I’ve never liked the term ‘gay’ applied to deviant sexuality. It’s a good word – or, perhaps was – meaning happy, joyful. Don we now our gay apparel, and all that, which no longer has the same ring as when the Christmas ballad was first penned by the Scotsman Thomas Oliphant in 1862, to a Welsh melody dating back to the sixteenth century. Scotland or Wales back then, and until the modern era, would have had no truck with what was known as ‘sodomy’, a term based on the Biblical reference of the city mired in sin. It has only been in the past few decades that such unnatural sexual activity has been ‘normalized’, made ‘okay’, and brought into the mainstream.
Scott Yenor describes this insidious process in a recent article, describing first, second and, now, third wave ‘gay’ activism. In the wake of the sexual revolution, the more deviant aspects were first flaunted, loud and proud; then, when that didn’t work so well, ‘gays’ were made bourgeois, as in Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas in the 1993 propaganda film, Philadelphia. Support for same-sex ‘marriage’, and its consequent legalization then followed. ‘Gay’ went mainstream. Now, with the third wave, the initial deviancy, and then some, is making a chiastic return: Transgenderism and pedophilia (‘minor attracted’ men) are amongst the most troubling, for they target innocent children, and not those grown old in their sin.
Now, a man is a woman, and woman a man, a boy a girl, and children dispensable, surrogated and adopted in surreal situations. Anything goes, except normality. Nietzsche’s transvaluation of all values is upon us, and Yeats’ mere anarchy is now loosed upon the world.
For a fuller version of the history of homosexuality and its now near-universal acceptance, see Robert Reilly’s Making Gay Okay, an eye-opening, if disturbing, read.
We should be clear that, as the Catechism says,
This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.
Furthermore,
These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
Working through their inclinations, those with these inclinations, with the rest of us, are called to be saints:
Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
By ‘chastity’ is meant the ‘successful integration of sexuality within the person’, which means, no unnatural relations, and natural ones only within marriage.
We must work and pray for the truth to win out, for the conversion of hearts and minds, and for laws that at the very least protect those too young, too vulnerable, to protect themselves. All it takes a few good men, and women, to stand up, and not be afraid.
