ENDEAVOUR FORUM NEWSLETTER No. 116, OCTOBER 2004

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Like many of you I have expended significant effort crafting a defense of marriage and testing it  in speeches, articles, and conversations with friends. Last week I had an unexpected opportunity to  try out  my ideas on a representative of the opposition. 

A journalism student from a local college had set up an appointment to interview me about the  debate over gay marriage. About 20 minutes into the interview she admitted that she had many  gay male friends and was for gay marriage. Her assignment was to test her own objectivity by  writing a story on someone with whom she strongly disagreed.

We spent three hours together and for me it was like a mini focus group. I presented arguments  which I had made in my speeches in Mexico and at a women's conference in Florida. I had seen  how they had appealed to my natural constituency, but here I had an opportunity to try them out on someone who had come to me precisely because she saw herself firmly on the other side. 

Little by little I saw her defenses crumble. I am not sure the change will be permanent. I know  that she is going back into an atmosphere where everything I said will be contradicted, but we  parted as friends with a promise to see one another again. 

To which ideas did she respond?

I presented most of the arguments I had made in my speeches: It's not genetic. It's a preventable  and treatable developmental disorder. It's violence against children. But I did so acknowledging  the suffering of young men and women who struggle with same-sex attractions which they didn't  want and whose origins they don't understand. I kept emphasizing that I cared more about her gay  friend than she did because she accepts him as he is -- who she tacitly admitted is unhealed --  while I want him to be the real man he was meant to be. I want him to be free to really marry and have children. 

Second, I took the blame. I am convinced this is crucial. Our side has publicly and privately said things about persons with same sex attraction which are simply un-Christian and for this we need  to demonstrate our real repentance. Sincere repentance is not only necessary if we want to be on  God's side in this, it is also essential for us to be credible, because our opposition knows our  sins in the matter and holds  them against us. 

Yes, homosexual acts are objectively sinful, but none of us "chooses" our temptations. They  didn't choose these feelings. Most of them have no idea why this happened to them and not their  brother or sister. They wanted to be like other people, but they always felt "different." It was our  job to be there with information, with real help and with prayer and we failed.

It is our fault that in 1963 when the therapists knew how to prevent and treat same-sex attraction  that we didn't care. We knew who was homosexual and we left them in their glass closets. We  abandoned them to their suffering. They lived through years of teasing, humiliations, lies, rejection and shame. Of course, "coming out" feels like a solution, acceptance feels better than  rejection, but "coming out" is really giving up hope. Why did they give up hope? Because we  never gave them solid reasons to hope. We just added to their shame until the burden became  unbearable. Most of all we didn't pray for them as we should have. I have found that speaking of  repentance also moves sympathetic audiences. When I spoke in this vein in Mexico the audience  spontaneously responded, committing themselves to prayer. 

Third, I listened to each of her objections and answered them as fully as possible. For every fact  I had a story, either personal or taken from the literature.  We must put a face on the suffering and  the successes. We say same-sex attraction is a psychological developmental disorder but we  don't act like we believe it. When I pointed out the problematic behaviors – infidelity, sexual  addiction, sexually transmitted diseases, psychological disorders, substance abuse problems – I  always linked them back to origins of same-sex attraction. The extreme behaviors are symptoms.  The more wounded the child, the more that child needed early intervention, protection, and help  and didn't get it. 

Fourth, when I explained that intentionally making a child to be permanently fatherless or  motherless was violence against the child, I could see that in spite of herself she  knew what I was  saying was true. As we talked I discovered another way to approach the subject, namely that gay  marriage is brought to us by the same people who told us there would be no negative  consequences if we adopted divorce on demand, the sexual revolution, abortion, etc... Now we have 30 years of these "experiments" on children and the results have been disastrous. I told her  about the results of Judith Wallerstein's studies on the effects of divorce on children. I talked  about the effects of the sexual revolution on the health of young women – HPV and cervical  cancer, abortion and breast cancer. Why should we trust people who have lied to us in the past,  caused and are still causing terrible suffering? I could tell by her eyes that she knew what I was  talking about because she lives with the victims. 

Finally, I pointed out that this is a battle between two philosophical points of view – Thomistic  realism and Post Modernist Deconstruction. We oppose calling the relationship between two  persons of the same sex a marriage because we believe in human nature and natural law. We  believe that men and women are different. There is no better evidence of the difference than the  striking differences between the gay male community and the lesbian community. She smiled  because she knew what I was saying is true. Post Modernist Deconstructionists don't believe in  truth; they believe that marriage, motherhood, family, man, women are just hegemonic ideas that  were invented by the oppressor class -- ideas which have no roots in reality (because reality is  irrelevant), ideas that can be changed or discarded. We are fighting for our entire world view against a world view that is dangerous because its proponents don't care who gets hurt.

The tyrant judges who impose the gay agenda follow Post Modernist reasoning and reject reality.  The young woman was an English major, a religion minor; she knew what I was talking about.  The students have been indoctrinated, but in their hearts most have doubts. I remember when I was exposed in philosophy to the idea that we really can't know anything for sure, that all is  merely perception. I came out of the classroom into a beautiful spring day, golden sun, green grass, pink blossom and I knew  the philosopher was blinded by too much speculation. He could not acknowledge what was obvious to the smallest child. The world is real.

We must not be afraid to confess our past failures. We must rededicate ourselves to prayer and to sharing our hope, even in the midst of the fierce political battles in which we are engaged. It is not what we are against that shapes who we are, but what we are for. It is our hope that forces us  to refuse to call the relationship between persons of the same-sex a marriage. We are for reality,  for truth, and for love. This is where we must stand.

Dale O’Leary is a freelance writer and lecturer and author of The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality

Member Organisation, World Council for Life and Family

NGO in Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC of the UN