Behind wide, red banners affirming traditional marriage, hundreds of Chinese Christians fell into formation. Each formation had a commander who telecommunicated with their field general. They moved only on his command. And when the command was given to begin the March to Parliament Hill, they marched – with precision and purpose. In total, I think they may have accounted for at least 40% of the entire crowd. It didn’t matter, though. The rest of us knew leadership when we saw it, and we simply fell into line and marched with them.

When we arrived at Parliament Hill, the crowd settled in from the march. I made my way up the stairs to confer with the principal organizer for the Event. Gazing over the crowd, I estimated at least 10,000 people based on other rallies on the Hill. It was a good and respectable turn out. Sadly, however, I knew that with more co-operation from certain Christian Churches and their leadership, we could have easily trippled that number.

As the people settled in, Mr. Tim Dooling, the Event’s principal organizer, made a few brief announcements. He made it clear that all those assembled were not there to “hate” or “bash” anyone. The objective of the event was only to oppose same-sex marriage. Indeed, considering the composition of the crowd and its polite and charitable behaviour, combined with the constant message of God’s love for everyone, the mere suggestion of “hate” would be comical, if it were not taken so seriously by a dum-downed electorate. After the crowd sang the national anthem, Mr. Dooling passed over the podium to the speakers.

Addressing the crowd, Canadian Alliance MP, Cheryl Gallant, (Renfrew-Nippissing-Pembroke) underscored how the Liberal government has attempted to divide, intimidate and conquer on family issues in order to gain the upper hand. She said, “This is not about equality, or a woman’s right to vote, or about lifestyles or about any other unrelated excuse that is intended to confuse Canadians. This is about one thing: this is about protecting the institution of marriage.”

Rev. William Oosterman of Christian Coalition International cited a number of cases where religious rights were denied in the name of the gay agenda, and the financial and democratic costs Christians were already paying in this country. He gave the crowd an ominious warning: “The Charter of Rights will not protect you. It will be used as a witness against you as people of faith”. He urged his listeners to make the next federal election a referendum on marriage.

Canadian Focus on the Family Vice President, Derek Rogusky, reiterated the necessity of Canadians to remain vigilent in their opposition to policies which attack and undermine the traditional family. He reminded everyone that it was absolutely necessary to get involved in the political and social debate, and keep the pressure on the politicians.

Rev. Paul Holden, a Baptist Minister, explained why he had to give up his license to marry people because of the imminent threat of the government to force clergy to marry homosexuals. Despite the media and the government’s false assurances, he explained how there was a concerted attempt to limit civil marriages in Canada in order to force clergy into the corner. Earlier, Rev. Oosterman related a telephone conversation he had had with a gay man who demanded that he officiate at his marriage to his lover.

Rev. Peter Au, the Chinese spokesman, challenged Prime Minister Chretien to begin a country-wide consultation process and hold a referendum on the issue, which Prime Minister Chretien has refused to do. The Liberal Party is severely underestimating the backlash that is building among ethnic voters who overwhelmingly vote Liberal. Immigrating ethnic communities usually vote for the governing party as a sign of loyalty and respect. However, there is a line which even they will not cross, and marriage is that line. In a bold and determined voice, Rev. Au made a solemn vow to the politicians that Chinese Christian Canadians across this nation will vote against any politician who favours same-sex marriage. Judging by the unanimity and organization which this particular ethnic group showed during the protest, this can only serve as a prime example of how the ethnic vote will be the deciding factor in overturning Canada’s current one-party State.

The current government is divided on the issue. While cabinet ministers are squarely behind the Prime Minister and his legislation, a number of backbech MPs are firmly against it. The Prime Minister has declared that this will not be an issue in the next election, but many in the crowd held up signs saying “My vote counts” and “Vote No and I will vote for you”. The legislation is scheduled to be voted on in 2004.

The press coverage of the event was vintage liberalism. In one of my two interviews with the media, one rather eager reporter asked me how my life would be impacted by two homosexuals getting married. He asked the question, of course, to suggest that I was an irrational religious zealot who would otherwise be unaffected by “two persons in love”. I responded: “When the government legislates homosexual marriage, it is legislating morality. As such, it requires me, through the law, to acknowledge and recognize the homosexual relationship in law as equal to my own heterosexual marriage. This means that when Adam brings in his “spouse”, Steve, into school to discuss his “marriage” with my 6-year old daughter, it most certainly does become my business.”

Some time before the event Mr. Dooling had informed me that the RCMP expected the opposition to be out. I expected hundreds. Less than a dozen turned out. Some opposition. Nevertheless, the media were fawning all over them like some cheap hollywood liberal over their local pro-abort candidate. In one news report, this young teenage lesbian was dutifully informing the camera that all of those nice, polite Christians casually strolling behind her were “hate mongering”. The media laughingly presented the event as a “clash” between views and gave equal air time to both camps, even though the other “side” was outnumbered 10,000 to 12.

The CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster (which I affectionately call the “Communist Broadcasting Corporation”), somehow got a hold of socialist NDP Leader, Jack Layton, who showed up to give his support to the dozen or so gay marriage supporters. Offering his gay soundbite for the event, he took the opportunity to challenge Paul Martin, the soon-to-be Prime Minister, to meet him next month for Gay Pride Day in Quebec. That was the only interview they aired! And, as for the local paper, it scooped up a picture of two teenage lesbians with an elderly gentlemen. Based on their comments, they were obviously very confused, being dutiful drones of the “human rights” brigade.

After the last speaker, Mr. Dooling thanked everyone for coming out, and reminded them that this event and their participation in it were a sign of their committment to kick the gay marriage politicians out of power. The crowd, in turn, thanked him, a sixty-eight year old former Liberal Party member, for his tireless efforts in organizing the event. We all then sang Amazing Grace and went home to turn up the heat on the politicians.

As I told the TV-reporter who ended up airing my interview with her: “The politicians better listen up. If they don’t, there will be a heavy political price to pay at the ballot box during the next election.” If the general electorate is emboldened with only a fraction of the zeal the Chinese Christians showed, Paul Martin will be Prime Minister for about as long as John Turner was. About six months.

John Pacheco with Suzanne Fortin

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The battle for the sanctity of human life today is not really about the peripheral issues surrounding it. Issues like homosexuality, abortion, and genetic manipulations are only the logical outcomes of the worldview espoused by competing forces. The Christian world view does not see the dignity of the human person in terms of utility or action. Rather, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “the dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God” (CCC, 1700). From this simple distinction, it is not difficult to understand that those holding a purely materialistic and worldly view of man will confront and oppose the Church and her teaching. The secular world view sees man as a means to an end. The end, of course, is self-gratification, whether expressed sexually or otherwise. The secular view is necessarily selfish. It does not seek the good of the other, but demands the natural right to gratify itself at the expense of others and human dignity itself. In order to establish this concocted right, the secular order seeks to sustain its propositions of license under the guise of “liberty”. But authentic liberty can never be sustained without appeal to an objective truth. Without such an appeal, the liberty of one group becomes the tyranny perpetrated against another.

In seeking to defend the traditional Christian teaching on morality, our opponents are not interested in being challenged on this issue. They are not interested in reconsidering their defunct and atheistic world view. They are not interested in the arguments against their position from history, anthropology, physiology, psychology, biology, natural law, moral law, or religion. What they are interested in is maliciously painting everyone who disagrees with their encroachments on common sense as individuals who “hate” them. Consider, for instance, the recent outrageous threats of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties against the Vatican’s rather firm yet balanced approach to the question of homosexual ‘marriage’. If the Vatican can be accused of “hate”, then there is really little hope for the rest of us in engaging our opponents.

This charge “hatred” stems from a distorted view of human dignity. Human dignity is not determined by the sexual act or any act, for that matter. Nor is human dignity predicated on utilitarianism. Hence, any Church criticism of any act cannot be considered as an attack on a person’s dignity. The Church believes that man’s dignity is founded in God:

“The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit…” (CCC,364)

As such, man’s intrinsic dignity is irrevocable regardless of the sin man engages in – sexual or otherwise. This means that the homosexual person has an intrinsic dignity which no one can take away precisely because he is created in the image of God. This is something that everyone engaged in this debate needs to understand so that misconceptions can be allayed. The homosexual must understand that when the Church condemns his sexual acts, She is not revoking or undermining his human dignity. Human dignity is not determined by the sexual acts performed. This is why, whether he is celibate, heterosexually active, or homosexually active, man retains his dignity in the face of the abuse of his sexuality. His dignity remains because he remains created in the image of God. Indeed, it is precisely in the abuse of the sexual act that homosexual acts undermine human dignity, although not removing it completely. In today’s culture, however, since there is no conception or possibility of abuse in the sexual arena – as long as it is consensual – any attack on its abuse is falsely understood as an attack on the person.

This is why the Church focuses the attention on the act and not the person or his dignity:

Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are 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 can they be approved.” (CCC,2357)

Although not the basis of his dignity, the sexual act is an expression of how man understands his dignity. When that expression is disordered and against the natural law; when it is against its physiological procreative purpose; and when it is against its moral purpose in affirming the unitive attributes of its essence, then those sexual acts must be rejected and condemned as a grave depravity. Homosexual acts are not life affirming. Neither are they procreative nor unitive. Yet, God is a God of creation and unity. And He has made man in His own image and given him an indispensable part in this noble act of creation.

Physiologically, a penis and a vagina complement one another for the purpose of uniting a husband and wife. They are not merely random biological parts of the body with no substantive purpose. Yet, homosexualism insists that their primary purpose is for sexual self-gratification without recognizing the reality of the procreative element to sex. Our physiology as men and women show us that we are incomplete as a sex without the other. The natural law proves that, in the natural course of human relations, our species cannot survive without conceding our gender limitations. When a man unites himself with a woman, he is implicitly admitting that he is incomplete without her. His completion can only be realized through her affirmation of their union. This affirmation of the heterosexual act is realized through the birth of a child, being the fruit of the union between both persons. It is nature’s way of affirming the inherent goodness of their act. This affirmation is not merely incidental to their union, but in the most profound literal way, a personal realization of that union.

The human person, therefore, cannot divorce the cause of his existence from the sexual act itself. His very existence, his conception is defined by the sexual act of a heterosexual couple. In the natural course of human relationships, no homosexual can define himself other than by the heterosexual act of his parents. He was not, nor could he ever be, called into existence by a homosexual act. Hence, he could never point to the past to justify his act because the act itself denies his very existence, and therefore attacks the dignity of his person in the most grievous way possible. A heterosexual act, on the other hand, can point to the past and to the future and claim its rightful place in human lineage by the natural act of propagation. But the homosexual act cannot point to itself as the basis for the existence of future homosexual persons. In fact, homosexual acts are always dependent on a heterosexual act of creation to sustain their very existence.

Each sexual act is meant to be an affirmation of human existence. Each act affirms the feminine and masculine physical image. Each act is an affirmation of the creation of our first parent and the creation of our last. Each act joins us to history and to all of creation. Homosexual acts are none of these, of course. They do not seek to unite generations. At best, they seek a human unity which cannot survive in the natural order. This is why engaging in contraceptive sex, of which homosexuality is merely a logical corollary, is a contradiction. It is a lie and a self-deception. Intercourse is meant to be an act of total abandonment to the other person. It is meant to be a full and complete sacrifice of self. Yet the object of this complete abandonment and self sacrifice must be capable of receiving the gift of self. Since the human body’s physiology is not merely tangential or incidental to a person or his dignity, man must respect his physical image and the purpose of this physical image in this abandonment.

With this understanding, a man’s total self-abandonment to his wife is correctly ordered since their respective bodies are designed for this self abandonment, and therefore yield the procreative fruit of their mutual self-sacrifice. Homosexual sex, however, is not capable of a complete abandonment because while the emotional and psychological attachment may be perceived to be present, the physical reality points in the opposite direction. The homosexual apologist chooses to dismiss this fact, but in so doing, he only attacks his own person by rejecting his own physiological image and the dignity that such a divine image demands.

Man’s dignity, therefore, has already been established by God. Its foundation rests on man being created in the image of God. This image is reflected in, and expressed by, the complementarity of the sexual act. As such, any proposition which seeks to redefine this truth is an affront to all persons and an attack on the dignity of the human person. By opposing the homosexual act, the Church is affirming its belief in the dignity of all men as created in the image of God. This is the reason the Church can love the homosexual person but hate the sinful act which he engages in. Our intrinsic dignity is not determined by our acts – however good or sinful. It is predicated on man’s immortality as a child of God. Being so ordered, any sinful acts which seek to undermine or negate this relationship can and must be condemned. If any of her children were to abdicate their responsibility to teach this truth, the Church would consider such treason as an affront to the homosexual person who retains their inherent dignity before society and God.